The Heart Breaker (23 page)

She found herself missing his presence. There were no longer any quiet cozes in his study, or homey, peaceful meals with Janna between them, or pulsing nights of darkness and desire.

She kept herself occupied, though, as spring slipped into early summer, and was not discontented
with her lot. In helping to raise Janna, she’d found a sense of renewed purpose in life, and her former existence in St. Louis began to seem like a distant dream.

Until, that is, she encountered Quinn Lovell.

For the past month or more she’d heard various accounts of Sloan’s political opponent, but she first met him face-to-face one morning when she drove into Greenbriar for supplies. The wealthy mining baron had already begun campaigning for state senator, it seemed, and Heather discovered him holding sway on a street corner before a small crowd of townspeople, explaining the bleakness of the future of Colorado’s cattle industry.

She drew the buggy to a halt and pulled Janna onto her lap as she listened curiously. The intent crowd was questioning him about his plan to start new silver mines in the district. The few hecklers apparently were cattlemen, but the town marshal, Luther Netherson, stood to one side, keeping the peace, his pair of six-guns prominently visible.

Mr. Lovell seemed a persuasive speaker, with a powerful, booming voice any Shakespearean actor would envy. He ran to portliness perhaps, but he was tall enough to carry the bulk, and the superbly tailored suit he wore helped to disguise his paunch. He might be considered handsome, Heather reflected, but he reminded her of Evan Randolf, not merely because of his dark-chestnut hair and sideburns and curling mustache, but his suave manner.

The discussion ended with Lovell appealing for votes, and the crowd dispersed. Before Heather could drive on, though, she found her buggy approached by Lovell himself, accompanied by Marshal Netherson.

When the marshal introduced them, Mr. Lovell tipped his hat to her. “Ah, the lovely Mrs. McCord.
I understand you are the wife of my political opponent.”

Heather nodded politely. “How do you do, sir.”

“I am delighted to meet you at last,” he returned, displaying a graceful social address. “We share a common acquaintance, I believe. Evan Randolf thinks very highly of you. He asked me to look you up.”

“You know Mr. Randolf?”

“We are both on the board of the Union Pacific Railroad. I travel to St. Louis frequently on business. I understand you recently quitted that fine city. You must find it vastly different from the state of Colorado.”

“Different, yes, but pleasantly so.”

His eyes swept her body, taking in her jacquard bodice and skirt, as well as the half-Cheyenne child she held on her lap. “This is the little Indian child I’ve so much heard about?”

Protectively, Heather wrapped her arm more tightly around Janna. “This is my stepdaughter, Janna McCord.”

“Her features are more pronounced than I expected.”

His tone conveyed the slightest hint of triumph, and he had no need to explain his rationale aloud to Heather: Janna’s lineage would likely prove a disadvantage to Sloan’s campaign. The good citizens of Colorado would not be able to forget who her mother was.

“Yes, isn’t it fortunate?” Heather replied evenly. “With her fine bone structure, she will doubtless grow up to be a real beauty. And she has the sweetest disposition… Anyone who meets her, loves her at once.”

“Perhaps.” His smile was patronizing, but he seemed to tire of sparring with her. “A pity you are
supporting the wrong candidate, Mrs. McCord.”

Heather smiled coolly in return. “I don’t believe my husband is the wrong candidate, sir.”

“Well, we shall see…”

Quinn Lovell tipped his hat again and politely took his leave, while Heather breathed a sigh of relief. Normally she reserved judgment until she knew someone better, but instinctively she did not like Mr. Lovell. She had the uncomfortable suspicion he possessed the same ruthless ambition as Evan Randolf.

Sarah Baxter seemed to agree with her assessment. Sarah was behind the counter of the general store when Heather entered, and wasn’t at all shy in giving her opinion about Quinn Lovell.

“He’s a low-down sidewinder, that’s what.”

“A sidewinder?”

“A rattlesnake,” Sarah explained. “Pure poison—preying on decent folk down on their luck.”

When Heather eyed her quizzically, Sarah explained. “Lovell’s been buying up cattle ranches hereabouts. He offers the owners a pittance, but with the terrible winter we had and the price of beef so low, they have no choice but to sell. And that isn’t the worst of it,” she added darkly. “I’ve heard he’s assayed a dozen sites and means to start digging new mines any day now.”

“He suggested as much in the speech he gave just now. But why is that a problem?”

“Have you ever seen a slag heap? Mine tailings are about the ugliest thing you could ever lay eyes on. It’s going to destroy this beautiful land.”

“If that’s so, then I should think the voters would object to having Lovell as their representative.”

Sarah gave a ladylike snort and shook her head. “He already has a lot of support. A good third of the business in this town comes from miners, and
they want someone who’ll look out for their interests. And folks who lose their ranches could find work in Lovell’s mines… It’s a prime pickle for sure. We have to stop him, Heather,” Sarah said earnestly. “We have to do our darnedest to make sure Sloan gets elected.”

Late that night, though, when Heather told Sloan about Lovell’s speech in town, he only nodded with grim resignation.

“Lovell is getting a head start on the campaign,” she pointed out. “If you’re not careful, the election will be over before it’s even begun—and he will have won.”

“Even so, I can’t afford to spend time campaigning just now. I have a ranch to see to. When roundup’s over, I can concentrate on the race.”

“Could you not let your foreman run things for a while now? You could hire more hands to replace you, could you not?”

“I can’t spare the cash.”

“But there must be something you can do.”

Sloan sighed, his frustration evident. “It takes money to fight men like Lovell. Money I don’t have.”

Heather winced silently, remembering precisely why Sloan was short on resources: because he’d paid her debts. She dropped the subject for the moment, but the issue gnawed at her.

She would have to ask Vernon Whitfield what jobs might be available for a woman with her skills. Perhaps the schoolteacher would know where she could find work as a part-time tutor. But this was not the best time to begin looking. School would be letting out shortly and not resume until the fall.

Meanwhile, however, she would do what she could to help Sloan’s senatorial campaign. She
needed no convincing to know he was the better candidate. Sloan’s political aspirations were different from his opponent’s. His was not a search for power or wealth, but a fervent desire to make life better for the ranchers.

The roundup ended the second week in June. Sloan and his cowpunchers drove a herd to the railhead in Denver, a short distance compared to the long treks of most cattle drives. He left Rusty as guard and general handyman.

While he was in Denver, Sloan planned to meet with a group of politicians who were interested in seeing him beat Lovell. He intended to be gone only three days, but Heather missed him more than she cared to admit. The day after his departure, she was gathering Sloan’s clothing to launder when she found the chambray shirt he’d worn when they’d first met in St. Louis.

Wistfully, she rubbed the soft collar between her fingertips. Bunching the fabric in her hands, she brought it up to her face. She could still smell his male scent. Unbidden, the vulnerability, the loneliness, the longing rose up in her like a tide. She longed for a true marriage, a husband who cherished her. She longed for Sloan.

Her heart aching, Heather shook her head. She was a fool for wasting her emotions on an impossibility. Sloan had made it clear he didn’t want love. She yearned for a man beyond her reach. Despite the intensity of his passion, he kept himself shut off from her, elusive and terrifyingly remote, guarding what was left of his soul like a miser.

And yet when she looked into his haunted eyes, she could almost forgive him. He still grieved for his first wife. Still loved the ghost of another woman.

She couldn’t fight a ghost, or compete with such
a hallowed memory. Yet she would not, could not, stop trying to get close to him. Even though she greatly feared he would break her heart in the end.

He came home on Thursday, in mid-afternoon, just after she had put Janna down for a nap. Heather’s heart did a somersault when she descended the stairs to find Sloan in the kitchen.

He seemed to be waiting for her, one hip lounging casually against the wooden table. He looked dangerous and a bit disreputable with his sleeves pushed up to expose corded, tanned forearms, his thumbs hooked into the gun belt riding low on his hips. A rough stubble shadowed his lean cheeks, while his skin seemed very bronzed. He exuded raw male attraction, every hard male inch of him.

Heather felt her pulse leap with sexual awareness, while all her senses honed to him. The air was suddenly fraught with dark undercurrents of passion.

He watched her, his ice-blue eyes intense, as he slowly unbuckled his guns and dropped them on the table. Her mouth went dry.

“Janna asleep?” he asked, his voice low, husky.

“Yes. I just put her to bed.”

“Good. Come here.”

That was all he said, all he needed to say. Her heart alive with excitement, she went to him. Almost roughly Sloan drew her into the hard cradle of his thighs. In response, hunger flared inside her, fanned into instant life at his touch. The heat of his body seared her through their clothing.

Heather closed her eyes, savoring the smell of horse and man rising from that seductive heat. Eagerly she raised her mouth to his.

Sloan held himself back for only an instant. He’d told himself he wasn’t going to attack her the minute
he got home, but for the last ten miles, all he could think of was her naked body, pale and frenzied as he took her. He wanted to be locked deep inside her, feeling her heat, making her moan for him. He wanted her clawing at his back and arching her hips for him.

His arousal was hot and throbbing. He could feel his cock pressing against the rough denim of his pants, a pleasure-pain.

“I’ve been hard since I left you,” he muttered.

“And all day today…” He pressed her hand to the straining fabric of his jeans. “I’m so hard now, my guts are hurting. I want to be inside you.”

“Yes,” she breathed in reply.

His lips seized hers in a kiss as darkly intimate as the mating of their bodies had once been, while his fingers fumbled with the buttons of her shirtwaist. Her clothes were in his way. He wanted to strip every stitch of them from her body. He needed to get between her long legs and make her feel things she’d never felt before. He needed to make her as hungry for him as he was for her.

He managed to pull her blouse down over her shoulders and free her flesh from the top lacy edge of her corset. Her jutting, naked breasts rose above the tight whalebone, bared to his heated gaze. His fingers closed over the pale, high-swelling curves like they were his property. She was so damn beautiful that looking at her made him ache.

He rubbed her budded nipples to hard little points of fire, so that she arched into his touch with a whimper.

“I have to taste you,” he muttered.

Turning her, he lay Heather back on the kitchen table and bent over her hungrily. She gasped as his lips traced burning kisses around her full swells. His mouth was hot, his tongue rough and wet on
her sensitive skin, arousing the peak to a pebble-hard point of pleasure, setting the rest of her body on fire. With a hard sucking motion, he assaulted her, his devouring lips dragging across her breasts, pulling at her flesh, nipping softly. He was tasting her to his ruthless satisfaction, staking a claim.

But it wasn’t enough, for either of them. Still suckling her fiercely, Sloan pushed her skirts up to her waist. He felt a shock as he realized she wasn’t wearing drawers. She was naked from the waist down, open for his pleasure. When her bare legs parted, the sweet scent of woman rose to his nostrils.

Raw need bolted through him like a wild horse. His gaze lifted abruptly, silver-blue smoke.

“Such an accommodating wife,” he murmured hoarsely in approval.

He slipped a finger into her cleft, feeling the heat and dampness and need of her. She was so wet, so trigger-hot, she nearly came right then. She made a soft whimpering sound of need as she reached for him, but Sloan clenched his teeth and held back. She made him shudder with the urge to pound deep and pour his hot seed inside her, but he wanted her to plead.

His hard lips closed wetly over her nipple. His hot mouth seared her with a lash of pleasure that was almost cruel, while his fingers stroked fiercly.

“Sloannnnn…” His name was a keening moan which changed to a strangled cry. The orgasm that shook her was powerful, instantaneous, shattering.

Sloan held himself still as tremors shook her lush, magnificent body, fighting the raw lust that ran rampant through him. His body pulsed against hers while his hardened shaft cramped beneath his pants. He wanted her, wanted to impale her until he drowned in her.

Abruptly he rose above her, tearing at his pants until they opened and he could push them out of the way. He had to have her or go crazy. In a rush of heated flesh, he plunged into her.

When Heather cried out again and wrapped her legs around him, he spread his fingers and clasped her bare buttocks hard to draw her closer. Her breathy whimpers were driving him mad. He’d never been so hungry for a woman before, so hot. He’d never felt this kind of need, mindless, relentless, endless.

He rode her hard and fast. Wildly, he drove himself into her, big and hard, his lean, powerful body trembling with almost angry need. His lips drank in her wild moans as she clawed at his back.

In only a moment, fire exploded where her slick, heated flesh sheathed him. When in the same moment she began to convulse around him once more, his body contracted. He shook violently, shuddering with a pleasure so piercing it was almost unbearable.