Unable to stop himself, Sloan rose from the table and carried Janna into the parlor, where he stood before the window. His jaw clenched rigidly as he watched Evan Randolf handing his wife into the closed carriage.

Yet as the vehicle drove out of sight, he couldn’t explain the panic that twisted like a knife in his gut. This was what he wanted, wasn’t it? Heather out of his hair, out of his life, out of his heart. Yet he felt as if a vital part of him had been torn away. The way he had when Doe had died.

He locked his jaw against the tearing grief. The past years had hardened him, like steel tempered by fire. He would survive this loss, as he had others.

Janna started whimpering just then, as if she somehow understood her new mama was leaving her for good. With a raw curse, Sloan turned away from the window.

“Want Hever,” Janna murmured plaintively.

“So do I,” he whispered. “But it’s just us now, sweetheart. Just like before. But we’ll get on. We’ll comfort each other.”

Still holding his daughter, Sloan wandered the empty, silent rooms, keenly aware of Heather’s absence, of his aloneness. She had been gone only a short while, and already the house felt haunted by her memory.

Heather claimed she couldn’t bear to stay, and after the way he’d treated her, Sloan reflected with bleak honesty, he really couldn’t blame her. She deserved so much more than he could give her—a life filled with harsh challenges and grueling work. She deserved love.

Almost to his surprise, he found himself in his bedchamber, the one he had shared with his first wife. He tried to picture Doe as she’d been in life, with her quiet features and gentle brown eyes, but all he could remember was the last time Heather had visited this room, when he’d spurned her love. And later… when he’d offered her gold for sex, making a mockery of the tender passion that had been the mainstay of their marriage for the past few months.

He sank heavily onto the mattress. He felt numb, except for the burning in his eyes, in his heart.

He didn’t protest when a squirming Janna crawled off his lap and made herself a nest among the pillows. Instead Sloan lay back on the bed, exhausted from the turmoil of the past few weeks, from the constant war between feeling and trying not to feel.

Wearily he shut his eyes, trying to summon Doe’s face. All he could see was a pair of golden eyes shimmering with tears … Heather’s beautiful features torn by despair and anguish as she said a final farewell.

She was wrong, Sloan reflected bleakly. She was wrong to think he didn’t love her.

If he didn’t, then why did it hurt so god-awful much to lose her?

Chapter 19