The Heart Breaker (2 page)

“True, but she’d never let on about it. And she’s in dire straits now. Her father left her with a pile of gambling debts to settle. She had to sell his newspaper and her home and move in with my Aunt Winnie. In all likelihood she’ll be forced to shut down her school to meet the mortgage.”

“Well, I can’t afford to bail her out. I’ll be lucky to scrape by this winter with two bits to my name.”

“Jake and I could help if you’d let us.”

Sloan shook his head emphatically. The McCord cattle empire was crumbling; the vast spread he and his father and brother had carved from the shadow of the Rockies was at risk of going under. It had been a hell of a hard winter, with heavy snows and lethal temperatures ravaging herds from Texas to Montana.

His brother hadn’t been hit as hard by the brutal winter. Jake was now a county judge with a steady wage. And Caitlin had her late father’s sheep ranch to tide them over, raising woollies that could survive frigid weather better than beeves.

But Sloan already owed them enough. He still hadn’t fully been able to buy out Jake’s share of the ranch. And he refused to become any more obliged to them than he was.

Caitlin, however, let their longstanding argument pass and concentrated on championing her genteel friend from St. Louis.

“If you wait, Sloan, you could miss your chance altogether. Heather might not be available for long. Not with the railroad baron who’s been after her to marry him.”

“So let her marry him.”

“She doesn’t want to! She doesn’t even
like
the man, let alone want to become his wife. But she may not have much choice.”

Sloan frowned skeptically. “Heather Ashford… What kind of fancy name is that?”

“She’s not fancy, I tell you,” Caitlin insisted. “She’s a true lady, but strong in her own way. She’d not afraid of hard work. She built her girls’ school from almost nothing.”

“What is she like?”

“Oh, her looks are passable enough,” Caitlin replied. “She has fair hair … and she’s rather tall, with a full figure.”

Sloan’s mouth curled as he envisioned a plump starch-and-tea schoolmarm. Plain and homely, no doubt. An unappealing spinster who couldn’t catch a man on her own.

But her looks wouldn’t matter to him. He didn’t want beauty in a wife … as long as she wouldn’t drive away the men who would be voting for him.

“But,” Caitlin continued with a note of triumph, “you’re forgetting the most important reason to take a wife. Janna needs a mother.”

Roughly Sloan ran a hand through his hair. Caitlin had astutely saved that argument for last.
That
was the only reason that truly counted. His daughter needed a mother. Janna had been two months old when her Cheyenne mother was killed. For over a year now he’d tried to raise his daughter on
his own, but it wasn’t easy, what with trying to keep his ranch afloat.

Besides, a baby girl needed a woman to care for her. Yet he was losing his Mexican housekeeper, who planned to return home to look after her younger siblings. And Caitlin had her own family to care for—her four-year-old son Ryan plus another baby on the way. Cat helped out with Janna whenever she could, but he couldn’t ask her to take on the responsibility full-time.

Caitlin wasn’t about to give up trying to solve his problem, though. “Heather would make a good mother, Sloan, I swear it. She’s a born teacher, and no one is better with children. She helped me raise Ryan from a baby when I had no one else but my aunt to turn to.”

Sloan felt his jaw harden involuntarily. “What would she think about raising a half-breed? White women have a way of turning up their noses at anything ‘Injun’.”

“Heather wouldn’t do that. I know her, Sloan. And I truly think you couldn’t do better. She could teach Janna the social graces, how to handle herself in white society… Prepare her for the slights and outright hostility she’ll face with her blood. Especially when Janna gets older, when you won’t be there to protect her. You must realize she’ll need every advantage you can give her.”

Remembering his sister-in-law’s words now in the darkness of his bedchamber, Sloan rose abruptly and pulled a blanket around his bare shoulders. Crossing to the pot-bellied stove near where his young daughter lay sleeping in her cradle, he added a scoop of coal and then hunkered down beside her, gazing at her dark-skinned features relaxed in sleep, soft with innocence.

Intense feelings of protectiveness and tenderness
swept over him, while fierce love twisted powerfully, painfully in his chest.

This slip of a child had been his salvation. After losing his wife, he’d been so crazed with vengeance that he’d gone on a relentless rampage against his enemies. He’d made Doe’s murderers pay, but for a long while afterward, he’d felt as if he had nothing left to lose, including his own life. He’d felt empty, as if his heart and lungs and guts had all been torn out. Sealed off by grief from everyone around him.

Janna was all that had kept him alive. She’d been the only thing worth living for.

In the past months since the range war was tenuously settled, his rage had eased somewhat, but guilt still burned inside him. His enemies had killed his wife to get at him. Doe had been all that was good and strong and gentle in his life. And he hadn’t been able to save her.

Guilt had burned a searing brand on his soul, leaving him with tortured dreams. The nights were the hardest. In the darkest hours before dawn, when the long, bitter years of loneliness stretched endlessly before him, he found himself craving the time when vengeance and hatred had been his closest friends.

He didn’t want another woman to share his life. Hell, for that matter, what right did he have to ask someone to shoulder his burdens? There were only shadows and sorrow in his past, hardship in his future. His hands were stained with blood and violence, while a cold blackness surrounded his soul.

But his child needed a mother.

And he’d pay any price, go to any lengths, to help his young daughter.

With infinite care Sloan tucked the covers under
Janna’s small chin and stood. He resented it like hell, but he needed a wife.

In any event, the time for debating was over. He was committed now. Yesterday, by letter, he’d made Miss Heather Ashford a formal offer of marriage. In it he’d pledged to pay her remaining debts—fifteen hundred precious dollars he would have to scrape together somehow—to free her of her obligations in St. Louis. It was too late for him to honorably back out.

He hated the thought of marrying again. He much preferred to let his wounds scar over with time, if that were even possible.

But Miss Ashford wouldn’t be a true wife to him. He would settle for a female body to warm his bed and someone to care for his child. A woman of refinement who could give Janna the advantages he couldn’t give her. That his bride also possessed the poise and breeding to help him get elected this September would only be an added benefit. No, theirs would be a marriage of convenience, nothing more. A business arrangement, pure and simple.

Heather Ashford.

He closed his eyes, trying to envision the genteel lady who would soon bear his name.

When the wanton angel of his recent dream drifted into his mind, Sloan cursed. The memory of her sensual lovemaking was dark and sweet… her flesh pale in the moonlight, her fair hair, wild and glorious, spilling over her naked shoulders, her ripe breasts straining for his touch… To his disgust, he felt himself getting hard again.

It had been one hell of a dream. Nothing like reality would be, he was certain. But then, he didn’t want a real woman, or a real marriage. If he had to wed again, he would rather his bride be a prim, starched-up schoolmarm like Miss Ashford. A total
stranger who couldn’t touch the inner core of him. Who wouldn’t get any foolish notions about things like love.

Love wouldn’t be part of their bargain.

He could never give his heart again. It had died with his wife.

St. Louis
March 1887

T
he telegram burned a hole in her skirt pocket, its message brusque and to the point:

ARRIVING TRAIN WEDNESDAY AFTERNOON—
CEREMONY THURSDAY EARLY—MUST RETURN
COLORADO DIRECTLY—SLOAN MCCORD.

For a wedding arrangement, it lacked all sense of romantic flair, Heather reflected with dismay, and only served to increase her growing feeling of panic. On the morrow she would wed a total stranger.

She must be mad to consider such a step.

But if her head had once been filled with dreams of romance, she could no longer afford such luxuries. She had no one else to turn to. No one to depend on but herself.

A sheen of tears she couldn’t repress blurred her vision as she made the final rounds of her school. It had taken her years, but the conservatory for young ladies had developed an exclusive reputation,
where well-bred girls learned deportment, elocution, music, and geography, as well as how to figure sums and to set a fine stitch. The elegant little clapboard house was quartered in one of the better St. Louis neighborhoods—an endeavor she had begun with such excitement and optimism what seemed like a lifetime ago.

With regret and sadness, Heather let her hazel eyes sweep the comfortable parlor one last time, remembering the laughter and sorrows of the past five years. A fierce ache tightened her throat as she recalled the tearful good-byes of this morning, when she’d said farewell to the last of her pupils, a dozen girls ranging from ages nine to sixteen.

“Pray don’t go, Miss Ashford, we don’t want you to leave!”

“Mamma has been perfectly horrid! She intends to enroll me in Mrs. Underwood’s Academy. Please, you can’t let her, Miss Ashford. I’ll die there!”

“Can you not take us with you to Colorado, Miss Ashford?”

Heather had faced their pleas and embraces stoically, refusing to cry—until the youngest presented her with an ivory lace shawl crocheted by all the students with their own labors. Despite an occasional uneven stitch and unsightly knot, the garment seemed beautiful to her.

She had lost her composure then, breaking down with a total uncustomary lack of grace and poise. Tears shimmered now in her eyes as she ran her fingers over the polished mahogany surface of the long-suffering pianoforte.

This chapter of her life had ended. She had been compelled to close her school, but she would not let herself see it as a failure. Merely, the time had come for her to move on. In truth, she would be
grateful to have a strong shoulder to lean upon, to help ease the burden she had carried for so long.

And at least she would no longer have to put up with the carping of snobbish mamas, Heather thought defiantly, forcing a halfhearted smile.

Her smile faded as she remembered the telegram in her pocket. Tomorrow she would wed a stranger. Yet
she
was making the choice, she tried to remind herself.
She
was taking control of her fate.

Still, she had never felt so alone.

Caitlin’s congratulatory letter gave her some small measure of reassurance. Her friend had staunchly vouched for her future husband’s character, and told her something of Sloan McCord’s past.

A powerful cattle baron who had carved an empire from the majestic Colorado foothills, McCord was known as a maverick. He was cherishing a bitter sorrow—the murder of his beloved Cheyenne wife during a bloody land war.

His tragic story had touched her heart, even though she’d also been warned of his darker side.

Heather had her own reasons for wishing to marry. Her father’s recent death from heart failure had left her alone, with large gambling debts she felt honor-bound to settle. And her sole other choice of suitor was not a man with whom she cared to spend the rest of her life.

There remained only the task of convincing Evan of the soundness of her decision.

Squaring her shoulders, she found her charcoal-gray wool coat and slipped it on over her black bombazine gown, for protection against the chill of the winter afternoon. She was still in mourning for her father, and would have only a limited wardrobe for her wedding. The black bonnet she donned next was one she’d borrowed from Caitlin’s Aunt
Winifred, and made her complexion look sallow and her hazel eyes far too large for her face.

Her hand trembled slightly as she locked the front door for the last time. Tomorrow the bank would take possession of the school.

Evan Randolf’s bank.

Negotiating the icy steps with care, Heather turned west, toward home. Evan thought he had won, but he was due for an unpleasant surprise. And she would find more than a measure of satisfaction in informing him she would no longer be a target for his determined designs.

The street widened some three blocks later, to become a thoroughfare lined with barren oaks and flanked by rows of attractive false-front stores. Deep in contemplation, Heather had just reached the corner and started to cross to the opposite side when a commotion to her right jolted her from her thoughts: a woman’s scream, followed by the pounding of horses’ hooves. With alarm she saw a pair of chestnuts galloping pell-mell directly toward her, dragging a closed carriage. The team had no driver, but the passengers within were evidently female, their cries for help echoing with pure terror.