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About the Book

A sweeping Western historical romance, from Nicole Jordan, the New York Times bestselling author

A Convenient Bride

Burdened by family debts, Heather Ashford has no choice but to accept the proposal of the ruggedly handsome cattle baron Sloan McCord. But she will not give up on her dreams of romance.

And an Irresistible Groom

However, tormented by a deep sorrow, Sloan keeps his heart well guarded and has vowed never to love again. Although his infant daughter needs a mother, he doesn’t want – or need – a wife. Does his fierce bride of convenience have the strength to heal his broken heart – before he breaks hers?

Rouge romance – the best historical romance novels, perfect for fans of Georgette Heyer.

About the Author

Nicole Jordan is the New York Times bestselling author of numerous historical, Western, and Regency romances. In her former life, Nicole grew up as an Army brat, earned a degree in civil engineering, and spent eight years as a manufacturing manager making disposable diapers and toilet tissue! Currently she lives in the Rocky Mountains of Utah with her real-life hero (her husband) and beloved kids (her horses).

One of Nicole’s novels had the dubious honor of being humorously spotlighted by Jay Leno on “The Tonight Show.” On a more serious note, her books regularly appear on bestseller lists, including The New York Times and USA Today, and have earned such honors as RITA finalist, RWA’s Favorite Book of the Year, and the Romantic Times Career Achievement Award for Historical Romance.

Also by Nicole Jordan:

The Warrior

To Pleasure a Lady

To Bed a Beauty

To Seduce a Bride

To Romance a Charming Rogue

To Tame a Dangerous Lord

To Desire a Wicked Duke

The Lover

Lord of Desire

Velvet Embrace

Moonwitch

Tender Feud

Wildstar

The Savage

The Heartbreaker

NICOLE
JORDAN

Dedication

To Jay, who makes my heart whole

With love for always

Epigraph

The wounds invisible

That love’s keen arrows make.

WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE

Prologue

Colorado

February 1887

MOONLIGHT PLAYED OVER her pale, nude body, silvering her fair hair yet obscuring her delicate features in shadow. Sloan McCord groaned as the woman above him gently lowered herself to straddle his taut thighs.

Her lovely, lush form pearlized by moonglow, she bent closer, her ripe breasts teasing him, the budded nipples begging for the touch of his teeth and tongue.

Sloan squeezed his eyes shut as another hot wave of desire ripped through him. He couldn’t see her face. She was a stranger, and yet… he knew her touch. He knew her white, satin-smooth skin… her proud, lush breasts … the lustrous cascade of pale gold hair spilling over her naked shoulders.… Knew her with the hungry, intimate knowledge of a lover.

Her breasts overflowed in his palms as he coaxed her willing body down to receive his hard shaft. His blood pulsed feverishly at her enveloping warmth, and he inhaled a harsh breath, welcoming the fierce heat that surged through him.

Here was fire and fantasy.

The woman in his arms trembled as she impaled herself fully on his rigid flesh, sheathing him in silken wet heat. At the exquisite sensation, his hands shifted restlessly upward, his fingers tightening in her glorious hair, burying in the curling golden strands. Yet when he tried to draw her closer—to kiss her lips, to see her face—she held back.

“Slowly, my love…” she whispered, her voice as liquid as the moonlight. “We have forever…”

Forever. The husky word breathed a promise into his soul.

Sinuously she took over riding him, heightening the coiling tension burgeoning in his body, fanning the flames with every soft surge of her hips. His teeth clenching, he strained to keep his explosive need in check, to withstand her tender, sensual assault. He wanted to plunge wildly inside her, wanted to take her with savage lust, to pound into her….

Blindly, helplessly, he raised his hips and thrust deep.

Her back arched and she moaned sharply, shuddering. Her writhing movement excited him beyond bearing. His body shook, and he felt desire, fierce and desperate, spiral through his groin in a sweet agony of pleasure—

With a violent start, Sloan came awake, a rough cry of passion echoing in his mind.

Heart pounding, loins throbbing, he scanned the darkened room. His bedchamber. His ranch house. His bed. Alone.

Moonlight filtered through the chintz curtains, reflecting brightly off the snow-blanketed landscape outside.

“A dream,” he whispered hoarsely. She was only a dream.

The wrong dream.

It had been too vivid, too seductive. A fine sheen of sweat covered his skin in the wintry night air; his manhood still strained in hot, unrelieved arousal.

Freeing an arm from the tangled covers, Sloan ran his hand raggedly down his face, trying to shake off his dark, fevered imaginings, to forget the way her naked skin had burned against his. Yet he could still feel her lithe, lush body, still feel the treacherous heat of desire.

Dammit to blazes, it was wrong. She was wrong. His dream lover had been blonde, not raven-haired like his Cheyenne wife. Pale, not dark-skinned. Voluptuous, not spare and sinewy.

Not like his dead wife.

A dark fist of pain gripped his heart. More than a year had passed since Sleeping Doe had been murdered, another innocent victim of a bloody range war. Haunting memories, dark and bitter, swept over Sloan, clashing with the sensual remnants of his dream. Normally his tormented dreams were of his wife and her final gasping moments in his arms … her blood on his hands as he’d sobbed harshly and railed at the heavens and vowed vengeance for her death.

Trying urgently now to forget, he focused instead on the throbbing of his groin. His eyes shutting, Sloan closed his fingers around his rigid flesh and with rough, quick strokes, brought himself physical relief.

He didn’t much relish this dispassionate means of release, but it wasn’t unnatural for a healthy man to have needs, and he hadn’t had a woman in months.

Oh, there were any number of females who’d be willing to scratch his masculine itch, including Doc Farley’s pretty daughter and a lively rancher’s widow who lived on the outskirts of town. But he’d shied away from them all, avoiding even the doves at the saloon in Greenbriar. They couldn’t fill the emptiness inside him since losing the woman he’d loved, or replace what he’d shared with Doe.

Despite what his family said.

His brother Jake was pushing him to get on with his life. His sister-in-law insisted he needed another wife.

With a swift, impatient movement, Sloan threw off the covers and swung his legs over the side of the bed. After wiping his damp hand on the sheet, he bent over tiredly, his corded forearms resting on his thighs, his head bowed.

Ever since Caitlin’s marriage to his brother last summer, she’d been intent on playing matchmaker, Sloan reflected somberly. She’d finally worn him down with sheer persistence.

“What in blazes do I want another wife for?” he’d demanded several months ago when Cat first broached the subject, half amused by her gumption, considering that they’d been mortal enemies for years.

“I can think of several excellent reasons,” she’d returned stubbornly.

And all her arguments had been sound, Sloan was forced to admit. Shrewdly she’d started with his foray into state politics.

“You want to win your campaign this summer, don’t you?” Caitlin asked.

“I have some notion of winning, yes.”

Ignoring his wryness, she eased her body, which was beginning to swell with child, into the leather sofa in his study, looking prepared for a long siege. “Then you’d better start thinking about how to get people on your side. Your maverick ways haven’t endeared you to voters, Sloan. Especially to sheep men.”

Caitlin was right, he knew. He planned to run for the Colorado senate, but his violence in the long range war had earned him more than a few enemies. Caitlin herself had helped him end the feud, but there was still bad blood between cattle ranchers and sheep farmers.

And then there was his marriage.

A hell-raiser in his youth, he’d earnestly avoided matrimony until he’d fallen for the full-blooded Cheyenne woman he’d met soon after his brother was unjustly branded an outlaw. His marriage had stunned and shocked the community. And it hadn’t helped that later, as a widower, he’d continued to evade the local belles.

“It would improve your public image significantly to be married to a well-bred lady,” Caitlin persisted.

Sloan didn’t bother repressing his scoff. “Your ‘well-bred lady’ is from St. Louis. A citified Easterner.”

“Who would do quite well as a political hostess.”

“I’d be better off marrying a Western woman. One suited for ranch life. Somebody who at least knows which end of a steer is which.”

“Do you have anyone particular in mind?”

When he hesitated, Caitlin said archly, “Of course you don’t. The women here have been chasing you for years, Sloan, and you’ve never shown the least interest in any of them. But you won’t win voters if you keep breaking hearts. And you won’t get any respite until you marry again. There are a dozen matrons who will keep smothering you with motherly concern and driving you to distraction until you do.”

“Matrons like you, Cat?”

Caitlin smiled sweetly in reply, making Sloan understand once again why his brother was so crazy for her.

Sloan couldn’t help but grin back. But then he gave a rebellious shrug. “Maybe I could use a wife, but I can’t afford one who needs to be pampered. Or who’d be afraid to dirty her soft hands.”

“Heather wouldn’t need pampering.”

“You said she came from rich roots.”

“True, but she’d never let on about it. And she’s in dire straits now. Her father left her with a pile of gambling debts to settle. She had to sell his newspaper and her home and move in with my Aunt Winnie. In all likelihood she’ll be forced to shut down her school to meet the mortgage.”

“Well, I can’t afford to bail her out. I’ll be lucky to scrape by this winter with two bits to my name.”

“Jake and I could help if you’d let us.”

Sloan shook his head emphatically. The McCord cattle empire was crumbling; the vast spread he and his father and brother had carved from the shadow of the Rockies was at risk of going under. It had been a hell of a hard winter, with heavy snows and lethal temperatures ravaging herds from Texas to Montana.

His brother hadn’t been hit as hard by the brutal winter. Jake was now a county judge with a steady wage. And Caitlin had her late father’s sheep ranch to tide them over, raising woollies that could survive frigid weather better than beeves.

But Sloan already owed them enough. He still hadn’t fully been able to buy out Jake’s share of the ranch. And he refused to become any more obliged to them than he was.

Caitlin, however, let their longstanding argument pass and concentrated on championing her genteel friend from St. Louis.

“If you wait, Sloan, you could miss your chance altogether. Heather might not be available for long. Not with the railroad baron who’s been after her to marry him.”

“So let her marry him.”

“She doesn’t want to! She doesn’t even like the man, let alone want to become his wife. But she may not have much choice.”

Sloan frowned skeptically. “Heather Ashford… What kind of fancy name is that?”

“She’s not fancy, I tell you,” Caitlin insisted. “She’s a true lady, but strong in her own way. She’d not afraid of hard work. She built her girls’ school from almost nothing.”

“What is she like?”

“Oh, her looks are passable enough,” Caitlin replied. “She has fair hair … and she’s rather tall, with a full figure.”

Sloan’s mouth curled as he envisioned a plump starch-and-tea schoolmarm. Plain and homely, no doubt. An unappealing spinster who couldn’t catch a man on her own.

But her looks wouldn’t matter to him. He didn’t want beauty in a wife … as long as she wouldn’t drive away the men who would be voting for him.

“But,” Caitlin continued with a note of triumph, “you’re forgetting the most important reason to take a wife. Janna needs a mother.”

Roughly Sloan ran a hand through his hair. Caitlin had astutely saved that argument for last. That was the only reason that truly counted. His daughter needed a mother. Janna had been two months old when her Cheyenne mother was killed. For over a year now he’d tried to raise his daughter on his own, but it wasn’t easy, what with trying to keep his ranch afloat.

Besides, a baby girl needed a woman to care for her. Yet he was losing his Mexican housekeeper, who planned to return home to look after her younger siblings. And Caitlin had her own family to care for—her four-year-old son Ryan plus another baby on the way. Cat helped out with Janna whenever she could, but he couldn’t ask her to take on the responsibility full-time.

Caitlin wasn’t about to give up trying to solve his problem, though. “Heather would make a good mother, Sloan, I swear it. She’s a born teacher, and no one is better with children. She helped me raise Ryan from a baby when I had no one else but my aunt to turn to.”

Sloan felt his jaw harden involuntarily. “What would she think about raising a half-breed? White women have a way of turning up their noses at anything ‘Injun’.”

“Heather wouldn’t do that. I know her, Sloan. And I truly think you couldn’t do better. She could teach Janna the social graces, how to handle herself in white society… Prepare her for the slights and outright hostility she’ll face with her blood. Especially when Janna gets older, when you won’t be there to protect her. You must realize she’ll need every advantage you can give her.”

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.

But Miss Ashford wouldn’t be a true wife to him. He would settle for a female body to warm his bed and someone to care for his child. A woman of refinement who could give Janna the advantages he couldn’t give her. That his bride also possessed the poise and breeding to help him get elected this September would only be an added benefit. No, theirs would be a marriage of convenience, nothing more. A business arrangement, pure and simple.

Heather Ashford.

He closed his eyes, trying to envision the genteel lady who would soon bear his name.

When the wanton angel of his recent dream drifted into his mind, Sloan cursed. The memory of her sensual lovemaking was dark and sweet… her flesh pale in the moonlight, her fair hair, wild and glorious, spilling over her naked shoulders, her ripe breasts straining for his touch… To his disgust, he felt himself getting hard again.

It had been one hell of a dream. Nothing like reality would be, he was certain. But then, he didn’t want a real woman, or a real marriage. If he had to wed again, he would rather his bride be a prim, starched-up schoolmarm like Miss Ashford. A total stranger who couldn’t touch the inner core of him. Who wouldn’t get any foolish notions about things like love.

Love wouldn’t be part of their bargain.

He could never give his heart again. It had died with his wife.

Chapter 1

St. Louis

March 1887

THE TELEGRAM BURNED a hole in her skirt pocket, its message brusque and to the point:

ARRIVING TRAIN WEDNESDAY AFTERNOON—CEREMONY THURSDAY EARLY—MUST RETURN COLORADO DIRECTLY—SLOAN MCCORD.

For a wedding arrangement, it lacked all sense of romantic flair, Heather reflected with dismay, and only served to increase her growing feeling of panic. On the morrow she would wed a total stranger.

She must be mad to consider such a step.

But if her head had once been filled with dreams of romance, she could no longer afford such luxuries. She had no one else to turn to. No one to depend on but herself.

A sheen of tears she couldn’t repress blurred her vision as she made the final rounds of her school. It had taken her years, but the conservatory for young ladies had developed an exclusive reputation, where well-bred girls learned deportment, elocution, music, and geography, as well as how to figure sums and to set a fine stitch. The elegant little clapboard house was quartered in one of the better St. Louis neighborhoods—an endeavor she had begun with such excitement and optimism what seemed like a lifetime ago.

With regret and sadness, Heather let her hazel eyes sweep the comfortable parlor one last time, remembering the laughter and sorrows of the past five years. A fierce ache tightened her throat as she recalled the tearful good-byes of this morning, when she’d said farewell to the last of her pupils, a dozen girls ranging from ages nine to sixteen.

“Pray don’t go, Miss Ashford, we don’t want you to leave!”

“Mamma has been perfectly horrid! She intends to enroll me in Mrs. Underwood’s Academy. Please, you can’t let her, Miss Ashford. I’ll die there!”

“Can you not take us with you to Colorado, Miss Ashford?”

Heather had faced their pleas and embraces stoically, refusing to cry—until the youngest presented her with an ivory lace shawl crocheted by all the students with their own labors. Despite an occasional uneven stitch and unsightly knot, the garment seemed beautiful to her.

She had lost her composure then, breaking down with a total uncustomary lack of grace and poise. Tears shimmered now in her eyes as she ran her fingers over the polished mahogany surface of the long-suffering pianoforte.

This chapter of her life had ended. She had been compelled to close her school, but she would not let herself see it as a failure. Merely, the time had come for her to move on. In truth, she would be grateful to have a strong shoulder to lean upon, to help ease the burden she had carried for so long.

And at least she would no longer have to put up with the carping of snobbish mamas, Heather thought defiantly, forcing a halfhearted smile.

Her smile faded as she remembered the telegram in her pocket. Tomorrow she would wed a stranger. Yet she was making the choice, she tried to remind herself. She was taking control of her fate.

Still, she had never felt so alone.

Caitlin’s congratulatory letter gave her some small measure of reassurance. Her friend had staunchly vouched for her future husband’s character, and told her something of Sloan McCord’s past.

A powerful cattle baron who had carved an empire from the majestic Colorado foothills, McCord was known as a maverick. He was cherishing a bitter sorrow—the murder of his beloved Cheyenne wife during a bloody land war.

His tragic story had touched her heart, even though she’d also been warned of his darker side.

Heather had her own reasons for wishing to marry. Her father’s recent death from heart failure had left her alone, with large gambling debts she felt honor-bound to settle. And her sole other choice of suitor was not a man with whom she cared to spend the rest of her life.

There remained only the task of convincing Evan of the soundness of her decision.

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