The Redhead and the Preacher: A Loveswept Historical Romance (4 page)

B
y late afternoon, Macky was chilled to the bone and wishing she had the cheese and hard bread that had been tied up in her bedroll. Heaven only knew where Solomon had ended up or who was eating her food.

It was good that the mule had run off, though. If and when he was discovered, the good citizens of Promise would likely think that something had happened to Macky and not even look for her. With any luck the townspeople would have been too busy watching the shootout to pay any attention to the boy holding the horses.

Even if the dressmaker mentioned selling a woman a skirt, nobody would believe it was Macky Calhoun, who didn’t even wear a dress to her own father’s funeral. The banker would foreclose on the land and sell it to another hapless family and the Calhouns would be mercifully forgotten.

Muscle-weary from holding herself erect and trying to
keep the money still as the coach bounced, Macky finally gave up and lifted the window curtain. All she could see was open prairie.

She allowed herself to slump slightly, leaning her neck back against the hard seat. The way her stomach was gnawing on her backbone she was glad the stranger was still sleeping, else he’d think he was about to be eaten by termites.

No matter how hard she tried to focus on her problems, her thoughts were drawn back to the man who called himself Bran. His boots scraped against the foot of the coach when it hit a bump in the trail. Occasionally his knee touched hers, setting off a fresh tightening of the nerves in her legs.

She decided that her feeling of anticipation was much like that of a moth being drawn to a candle flame. Even though the flame burned, the creature couldn’t control its attraction.

As they rocked back and forth, a certain tension started to build. In spite of herself she began to wait for the point at which they would touch. If her brother had been there he’d be taking bets on the next encounter. And, as likely as not, losing.

An unusually deep hole bounced Macky into the air, unfastening her cape and jingling the money inside her velvet purse. Damn banker! Why hadn’t all his payroll been in paper money? Why hadn’t she left the coins in the portmanteau instead of carrying them on her person?

Don’t be silly, Macky, even honest people have coins occasionally
. It was just that the sound of those coins seemed to call attention to her, announcing to the world that she was a bank robber.

“Better find a way to stop that jiggling around,” the stranger said, in a low, rough voice that gave the impression he didn’t talk a lot. “You’ll be accosted before you go ten feet outside this coach.”

“I have no intention of being robbed,” she said and untied
the drawstrings from her waist. No point in trying to conceal what she was carrying. If her traveling companion had been interested in robbing her, he’d already have done so.

Macky tied the coins in the four corners of her handkerchief the way she’d seen her mother do long ago. “But I thank you for your advice,” she added in a rare show of proper training that would support her new identity in Denver.

“Wasn’t talking about the money,” he said, tipping his hat away from his face with one black-gloved finger. His piercing dark eye came into view, focusing first on her chin, then traveling insolently lower. “ ‘Let your loins be girded above.’ ”

Macky followed the line of his vision to her chest. The open cape revealed where her blouse gaped between the buttons, exposing bare skin beneath.

“You wall-eyed peeping Tom!” she swore, promptly forgetting her plan to adopt a new identity, then tugged the front of her shirtwaist together. “How dare you quote Bible verse while looking at my—my private person?”

“Wouldn’t, normally. Personally, never did have much patience with women who bound themselves up in layers of clothes, but in your case that’s a mite safer than opening yourself up to be ogled.”

He didn’t even try to conceal his amusement. Not many women were so blunt in their speech or so foolish as to threaten a man like him. Any other time he might have reminded her that she was alone and at his mercy.

Instead he reached inside his greatcoat and drew out a small black cigar, then leaned forward to strike a match against the bottom of his boot, taking a long open look at her bodice.

Macky couldn’t remember ever having blushed before; she’d never had a reason to do so. But, so far as she knew, a man had never seen her breasts before either, certainly never looked
at them with such open appreciation. She pulled one side of her cape over the other and retied it.

“I can see how you got the name Eyes That See in Darkness,” she snapped. “You’re like a hawk, studying the field for his supper.”

A moment of fear flashed in her eyes, then was quickly replaced by determination. She refused to be intimidated by anybody—ever again.

Bran recognized that second of panic and regretted that he’d caused it. Whatever she was running away from must have been pretty bad. In a rare moment of kindness he reached back and tried to soften the effect of his words.

“I told you to call me Bran.”

“ ‘Brand’ as in ‘cattle brand’? Isn’t that an odd name for a preacher?”

“Bran, without a
d
, as in ‘devil.’ ” A suggestion of a smile wrinkled the corners of his mouth. “You think I’m a preacher?”

“Never knew but two men to carry a Bible around. One was a peddler and one was a preacher. How do you make your living?”

He should never have dropped his guard, but he found himself responding again. “Only answer to the law, a future wife, or Saint Peter. We can eliminate the first two and we aren’t in heaven yet.”

He drew in the smoke and let it out slowly. Macky felt as if he could see straight through her clothing, but she had no intention of letting him know how uncomfortable she was. It came to her that this was a test. If she couldn’t stave off one man, how could she hope to find a place for herself in Denver where she’d heard that women were rare?

“Only thing I’m sure of is that I’m nobody’s future wife, certainly not yours.”

“Not interested in a man?”

She would have spit if she could. “Nope!”

“Expect to go West alone?”

“I do.”

“Full of grit, aren’t you?”

“I can take care of myself.”

“None of my business,” he said wryly, “but next time you put on that garment, turn it around. My guess is that there’s more room for your ‘private person’ with the front of the shirtwaist in the front.”

She thought back to the woman in the dress shop and the smug smile she’d given Macky when she studied her in the new clothes. Damn woman. She could have told Macky. But she’d let her go out of the shop looking like the ignorant know-nothing girl she was.

Macky suddenly swung her purse, catching the man’s cheek with a heavy whack. Wasn’t his fault that she’d reached the end of her control, but he was the one who had caught the brunt of it.

He didn’t move when she hit him. Then, like one of those lizards that flicked out his tongue and caught his prey in the blink of an eye, Bran flipped his cigar out the window and jerked her across the seat. He turned her around, folded his arms across her chest, and spread his legs, pulling her bottom close to him.

When he spoke, his voice was tight with fury, not from her attack, but from the unexpected rush of heat that came when he put his arms around her.

“Had a few black eyes in my day, woman, but they were honest in the getting. Being slapped for telling the truth is something I don’t take kindly to.”

At that moment the sound of gunfire broke out and a barrage of bullets pelted the carriage door. The driver yelled and the horses began to gallop. The stranger pushed Macky down across the seat where she’d been sitting only moments before, shielding her body with his own.

“The devil’s pitchfork! What are you trying to do,” she cried, trying to twist out from under him, “smash the breath out of me?”

He curled his arm around her waist and shoved her even
farther down until she was in the foot of the carriage with his knee planted against her chest.

“Now shut up,” he said, “and stay put unless you want to expose your private person to one of those outlaws shooting at us.

“Outlaws?”

Fear swept over her. Could Pratt have learned where she was? She bit back the curses she’d been about to let fly. The stage lurched drunkenly, throwing her assailant off balance. Righting himself, he drove his leg between Macky and the seat so that he could stand and jerked the curtain down.

More gunshots followed.

Looking up from where she was wedged between the seats, Macky could see bullet holes in the door. She wished she’d never seen those bank robbers, never taken the money. She could have left it behind in the dress shop. Instead, she’d drawn a gang of outlaws who were trying to kill them.

Instead of returning fire, the driver had to concentrate on keeping the stagecoach under control. The preacher was the only other man around. Macky had the absurd thought that the preacher might do better with a gun than a Bible.

Bran swore and Macky watched in surprise as he drew a gun from beneath his greatcoat. Bouncing around in the foot of the carriage, she was uncomfortably close to her protector. Expensive dusty boots disappeared beneath the fine black trousers covering muscular legs that now straddled her body. He was all man and the most masculine part of him was within touching distance. And given the rutted trail and the horses’ speed there was little she could do to avoid touching.

He’d lost his hat, exposing a mass of jet-black hair that curled across his shoulders. Frowning, he slowly raised his head to peer out the window. Quickly he got off one shot, ducked, then lifted himself to fire a second one.

The sound of pounding horse hooves seemed temporarily diminished.

“Got one,” he said, as if he were talking to himself. “Still two of them.”

“If you’ll let me get up and give me a gun, I’ll help.”

“I don’t have another gun, ma’am, and if I did, I wouldn’t let you waste the bullets.”

“I’m as good a shot as the next man.”

“Don’t doubt it.” And he didn’t. Bran took quick aim and squeezed the trigger. “Now there’s one left. Must be the leader—horse has a saddle trimmed with silver.”

Macky felt her heart lurch. Silver-trimmed saddle? It was Pratt. She thought he’d been shot. As she listened, the sound of the third horse was growing fainter, as if the rider were turning back.

The trouble would have ended there, if the wheel hadn’t hit a rut and cracked, careening the coach around and slamming it on its side. Already in a panic, the horses dragged their heavy burden for a short distance, then broke their traces and raced away, leaving the travelers stranded halfway between Promise and Denver.

Inside the carriage the two passengers had no time to brace themselves. When the coach tipped over it flung Bran backward, slinging Macky against him, her chin slamming his forehead against the door with a star-gathering thud.

When the commotion finally ended, Bran lay still, trying to sort out the situation. Pain shot through his head and he was having trouble focusing his thoughts. He blinked and tried to move only to discover that he was trapped beneath a heavy weight.

Groggily, he opened his eyes. He was half covered by a very feminine body which, even in his addled state of mind, had a pulse-raising softness. The loss of her bonnet had freed a mass of wild red hair that tickled his face and clouded his vision. The steady ache of his head didn’t stop his awareness of a pair of firm breasts pressed against him. Her chin was resting on his forehead and his left arm was holding her bottom against the part of his body that responded faster than his muddled mind.

Her cape had pulled apart at the neckline and now covered them both like a blanket. As he attempted to lift her he was treated to a view of her blouse, which had fought a gallant, but losing battle. The buttons, now ripped from the shirtwaist, were caught in the folds of his waistcoat, leaving her breasts fully exposed. She was wearing nothing beneath.

Macky tried to scramble up, succeeding only in planting her knee into the body under her.

“Good God, woman, are you trying to emasculate me, too?”

He slid his hand between them and used what strength he had left to help her stand.

“Get your hands off my— What in the name of all that’s holy are you doing?”

He let his hand drop. “Trying to survive purgatory!”

“For a preacher, you have a strange inability to distinguish the difference,” she said, then bit back her anger as she realized that the man she’d been dressing down was bleeding.

Or rather he had been bleeding, both from his forehead and, from the looks of the panel he was leaning against, the back of his head as well.

“You’re hurt,” she said. “Were you shot?”

“I think not, but I don’t seem to have any feeling in my lower body.”

“Oh, my. Let me see.” She slid one knee between his legs and wedged the other one beside him. She pulled back the greatcoat and looked for blood.

“I don’t see any bullet wounds. But you may have broken something,” she said curtly and slid her hand inside his shirt.

Bran could have argued but the intimacy of her touch shocked him into silence.

“What are you doing?” he finally croaked.

“This may hurt, but we have to know if you broke anything.”

The numbness in his body was brought back to life by
her touch. When she pulled her hands out of his shirt and began to run them down his legs he couldn’t hold back an oath.

“Here?” she questioned as she moved her hands back up his leg.

“No! I’m all right, I told you.”

She moved her fingertips across his groin, prodding and kneading his flesh.

He groaned. Any fear he had that his condition was permanent disappeared as a rush of blood pooled and swelled that part of him that responded to a woman’s touch. Unless he stopped her, she’d discover his rapid recovery.

“Stop it, woman! I told you I’m fine. Unless you want me to return the examination, you’ll stop fondling my body.”

“How dare you, you conceited jackass! I don’t know why I was worried that you were hurt. I ought to be concerned with my own … condition.”