Bride On The Run

Yes, it was all about the children. She had known that from the beginning, but now, hearing his words, she felt the truth sink home and settle in like a spell of gray weather. A man like Malachi Stone could live alone on the moon without wanting for love or companionship. But his two young children were different. They needed a mother.

And what did she know about mothering? Her own mother had died of typhoid when Anna was still in diapers; and there’d been nothing motherly about the rod-wielding women who’d run the orphanage where she’d lived until the age of fifteen. She knew more about faro and five-card stud than she did about children, a fact that wouldn’t buy her much with a man like Malachi Stone.

The buckboard lurched through a flooded spot in the road, its wheels splattering water that was the color of cheap Mexican pottery. The Colorado would be the same—too thick to drink and too thin to plow, the locals said of it. A river of mud, sunk into a canyon as deep as the mouth of hell itself.

Would she be safe here? Even now, a shudder passed through her body as she thought of Louis Caswell and his pockmarked companion. For a time she had hoped that, having blamed her for Harry’s murder, the police chief would allow her to disappear. By now she knew better. Caswell would not rest as long as she was free. He wanted her dead.

Anna’s eyes ranged up and down the sheer, rocky walls. No, she decided, feeling better, Caswell’s hired thugs would never find her here. She could lose herself in the great, twisting canyon and its maze of arroyos and tributaries. She could vanish from the earth as the wife of an unknown ferryman, safe and secure until she was ready to move on to California and start a new life.

As for the children, she would manage somehow. After all, how difficult could her job be? When they were hungry, you fed them. When they were dirty, you washed them. When they were tired, you sent them to bed. What could be simpler? Now, their father, on the other hand…

Anna shot another sidelong glance at her companion’s rough-hewn profile. The straitlaced Mr. Stone would give her no trouble, she reassured herself. The man was no more open to entanglements than she was. Theirs was a business arrangement, with a contract that could be canceled at any time by either party. That, too, was all for the best. It would make things that much easier when the time came for her to leave.

What the bloody hell had Stuart been thinking?

Malachi stared at the dust-caked rumps of the mules, his spirits growing darker with each turn of the wheels. He should have known better than to trust his city-bred cousin to find the kind of wife he needed—a strong, plain, practical woman who would take to the rigors of running the ferry and managing two active youngsters. A woman of impeccable moral character. Stuart Wilkinson may have studied law, but that was no substitute for common sense. The fool had succumbed to the first pretty face that came along, and now there would be the devil to pay.

He glanced furtively at her hands, which were clasped tensely around the handle of her lace-trimmed parasol. They were like creamy bisque porcelain, each fingernail a perfect, ivory-rimmed oval. He could see no sign of a scratch or callus on those hands. Not a mark to show that she had ever done a lick of work in her pampered life.

But that wasn’t the worst of his concerns—not by a damned sight. A woman that pretty and self-assured could get any man she wanted. Why should she settle for a mail-order marriage to a stranger with nothing to offer except solitude and hard work?

Why, indeed—unless she was running away from something?

He remembered his first sight of her, standing on the porch of the Jepsons’ ranch house where the freight wagon had left her, wearing a demure lavender gown that, for all its modest cut, clung to the curves of her lush little body in a way that made his breath stop. She had watched him in silence as he swung out of the wagon and hitched the mules to the rail. He remembered the tilt of her small head as her gaze swept upward from his muddy boots to his sweat-soaked shirt, then paused to linger on his face. He had stood there clutching his hat, feeling big and awkward and dirty, desperately hoping there had been a mistake and she was waiting for someone else.

Her hair, gathered into a crocheted snood at the back of her neck, was like a swirl of molasses taffy, each strand a different shade of gold. Her eyes, set in a square, sharp-boned face, were a rich, startling shade of amber, flecked with bits of gold and brown. They had regarded him boldly, as if he were a prize hog she had just won at a church raffle. “Well,” she had said in a husky contralto voice that seemed much too big for the rest of her. “Well, well, so it’s Mr. Stone, is it?”

Malachi’s heart had dropped like a plumb bob.

He should have turned away right then and there, he lashed himself as he leaned hard into the brake to slow the careening wheels. He should have tossed her a few dollars for fare back to Salt Lake, climbed into the buckboard and driven off without a backward glance. Instead here he was, wondering how he was going to make do with the last kind of female he wanted on his hands.

Malachi’s inner grumblings were cut short by the crack of splintering wood. His bride gave a little yelp as the wagon lurched sideways, its momentum pitching her out of her seat. The parasol flew from her hands and vanished into the wide, rocky void of the canyon. She might have gone the same way if he had not grabbed her arm and wrenched her back toward him.

“What on earth—?” Her eyes were as wide as a startled fawn’s, her arm taut through the thin fabric of her sleeve.

“It’s all right,” he growled, “I’ve got you.”

“I can see that, but it doesn’t explain what happened.” Annoyance formed a furrow between the golden wings of her eyebrows. Close up, she smelled of clean sweat and cheap hotel soap.

“Broken axle.” Malachi bit back a curse as he released her. “Happens now and again on this road.”

“So what do we do now?”

“We unhitch the mules and ride them down to the ferry. Unless you’d rather walk, that is.”

“What—about my things?” Her eyes flickered uncertainly toward her leather-bound trunk. It was of modest size as trunks go, but Malachi was in no frame of mind to lug the woman’s useless finery down six miles of rough road.

He scowled at her. “No reason it shouldn’t be safe where it is. Nobody comes this way when the river’s in flood.”

“We can’t take it with us?” The eyes she turned on him would have reduced a lot of men to quivering putty, and probably had.

“There are two mules,” Malachi swung out of the seat and dropped to the ground. “I plan to ride one of them. The other one can carry you or the trunk. Not both. Take your pick.”

Still she seemed to hesitate. Resolving to ignore her, he strode to the front of the rig and began unbuckling the double harness from the traces. One of the mules raised its tail and dropped a steaming pile of manure in the orange dust. Yes, that about summed things up, Malachi reflected dourly. Stuck on the road with a useless city female, an hour from darkness, with the children alone and waiting for him. He hoped to blazes the woman could ride a mule.

“Aren’t you going to help me down?” Her raspy little voice, as mellow as southern bourbon, penetrated Malachi’s awareness. He glanced back to see her watching him with eyes as bright and curious as a wren’s. There was a birdlike quality about her small frame, the quickness of her movements and the way she sat forward on the wagon seat, as if she were about to spread her wings and take flight. Anna. A good, simple name. But something told him there was nothing simple about this woman.

“Well, Mr. Stone?” Was she demanding or only teasing him? Malachi was tempted to ignore her, forcing her to climb down on her own, but then he noticed the narrowness of her skirt and realized she could not get down except, perhaps, by jumping. How in blazes was she supposed to ride a mule? He hadn’t brought along a damned sidesaddle.

With a sigh of resignation, he walked back to the side of the wagon and extended his arms. The corners of her mouth lifted in a tight little smile as she leaned toward him, letting his big hands encircle her ridiculously tiny waist. He lifted her without effort, bracing his senses against the onslaught of her nearness as he swung her over the edge. This was a business arrangement, Malachi reminded himself. It would remain just that until she got tired of the sand, the bugs, the isolation and the unending work, and lit out for greener pastures. That wouldn’t take long, he reckoned. A week, a month, surely no more, and he would be faced with the dismal prospect of starting over—if it wasn’t already too late by then.

Anna.

Her hands lingered on his shoulders as he lowered her to the dusty roadway. Close up, her skin was warm apricot in tone, luminous beneath the smudges of rust-colored dirt. Her eyes were the color of aged brandy, her body warm through the fabric of her dress and soft, he sensed, beneath the tightly laced corset. Malachi felt the all too familiar tightening in the hollow of his groin. He cursed silently. No, this wasn’t going to work out. Not for a week. Not for a day. Not for a damn-blasted minute. He’d have been better off alone.

Determinedly, he stepped away from her. “I’d better get these mules unhitched,” he muttered, feeling sweaty and awkward.

“Can I do anything to help?” she asked all too innocently.

“Just stay out of the way. A skittish mule can kick hard enough to kill you.” He turned aside and began fumbling with the buckles, which seemed unusually stubborn. Anna stood where he had left her, glancing up and down the road as if she were expecting company.

At last she cleared her throat. “Well, if you don’t need me, I’m going to find a convenient bush,” she announced. “Heaven knows I’ve been needing one.”

Malachi choked on his own spit. He wasn’t used to having a woman speak so frankly about her bodily functions. There was hell of a lot he didn’t know about this woman who’d given her maiden name as Anna Creer. But one thing was already certain—his new wife was no lady.

“Watch out for rattlesnakes,” he said. She shot him a startled glance, then turned and stalked up the road toward a big clump of sagebrush, lifting her skirt to keep the hem from trailing in the dust.

Malachi’s mood darkened as he finished unhitching the mules. He could feel his whole plan unraveling like a badly made wool stocking—not that it had been a great plan to begin with. He had grown desperate over the past eleven months, with Elise gone and the children so sorely in need of a mother. Every day he had lived with that need—watching Carrie grow toward womanhood without a mother’s guidance, seeing the lost look in little Josh’s eyes. His heart had ached for them. But there were no eligible women within a day’s ride, and it was all he could do to manage the ferry and the stock and the household chores, let alone go off courting.

He had let the months pass without taking action. Then the letter had come—the letter that even now threatened to rip his whole world apart—and Malachi had known he could not wait any longer.

One desperate night he had hit on the idea of ordering a wife—a plain, good-hearted woman with no illusions about romance, a woman who would be content to stay in the canyon, care for the children and work at his side. Before dawn he had written the letter to Stuart and the plan was in motion.

The terms of the contract had been set up to protect both himself and his prospective bride from hurt if things didn’t work out. But it had been Malachi’s hope that over time, mutual respect would ripen into a semblance of love, and the awkward arrangement would become a true marriage. Now—he swore under his breath as he struggled with the harness. What a calamity he had brought down—upon himself, upon his innocent children, and upon this willful bit of fluff who seemed to have no notion what was in store for her.

Anna emerged from behind the sage clump, brushing twigs and flecks of dirt from her skirt. “No rattlesnakes,” she said. “But I did meet a very curious lizard. I ordered him to turn his back, but the little imp just sat there and stared at me the whole time. Most ungentlemanly of him.”

Malachi kept his eyes on the mules, ignoring her attempt at ribaldry. “There are a lot of animals in the canyon,” he said. “You’ll get used to them in time.” What in blazes was he saying? The woman wouldn’t likely stick around long enough to get used to anything!

He glanced back to find her a few paces behind him, watching as he freed the harness from the traces. She was older than he’d first thought, Malachi reckoned, twenty-five or twenty-six, perhaps. That part was fine, since he was almost thirty-five himself. But even though she was trying her best to be pleasant, something about her just didn’t set right. She was too bold, too worldly; too much like the women he had known in that other long-ago life, the life before Elise and the children.

How could he bring such a woman home to care for his son and his impressionable eleven-year-old daughter?

“Can you ride?” he asked her.

“Some.”

“Then climb aboard.”