Call Back the Dawn — Diane Wicker Davis

SHE HAD NOTHING LEFT TO LOSE...EXCEPT HER HEART

Seven Pines was everything--home, heart, and soul--to Damask Downing. But with the flip of a card, her careless brother had lost it all to the handsome gambler who arrived to claim the lovely old Louisiana plantation, and propose that Damask stay... as his wife!

She had no choice. Damask couldn't allow her younger sister and all the slaves to be thrown out of their home. But she vowed that she would marry Brad Rafferty in name only.

Yet there was magic between them. The cool stranger she had sworn to hate electrified her with his nearness, and she trembled with desires she had never known. In a blaze of passion that made her forget all else, she could only surrender to a love she couldn't deny, from a man she couldn't resist.