The Heart Breaker
Authors: Nicole Jordan
HE
H
EART
B
REAKER
NICOLE
JORDAN
N
EW
Y
ORK
T
IMES
Bestselling Author
Copyright © 2011 Anne Bushyhead.
All rights reserved, which includes the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever except as provided by the U.S. Copyright Law.
First published in the United States by Avon Books 1998.
Cover design by Hot Damn Designs.
ePub ISBN: 978-1-937515-13-3
Dear Readers,
Knowing I’ve written numerous Regency historicals, when people learn my body of work includes four classic Western tales, they ask me, “Where did those come from?”
And like any good author, I have a story or two to tell.
Growing up as an Army brat, I lived in several Western states, including Oklahoma, Texas, and Kansas. Plus I cut my front teeth on TV shows set in the wild, wild West. But more importantly, the American West is in my blood. My famous Cherokee ancestors helped settle Oklahoma—my great-great grandfather was a Cherokee chief!
Then there’s the passion my husband and I share for snow skiing, especially in the exquisitely beautiful Rocky Mountains. That’s where we live now—in Utah, along with my beloved horses. Yes, in the tradition of my Cherokee ancestors, on any given morning, you’re likely to find me astride a horse, with a love for the land in my heart.
It’s no wonder that I set three of my four Western romances in the Rockies—
WILDSTAR
,
THE OUTLAW
, and
THE HEARTBREAKER
—and the fourth,
THE SAVAGE
, in Texas with a hero who’s half Comanche. Many of you have written, asking where you could find these four classic Western tales that were published years ago. I’m delighted to report that all four—along with five other out-of-print historical romances—have been reissued in eBook format. While these reissues still bear my trademark storytelling and sensuality, you’ll find them a bit more emotional than my livelier, more recent works such as
The Courtship Wars
and
Legendary Lovers
series.
I hope you enjoy a visit into the West inspired by my heritage and my background. If you want to learn more about all my novels, visit
www.NicoleJordanAuthor.com
. I’d love to know how you like these earlier books!
Best wishes and happy reading!
Nicole Jordan
To Jay, who makes my heart whole
With love for always
The wounds invisible
That love’s keen arrows make.
W
ILLIAM
S
HAKESPEARE
Colorado
February 1887
M
oonlight played over her pale, nude body, silvering her fair hair yet obscuring her delicate features in shadow. Sloan McCord groaned as the woman above him gently lowered herself to straddle his taut thighs.
Her lovely, lush form pearlized by moonglow, she bent closer, her ripe breasts teasing him, the budded nipples begging for the touch of his teeth and tongue.
Sloan squeezed his eyes shut as another hot wave of desire ripped through him. He couldn’t see her face. She was a stranger, and yet… he knew her touch. He knew her white, satin-smooth skin… her proud, lush breasts … the lustrous cascade of pale gold hair spilling over her naked shoulders. … Knew her with the hungry, intimate knowledge of a lover.
Her breasts overflowed in his palms as he coaxed her willing body down to receive his hard shaft. His blood pulsed feverishly at her enveloping warmth, and he inhaled a harsh breath, welcoming
the fierce heat that surged through him.
Here was fire and fantasy.
The woman in his arms trembled as she impaled herself fully on his rigid flesh, sheathing him in silken wet heat. At the exquisite sensation, his hands shifted restlessly upward, his fingers tightening in her glorious hair, burying in the curling golden strands. Yet when he tried to draw her closer—to kiss her lips, to see her face—she held back.
“Slowly, my love…” she whispered, her voice as liquid as the moonlight. “We have forever…”
Forever.
The husky word breathed a promise into his soul.
Sinuously she took over riding him, heightening the coiling tension burgeoning in his body, fanning the flames with every soft surge of her hips. His teeth clenching, he strained to keep his explosive need in check, to withstand her tender, sensual assault. He wanted to plunge wildly inside her, wanted to take her with savage lust, to pound into her....
Blindly, helplessly, he raised his hips and thrust deep.
Her back arched and she moaned sharply, shuddering. Her writhing movement excited him beyond bearing. His body shook, and he felt desire, fierce and desperate, spiral through his groin in a sweet agony of pleasure—
With a violent start, Sloan came awake, a rough cry of passion echoing in his mind.
Heart pounding, loins throbbing, he scanned the darkened room. His bedchamber. His ranch house. His bed.
Alone.
Moonlight filtered through the chintz curtains, reflecting brightly off the snow-blanketed landscape outside.
“A dream,” he whispered hoarsely. She was only a dream.
The wrong dream.
It had been too vivid, too seductive. A fine sheen of sweat covered his skin in the wintry night air; his manhood still strained in hot, unrelieved arousal.
Freeing an arm from the tangled covers, Sloan ran his hand raggedly down his face, trying to shake off his dark, fevered imaginings, to forget the way her naked skin had burned against his. Yet he could still feel her lithe, lush body, still feel the treacherous heat of desire.
Dammit to blazes, it was wrong.
She
was wrong. His dream lover had been blonde, not raven-haired like his Cheyenne wife. Pale, not dark-skinned. Voluptuous, not spare and sinewy.
Not like his dead wife.
A dark fist of pain gripped his heart. More than a year had passed since Sleeping Doe had been murdered, another innocent victim of a bloody range war. Haunting memories, dark and bitter, swept over Sloan, clashing with the sensual remnants of his dream. Normally his tormented dreams were of his wife and her final gasping moments in his arms … her blood on his hands as he’d sobbed harshly and railed at the heavens and vowed vengeance for her death.
Trying urgently now to forget, he focused instead on the throbbing of his groin. His eyes shutting, Sloan closed his fingers around his rigid flesh and with rough, quick strokes, brought himself physical relief.
He didn’t much relish this dispassionate means of release, but it wasn’t unnatural for a healthy man to have needs, and he hadn’t had a woman in months.
Oh, there were any number of females who’d be willing to scratch his masculine itch, including Doc Farley’s pretty daughter and a lively rancher’s widow who lived on the outskirts of town. But he’d shied away from them all, avoiding even the doves at the saloon in Greenbriar. They couldn’t fill the emptiness inside him since losing the woman he’d loved, or replace what he’d shared with Doe.
Despite what his family said.
His brother Jake was pushing him to get on with his life. His sister-in-law insisted he needed another wife.
With a swift, impatient movement, Sloan threw off the covers and swung his legs over the side of the bed. After wiping his damp hand on the sheet, he bent over tiredly, his corded forearms resting on his thighs, his head bowed.
Ever since Caitlin’s marriage to his brother last summer, she’d been intent on playing matchmaker, Sloan reflected somberly. She’d finally worn him down with sheer persistence.
“What in blazes do I want another wife for?” he’d demanded several months ago when Cat first broached the subject, half amused by her gumption, considering that they’d been mortal enemies for years.
“I can think of several excellent reasons,” she’d returned stubbornly.
And all her arguments had been sound, Sloan was forced to admit. Shrewdly she’d started with his foray into state politics.
“You want to win your campaign this summer, don’t you?” Caitlin asked.
“I have some notion of winning, yes.”
Ignoring his wryness, she eased her body, which was beginning to swell with child, into the leather sofa in his study, looking prepared for a long siege.
“Then you’d better start thinking about how to get people on your side. Your maverick ways haven’t endeared you to voters, Sloan. Especially to sheep men.”
Caitlin was right, he knew. He planned to run for the Colorado senate, but his violence in the long range war had earned him more than a few enemies. Caitlin herself had helped him end the feud, but there was still bad blood between cattle ranchers and sheep farmers.
And then there was his marriage.
A hell-raiser in his youth, he’d earnestly avoided matrimony until he’d fallen for the full-blooded Cheyenne woman he’d met soon after his brother was unjustly branded an outlaw. His marriage had stunned and shocked the community. And it hadn’t helped that later, as a widower, he’d continued to evade the local belles.
“It would improve your public image significantly to be married to a well-bred lady,” Caitlin persisted.
Sloan didn’t bother repressing his scoff. “Your ‘well-bred lady’ is from St. Louis. A citified Easterner.”
“Who would do quite well as a political hostess.”
“I’d be better off marrying a Western woman. One suited for ranch life. Somebody who at least knows which end of a steer is which.”
“Do you have anyone particular in mind?”
When he hesitated, Caitlin said archly, “Of course you don’t. The women here have been chasing you for years, Sloan, and you’ve never shown the least interest in any of them. But you won’t win voters if you keep breaking hearts. And you won’t get any respite until you marry again. There are a dozen matrons who will keep smothering you with
motherly concern and driving you to distraction until you do.”
“Matrons like you, Cat?”
Caitlin smiled sweetly in reply, making Sloan understand once again why his brother was so crazy for her.
Sloan couldn’t help but grin back. But then he gave a rebellious shrug. “Maybe I could use a wife, but I can’t afford one who needs to be pampered. Or who’d be afraid to dirty her soft hands.”
“Heather wouldn’t need pampering.”
“You said she came from rich roots.”