It hurt to watch his exhausting campaign against the uncontrollable elements, to see him bear his defeats in grim, stoic silence. Once or twice when he came home long after dark, half frozen and ravenous, she saw the vulnerability in the hard, shuttered face. In those moments something painful caught at her heart. She wanted to offer him comfort, but she labeled the feeling as foolishness and shoved it aside. Sloan would not want her sympathy, any more than he would give it.

She would not be his salvation, as Caitlin had prophesied. She would never have the chance. He was a man torn by a terrible grief, but he would never let her near enough to help him with the demons that haunted him.

When the snow let up later in the week, she met his ranch foreman and several of his half-dozen hired hands, including the range cook named Cookie. Some of the boys, Heather learned, lived in line camps—isolated cabins from which they patrolled the ranch’s distant reaches, but the rest lived in the bunkhouse. There were countless winter chores to keep them busy. Besides helping the cattle stay alive by hauling out hay or driving the herds onto snow-free grass, they had to cut ice in water holes, bring in sick cows or calves, find strays that had drifted, repair corral poles and barbed-wire fences, chop firewood, mend gear … an endless monotony of work.

The ranch hands seemed to welcome her presence and were eager to help her settle in, particularly Rusty, the tall, ginger-haired young man Sloan had designated to protect her and Janna.

“We’re right glad you’ve come, ma’am,” Rusty said shyly one laundry day as he helped Heather carry buckets from the barn to the kitchen. “Janna needs a real ma. Especially since Maria left.”

“That was Sloan’s housekeeper?”

“Yes’m, a Mex woman. But she had family troubles of her own to see to. All the boys try to help with Janna, but we can’t take the place of a woman.”

“You seem to care for Janna a great deal.”

“We’re all a mite protective of her.”

“Have you worked here long?”

“Goin’ on ten years, I reckon.” He set down the buckets on the back porch and brushed a forelock of red hair away from his eyes. “Sloan’s pa hired me straight from Texas, when I was still wet behind the ears. I was here when Sloan got hitched and when Ben McCord died and when Janna was born and when Miz Doe was killed…” His brown eyes darkened.

Heather waited, wondering if Rusty would say more about the tragedy, but he didn’t. Not wanting to sound as if she was prying, she asked a different question. “Janna is rather an unusual name, isn’t it?”