One afternoon as she stood at the kitchen window, Heather saw several of the hands ride in. She donned her coat and carried a tray out to the bunkhouse, laden with two golden-crusted pies still warm from the oven.

The cowboys were unsaddling their horses at the corral, and when they saw the pies, they tugged off their hats and greeted her with whoops and “Thankee ma’am’s.”

While they teased Cookie good-naturedly about the inadequacy of his cooking, Heather followed the tall, ginger-haired Rusty into the bunkhouse and deposited the pies on a wooden table. She had just stepped outside again when she came to an abrupt halt.

Her husband had ridden up on his rangy bay and sat staring down at her from beneath the brim of his hat.

To her dismay, Heather heard herself stammering. “I b-brought the men some rhubarb pies. Caitlin told me cowboys are wild for it.”

His silence, along with his hard, unwavering gaze, unnerved her.

“Did I do something wrong?” she murmured.

It was all Sloan could do to repress a savage reply. He shut his eyes briefly as a memory pierced him. Doe laughing quietly at herself as she poked at a pie crust, burnt to a crisp around the edges and raw in the middle. Her dismal failure as a cook had frustrated her, only because she’d wanted to please him. She’d never gotten the hang of baking the white way, fixing biscuits like rocks and flapjacks like leather….

The tormenting memory faded, leaving him with a bittersweet, lingering sense of loss.

“No,” Sloan forced himself to say to his present wife, more gruffly than was warranted. “You did right, duchess. The way to a cowboy’s heart has always been through his stomach.”

Heather bit her lip hard, refraining from making the reply that sprang to her tongue. Is that the way to your heart, Sloan? Do you even have a heart?

She watched, unsurprised, as without another word, he whirled his bay and rode off at a lope, leaving her to stare after him.

He seemed somewhat repentant, however, when he joined her in the study late that evening for the first time in over a week. After asking her how Janna had fared, Sloan went to his desk and pulled out the account books. For a time, the only sound in the room was the crackling of the fire in the hearth and the occasional scratch of his quill pen.

When his heavy sigh broke the silence, Heather couldn’t tell whether it was due to frustration or despair. She looked up from her book to see Sloan roughly run a hand through his tawny hair.

“What is it?” she asked quietly.