Apuesta Por Un Amor (2004-2005)

Julia Montaño is the daughter of Don Julio Montaño, a wealthy landowner in the Yucatán Peninsula. She is a beautiful, strong-willed and sometimes arrogant woman, who flouts her father's will and the customs of their small town by spending her days herding cattle and overseeing the management of her father's ranch. She has two siblings - Álvaro, a dissipated young man who spends the majority of his time chasing girls and getting drunk, and Soledad, a beautiful and ingenuous young girl who falls in love with Gabriel Durán, the handsome gamester and ex-lover of their greedy step-mother Cassandra, who moves to San Gaspar after winning the hacienda of Don Ignacio Andrade, Julio's closest friend, in a poker game. Don Ignacio's son, Francisco, has been in love with Julia, but after discovering that he has become involved with the town harlot, Eva, spurns him for Gabriel. Julia doesn't let herself be domesticated by anyone, but despite all the disagreements, she has to admit she is deeply in love with Gabriel. Nevertheless, after she catches him cheating her with Eva, Julia declines his marriage proposal. Although she claims to utterly hate him, she eventually accepts to marry him, only to save her family's fortune that Don Julio foolishly lost in a bet with Gabriel. At first their marriage is full of fights and hateful words as Julia is determined to make Gabriel pay for his faults, but her heart softens after giving birth to their son. Things seem to look up for them and they start living as a normal couple, but the real troubles are yet to come.