The Redhead and the Preacher: A Loveswept Historical Romance (3 page)

Female, he confirmed. The driver had called her ma’am.

A good build and firm step because the carriage had tilted as she stepped inside, and she’d settled herself without a lot of swishing around.

Probably no-nonsense, for he could see the tips of her boots beneath the brim of his hat. The boots were worn, though the clothing looked new. The only scent in the air was that of the dye in the cloth.

Practical, for she’d planted both feet firmly on the floor of the coach and hadn’t moved them; no fidgeting or fussing with herself.

Deciding that she seemed safe enough, he flicked the brim of his hat back and took a look at her.

Wrong, on all four counts. Dead wrong. She was sitting quietly, yes, but that stillness was born of sheer determination—no,
more like desperation. She was looking down at rough red hands and holding on to her portmanteau as if she dared anybody to touch it. Her eyes weren’t closed, but they might as well have been.

The stage moved away in a lumbering motion as it picked up speed.

The woman didn’t move.

Finally, after an hour of steady galloping by the horses pulling the stagecoach, she let out a deep breath and appeared to relax.

“Looks like you got away,” he said.

“What?” She raised a veil of sooty lashes to reveal huge eyes as green as the moss along the banks of the Mississippi River where he’d played as a child. Something about her was all wrong. The set of her lips was meant to challenge. But beneath that bravado he sensed an appealing uncertainty that softened the lines in her forehead.

“Back there you looked as if you were running away from home and were afraid you wouldn’t escape,” he said.

“I was,” she said.

“Pretty risky, a woman alone. No traveling companion, no family?”

“Don’t have any, buried my—the last companion back in Promise.”

Macky risked taking a look at the man across from her. He was big, six feet of black, beginning with his boots and ending with the patch over his eye and a hat that cast a shadow over a face etched by a two-day growth of beard. There was an impression of quiet danger in the casual way he seemed to look straight through her as if he knew that she was an impostor and was waiting for her to confess. “What’s wrong with your eye?”

She hadn’t meant to ask. Asking questions would be considered bad manners. In the past, manners were something in which she’d never taken much stock. Now everything had changed. The memory of the dressmaker’s frosty
glare made her acutely aware of her ill-fitting lady’s garments and bonnet.

Skirts and petticoats didn’t make a lady and she’d already reverted back to her old way of saying what she thought without regard for the consequences.

“I’m sorry. ‘A fool utterth all his mind.’ ”

Bran couldn’t help responding in kind. “ ‘Answer a fool according to his folly.’ ”

She looked at him in surprise. “Plato?”

“No, Proverbs.” He let a few seconds pass before he went on. “I lost the eye a lot of years ago.”

“Forgive me. Your eye is none of my concern.”

The man wearing the eye patch wouldn’t normally have continued the conversation, but he’d never come across a woman who not only read books, but quoted from them. His interest sharpened. He couldn’t resist the impulse to learn more about her. “You have a name?”

“Yes. Do you?”

“Indians call me Eyes That See in Darkness.”

Macky studied him carefully, giving the impression that she was measuring him as a man, not an enemy. “Why?” she asked with no attempt to conceal her curiosity.

“Thought I could see in the dark.”

“What do other people call you?” she asked.

He studied her in return. Though she was young, she neither played the coy young maiden nor the piously proper woman he was accustomed to. In short she met him head-on. He frowned. “Depends.”

“Fine, it’s your business,” she said and pressed her lips firmly together. She didn’t have to talk to him.

She gave the man in black a furtive look. His face was hard, chiseled with sharp edges, smeared in dark shadows. She knew better than to think he was interested in her. There was something about the Calhouns that turned people away.

Even the widows back in Promise who once made overtures to her father had cooled when her father spurned their
attention. Later, when her brother, Todd, started hanging out at the saloon in town, those same widows quickly let Macky know that they had done their Christian duty in welcoming the Calhouns, but that welcome had come to an end. Thereafter, Macky had avoided the town.

Macky had missed Todd’s boyhood teasing but she didn’t miss the sullen, resentful man he’d become. She’d still had her father then, and that, she’d told herself, was enough. Todd would sow his wild oats and then come home. But he hadn’t.

Across the carriage, Bran was aware of the girl’s scrutiny. He felt himself giving her a reluctant grin. She was a feisty one, his peculiar-looking companion with wisps of hot red hair trying to escape her odd little hat. She had a strong face and a wide mouth. But what held him were green eyes that, no matter how frosty she tried to make them, still shimmered with sparks of silver lightning.

The Indians who’d named him would have called her Frozen Fire. She might be dressed like some dowdy schoolmarm, but there was more to her than her appearance indicated. In fact, he doubted that she cared much about clothing. And she damned sure didn’t know how to choose a hat.

“I’m called Bran,” he said slowly.

Bran decided she was definitely running away from something, but he couldn’t figure what. He should back off. Planning the job waiting for him in Heaven was what he ought to be doing. He would be working for a woman. He’d never worked for a woman before and she hadn’t liked his stipulation that his identity be kept secret.

John Brandon Lee had stopped using his real name fifteen years before when he’d killed a man who’d been beating an Indian boy. A warrant had been issued for John Lee’s arrest. The only thing that had saved him in the years since was the fact that the only witnesses had been Indians. They’d identified the killer by name but their descriptions had been deliberately vague and confusing. Nobody ever
knew that in later years John had dropped that name and taken a new identity, that of a half-breed gunfighter called Night Eyes.

Now he’d surprised himself again by giving her his real name. There was a growing sense of intimacy inside the coach. She seemed to be genuinely interested in him as a person, but wary at the same time. He considered getting out, saddling the horse tied to the back of the stage, and riding into Denver alone.

Bran had always found women ready to make a casual relationship with him more personal. They seemed attracted to danger. But this one didn’t. And that cool independence had become a challenge.

Maybe a little conversation would shake the uneasy feeling that he was experiencing.

“What are you called?” he asked.

“Trouble, mostly,” she said with a sigh that told him more than she’d intended.

“That’s an odd name for a woman.”

“That’s as good as you’re going to get,” she added, lifting a corner of the shade covering the open window.

Good? There it was again
. “Good is a rare quality in my life.” He took a long look at her. “But I’m willing to reserve judgment.”

He was doing it again—extending the conversation. Something about this young woman was intriguing. “Truth is, I’m a lot more likely to appreciate a woman who’s bad. Wake me when we get to the way station.”

Macky’s eyes flew open. She was ready to tell him where he could go, but the brooding one-eyed stranger had covered his eyes with his hat and within seconds he was snoring. Macky hadn’t had much experience with men, but she had the feeling that he might be laughing at her. She ought to be used to that but somehow this time it was disturbing.

Well, two could play that game. With his face covered, he couldn’t be watching her. And no matter what the Indians
thought about his sight, Macky didn’t believe he could see through his hat.

Through the crack between the shade and the window opening she watched for some time as the stage moved across the open prairie. But her eyes kept moving back to the man. It was just because she’d never seen a man with an eye patch, she told herself as she studied him more carefully.

His fine leather boots were splattered with mud as if he’d come a long way. She’d noticed a saddle strapped on top of the coach and a horse tied to the back of the coach. His black greatcoat showed signs of hard use but his trousers were of fine cloth. His shirt was white, tied at the neck with a thin black ribbon tie, and the striped fabric of the waistcoat looked like the one Papa always wore when he went into town.

Papa. A pang of regret pierced her. She’d left town so quickly that she hadn’t even stopped by his grave to say goodbye. But he wouldn’t have wanted her to grieve. Eternally optimistic, if he were the one sitting in the seat across from Macky he’d say, “Don’t look back, girl. Find a new star in the heavens.”

But the only star she was likely to find was the one pinned on a lawman’s vest.

Her father was a schoolteacher when Todd was born, barely making enough money to support his family. Todd was thirteen and Macky was eight when Papa had made the desperate decision to go West and make a new start running a trading post along the Missouri. But he’d been a better teacher than merchant. The move and poor health aggravated by the climate had hastened her mother’s death.

The only fond memory Macky had of that time was the daily exchanges she had with her father. They’d had little else to do except try to outwit each other with puns, hypotheses, and verbal exchanges.

During her mother’s long illness, all attempts to turn Macky into a real lady were forgotten. Instead, she had learned to use her mind and speak her thoughts. When
Mama died, Papa had sold his store and, sight unseen, bought a ranch in Kansas. It was only when they got there that they found out the land was worthless.

Macky had tried to talk her father into returning to Boston, but the banker who’d surveyed off the plot and sold the land had filled Papa’s head with dreams of fortunes to be made in raising cattle and wheat. Papa had used the last of their money to buy cows and settled down to become a rancher.

But Todd, by then a gangly sixteen-year-old, had no use for or skill with a horse or a plow. Planting a garden for food and riding the range to keep up with their cattle had fallen to Macky. When the drought killed the crops and the cows had to be sold for food, Todd moved into the town that had sprung up, turning to drink and cards. Macky held the banker responsible for that.

Now, when she didn’t need it any more, Macky had more money than she’d ever seen. She might have felt guilty over it, but the man whom she’d stolen it from had stolen much more. He’d taken her papa’s dream. The gold and silver coins that lay heavy against her thigh seemed cold payment for his theft.

Todd and Papa were gone. Now, Macky was leaving. She shifted her weight and tried not to look at the long muscular legs filling up the space between the seats, but she couldn’t help it. She focused on his hat, an expensive black Stetson. A jaunty silver feather had been pinned to the leather band. The feather seemed as out of place for a man so devoid of warmth as the Scriptures he quoted.

That’s what was bothering her, she decided, the aura of danger he carried with him. It seemed impenetrable, and was the only explanation for the uneasy feeling in the pit of her stomach. She tried to keep her breathing light, in order to conceal her agitation.

But she soon decided that it wasn’t only the lack of air that was bothering her. Her stomach was reacting just as oddly. Resolutely she pulled her attention away from her
companion’s hat, allowing her gaze to fasten on the seat across from her.

Beside him, on the hard leather bench, was a black object, an object that, after a moment, she recognized. A Bible. The man was carrying a Bible. What did that mean? Was he some kind of missionary? He’d said something about Indians. Maybe he’d been sent to convert the heathens.

Heathens.

Outlaws.

Bank robbers.

Sinners.

Macky, on her way straight to hell, was traveling across the prairie with a man of God. The Lord had sent an escort to make sure she got what she deserved.

She took a deep breath. Maybe, but if so, she was going to put up a struggle. She’d tied the drawstring purse containing the money left from purchasing her ticket around her wrist. She placed both hands on her travel case, shifting her sitting position in hopes of relieving the tingling sensation that continued to needle her.

The man called Bran might have eyes that could see in the dark, but unless he’d been watching during the bank robbery, he couldn’t know what she was carrying in her case.

Once they got to the way station she’d buy a horse and make her own way to Denver. She’d always looked after herself. Now, thanks to Pratt, she was wealthy enough to buy her future, as soon as she decided what she wanted.

Letting out a quick little sigh of relief, Macky tipped her bonnet to cover her eyes. She had to make decisions and she had to make them before she got to Denver. With any luck the sheriff wouldn’t know that the boy holding the horses had been Macky Calhoun.

But there was an even greater danger. Pratt may have been captured; she hadn’t waited to see, but he knew that her name was McKenzie and that she had his money.

And, he’d already escaped once. The little jail in Promise
was nothing compared to the prison where he’d been held before his escape.

Macky had changed her appearance. Surely nobody would connect the woman on the stage with the robbery. Once she got to Denver she’d use her other name, Kathryn—no, Kate. And she’d make certain that nobody learned anything about her past. After she figured a way to return the bank’s money she could move on, maybe even travel to California.

McKenzie Kathryn Calhoun, the person she’d been for the first nineteen years of her life, had to disappear so that nobody could link her to the robbery.

Before the world learned that Macky Calhoun was an outlaw.