“Good heavens, it won’t be charity! Sloan will be getting the better end of the bargain, if you ask me. Janna desperately needs a mother—and Sloan needs you, too, whether he realizes it or not.”

“Still … he’s so …” Several descriptions came to mind: Forceful. Dangerous. Overpowering. He was all of those and more. “Frightening…” she finished lamely. “I have no notion how to deal with him.”

Caitlin set the plates on the range to keep warm and sat down at the table. Staunchly she took Heather’s hands. “You’re not really afraid of him, are you?”

She was afraid. Afraid of his power over her. In three days, Sloan not only managed to rake her emotions raw, he’d created a storm of rebellion and discontent within her. He stirred the deep lonely places inside her and made her ache for things she’d only dreamed of until now.

Passion and tenderness and love.

A pained smile twisted her mouth. She wasn’t likely to find such gentle sentiments with Sloan McCord. He wasn’t capable of showing them.

Caitlin was regarding her with sympathy. “I know he’s not an easy man, Heather. You look into his eyes and see things you wished you never had to.”

Heather nodded. She had felt it, that haunted bitterness beneath the cold mask. The bleakness.

“But you have to understand him. I told you about the range war, how long and bloody and savage it was. But Sloan suffered more than most of us. First he lost his father, who was shot in the back in a cowardly ambush. Then his brother was branded an outlaw and forced into hiding. Then his wife was assaulted and murdered by my father and his hirelings. It changed him, Heather. Sloan made vengeance his life.”

“He said he had blood on his hands,” Heather murmured.

“He does. Rumor has it that he killed my father for what they did to Doe, and I believe it.”

Heather shivered. Sloan seemed entirely capable of taking the law into his hands and dispensing justice unremittingly.

“There was a time when Sloan was my greatest enemy,” Caitlin added seriously. “I think he might even have liked to see me dead.”

“You seem to have put aside your differences now.”

“Yes, but it took months of pushing and prodding. Making him trust me and accept me. It was like peeling an onion, layer by thin layer. No … more like prying open the rigid shell of an oyster. He would only budge a fraction of an inch at a time.” Her blue eyes darkened with concern. “The pity of it is, Sloan is still only a shell of the man he could be. He won’t give up the darkness. He can’t let go of the past, especially his wife’s death. I’m worried about him, and so is Jake.”

Heather searched her friend’s face. “What was she like, Sloan’s Indian wife?”