Reporter Pat Carson flees the embarrassment of a broken engagement to return to the one place she'd vowed never to go, her coal mining home town in West Virginia. While on assignment with the local paper, covering a story on the Ridge, she encounters both a brawny hunk of a man, Allen Walker, and an unexpected grave at a work site. The remains of the dead man lead to more questions than answers and ultimately to the killer who threatens her very life as well as a future with the handsome ranger. Ranger Allen Walker has enjoyed a quiet life on the mountain, working to both ensure the safety of the gas company workers and equipment, and to secretly search for his missing grandfather. When the new journalist arrives to cover a road widening story, though, his serene life is upended. First, she enters the scene just as workers make the shocking discover of a hidden grave. Could it be the body of his grandfather who vanished twenty years ago? But more disturbing, he has an immediate attraction to the pretty woman, but no woman would want to live in an isolated cabin on a mountain. Would she?