Remembering his sister-in-law’s words now in the darkness of his bedchamber, Sloan rose abruptly and pulled a blanket around his bare shoulders. Crossing to the pot-bellied stove near where his young daughter lay sleeping in her cradle, he added a scoop of coal and then hunkered down beside her, gazing at her dark-skinned features relaxed in sleep, soft with innocence.

Intense feelings of protectiveness and tenderness swept over him, while fierce love twisted powerfully, painfully in his chest.

This slip of a child had been his salvation. After losing his wife, he’d been so crazed with vengeance that he’d gone on a relentless rampage against his enemies. He’d made Doe’s murderers pay, but for a long while afterward, he’d felt as if he had nothing left to lose, including his own life. He’d felt empty, as if his heart and lungs and guts had all been torn out. Sealed off by grief from everyone around him.

Janna was all that had kept him alive. She’d been the only thing worth living for.

In the past months since the range war was tenuously settled, his rage had eased somewhat, but guilt still burned inside him. His enemies had killed his wife to get at him. Doe had been all that was good and strong and gentle in his life. And he hadn’t been able to save her.

Guilt had burned a searing brand on his soul, leaving him with tortured dreams. The nights were the hardest. In the darkest hours before dawn, when the long, bitter years of loneliness stretched endlessly before him, he found himself craving the time when vengeance and hatred had been his closest friends.

He didn’t want another woman to share his life. Hell, for that matter, what right did he have to ask someone to shoulder his burdens? There were only shadows and sorrow in his past, hardship in his future. His hands were stained with blood and violence, while a cold blackness surrounded his soul.

But his child needed a mother.

And he’d pay any price, go to any lengths, to help his young daughter.

With infinite care Sloan tucked the covers under Janna’s small chin and stood. He resented it like hell, but he needed a wife.

In any event, the time for debating was over. He was committed now. Yesterday, by letter, he’d made Miss Heather Ashford a formal offer of marriage. In it he’d pledged to pay her remaining debts—fifteen hundred precious dollars he would have to scrape together somehow—to free her of her obligations in St. Louis. It was too late for him to honorably back out.

He hated the thought of marrying again. He much preferred to let his wounds scar over with time, if that were even possible.