Where there are Irish Travellers, there you'll find their beautiful Gypsy Horses.

Where there are Gypsy Horses, you'll find handsome Dane McDeglin, the bare-knuckle champion of the north of England.

But Rikki's not a gypsy. She's a settled girl living in an upmarket suburb of Manchester, in a house befitting her father's social and financial standing as a top barrister. Years ago, she used to sneak over the fence to the illegal gypsy campsite next door. There she met Dane and joined his boys' gang as an honorable member. She lost her child's heart to him. All too soon the connection was broken, and she hasn't seen him for years.

Now, turning eighteen, Rikki goes on a school trip with the Pony Club to the world-famous Appleby Gypsy Horse Fair in the north of England. The fair is a meeting place for Irish Travellers and the Roma to trade and enjoy their beautiful vanner horses with their flowing manes and feathered hoofs.

At the fair, Rikki and her best friend, Sasha, are set upon by a bunch of unruly ruffians, but all is not lost. Rikki's childhood hero, Dane McDeglin, charges into their rescue. Dane is now over six-foot, devastatingly handsome with his Irish black hair and blue eyes, and a successful businessman to boot. Although Rikki recognizes him immediately, he's merely helping out a couple of silly girls wandering about after dark.

Rikki's badly smitten - she always has been - and Dane seems to like her at first. But nothing has prepared Rikki for the way their past history rises up and sucker-punches what they feel for each other.