Apuesta por un amor

Julia Montaño (Patricia Manterola) is the daughter of Don Julio Montaño (Jorge Vargas), 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 (Fabián Robles), a dissipated young man who spends the majority of his time chasing girls and getting drunk, and Soledad (Lorena Enríquez), a beautiful and ingenuous young girl who falls in love with Gabriel Durán (Juan Soler), the handsome gamester and ex-lover of their greedy step-mother Cassandra (Alejandra Ávalos), who moves to San Gaspar after winning the hacienda of Don Ignacio Andrade (Arsenio Campos), Julio's closest friend, in a poker game. Don Ignacio's son, Francisco (Roberto Palazuelos), has been in love with Julia, but after discovering that he has become involved with the town harlot, Eva (Mónika Sánchez), 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.

Huyendo de un mafioso que lo acusa de hacer trampas en el juego, el tahúr Gabriel Durán termina en el lugar más insospechado, la jungla yucateca, convertido en hacendado tras ganar una propiedad en la mesa de naipes. Nadie recibe muy bien a Gabriel en el pueblo de San Gaspar, sobre todo cuando se enteran que es el dueño de la hacienda de los Andrade, una familia muy querida del lugar. Francisco Andrade, al comienzo hace amistad con el fuereño, pero su afecto se vuelve desprecio al saber que Gabriel se quedará con la hacienda de su familia, y que para colmo, pretende a la mujer que él ama, la famosa Potra Zaína. Julia Montaño, apodada La Potra, es la hija del hombre más poderoso del lugar, Julio Montaño. Es altanera, rebelde e independiente. Desde que conoce a Gabriel, lo detesta y se establece entre ambos una competencia de orgullos que termina en un gran amor. Sin embargo, hay muchos que desean separarlos, comenzando por Kassandra, la madrastra de Julia y ex amante de Gabriel. Cuando Julia descubre este vínculo entre la esposa de su padre y su novio odiará intensamente a Gabriel. Odio que se acrecienta tras él obligarla a ser su esposa como pago de otra apuesta. Sólo el nacimiento de un hijo podrá reconciliarlos.