Free To Choose — R. William Rogers

Jake Pinkerton had started out alright enough, but after his mother had passed, he lost his way and reverted to running the streets of Albany with a bunch of losers who were barely managing to remain one step ahead of the law.After Jake's father, Tyler, had given him the last ditch choice of either spending a full year on his uncle's cattle ranch in Paradise, Kansas, or being written out of what would someday be a very lucrative inheritance, he begrudgingly took the offer and headed west.Patricia (Trish) Wentworth, on the other hand, had spent a good portion of her eighteen years being bounced from one foster family to another until finally she'd had enough of being used as slave labor by argumentative and, more times than not, drunken, foster parents. It was shortly after that when, unsure and afraid of what lie ahead for her, she made a clean break armed with barely the clothes on her back and an unrealistic dream of someday making something of herself showing her the way.About a week or so later, fate intervened and brought Jake and Trish together. It wasn't long before they discovered they shared many of the same interests and had much the same goals in mind. They also realized they were drawn to one another and that nothing comes about strictly by happenstance.