Pearl Belladonna is twenty-nine, very beautiful, and owner
of a saloon in a Colorado gold mining town. At fifteen she
ran away with a river boat gambler. When he refused to
marry her, she left him and started her own saloon. That
put her firmly into the category of other women, a label
that virtually guaranteed she wouldn't have the
respectable marriage, home, and family she wanted. With
herself as the main attraction, her saloon, the Silken
Lady, is the most successful saloon in town. But Pearl
isn't all she pretends to be. Her secret wish is to save
enough money to give her daughter the decent life Pearl
never had. When she finds the price of her daughter's
future is betrayal of the only man she's ever really
loved, she makes the only choice a mother can make.
Twenty-four-year-old Sean O'Ryan's parents died when he
was a baby. His only relative in America twice refused to
take him because it would interfere with her stage career,
and he ended up in an orphanage. When he saves Pearl's
saloon from being torn apart by paid bullies, he makes it
clear he wants nothing to do with her kind of woman. He
thinks his infatuation with Pearl is just temporary.
Pearl makes up her mind to ignore Sean until a man from
her past appears. Knowing the one secret Pearl thought
nobody knew, he forces her to help him cheat Sean out of
his gold. Unable to refuse, Pearl sets about seducing
Sean. In the process, she falls in love with him. Pearl
realizes that the only man who could give her everything
she wanted in life won't because she's lied one time too
many. But even an angry Irishman can't turn his back on a
woman in trouble.