Promises Reveal (27 page)

“I DIDN’T JUST demand everyone be here today because I was feeling underappreciated.”

Brad’s words filtered through the bustle of the congregation as they gathered their belongings, preparing to leave. Evie, for whom the hour had passed in an agony of faking serenity while her belly cramped, was as surprised as everyone else.

“You didn’t?” Doc asked. “Then why in hades are we packed in here tighter than pigs in a poke?”

Brad didn’t immediately answer, his blue eyes slightly narrowed as his gaze swept over the congregation with an expectancy that had people shifting uncomfortably. Evie shifted right along with them. It wasn’t Brad’s normal pattern to start another sermon after he’d just finished one. Had seeing her so indisposed last night made him rethink his insistence on the marriage being real? Was he going to announce he wanted a divorce? She hunched down in her pew.

“Because I wanted to talk to you.”

The sick feeling didn’t leave Evie’s gut, and it had nothing to do with the agony of her monthly and everything to do with fear that her marriage was about to end.

“Heck, Rev, you just spent thirty minutes jawing our ears off.”

His smile didn’t give anyone comfort. “That was just to soften you up for what I really want.”

“And what is that?”

“To talk to you about the need to follow our beliefs as strongly as we voice our opinions.”

Total silence descended upon the church. A baby wailed. Pews creaked as people looked at each other. Evie pressed her hand to her stomach and looked at her mother, who sat in the third row. Pearl just shrugged. She didn’t have any idea either.

Evie sat up as Brad’s words came back to her. Whatever this was it had nothing to do with her marriage. Any issues Brad had with that, he’d handle in private.

“A year ago Cattle Crossing was a cesspool of ill repute. Bandits hid out here, raiding the surrounding area, believing they were safe from retribution because of the fear that held the citizens paralyzed. Some of our beloved citizens were abused, some were held against their wills and forced into lives they never would have chosen for themselves.”

Everyone turned to face Mara and nodded. Cougar growled.

“You damn well—”

“Cougar,” Mara gasped, “you can’t swear in church.”

“Then the Rev best find another way to make his point.”

“The truth is never an insult,” Brad continued. “And the truth is, while the McKinnelys did a good job of routing the bandits, the rest of us haven’t done our job.”

Cougar settled back down, his gaze speculative. Evie relaxed further. This definitely did not sound like the start to an I’ve-decided-I-don’t-want-my-wife-anymore speech.

“We’ve turned a blind eye to the problems still in our community, letting the weak be abused and exploited while telling ourselves there’s nothing we can do. We’ve made this choice time and time again, and I’m sick of it.”

“Could you get to the point, Rev? I’ve got a whiskey with my name on it waiting at the saloon,” a wrangler standing among his three friends in the back shouted.

Brad smiled that cold smile that didn’t reach his eyes. “I’d be happy to. You all know me.” He glanced pointedly at the drunken quartet in the back. “I’m a tolerant man when it comes to some things, coming to church on Sunday with the effects of Saturday night clinging to you being one of them, but there are things going on in this community that turn my stomach, things that we excuse because the law says it’s fine to turn a blind eye, and societal rules make it even more convenient.”

“What kind of things, Rev?” Clint asked in his deep voice.

“There are still women trapped in a life they don’t want, abused, their children’s stomachs cramping with hunger, their little bodies sporting bruises that shame us all. Because we look the other way.”

The congregation shifted again, looking toward Bull Braeger’s small family.

“What the hell are you all looking at?” Bull snarled.

The congregation shifted again, no one wanting to face that much muscle.

Everyone except Brad. He met Bull’s gaze directly, stepping down from the pulpit. When Bull stood, displaying his massive size and muscle, Brad didn’t even pause, just headed down the center aisle.

“They’re looking at a problem that needs to be solved.”

“My family is my business.”

“Not anymore.”

Bull’s hands fisted and his face flushed while Brad, apparently oblivius to the warning signs, just kept walking with that smooth, measured glide that Evie recognized as signaling he meant business. Oh shoot! Searching the church for a weapon, she considered the freestanding candelabra to her right. It was heavy enough to put a dent in even Bull’s thick skull.

“The hell you say,” Bull snapped.

“Yes. I do.”

On the aisle opposite Bull’s family, Patrick, the new blacksmith, rose to his feet and watched Brad’s progress with a calm Evie wished she felt. Bull made two of most men.

“This morning, Erica Braeger came to me in tears, desperate, asking for help.” Brad casually nodded to Millicent as he passed. “And I’ve decided to give it to her.”

“Thank God.”

That came from Jenna.

After a hard glare at his wife, Erica, that had her cringing, Bull spat, “You ain’t got no call to come between a man and his wife.”

Brad was even with the Braeger family. “Your wife and your children are members of this congregation, same as you.”

He held out his hand to the oldest girl. She was about seven. Her too small dress was spotless, her complexion ghostly pale. The girl shook, glanced at her father, her mother. Erica’s nod was infinitesimal.

“It’s okay, darling,” Brad murmured in that voice that all women, no matter what age, responded to. Because it made them feel safe, Evie realized as the girl placed her palm in Brad’s. “I promise, you’re going to be fine from here on out.”

“Don’t you move, Hannah Lynn!” Bull bellowed.

The child froze, shaking as if she had the ague, trapped between the threat of her father and the promise of safety that Brad held out.

Brad’s mouth tightened. With a suddenness that shocked, the normally mousy Erica jumped to her feet and thrust herself physically between Bull and her children, shoving the two-year-old who had been in her lap into her five-year-old girl’s arms, desperation in every line of her slender body. “Go! Oh God, go!”

Bull hauled Erica back, all but throwing her down in the pew while the children shuffled toward Brad, terror making their movements more awkward than did the lack of space. The congregation gasped at the crude splint now visible on the baby’s arm. Once in the aisle, the kids didn’t know what to do. With a sweep of his massive arms, Patrick herded them across the small space to the row of seats behind him before planting himself solidly at the end. They crowded in next to Millicent—shaking, eyes glued to their father and mother, harsh, terrified sobs ripping from their throats.

“Momma?” the oldest asked in a thin thread of sound that broke Evie’s heart.

Brad held out his hand again, not a lick of fear in his stance. Evie could have smacked him. His profession wasn’t going to save him from Bull’s muscle.

“You come, too, Erica.”

Erica shook her head, not looking at Brad, Bull, or anyone. She stared at the floor as if it held the secrets of the universe. “I can’t.”

“Yes, you can.”

Erica cast Bull a fearful glance from beneath her lashes. “He won’t let me, and the law says—”

A muscle jumped in Brad’s jaw. “The law says a whole lot of things that I don’t care about.”

Tension rippled through the congregation. Evie stood.

“Go, Erica,” Jenna whispered from where she stood two pews down, leaning against Clint’s arm, her face as white as the children’s. “This is what you’ve prayed for.”

Erica’s mouth worked. “He’ll let the children go.”

Evie caught Clint’s eye. “Do something!”

“Do what? It’s the Rev’s show.”

She didn’t know what. Maybe trade places with him. He was an ex-marshal and ex-bounty hunter, for heaven’s sake, while Brad was just a preacher. The only show that was going to occur was the one in which he got pulverized.

“Let her go, Bull.”

“The hell I will,” Bull snapped.

“The hell you won’t,” Brad countered, walking around the packed line of pews, heading to the back. “This is my congregation, these are my people, and no one”—his hand slapped against wood as he cleared the rear pew. Everyone jumped—“husband or not, is going to abuse one of them.”

Bull hauled Erica up against him with a grip so tight it would leave bruises. Not a sound passed her lips, but she jerked with terror. Shoving his bearded face in hers, he growled, “You filthy whore. This is who you’ve been screwing? The goddamned preacher?”

The uneasy rumble in the congregation grew. Evie looked around frantically. Why wasn’t someone, anyone besides Brad, doing something?

“Let her go, you no-account son of a bitch or I’ll break your arm, the same as you broke that baby’s when she took that biscuit to fill her little belly.”

Women gasped, men swore, and congregation members slowly came to their feet, propelled by outrage and the tension Brad was fueling.

“Big talk for a preacher,” Bull snarled.

“You would think.”

“Not big talk for me, I’m thinking,” Patrick said in his thick brogue. “For me, I’m thinking ridding the world of your stench would be a fine way to start me Sunday.”

“I don’t need your help, O’Shaunessy,” Brad snapped, as he came down the outer aisle, his gaze locked on Bull, one step flowing into the next with predatory grace.

“Now there I’d be seeing things from a mighty different view, Reverend, seeing as how I’m a member of this congregation and as rightly offended as you at these goings-on.”

“Momma!” the baby cried. Blocking their view of what was happening directly across the aisle with his huge body, Patrick kept the children in the pew.

Brad spared him one glance. “This is my fight, Patrick.”

“It’s all right, babies,” Erica called to her sobbing children, leaning away from Bull as she stared at him with the terror one usually reserved for a striking rattler. “Just stay there. It’s going to be all right.”

Evie couldn’t blame the kids for crying. She didn’t believe Erica either.

“You claiming the Braeger women and children, Rev?” Cougar asked in that calm way of his that made one think of an approaching storm.

“Absolutely.”

Evie covered her mouth as understanding hit her. Brad wasn’t just challenging Bull; he fully intended to fight him. Good grief, was he insane? Reverends didn’t fight. Especially not against veritable mountains pretending to be men.

“Need help?” Clint asked in the same conversational tone as Cougar.

“Nope.”

“A pity,” Asa added.

Bull sneered, “You’d better take the help, Reverend.”

Brad smiled and leapt sideways up onto a pew before balancing on the back of the next like a mountain lion moving in for a kill. The whole time his gaze never left Bull. “Thanks for the advice.”

Brad leapt, hitting Bull high, knocking him backward. Erica jerked free with a scream as Bull grabbed for him. The two men crashed to the outer aisle. Patrick took a few steps forward, reached over, and gently pulled Erica away.

“Here now, you don’t want to be near that tussle.”

Erica gaped at him. As if she wasn’t looking at him like he had two heads, Patrick calmly tucked her into the pew with her children and Millicent.

“You have to help him.” Erica sobbed the words that were caught in Evie’s throat. “Bull will kill him.”

“I’m thinking the Rev has the look of a scrapper about him.”

Who the hell cared what he looked like? Bull was huge! “Leave him alone, you brute!” Evie yelled, snatching up the candelabra and dashing up the aisle.

Asa caught the candelabra in one hand, pulling her up short. “If the Rev needs help, he’ll get it.”

“And how the hell do you know?”

“Evie!” her mother gasped.

Yanking at the candelabra, she snapped, “Well, excuse me for swearing. My husband is getting beaten to a pulp while his congregation looks on. I’m just a little upset.”

Clint, who’d put himself between Jenna and the fight, motioned to the men as they crashed into the wall. “Doesn’t appear to me that the Rev’s getting the short end of this deal.”

Evie blinked in astonishment. No. It didn’t. Brad had Bull’s face smashed into the wall and was holding him there with a hand at the base of his skull while the other wrenched Bull’s arm up behind his back.

“Knew he had the look of a scrapper,” Patrick said, arms folding across his massive chest.

“Heard over in Cheyenne that the Rev was a bit Old Testament,” a wrangler offered from the back.

Leaning in, saying something only Bull could hear, Brad shoved hard on Bull’s arm. There was a god-awful
snap
and Bull screamed.

“Appears he’s got a real fondness for the eye-for-an-eye part, at least,” another wrangler agreed over Bull’s swearing.

“Got to admire that.”

“Bastard deserved it,” someone else muttered.

“Stop swearing in my church,” Brad ordered, still holding the now-writhing Bull against the wall. He could have been talking to Bull or the cowboys. Both shut up, though only the wranglers looked abashed.

“Sorry, Rev.”

“About time someone put Bull in his place,” Jerome said.

“It’s a shame what those children have gone through,” a woman fussed.

“Poor little darling,” another muttered. “She was just hungry.”

No matter how she listened, Evie couldn’t hear any disapproval in the rumbling among the congregation. That was, until Brad made his next pronouncement.

“As soon as we’re done here, Herschel’s going to draw up divorce papers, and you, Bull, are going to sign them.”