The Redhead and the Preacher: A Loveswept Historical Romance (21 page)

When he kissed her, Macky didn’t even try to pull away. She accepted him, both the intrusion of his tongue in her mouth and the feel of his rough hands on her body. She couldn’t mount a protest, couldn’t even find a reason to do it. She’d known how he felt, almost waited for him to claim her. This time he wouldn’t stop.

Macky held herself very still. Only a low moan gave voice to her own desire. His heart was racing and when he pulled his lips from hers and moved down toward her breasts she couldn’t hold back a gasp.

Through the haze of his desire Bran heard her surprised
cry. What was he doing? He’d sworn to protect her, to keep her from being hurt, and he was the one about to do her the most harm.

So what if she was giving him her permission, giving herself to him freely and with trust? It was that very trust that had to stop him. Sweat beaded his forehead. His body was screaming. His desire had stretched him almost past the point of no return, but he reached deep inside and forced himself to find the strength he needed. Gradually he was able to move her to her back beside him.

“No, darling Macky. Forgive me for behaving badly. I won’t do this to you.”

“What’s wrong with me, Bran?”

“It isn’t you,” he groaned, “it’s me. I won’t take you just to satisfy my lust.”

“What—” Her voice choked in her throat. “What if I wanted you to satisfy mine?”

B
ran had never thought much about heaven or hell until Macky came into his life. At this moment he believed in both.

Earlier, she had found her own way of escape. She’d fainted. If it worked for her, it could work for him. For once he intentionally took the coward’s route. Bran groaned, and pretended to pass out.

Macky swore in frustration.

If Bran thought that concern over the state of his health would stop Macky’s inquisitive nature, he was wrong. It only gave her free license to examine his body.

She touched his lips, examining them intently with her fingertips before trailing them downward. As her caresses moved lower and lower, Bran felt the muscles in his stomach tighten, and the expansion of that part of him she examined next.

Bran bordered on total loss of control at Macky’s touch
and whisper of awe. In another minute he’d have her beneath him and he’d—

“Ohhh!” he moaned, and turned over, shielding himself in self-defense. He couldn’t believe what was happening. All he had to do was lie back and enjoy it, but he had to refuse what he wanted, what she needed as badly as he.

“I’m sorry, Bran,” she said. “I didn’t mean to hurt you. I really didn’t.”

He felt the bed move as she lay down beside him. From her restlessness he realized that she was as aroused as he. Only she didn’t understand and he couldn’t bring her to fulfillment.

“Oh, Lord, give me strength!” Macky’s voice quivered as she spoke the words. “Make me strong. Make me— Ah, hell.” She turned toward him, threw her leg across his thigh and her arm over his back. “There has to be more to being a wife than this. And you just look out, John Brandon. Sooner or later, I intend to find out what it is.”

Once Macky finally fell asleep, Bran turned over, feasted his eyes reluctantly on her lush body and pouting lips, then reluctantly extricated himself from her embrace.

God had tempted David with Bathsheba and David had sinned. He’d tempted Sampson with Delilah and he’d lost his power. Now Bran was poised at the edge of the fiery furnace and the flames were coming closer and closer. He’d better find somewhere else to sleep.

The floor was not far enough away, but it would have to do. He didn’t even need a blanket. He was burning with a heat that nothing could cool.

Not even sleep.

By the time Bran made it to the boardinghouse for an early breakfast the next morning, it was common knowledge that the man he’d rescued was a stranger. Preston Cribbs suggested Bran join the other members of the city government
who were meeting down at the jail to discuss the implication of the explosion.

He’d managed to escape before Macky waked and now all he wanted to do was stay away.

“You don’t look too bad,” Larkin observed as Preston Cribbs and Bran entered the jail.

“Just singed a bit here and there,” Bran said. “You?”

“About the same. We’re both lucky, I guess.”

“What about the explosion?” Preston asked.

“Accident, or deliberate, we’ll never know,” the marshal said as the men gathered in the vacant jail built by the citizens of Heaven.

“You don’t believe the explosion was an accident, do you?” Bran asked. The other men, Otis Gooden, Preston Cribbs, and Hank Clay, each gave a reluctant shake of the head.

“Without witnesses, there’s no way to prove anything,” Marshal Larkin said, his wariness of Bran clear in his eyes.

“You didn’t recognize him, Marshal?” Bran met the marshal’s gaze, not hiding his doubt.

“Nope, and once I’ve seen a man’s face, I don’t usually forget him. It’s a talent I have.”

“Too bad he got away,” Hank Clay observed in an unusual voicing of his opinion.

Otis Gooden agreed. “These things happen all the time around here. A man decides to do a little prospecting on his own and he blows himself and everything around him to blazes.”

“Maybe,” Bran allowed. What no one had said was that the man Bran had rescued had a stab wound in his chest. The marshal seemed ready to pass the wound off as being caused by the explosion, but Bran wasn’t so certain.

“And maybe,” Hank went on, “no reflection on you, Larkin, we ought to find us a local man to keep an eye on things. It’s time we started making use of the talent we have right here in Heaven.”

Preston cast a critical eye on the blacksmith. “What do you mean, Hank?”

“We need a full-time sheriff and I think that we ought to start a school.”

Bran studied the blacksmith. He’d heard the man kept to himself, but he seemed more observant and wise than he was being given credit for. “I understand you’ve had several law officers,” Bran commented.

“Yes,” Cribbs confessed. “But as I told you, they don’t last long in Heaven.”

“Don’t know why Moose ever called this place Heaven. He should have gone with its original name,” Otis Gooden said in disgust.

Bran flexed his knee, still sore from the rescue. “Original name?”

“Early prospectors called the trail leading into the area Hell,” Otis Gooden was saying.

Hank Clay tucked a pinch of tobacco between his lip and his gum with two soot-covered fingers. “It might have been cut out of the wilderness with good intentions, but folks used to say that once you got here, you either went to Heaven, or the other direction.”

“Yep,” Otis agreed. “Now they just say if you want to go to Heaven, you’ve got to go through Hell first.”

Bran studied the men, trying to decide how best to phrase his questions. Being a preacher was a new experience for him. He was finding that people weren’t always as open with a preacher as they were with a man carrying a gun.

“Mrs. Mainwearing seems to be the one hardest hit. But she seems determined to hold on,” Bran said, abruptly changed the subject.

“If anyone can, she will,” Preston Cribbs answered. “It’s still hard to believe old Moose is gone. We miss him a lot.”

“You miss him
now
,” Otis corrected. “But there were times when us merchants could have done without his rowdy binges. And I know Lorraine could have. Sorry,
Preacher, but Moose did get a little out of hand before he married Miss Sylvia.”

“Out of hand?” Bran inquired.

“Moose was good to us, all right. He brought all us to town and carried us till we could get set up,” Otis explained.

Then Hank added wryly, “But there was times that we had to send up to Denver to restock after Moose tore the town apart.”

“But about the accidents.” Bran drew the conversation back to the issue. “Was Moose the only victim?”

This time it was the marshal who responded. “No, all of the prospectors have had a hard time of it. Of course, Heaven is no different from a hundred other mining settlements. Once Moose struck it rich, the hills were crawling with miners. There were tents every ten feet along Coyote Creek. They’d get enough dust to get drunk, then they’d gamble their claims away, or worse.”

“Sometimes they started killing each other,” Otis added.

“Anybody in Heaven seem to get more prosperous?” Bran asked.

“No, truth is, once the miners drifted off, things seemed to die down,” Preston said thoughtfully.

“Yeah,” Otis agreed, “even the bank closed. Moved all the money over to Promise.”

That caught Bran’s attention. “You mean the banker in Promise owned both banks?”

“Not any more. According to my Express rider, the banker got shot in the holdup.”

The blacksmith spat a stream of tobacco out the open door. “Too many people connected to Heaven are dead, starting with Moose. Prospectors go missing or get murdered. Folks thought it was for their claims, but now I ain’t sure. Kelley never found much color and he lost his wife.”

“That’s the man who built the shack—I mean cabin—you’ve refinished for us?”

“Yep, and speaking of that, we ought to get back to the hotel and collect your missus,” Preston Cribbs said, getting
to his feet. “We need to get you settled in the cabin before tomorrow.”

Bran cast a cautious eye on the mayor. “Why?”

“Because we’ll be having a little housewarming for you on Saturday night, before your first service on Sunday. You remember, I told you that the ladies would be bringing a few things to make you more comfortable.”

First sermon. Housewarming? Christ!
Bran suspected that Macky would be as happy to hear about that as he was.

The others fell in behind the mayor, marching up the sidewalk toward the hotel.

Bran moved more slowly than the rest, using his burns as an excuse to fall back to the marshal’s side. “How long will you be here, Larkin?” he asked.

“Depends. I was about to head out when that explosion happened. Now, I don’t know. Not that I’m convinced that it was deliberate,” he added, “but Sylvia Mainwearing is an important woman in the territory. If this keeps happening, it might be safer for her to move into Denver.”

“Is she likely to?” Bran asked curiously.

“Sylvia has had her pick of any man in the territory and she hasn’t accepted any of them yet. She’s determined to keep her money under her control. But she isn’t safe any more. I tried to get her to let me recommend a good man to protect her, but she refused.”

Bran knew that Mrs. Mainwearing had only refused the marshal’s help, not the idea.

“You wouldn’t be a candidate for her hand, would you?” Bran asked and was rewarded with a flinch which Larkin tried to cover by cutting his eyes to the hills and back at the street.

“Me? What makes you think I’d throw my hat in that ring?”

“I don’t know. Even a marshal might like the idea of marrying a wealthy woman.”

“Hell, no! A marshal makes a poor husband. And even if I was interested in a woman, it would likely be somebody
like Lorraine who still recognizes that the man is in charge. With a woman like Sylvia I’d be afraid she’d hog-tie me and put her brand on my bottom.”

Bran had heard enough lies in his time to recognize one when he heard it. The marshal was interested in Mrs. Mainwearing all right. But was it the woman, or the gold, that drew him? And did Lorraine know?

What was more to the point, did Macky know that the wagon piled high with goods parked outside the saloon was meant for her? He wondered if she’d really recognized the mule he’d bought, the one she’d called Solomon. He was already feeling a bit foolish for having made the arrangements with Hank, but they needed a mule, he told himself, if they intended to give the impression that they were settling in.

One look at Macky, as she came through the swinging doors dragging her portmanteau, told him that he was right about the mule. “Solomon,” she said and broke into a smile.

For Bran, one look at Macky took him right back to the night before and he knew exactly how David and Samson felt.

Preston Cribbs and Hank Clay rode ahead, leaving Bran and Macky to follow along in the wagon. At the rear of the wagon they’d tied a roan-colored mare which Hank had offered to let Bran use until Bran could pick out one of his own.

The sun was high in the sky and not a cloud could be seen. In the distance the mountain peaks were still frosted white and Pigeon Creek was lapping at its banks from the melting snow.

Bran didn’t mention the night before and neither did Macky. She hadn’t expected to enjoy the morning. She didn’t even know why she was still in Heaven. Until the explosion had occurred, she’d planned to be past Denver by now.

She hadn’t seen Pratt that morning, but she knew he had to be around, waiting and watching. She had to be very careful. One false step could result in a prison term for her and put Bran in danger. She still didn’t know why he was in Heaven, but her instincts told her that it had something to do with his family.

Knowing all that, she’d still packed her new clothes and the money in her traveling case and followed Lorraine down the steps to the wagon that was carrying her straight into a life of seduction and secrets.

Lorraine gave Macky a parting gift of a red feather quill and an absurdly small umbrella. “Are you sure you want me at the housewarming?”

“Of course I do, and bring Letty, too.”

“Oh, Mrs. Adams, you’re going to set this town on its ear. And I want to be there to see it. Thank you.”

Macky had been a bit worried about leaving until she saw Solomon. Somehow when she saw her contrary old mule, it made her think everything would be fine.

Now, instead of taking flight as she’d planned, Macky was decked out in her gingham day dress, holding an umbrella and riding across the plains like a real preacher’s wife out for a Sunday drive.

She ought to thank Bran for his kindness, but she didn’t know what to say.

“Is he ours?” Macky finally whispered. “The mule?”

“You seemed to like him,” he said.

“But that means … Surely you don’t really expect us to move out here and set up housekeeping?” Macky asked under her breath as they rode along.