“Yes, I loved her,” he said hoarsely. “So much I ached with it. She was … She was like the sun, warm and nurturing. She was my life.” There was a pause. “I died that day, along with her.”

“No,” Heather replied urgently, “you didn’t die. You lived to care for your daughter.”

The words reached inside him and cradled a part of him he didn’t want anyone near. Sloan winced, wanting to curse Heather and her damned interference. She didn’t understand the bleakness of his soul, the great gaping hole where his heart should have been.

Then he made the mistake of looking into her eyes. It was like stripping his soul bare. He saw quiet compassion there, and sheltering, tender solace. A solace he didn’t want, couldn’t accept. He gathered his shattered defenses around him like armor, drawing into himself. He turned his face away to stare up at the ceiling.

In the silence Heather felt his withdrawal like an icy wind. Once again Sloan was the remote, cold stranger, though he held her against his warm, naked body.

Tears stung her eyes at the loss. Gazing at his chiseled profile, she wondered what it was like to love someone that much, so much that death meant the death of one’s own heart.

Instinctively her hand reached up, her fingers touching his lean cheek, but Sloan might have been a marble statue for all the warmth or emotion he showed.

She closed her eyes against the longing that welled up in her. She couldn’t ease his torment or heal the deep sorrow that tortured him, heart and soul. Perhaps Sloan was right. He had been mortally wounded that day, just as surely as if his enemies had plunged a knife into his chest.

Her own heart constricting with pain and regret, Heather swallowed the ache that rose in her throat. She was mistaken. Sloan’s heart was not made of ice. The reality was far worse. His heart belonged to his late wife.

She had a dead woman for a rival.

Chapter 10

HE STAYED WITH her the entire night, holding her, warming her, comforting her with his strength when she needed so badly to have his arms around her. He left before dawn, telling her to sleep a while longer.

Already missing him, Heather lay there in the early-morning darkness, remembering.

She had tried to imagine what Sloan’s lovemaking would be like, with heat and need and hunger. But never had she envisioned the sensual power of his burning lips and magical hands and lithe body. His lovemaking was as intense and elemental as he was, like getting caught up in a storm. Yet for all the violence and power of their coupling, there had been a gentleness as well.