The Redhead and the Preacher: A Loveswept Historical Romance (8 page)

Making up her mind, she stood up, draped her wet skirt around her, and dashed into the bushes along the creek. Quickly she hid the money behind a log, then returned to the fire where she dropped to the ground and scooted beneath the greatcoat, planting her back against her tormentor’s.

Without a comment, he turned, gathered her into his arms and pulled her close, covering the lower part of their bodies with his coat and their upper bodies with her father’s.

“What in hell?” He sat up. The woman’s bottom was covered with a soggy mass of wet cloth.

“What? What’s wrong now?”

“Take those wet things off.”

Macky shook her head. “I will not. And they’re my—my undergarment.”

“And they’re wet. Off. Take them off and then we’ll try again.” He lay back down and closed his eyes.

Macky squirmed. This wasn’t working out. The wages of sin were upon her and she didn’t need a preacher to tell her. Finally, with the threat of freezing to death at hand, she shimmied out of her drawers and flung them alongside the skirt, then crept back under the coats.

If Bran had said a word she would have hit him with his Bible. He only opened his arms and resettled her inside them. The fire warmed her feet and his body offered a cozy little burrow for the rest of her. He even provided his arm as a pillow.

She could feel his strong thighs pressed against the back of hers, his body buffering her from the cold, his arms folded across her providing warmth and a sense of protection.

Giving a last reluctant sigh, she closed her eyes. She could do this, she decided. By morning her clothes would be dry. The sun would warm the earth and they’d get to the way station.

Bran knew the exact moment the girl relaxed and started drifting into sleep. And he knew that he wouldn’t be so lucky. Her hair tickled his nose. With her bare bottom pressed intimately against him, and her legs—dear God what legs—rubbing against his own, he was going to have a long night.

Suddenly she wiggled again, arranging her body so that they were completely touching. He trembled with the need to plunge himself inside her.

“Are you cold?” she asked, rousing herself sleepily.

“No—yes.”

“Can I do something to help?”

“Yes! Stop wiggling your bottom and go to sleep!”

She grew very still, fighting the urge to move against him.

It was very hard not to, especially when she could feel his heart beating against her. But she didn’t know what else to do and she knew that she was keeping him from resting.

Finally, a long time later, she fell asleep. Once, Bran thought he heard a horse gallop by, but it kept going. When the sky began to lighten, Bran rose to build the fire back up again. He’d only fallen asleep once. And when he woke to find his hand beneath her shirt, holding her breast, he’d stilled his movement, but he’d found it difficult to let her go. For the rest of the night he simply held her, like a father might hold a child, comforting, nurturing.

Damn it, he didn’t want to feel like that. He didn’t want to feel responsible for her safety. He’d never been able to protect the people he cared about. He hadn’t been able to stop the deaths of his own family, nor that of his Choctaw brother. Caring sealed their death warrant. He had no intention of caring about this woman.

In the state of half-sleep he allowed himself, he argued that keeping the girl warm was only a matter of survival. But by morning he couldn’t ignore that he was as hard as a stallion in the middle of a herd of fillies. He hurt and he knew if she awoke and found him throbbing against her, she’d be frightened.

He pulled away, covered her with his coat, and left the camp.

Macky had been having a wonderful dream. Everything about her had been alive and warm. She’d felt strange new feelings, feelings that made her want to tighten her muscles and release them. She pressed herself against the pleasurable warmth that was touching her.

That hot feeling took over her. Her body felt as if it
needed relief, but this time it was different. Her very skin seemed to burn and twitch and her private parts were trembling with fire.

Then, suddenly the pressure disappeared and she knew that she was alone. “No,” she whispered, wishing the dream would return. She didn’t want it to go. She didn’t want to wake. She moaned, then burrowed beneath the duster, seeking the return of warmth. Moments later she came suddenly awake.

“Bran?”

But there was no answer.

Macky heard the sound of fire crackling dry brush. Her skirt was lying across her feet, dry and still warm from the fire. And she was alone.

Quickly she climbed out from beneath Bran’s coat and shimmied into her drawers. Before he returned she reclaimed the money she’d hidden and packed it beneath her shirt. She lay back down and pulled the coat back over her.

Sometime later, Macky heard the spit of water dripping into the flames. She opened her eyes to see the tin bucket back in the midst of glowing coals.

Bran was squatting beside the fire, adding fresh water to their coffee beans from the night before.

The night before
. Her heart skipped a beat as she remembered how they’d slept, how he’d put his arms around her. She’d shamelessly pressed herself against him, seeking his warmth. And he’d held her, keeping her safe, while making no demands. Whoever this man was, she trusted him.

“Good morning, Bran,” she said, brushing sand from the back of her arms and Fanning her fingers through her tousled hair.

“Maybe. Need to get to the station. Without trouble.”

She glanced around, grateful to see that he was focused on the fire, then stepped into her skirt and stood up, fastening the button at the waist. “Is something wrong?”

“Out here without a horse? Guess not.”

The beard on his face was even heavier, making his
already dangerous-looking face even more forbidding. “I never knew a preacher to talk so little. Are you always so pessimistic?”

He cut a sharp glance at her. “Yes.”

“No joyful noise from you, huh?”

“ ‘A fool’s mouth is his destruction.’ ”

“Or, ‘Fools rush in where angels fear to tread.’ ”

“Proverbs?” he questioned, with reluctant admiration in his mind, if not his voice.

“Nope, Alexander Pope. Which translates roughly to ‘you may talk like a preacher, but you could be a “wolf in sheep’s clothing.” ’ Aesop’s Fables.”

Bran couldn’t think of a proper response. If she’d been lovely in the dark, she was even more appealing with the flush of their exchange on her face. She ought to be frowning. Instead she was smiling, her mouth challenging like some temptress. Her green eyes were a soft emerald color in the sunlight; they’d match the leaves of the willow trees in summer. And they were teasing him.

In spite of her dowdy clothing and the fact that she was alone, his independent traveling companion had a quick mind that had been used for more than just womanly chores. She was becoming more and more intriguing.

“Drink your coffee,” he said, dropping the dipper in her lap. “We have a rough walk ahead of us.”

Remembering that one brief lapse the night before, Macky understood that the light of day had turned them back into strangers. She took the dipper and filled it with the strong coffee. She wished for some honey to sweeten it. She wished for a smile from her stern companion or at least a word to suggest that they were friends.

But it wasn’t to be. The coffee was bitter as sin. She didn’t know yet what the man was.

Morning burst across the prairie like Macky’s childhood memory of a saffron veil over one of her mother’s sky-blue
hats. The thought made her smile. Her steps came a little lighter and for just a moment she found herself humming.

Bran, leading the way, fell back a step, allowing her to come alongside him. “Always this cheerful in the morning?”

“Yes.”

“They called you Trouble. Why?”

“It was my father’s name for me. I always seemed to get into something. I was never content until I did everything my brother did. Then later … well, it was good that I had learned.”

“Undaunted” was the word for his companion. She’d taken everything that had happened in stride and made the best of the situation. Her attire might be outlandish, but it couldn’t hide her beauty and her strength. He had the feeling that nothing stopped her.

Even spending the night in the wilds with a stranger.

“What did your brother do?”

Bran watched the light go out in her eyes.

“He cheated at cards. Another gambler shot him.”

“And your father?”

“My father had a bad heart. The land and the town finally killed him. He was all I had left.”

Thinking about her brother and her father seemed to take away her brief flare of optimism. Macky shaded her eyes and peered across the flat brush-strewn landscape. When she squinted he knew she’d seen the thin, snaky trail of smoke visible in the distance.

“Look, smoke! Is it the way station?”

“Could be the way station. Could also be Indians, or even the outlaw that got away. Best we take care.”

Macky slowed her steps. Now that they were nearly there she wasn’t sure that she was ready for what might be ahead. In spite of the risk, the danger, there was something invigorating about having survived.

From the time she rode into Promise, her life had changed. She’d become a bank robber, climbed on a stage, and been shot at. Now she and a devilishly handsome man
were heading across a windblown prairie toward an uncertain end with an outlaw on her trail.

“Are you worried, preacher man?”

“I’m always worried, especially when I’m with a pretty woman who doesn’t know the meaning of fear.”

Pretty woman?
Macky didn’t know whether it was the unexpected compliment or that the man had uttered a full sentence of conversation that stunned her into silence. She had known few men in her life and none of them had ever referred to her as a woman, not even Papa. To Papa she was Trouble. To Todd she was just Sister, and to the town she was that wild girl. But never woman and never pretty.

She pulled her jacket tighter, covering her confusion.

Bran considered their approach, worried about what they’d find ahead. Often robbers hit the way stations. For all he knew the outlaws had circled around and were waiting for them.

He was down to a handful of bullets and flat out of ideas. Waiting until morning had given them time to dry off and rest, but now they were in full sight. And he had a woman to protect.

He glanced at her. She was impatient to be on the way, stamping her feet and flexing her shoulders. Her hair was tangled from their trek and the desert breeze. She might be wearing a man’s jacket and shirt, but that glorious head of auburn hair would identify her as a woman from ten feet. Most women would be timid and afraid. She was like some renegade chief, spear raised, ready to charge.

“All right,” he said, “let’s see if Daniel is in his den.” He started toward the smoke spiral, toward rescue, toward God only knew what.

“Wait a minute,” Macky called out. “Why not let me go first? If there are outlaws there, I’ll tell them you’re hurt. That way you’ll have a chance to size up the situation before you’re into it.”

“Let a woman go first?”

“What do you have against being cautious?”

“I don’t call that cautious. I call that foolish!”

“My father didn’t. He always let the most unlikely person scout out the situation. Said it caught the opposition off guard.”

“Your father sounds like a smart man. How come he let a town get the best of him?”

Macky turned to face her companion, her eyes dangerously full of moisture. “Because of me and my brother. He wanted to give us a good life and didn’t know how.”

“Sometimes we can’t save the ones we love, no matter how bad we want to,” Bran said softly. “That’s why I travel alone.”

“Alone?” She swallowed the lump in her throat, concentrating instead on refuting his claim. “What do you call me, or don’t I count as a person?”

“You’re temporary trouble. And I never let trouble get the best of me, not for long.”

T
hey continued to follow the wagon trail across the plains until the way station came into view. Macky charged ahead, determined that the preacher wouldn’t tell her what to do. He stayed with her for a while, then slowed.

The hot Kansas sun brought beads of perspiration to Macky’s forehead. She’d never understood the sudden change of temperature in the West. When the sun set, the flat open plains became bitterly cold. But in the springtime, it could snow one day and still be warm, sometimes even dry the next.

From a distance, the station seemed quiet. By now she could see horses in the dusty corral. A dog wandered down the trail, then sat and watched as if he were too lazy to come any farther. Nothing about the scene caused alarm.

The door opened and a tall rawboned woman with thinning brown hair caught up in a bun stepped out, carrying a
dishpan which she emptied over a patch of new grass sprouting beside the door.

“Hello!” Macky called and began to run toward the crude structure.

The woman looked up, frowned and stepped quickly back inside. Moments later a bearded man wearing a red shirt that fit too tight across his middle came to meet them.

“Morning,” he said, studying them with surprise. “Name’s Smith, stationmaster here for the stagecoach line. You folks run into some trouble?”

“We were on
your
stagecoach,” Macky answered, “Bandits wounded the driver and tried to hold us up.”

“Your driver’s still alive,” Bran added. “We left him back a ways, in an outcropping of rocks just off the trail.”

“Know where that is. What about the robbers?”

“Winged two. One got away.”

“Could be Pratt’s gang. One of those new Pony Express riders came through here last night with the news. Pratt broke out of the federal prison and robbed the bank in Promise. He and the kid riding with them escaped with the loot.”

Kid riding with him
. Macky groaned inwardly. He was talking about her. And Pratt had escaped. She didn’t want anybody to die, but she didn’t want to think a hardened criminal was trailing her, either.