Book excerpt: Hallie McIntyre intends to take her vows and live a cloistered life-until she finds a wounded stranger lying in Sister Dominica's garden. Against her better judgment, Hallie agrees to hide him from her Sisters and from the lawmen who come looking for him, and nurse him back to health. When the law refuses to hunt down the men who slaughtered his family, John Walking Hawk takes the law into his own hands. Wounded and with a price on his head, he's on the run, wanted for exacting the justice that had been denied him. Now, because of a twist of fate, Hallie finds herself falling in love with a man she never should have met, and making the hardest decision of her life. Turning her back on the convent, Hallie follows her heart, trading the peace and serenity of the convent for a different and far more dangerous life, risking security and freedom to become Hawk's woman. Publisher Note: Previously published elsewhere under the same title.