The deathbed promise made six years earlier to care for Padre Tomas' child of his heart, compelled Don Sebastian to place her in a convent in Boston. He hoped the nuns would curb the forceful will that continually clashed with his own. Now, like a thunderbolt, her unannounced arrival reveals how utterly the nuns failed in their assigned task. The political climate is critical. He fears that she chose a treacherous time to return. His secrets as a former vigilante are as numerous as the scars on his back. Keeping the deathbed promise to guardian Chenoa is uppermost in his mind, even as an old enemy threatens his land and life. Will his desperate gamble destroy or ensure the future? The choices he has to make could be fatal. Barely ten years between Chenoa and Don Sebastian, these two headstrong people must confront the sparks of hostility and magnetism—or they will not survive.