MELISSA HUNTOON. She stood on the spacious, pillared veranda of her ancestral home, Great Oaks, looking out over the broad acres that had belonged to her family for two generations, and her eyes burned with anger and humiliation. Today, her home, this grand old plantation, would go beneath the auctioneer's hammer. The bank had already foreclosed on the house and two thousand acres of rich Mississippi bottomland. Now everything else would be sold to the highest bidder. Two men eagerly awaited the auction -- Simon Crouse and Luke Devereaux. The art collector and the gambler. One would try to buy Melissa, the other would attempt to win her. But both would have to contend with the pride and fury of a girl turned woman... Melissa would soon have to sink or swim in the raging tide of love.