The Heart Breaker (35 page)

His surrender was as violent as his hunger. A hoarse shout dredged from his throat as he gave himself up to the powerful explosion.

When it was over, when the storm of emotion had passed, he lay against her, spent, shuddering. His skin was sheened with sweat, his heart hammering.

For a long moment neither of them spoke a word. Drained and limp, Heather lay there unmoving in his arms, while love and despair pulsed through her. She could feel the tears slipping from her eyes.

“That … should never have happened,” she whispered finally.

His heart wrenched to realize she was crying. He wanted to hold her close, to soothe her distress and banish her feelings of regret, but she winced when he tried to tighten his arms around her.

“I asked you not to touch me.”

The tension was suddenly back between them, sharp as a knife.

“You were hot as I was,” Sloan replied finally. “Don’t deny it.”

That was the trouble, Heather thought in wretched misery, remembering her shameless reaction to his seduction. She was helpless against
Sloan, her defenses against him in tatters.

She had no protection for her heart. Her love for him made her so terribly vulnerable. And remaining here would only make the pain worse.

H
eather dashed scalding tears from her eyes as she made Janna’s breakfast the following morning. Her need to burrow deep and hide her sorrow and pain wasn’t as strong as her need to escape. She wanted to run, as far and as fast as she could. Janna was all that had kept her from fleeing this morning.

She couldn’t bear to remain here any longer.

Swallowing hard, Heather lifted her blurred gaze to stare blindly out the kitchen window. She found it a bleak thought, spending the rest of her days alone, abandoning the life she had made here, the precious daughter, the husband… But she faced a bleaker future if she remained.

She loved a man who didn’t want her. Desperately loved him. She had vowed to make Sloan forget the sorrow that imprisoned his heart, but she couldn’t heal him. She’d been a fool even to hope to. And a greater fool to misjudge herself so completely.

She’d thought she could be content with merely being Sloan’s wife, his lover, sharing a deep physical passion without his love. But she had wanted more all along. She wanted him to want her, to care
for her, to feel that his life was incomplete without her. As hers was without him.

No man had ever held such power over her. Until now she had been too proud to beg him for a crumb of affection. But she feared what she would become if she stayed. She would be beyond defenses, unable to protect herself. She would be his, body and soul, accepting his unmeaning cruelties because she was so sick with love for him that she would take anything she could get.

Heather buried her face in her hands. She had to leave. Going away was the best solution for them both. Perhaps someday the doomed love that had taken possession of her heart would fade and the pain would diminish....

She gave a bitter, silent sob. And maybe pigs would sprout wings.

Just then she heard Janna’s exclamation of delight as the child spied her papa. Heather’s spine stiffened. Sloan had silently entered the kitchen, she realized.

Swiftly she wiped a sleeve across her damp eyes. She would not let him see her cry again.

He went straight to Janna’s corner and picked up his daughter. As he settled with her at the kitchen table, Heather stole a look at him. His expression was inscrutable, his attention fixed solely on the child.

She turned away without speaking.

As the awkward silence drew out between them, though, Heather felt him watching her. Selfconsciously she stirred the oat porridge and scooped a small helping into a bowl, then added brown sugar and a little milk. When she carried the concoction to the table, she paused beside him.

“Would you care to feed Janna or shall I?”

“I’ll do it.”

She set the bowl down before him on the table, then returned to the sink, where she mechanically began cleaning the dirty pot and utensils. Behind her she could hear Sloan spoon-feeding his daughter. When Janna gave a gurgle of laughter, Heather clutched at the edge of the sink, the ache inside her chest savage.

After a long moment, she took a deep breath, trying to ease the pain, trying to gather the courage to broach a subject that would likely only kindle more misery.

Finally she said in a low voice, “Sloan … I think it might be best if I left. I never should have come here in the first place.”

She turned reluctantly to look at him, to find him staring at her with hooded eyes.

“Where will you go?”

“I thought … perhaps Denver.”

Sloan couldn’t respond. He felt gut-punched. Heather actually meant to leave him and his daughter. He knew he was greatly to blame, but it still struck him like a blow. He sat there numbly, holding his daughter, unable to manage a word.

“What about Janna?” he said finally. “You mean to desert her now? After she’s come to love you?”

She glanced down at Janna, who was happily smacking her lips as she ate her breakfast. “I love her as well. But the longer I remain, the harder it will be for both of us to part when the time comes. Children are resilient. She’ll forget me in time.”

What about me?
he wanted to demand.
How am I to forget you?

His mouth twisted in a thin smile. “Sure, duchess. She’ll get over it. She’s too young to have feelings. She’s only a half-breed, after all.”

An angry flush stained Heather’s cheekbones. “Must you use that term to describe her?”

“Why not? That’s what Janna is.”

“Perhaps so, but she isn’t to blame for her Cheyenne ancestry. She cannot help who her mother was.”

His quick, indrawn breath was loud in the silent room; a slap would have been less hurtful.

In the awful pause, Heather bit her lip hard. She wished she could take back the words. She didn’t know why she had lashed out at him like that, except that he had wounded her so deeply by rejecting her love. “I… I’m sorry. I should never have said that.”

He ignored her apology. For a span of several heartbeats he didn’t answer. When Heather risked a glance at him, Sloan’s lean face was shuttered, set in harsh forbidding lines. His next question took her breath away.

“You could be pregnant, have you thought of that? You think I’ll let you leave if you’re carrying my baby?”

The question slipped into her heart like a knife. “I’m not… My courses came last week.”

“Yesterday could have changed that.”

When she remained mute, he stared at her. “Even leaving that aside for a minute … just how do you propose to support yourself in Denver? I can’t afford to do it.”

“I told you, I’ll find a job.”

“There may be horns on that bull, duchess. For a woman alone it won’t be so easy to find honest work in a strange town.”

Her chin rose at his disparaging tone. “Who says it must be honest work? Perhaps I’ll apply for a position at a saloon, dancing for money. I’ve noticed that gentlemen have a great fondness for that sort of woman.”

His expression went dangerously still. She might
have been bluffing, but it outraged him to think of his beautiful wife dancing for money in a gaudy saloon. “Like hell you will,” he said softly.

“Does that upset you, Sloan?” Heather retorted bitterly. “I can’t imagine why. You’ve always known I’m not a saint like your precious Doe.”

She drew blood with that barb, she could see it in his face.

“Leave her out of this,” he said tightly.

“How can I, when she’s always come between us?”

Sloan’s fist tightened around the spoon in his hand. Heather had struck straight at that dark, empty place that had once been his heart.

“In any event,” she went on tonelessly, “I have a friend in Denver, remember? I’ve applied to Richard for help, and he has agreed to look for a possible position for me.”

Sloan remembered the newspaperman well enough. A sick sensation knotted his belly.

“At the very least I could become a governess, or perhaps a music teacher. Elite families are willing to pay handsomely for pianoforte lessons for their spoiled daughters, I’ve discovered.”

His jaw hardening, he set his daughter on the floor and rose slowly to his feet. Janna looked startled to be so abruptly abandoned, but Sloan paid her no heed as he moved to stand before his wife.

The tension was raw, so brittle it had an edge to it. He stared down at Heather, yet he didn’t realize he had reached out to grasp her shoulders until she said tightly, “Would you kindly unhand me?”

He didn’t want to let her go. He felt the primitive urge to bind her to him now, so she wouldn’t leave him.

“Sloan…” Her eyes implored him, while her tone softened to a plea. “Let me go. You don’t want
me for your wife. You don’t really want me at all.”

She was dead wrong, he realized, his jaw locked against the pain. He did want her. More than he’d ever wanted any woman in his life.

“You think not, duchess?” Catching her wrist, he drew her hand down to his groin to feel the hard evidence of his desire. “What the hell does this feel like? Indifference?”

She winced. “Our relationship has always been merely carnal. Just sex—you said so yourself.”

“Maybe so. Maybe all I’ve ever really wanted is your body.”

She felt the color drain from her face.

For the space of a dozen heartbeats, he stood towering over her, his face as tight with emotion as hers. The strain between them was palpable enough to shatter.

“All right then,” Sloan said finally, his voice as cold as a Colorado winter. “Have it your way, duchess. You can leave. You can do whatever you want once the campaign is over.” His fingers opened to release her shoulders. “Don’t worry that I might repeat yesterday. I won’t touch you again. You have my word on it.”

With no more than a glittering glance at her, he turned to scoop up his startled daughter and stalked out of the kitchen, leaving Heather alone in the brittle silence.

Her hand clenched over her stomach, she heaved a shuddering breath, fighting tears of despair and anguish, wondering if she had made a terrible mistake.

The silent and bitter war between them showed no signs of abating. They might as well have been strangers, for all the intimacy they shared.

Sloan kept his promise to keep away from her
bed, not betraying by so much as a touch or a glance that he cared whether her heart was breaking.

It was all Heather could do not to humble herself at his feet, to beg him to love her. Yet he had spurned her love in the starkest terms imaginable, and it would serve no purpose to try to persuade him differently.

She might have been gratified to know Sloan was battling his own inner devils.

They struck him hardest when he rode home at sunset one evening to find Heather beside the corral, supervising his daughter’s new acquaintance with a gentle mare.

“Was there something you wanted?” Heather asked, her tone carefully even as he sat looking down at her from the saddle.

You,
he nearly said. Her beauty nearly took his breath away. The setting sun made a gilt halo of her hair, while her porcelain complexion was flushed with gold and rose—a vivid reminder of how she looked in the depths of passion. A searing passion they had shared until he had destroyed the fragile bond between them.

Sloan felt his throat close tightly as a sharp pang of longing went through him. Yet he couldn’t give her the love she needed.

Maybe Heather was right. Maybe it might be best if she took herself the hell out of his life. Then he could return to the cold shell that had protected him from the tormenting emotions of grief and guilt and loneliness in the endless months after Doe’s death.

Maybe then he could escape the pain that hounded him now when he merely looked at Heather.

* * *

It was a shock to them both when Evan Randolf unexpectedly arrived in Colorado the following week. Heather had just applied herself to the mending basket in the kitchen when she heard the knock at the front door rather than the back, as was customary when neighbors came to call.

“Evan!” she exclaimed when she opened the door.

His smile was warm, his look intent as he removed his bowler to expose carefully styled dark hair. He appeared as elegant and handsome as ever in a tailored chocolate frock coat and fawn trousers.

“How are you, my dear?” When she stared at Evan in incomprehension, he prodded gently, “I trust you are well.”

“Yes… of course.” She
was
well, if well meant heartsick and lonely.

“It is good to see you after all this time. I’ve missed you a great deal, Heather.”

She glanced beyond him to see the private carriage waiting in the drive.

“If you are wondering why I am here… I’ve come to see how you go on. Will you not invite me in?”

Heather recognized her rudeness at leaving a guest standing on the doorstep, but she wasn’t certain she trusted Evan. And yet his manner seemed conciliatory enough. And it
was
good to see a familiar face from home. “Yes, of course. Do come in.”