“You looks tuckered out,” Uncle Billy remarked. “You needs to rest some, Miz Sloan.”

Sloan gave the burly Negro a wan smile as she lifted her flat-brimmed hat and used a kerchief to wipe the sweat from her brow. “When we get the cotton snatched, we’ll all take a rest.” Sloan turned the stallion and headed for the house.

“Sun be rising early, Miz Sloan. See you gets those eyes closed ’fore the moon be up, hear?”

Sloan didn’t answer. Her thoughts had already leaped ahead to the coming confrontation with Luke Summers. If Rip insisted on her sharing Three Oaks with Luke, she would… Well, that was putting the harvest before the planting. It remained to be seen what Luke Summers would have to say about Rip’s offer.

As she approached the main house, Sloan saw Luke’s chestnut gelding tied in the shade of the live oaks. She shrugged her shoulders in an attempt to loosen the sweat-dampened gingham shirt from the places where it stuck to her skin. She wanted a bath. Her lips twisted wryly as the smell of her own sweat rose up to greet her. She also needed a bath. Stephen would have already placed the tub in her room and filled it with steaming water. There was no reason why she couldn’t take time to rinse off the grime of the day before she fought any more battles.

Sloan heard the murmur of voices in the study on the left as she quietly ascended the stairs in the central hallway that divided the house.

Coward!

The voice shouting inside her head stopped her halfway up the stairs. She was not avoiding a confrontation, merely delaying it, she reasoned in response. She took another step.

Coward! the voice shrieked again.

If there was one thing Rip had instilled in her from the day she was born, it was courage. She was his brave girl. She was his strong one. She must never be afraid. She must face her fears and conquer them. To show vulnerability was to be weak. To show weakness was to lose everything. She knew what she was. And she was no coward. She took another step.

Coward!

Sloan gripped the polished oak banister with a strength that left her hand aching. Then she turned and walked back down to Rip’s office, pushed the door open and entered the room. When she did, Luke Summers rose and turned to face her.

He stiffened as soon as he saw her face. “Where’d you get that bruise?”

“None of your business!” she snapped.

Rip flushed as Luke’s steely gaze shifted to him. But Sloan offered no further explanation, nor did Luke ask for one.

Somehow Luke looked even taller, Sloan thought, even more intimidating, in Rip’s masculine office. This man was her father’s son, her half-brother. Yet she noticed Luke and Rip were not much alike, physically.

Luke was whipcord lean, while Rip was a massive, barrel-chested man. She looked for traces of Rip in Luke’s features but found little of her father. Only the strong, square jaw was the same. Luke must have taken after his mother. Sloan had to concede she must have been a beautiful woman.

Because she and Luke were of a similar age, Sloan had figured out that her mother must have been pregnant with her at about the same time Luke’s mother had been pregnant with him. It appeared Rip had not been a faithful husband. She wasn’t sure how she felt about that.

She had never thought about it much, but in all these years she had never seen her father with a woman. Oh, she knew he must have sought out women for his needs, away from the plantation.

But suddenly she wondered why he had never married again-especially if once upon a time there had been another woman besides Amelia in his life.

Sloan nodded briefly to Luke. His eyes seemed to reach out to her, to ask her to take his side. She couldn’t afford to do that. She hardened her expression and turned away, afraid she would succumb to whatever it was about her half-brother that had caused her to befriend and confide in him. She paled at the thought that he might not keep her secret as he had promised.

“Sit down and join us,” Rip commanded.

Sloan headed for the other vacant chair across from her father. She met Luke’s eyes briefly as the two of them sat down and saw a measure of distress that surprised her. She leaned back in the rawhide chair and rested one ankle against the opposite knee, giving a casual appearance at odds with the tension rippling inside her.

Rip took a sip of brandy from the crystal snifter he had been rolling with uncharacteristic nervousness between his palms. “I’ve been telling Luke that I’d like him to think about staying on at Three Oaks for a while.”

“And what did he have to say to that?” Sloan asked.

“I said I’d think about it.”

Sloan realized that Luke wasn’t about to let her pretend he wasn’t there. Yet she directed her next comment to Rip alone. “Just what, exactly, did you have in mind for Luke to do here at Three Oaks?”

“Whatever needs doing. The harvest is backbreaking work for anyone, and you’ve had more than your share of problems this year.”

“I haven’t complained,” Sloan replied, carefully controlling her voice to keep out the irritation she felt.

Rip flashed a look at Sloan’s pale, bruised face and grimaced. “Of course you haven’t. That doesn’t mean you haven’t had problems.”

“Nothing I can’t handle,” she persisted.

“I don’t want to take Sloan’s place at Three Oaks,” Luke said. “I don’t have the experience-”

Rip cleared his throat, interrupting Luke’s speech. “What you don’t know, you’ll learn. I’ll teach you myself.”

“That’s a generous offer,” Luke said. “But when I came here this morning, it wasn’t what I had in mind.”

“What did you have in mind?” Sloan asked, her voice sharp with accusation.

Luke met Sloan’s stare without wavering. For an instant he let down his guard and she saw confusion and-? Bitterness? Hate?

Luke’s voice when he spoke was bare of the volatile emotions she had seen flash in his eyes. “I just wanted Rip to know he’s my father.”

Luke turned his gaze back on Rip, and for the first time since she had come into the room, Sloan was aware of a treacherous undercurrent between the two of them. Evidently, more words had passed between them than she had been told about.

Did Luke Summers have some hold over Rip that had forced her father into offering a part of Three Oaks to his bastard son? To Sloan’s knowledge, Rip had never been coerced into anything. What could the young Texas Ranger possibly have said that would have made her father want to keep him here at Three Oaks?

Then she became aware of something else.

They’re both in pain.

It was a startling thought, and an uncomfortable one. Sloan didn’t want to feel sorry for either Luke or Rip. Between them, they were turning her life upside-down.

She clenched her fists against the softness welling up inside that urged her to offer comfort. She had to stop behaving like some simpering female. She had to think about her future-about Three Oaks.

“If Luke says he doesn’t want anything to do with Three Oaks, then I think you ought to respect his wishes,” she said.

“Whether he wants it or not, half of Three Oaks is his,” Rip announced.

“I don’t want half of this place,” Luke replied evenly.

Sloan enjoyed a moment of relief before Rip said, “All right, then, three-quarters.”

Sloan gasped.

“I don’t want three-quarters, either,” Luke said in a steely voice.

Sloan held in the cry of despair that begged for release. Surely Rip could not, would not, offer more.

“All of it, dammit! I’ll make you my heir.”

“No!”

Sloan and Luke had shouted the word together as they bounded to their feet, but in desperation, Rip kept talking. “I would have offered it all in the first place if you’d just said that was what you wanted.”

“Wait!” Sloan cried.

“Wait for what?” Rip slammed down his brandy glass and grasped his cane. “Luke is my son. He’s entitled to Three Oaks.”

“You can’t do this!”

Rip met Sloan’s desperate look with defiant eyes. “Luke will inherit Three Oaks. Of course, you’ll always have a place here for as long as you live.”

Sloan’s heart pounded. Her throat constricted. She blinked to remove the film that kept her eyes from focusing. “A place here…” The words came out in a raspy whisper. She swallowed hard and tried again. “A place here as long as I live?”