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.