One Man's Trash Is Another Man's Treasure

From the back cover

For ten years, Cecilia Forrest has loved Jim Charleston in secret — her foster brother, the man she broke with her family for. When he leaves on an undercover mission to Duskhaven, he promises to marry her if he returns alive. Three years later he comes back ruined, in debt, and kneeling before her father with a pregnant Anne clinging to him, declaring he will care for her for life. Everyone waits for Cecilia to break.

Instead she smiles, accepts the ring of Luke Larson, the city's most notorious playboy, and slaps Jim twice when he storms her engagement party with a gun and a plea to keep her as his mistress in all but name. She tosses his bullet-casing pendant into the pond and has him and Anne escorted out.

Luke climbs the estate wall to ask what she wants as an engagement gift; she names the Larson port. He agrees — and warns her that Jim may ruin the party. In the pavilion, Anne cries that Jim only made her pretend to be his woman to protect Cecilia.