Brandon can’t believe his eyes when the woman he once proposed to back in South Carolina steps out of an overturned carriage on a dirt road in Texas. But Caroline Dumont is here, accompanied by Brandon’s former overseer, apparently intent on finding him. The question is why? Last he heard she was getting married to someone else and moving on with her life after he written her he wouldn’t return. Not wouldn’t—couldn’t. Not with a bum leg from the skirmishes with the Mexican Army—or the paralyzing hallucinations he was suffering from—another legacy from the war. He was a doctor, he knew the score.

Caroline Dumont can’t imagine this hard, rough looking man is her former fiancé. He’s changed and not just physically. He’s colder, harsher—crueler, to her at least. It’s clear he doesn’t want her here. It’s also clear he’s hiding a secret, something about the himself and what happened to him in that Mexican prison. Well, she’s got a secret too. One she has to tell him and hope he’ll do the right thing. But seeing him now, she’s not at all sure what the right thing will be.