The Heart Breaker

by Nicole Jordan

She would just have to accept that.

  They said good night to Caitlin and Jake and a sleepy Ryan, and watched from the back porch as the wagon rumbled away into the darkness. In the moonlit silence, Heather could hear the muted sounds of male laughter coming from the bunkhouse, could see her breath in the frigid air.

  When she shivered, Sloan gave her a swift glance. “You’d best go inside before you freeze.”

  To her surprise, he followed her into the warmth of the kitchen. “You must be tired,” Sloan said evenly, bolting the door behind them.

  “A little.”

  “You should go to bed. You can see the rest of the house in the morning.”

  “I would like that, if you don’t mind.”

  “I’ll show you to your room, then.”

  When he picked up an oil lamp, she searched his face, a rough-hewn sculpture of masculinity. Recalling his dark past, Heather fought the urge to lay her palm against his lean cheek. Something in her wanted to offer comfort, but she fought it down. She doubted Sloan would accept any such tender sentiments from her.

  She followed him upstairs to the hallway and the first room on the right. It was a small bedchamber, with a brass bedstead and a white counterpane embroidered with blue columbines. A water pitcher and washbasin sat on the bureau, while a pile of woolen blankets were stacked neatly in a wooden rocking chair. A small cast-iron stove stood in one corner, giving off a welcome warmth.

  “The house has no central furnace,” Sloan said, “but this stove works well enough. And you can heat a brick for your feet if you need it. The bathroom’s down the hall. I improved the plumbing a few years ago, so there’s hot running water.”

  “I’m sure I will be fine.”

  “Well then … good night.” He set the lamp on the bureau and started to turn away.

  Heather’s question, low and uncertain, stopped him. “Where … will you sleep?”

  His blue eyes remained narrowed and cool, his stance guarded. She recognized the all-too-familiar aura of impenetrability about him.

  “My room is across the hall. Janna sleeps there by the big stove so she’ll keep warm, and so I can hear her if she wakes up.”

  He meant for them to have separate bedrooms, Heather realized. She fought back the wave of disappointment that threatened to crush her and summoned her faltering pride.

  “You have a problem with that, duchess?” her husband asked evenly when she hesitated.

  Heather raised her chin with a touch of defiance. “Not at all. These arrangements will suit me perfectly.”

  Chapter 6

  She was up before dawn, even before Sloan stirred. Determined to prove her worth, Heather dressed quickly and made her way downstairs to prepare breakfast. She was standing at the range when Sloan entered the kitchen carrying his daughter.

  Heather flashed Janna a gentle smile and surveyed her husband. He wore a faded chambray work shirt and denims, and his tawny, sunstreaked hair was still slightly tousled from sleep. She felt her heart twist.

  “Breakfast is almost ready, if you would care to sit down,” she forced herself to say easily.

  He stared at her a moment, then slung his gun belt over a chair back and settled at the table with his daughter on his lap.

  Janna clung to her new doll and watched Heather curiously. So did Sloan, for that matter, as he sipped the cup of coffee she poured for him.

  He seemed surprised by the meal of flapjacks and sausage she set before him.

  “What is the matter?” Heather asked hesitantly. “Don’t you like flapjacks?”

  The corner of his mouth curved upward reluctantly. “Yeah, a lot. I just don’t eat them as often as I’d like. Doe never could get the hang of fixing them.”

  Heather bit back the response that came to her tongue. Doubtless she would have to become accustomed to being compared to his late wife. But Sloan would have to learn another fact as well. She was not Sleeping Doe.

  She served him butter and honey for his pancakes and then saw to Janna’s breakfast—a bowl of hot porridge sweetened with molasses and bits of dried apple mixed in. Caitlin was right, Heather thought optimistically. Her situation did look better this morning. She intended to make a place for herself, if not in Sloan’s life then on his ranch. She would not live on his charity. She would salvage her tattered pride by providing something of value to their relationship. Starting with his daughter.

  “Come, sweetheart, why don’t we let your papa eat his breakfast? You can sit on my lap. Would you like that? I’ll wager you’re hungry, aren’t you?”

  With unexpected willingness Janna allowed herself to be transferred onto Heather’s lap. Sloan watched guardedly as the duchess fed his daughter and pretended to feed the doll. She showed not a trace of awkwardness with the child, he noted with surprise, until he remembered that she’d helped raise his nephew Ryan from a baby. He felt his tension ease. Still, it hurt to see her holding Janna, her blonde head so close to the small raven one.

  Sloan took a swig of coffee, strong and scalding just the way he liked it. She could cook, too, just as she’d promised—a far cry from the monotonous range food he’d gotten used to eating on the run during the past year.

  “When we’re through with breakfast,” he said more gruffly than he intended, “I’ll show you the house.”

  Heather shook her head. “I’m certain you have work to do. I can find my way around.”

  A pleasant silence filled the kitchen for a time. Sloan cleaned his plate and then rose to strap on his gun belt.

  “Can you handle a gun?” he asked, seeing her eyeing his Colt revolvers.

  “I can shoot a derringer. My father taught me.”

  “A peashooter won’t do you much good here. I’ll teach you to use a rifle.”

  “Are you certain that’s necessary—”

  “You’ll learn,” he said brutally, not inviting debate on the subject. “My daughter will be under your care, remember?”

  “My memory is quite adequate,” Heather returned coolly, raising her chin. She might have surrendered any dreams of love, but she would not be Sloan McCord’s doormat.

  He shrugged on his coat. “I’m leaving one of the hired hands behind for your protection. Rusty will be within shouting distance if you need anything. And in case of real trouble, the signal is to fire two quick shots in the air. There’s a loaded rifle in the pantry.” Sloan hesitated. “Will you be all right here? I may be gone all day.”

  “We’ll be fine.” Heather smiled down at his daughter. “Won’t we, love?”

  Janna gave a toothy grin.

  “What about dinner this afternoon?” Heather asked him.

  “I’ll eat with the boys out on the range. You could keep supper warm, if it’s not too much trouble.”

  “No, it’s no trouble at all.”

  He bent to kiss his daughter’s cheek, then settled his hat firmly on his head, his hard countenance shadowed by the brim.

  Then, turning, he walked out the door, into the cold dark morning, leaving Heather to become acquainted with her new stepdaughter and her new life.

  It was a pattern that repeated itself often during the following week—meeting for breakfast, then seeing little of each other until late at night.

  A storm moved in that first evening, leaving a blanket of fresh snow covering the range. Before it hit, Sloan and his hands worked feverishly hauling hay they’d put up last summer out to the cattle. In a bad winter beeves were as likely to starve as freeze, for they were unable to get at the stubby grass beneath the heavy, crusted snow.

  It took Heather only a day to discover how bitter a Colorado winter could be. When the winds swept down off the mountains, the snow swirled so thick she couldn’t see her hand in front of her face. Even shut up in the house, it was impossible to ward off the cold. She wore three pairs of drawers and bundled Janna in a woolen suit she fashioned out of a worn blanket, complete with mittens and hood.

  The frigid weather was only one of the grueling challenges of
her new life. Sloan had warned her what to expect, but she discovered firsthand how hard ranch life was. And how isolated. She kept busy with the endless chores—cooking and cleaning and washing, as well as caring for Janna—but loneliness gripped her heart like a fist, especially in the long hours after dusk while she waited for Sloan to return home.

  Janna at least was a treasure. Heather cherished the little girl, who had the sweetest disposition of any child she’d ever known. But it was a struggle to keep her own spirits up. She crawled into bed each night, weary and sore and heartsick.

  She made no complaint, though, particularly to Sloan. She doubted he would offer her anything in the way of sympathy. Indeed, he might just offer to buy her a train ticket back to St. Louis.

  In any case, he had his own troubles to occupy him—chiefly, trying to save his herds from the crippling weather. He seemed to be fighting a losing battle.

  It hurt to watch his exhausting campaign against the uncontrollable elements, to see him bear his defeats in grim, stoic silence. Once or twice when he came home long after dark, half frozen and ravenous, she saw the vulnerability in the hard, shuttered face. In those moments something painful caught at her heart. She wanted to offer him comfort, but she labeled the feeling as foolishness and shoved it aside. Sloan would not want her sympathy, any more than he would give it.

  She would not be his salvation, as Caitlin had prophesied. She would never have the chance. He was a man torn by a terrible grief, but he would never let her near enough to help him with the demons that haunted him.

  When the snow let up later in the week, she met his ranch foreman and several of his half-dozen hired hands, including the range cook named Cookie. Some of the boys, Heather learned, lived in line camps—isolated cabins from which they patrolled the ranch’s distant reaches, but the rest lived in the bunkhouse. There were countless winter chores to keep them busy. Besides helping the cattle stay alive by hauling out hay or driving the herds onto snow-free grass, they had to cut ice in water holes, bring in sick cows or calves, find strays that had drifted, repair corral poles and barbed-wire fences, chop firewood, mend gear … an endless monotony of work.

  The ranch hands seemed to welcome her presence and were eager to help her settle in, particularly Rusty, the tall, ginger-haired young man Sloan had designated to protect her and Janna.

  “We’re right glad you’ve come, ma’am,” Rusty said shyly one laundry day as he helped Heather carry buckets from the barn to the kitchen. “Janna needs a real ma. Especially since Maria left.”

  “That was Sloan’s housekeeper?”

  “Yes’m, a Mex woman. But she had family troubles of her own to see to. All the boys try to help with Janna, but we can’t take the place of a woman.”

  “You seem to care for Janna a great deal.”

  “We’re all a mite protective of her.”

  “Have you worked here long?”

  “Goin’ on ten years, I reckon.” He set down the buckets on the back porch and brushed a forelock of red hair away from his eyes. “Sloan’s pa hired me straight from Texas, when I was still wet behind the ears. I was here when Sloan got hitched and when Ben McCord died and when Janna was born and when Miz Doe was killed…” His brown eyes darkened.

  Heather waited, wondering if Rusty would say more about the tragedy, but he didn’t. Not wanting to sound as if she was prying, she asked a different question. “Janna is rather an unusual name, isn’t it?”

  “It’s short for her Cheyenne name—Aiyanna. Means eternal blossom, or some such thing. Miz Doe’s name was a lot harder to say… E-naaotse mehe-vaotseva. Sounds like Natsy Me Vava.” He grinned. “My tongue always got twisted around it. We all just called her Miz Doe.”

  Sloan himself was not nearly so forthcoming as his ranch hands at informing Heather about his past. True to his word, though, he found time to give her a shooting lesson. Heather thought she acquitted herself adequately firing a rifle. She was less proficient with a revolver; her slender hands had difficulty controlling the kick of the weapon. And she was hopeless with a shotgun, which nearly knocked the breath out of her. At Sloan’s insistence, however, she learned how to load and use each type of firearm, and she paid careful attention when he showed her the half-dozen loaded rifles and shotguns he kept hidden about the house. The savage decades-old feud between cattlemen and sheep men had been over scarcely six months, and Sloan was deadly serious about her learning to protect herself and his daughter.

  She also learned new skills vital to ranch life. Cookie taught her how to milk a cow, so there would be fresh milk for Janna and for making butter. In St. Louis she had always ordered milk and butter from the delivery wagon that came twice a week, but Bar M Ranch couldn’t afford such luxuries. Her first attempt at churning butter blistered her hands, yet Heather was proud of her effort.

  And no matter how weary she became, despite the frustrations that often rubbed her temper raw, she tackled her chores with fierce determination. She wanted to prove to Sloan she was more than a useless society ornament. And though he seemed reluctant to show any gratitude toward her, she suspected she at least was starting to earn his grudging respect.

  Even so, Heather often sensed herself being compared to his late wife and coming up short. Sometimes she would find Sloan’s ice-blue eyes on her, narrowed and intent, as if he were measuring her against the past.

  She was nothing like Sleeping Doe, Heather suspected. In Sloan’s bedroom, she’d seen a daguerreotype of him with the raven-haired Cheyenne woman. Her dark-skinned Indian features were more striking than beautiful, but there was a serenity to her that seemed almost tangible. In the scene, Sloan looked happy and at peace, with a glint in his arresting eyes that spoke of devilish mischief. He must not always have been the hard, bitter man he was now, Heather realized.

  She spent long moments staring at the portrait, trying to fathom what had made the woman so special to Sloan. He clearly saw his first wife as a saint, and she, Heather, would never come close to such perfection.

  The only time he truly let down his guard around her was when he played with his daughter. Only then did she glimpse the rare, brilliant smile he reserved strictly for Janna. Heather was always unprepared for the stab of envy that pierced her at that smile. She wished just once Sloan would look at her that way, as if she were the light of his life, the sun around which his entire life revolved.

  Instead he remained wary and terrifyingly remote. Once he even frightened her. It was late afternoon toward the beginning of her second week in Colorado. She’d found a beaded buckskin coat in the corner of a closet, stained with what might have been blood. She was scrubbing the garment at the kitchen sink, using a recipe of Winnie’s, when Sloan came up silently behind her.

  Heather nearly jumped out of her skin when she heard his savage bark. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?”

  She whirled, startled to see the seething fury on his face. “I was t-trying to clean away the stain.”

  He ripped the coat from her grasp. “Don’t. Don’t dare touch this again, do I make myself clear?”

  Too astonished to reply, she simply stared. Sloan spun on his heel and disappeared upstairs without even stopping to greet his daughter.

  On rare occasions, however, there were moments when they seemed almost like a married couple. It was always late at night in his study, when she would sew or quietly read while he worked on the account books. He had never actually invited her into the masculine domain of his study, but neither did he refuse her entrance. Perhaps it was stubbornness, or merely a way to ward off the stark loneliness, but Heather made a habit of retiring there after putting Janna to bed, to await his coming. Unexpectedly she found a wide selection of leather-bound books on the shelves that lined one side of the room, some with the McCord brothers’ names inscribed inside, others which had belonged to their father Ben or their mother Elizabeth.

  When at last the weather thawed a little, Heather met some of her neighbors. Several of the women came to
call, bringing favorite dishes or small homemade gifts to welcome the new Mrs. McCord to the community. Heather found their open frankness surprising but a welcome respite from the stifling, shallow society in which she’d been raised.

  She also met Caitlin’s friend Sarah Baxter when Rusty drove her into town to buy supplies at the general store. Greenbriar was much like Caitlin had described. Nestled in the rugged foothills, it boasted a saloon and jail, a barber and bathhouse, a blacksmith and livery, a church, and several clapboard storefronts. Main Street was unpaved and six inches deep in mud and melting snow, but wooden boardwalks lined both sides.

  When Rusty had helped her down from the buckboard, Heather negotiated the slippery planks with Janna in her arms and hurried inside the store, grateful for the warmth of the woodstove in the far corner.

  “Don’t tell me—you’re Heather,” the brown-haired woman behind the counter said affably.

  Heather returned her smile. “How did you know?”

  “You’re the talk of Greenbriar, that’s how. And I see rumor didn’t exaggerate in the slightest. You’re every bit as beautiful as I heard tell. But honestly, you’re no giant like one old cat claimed. ‘A tall, decidedly elegant figure’ is how I would put it.” Before Heather could become uncomfortable, the woman grinned. “I’m Sarah Baxter, by the way. My husband Harvey and I own the store. I hope you’ll forgive me for not paying you a visit first thing, but the weather was so bad, and the minute it let up, the store was swamped…”

  “Of course,” Heather replied politely.

  “I just know we’ll be friends. Caitlin has spoken so highly of you. Don’t be upset, though, if the other ladies of Greenbriar don’t welcome you with open arms. You’re sure to be a target of envy.”

  “Envy?”

  “For snaring Sloan.” Sarah’s brown eyes filled with wry laughter. “You must realize women find him attractive—a handsome widower with a cattle empire the size of the Bar M. And with that dangerous air about him … Well, he’s a mite hard to resist.”

  Heather understood quite well what Sarah meant. She’d always been keenly aware how vulnerable she was to Sloan’s potent masculinity, and that aura of brooding sensuality of his only increased his appeal.