help wondering if Sloan’s baby girls would feel just as wonderful, just as right, up against her.
Then onto the scene came a fourth image. Three plus one, after all, always equaled four. Marla. The mother of Sloan’s children. The beautiful woman Sloan had never stopped dating during the entire time he’d known Ellie. The woman he’d been out with after he’d kissed Ellie so passionately.
She’d be a fool to open herself up to that kind of pain again. And Ellie Maitland was no fool.
CHAPTER TWO
SLOAN HID OUT in the barn the next morning. Mary had come to work with Charlie again, wanting, she claimed, to spend as much time with her brother as she could before leaving. But instead of staying in the house with Charlie, she was watching Sloan’s girls. Sloan half wondered if maybe the woman wasn’t trying to figure out a way to take his daughters home with her.
Damn thing was, the way the girls responded to her, he wasn’t sure that wasn’t what they’d want, too, if they’d been old enough to have a say in the matter.
From his position inside Ronnie’s stall, he could hear them outside in the yard, giggling as they chased a butterfly. He stopped mucking long enough to peek out the door of the barn. Smiling, he watched his daughters play. Sloan was itching to join them, but forced himself to return to his mare’s stall, instead. If he gave in to his desire, if he went out into the yard, the happy little imps tumbling over their feet and laughing so delightfully would turn into demanding, whiny little patoots.
“You’ve got time to waste mucking out a clean stall?”
Sloan turned when he heard Charlie’s voice. The old man had been with Sloan since before he’d married Marla. Charlie’d lost a leg riding the rodeo circuit and had been wandering around the circuit drunk all the time, making what money he could as a bookie, when Sloan first hit the scene. But in spite of his own problems, Charlie had taken the teenaged Sloan under his wing, become a crotchety but caring father figure, and had coached Sloan all the way to the top. And when Sloan had made enough money to turn his parents’ dilapidated excuse for Texas farmland into the four-thousand acre growing cattle concern it was now, Charlie had gladly turned in his bottle and betting tallies for a dishrag and washing machine. Lucky for Sloan, the old man had turned out to be a halfway decent cook, too.
“Not really,” Sloan finally said, resuming the work he’d begun after checking the cattle’s salt and mineral supplements that morning. Though he hired part-timers to help with vaccinating and shipping calves, Sloan usually worked the ranch alone.
Charlie watched silently for a couple more minutes, and Sloan waited. Charlie must have something more on his mind than Sloan’s chores, to have made the trek out to the barn in the first place.
“Mary’s got the name of a woman who can come in every day during the week to watch those mites for ya.”
The old man could have saved himself the trip out if that’s what he’d come to say. “Thanks.”
“I’ll give her a call if you like—get her out here to meet with ya.”
“Not necessary, thanks.”
Charlie leaned against the edge of the stall. “You can’t do this all alone, Sloan, no matter how bad you want to.”
“I know.”
“So you’ll call this woman?”
“I don’t want my girls raised by a baby-sitter.” Sloan, wishing that Ronnie weren’t such a fastidious horse, that she made more of a mess, cleared the last of what little debris there was from the stall. “I may not be much in the way of parenting material, but I’m going to learn,” he said. “I can’t do anything about Marla’s abandonment, but I can damn well make certain that those babies don’t feel unwanted.”
“But you—”
“I mean it, Charlie,” Sloan interrupted, leaning on his pitchfork as he met the other man’s gaze. “I know what it feels like to be deserted, not just by a parent who left, but worse, by one who didn’t, who lived in the same house but just wasn’t there. My children will not suffer the same insecurities I had to work through.”
“Not to mention the loneliness,” Charlie said gruffly.
Sloan grunted and attacked the fresh bale of hay he intended to spread on the floor of Ronnie’s stall. Charlie knew far too much.
“That’s why you married Marla, wasn’t it? To get away from the loneliness?”
“I married her for the sex.”
Charlie nodded. “I figured it wasn’t for love.”
Stopping again, Sloan frowned. “I cared about Marla.”
“So much so that when she was fooling around with the jerks in town, you barely missed a beat.”
He could hardly hate his wife for infidelity when the same urge was something he fought every day of his life. He’d been stubborn enough to win the battle, blessed, apparently, with incredible self-control, but he could still empathize with his wife’s weakness. Sloan—the man who wanted every woman who’d ever been born.
“She was sorry. She stopped.”
“If you’d been in love with her, you’d have wanted to kill the guys.”
“I’m not the violent type.”
Charlie’s weather-worn face showed no expression. Unless, thought Sloan, you looked into the deep gray eyes that saw far more than they should.
“I didn’t notice you sheddin’ any tears when she finally left town.”
“I never stopped trying to make it work,” Sloan protested.
“But did you ever love her?”
“I worked at it every day of our marriage.”
“You can’t force love to happen.”
“What’s your point, old man?” Sloan asked, getting impatient. “Don’t you have some dishes to wash or something?”
“Point is,” Charlie said, straightening, his prosthesis not even noticeable as he walked toward the barn door, “you couldn’t force yourself to love Marla no matter what you’d made up your mind to do, and you can’t force them girlies to be happy, either.”
“I love them. That should be enough.”
“You spoil them.”
“I love them,” Sloan said firmly.
“You let them run you around worse than that self-centered bitch you married.”
“I love them.” Sloan wasn’t backing down. He was used to Charlie’s bluntness.
“Then figure out how to do it right, or hire someone to come do it for you,” Charlie shot back. “Those babes are hell to live with when you’re around.”
His housekeeper’s
