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.”