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Clinging on with one hand, Anna tugged at the stubborn muslin. When it failed to come free, Malachi reached back, seized a fistful of cloth and yanked hard. The sodden fabric ripped, almost jerking her off the mule as it tore loose.
A fist-size chunk of sandstone bounced off Anna’s shoulder and skittered down the slope. Malachi had dismounted and flung the petticoat over the head of the screaming mule. They were moving forward now, at the leaden speed of a nightmare chase. She could hear his voice through the rain, urging the animal forward.
“Come on, you stubborn old devil! It’s all right! Just let loose and run!”
Anna could hear the sucking sound of the earth washing away behind them. Just ahead the huge, pale outcrop jutted over the road like the bow of an ocean-going ship. She could see the hollow beneath it, their only chance of safety.
“Get up, damn you!” She slapped the mule’s haunch with the flat of her hand. Startled, the animal bolted forward, almost running Malachi down in its haste. Anna lay low against its neck as they passed under the edge of the overhang, and then, miraculously they were beneath solid rock, safe for the moment.
The air was dark here and strangely quiet. Without waiting for Malachi to help her, Anna slid wearily down the mule’s wet side, her hand catching the petticoat on the way down. The ground was solid and dry beneath her feet, but her quivering legs refused to support her. With a little moan she folded onto the sand and huddled there in a sodden ball, her knees drawn tight against her chest.
Malachi had come inside, his presence filling the small space beneath the outcrop. Anna could hear his breath coming in raw gasps as he leaned against the rocky wall. His wet clothes steamed in the darkness.
The mule had ambled off to one side. It snorted and shook its dripping hide, spraying muddy water. Anna thought of the stubborn, cantankerous Lucifer and how he had gone flailing off the road at the worst possible time. She remembered the soft rabbity ears, the wheezy bray, the patient back. The accursed beast had meant nothing to her, but suddenly Anna found herself weeping—not in ladylike sniffles, but in ugly, body-racking sobs. She cried as she had not cried since her teens. She cried for the loveless years of her youth, for poor, dear Harry, for today’s hideous misadventure and for all the rough and lonely times ahead. Her tears gushed like water through a bursting dam, and try as she might, Anna could not make them stop.
“What the devil is wrong with you?”
She glanced up to find Malachi looming over her, his eyes glowing silver in the eerie light of the storm. “I can understand a few tears,” he growled, “but enough is enough, lady! For the love of heaven, you’re alive! You ought to be kissing the ground in gratitude instead of bawling your damn-fool eyes out! What’s gotten into you?”
Anna raised her swollen face, too distraught to care how she looked or what this man thought of her. “Lu-Lucifer,” she hiccuped. “The slide—he—”
“Bloody hell, woman, you don’t have to tell me! I know what happened to the blasted animal!” He furrowed impatient fingers through his wet hair, making it stand up in spikes. “That’s the luck of the draw in a place like this. You lose stock. Sometimes you even lose people, and the sooner you get used to that, the better off you’ll be. So stop your sniveling, lady! If anything, I’m the one who ought to be upset. I paid top dollar for that idiot mule!”
Anna stiffened as her distress congealed into a wintry rage. Slowly she rose to her feet, her clothes dripping mud, her hair streaming in her tear-blotched face.
“How dare you?” She forced each word past the barricade of her chattering teeth. “How dare you speak to me like that—as if I were nothing, a piece of livestock, bought and paid for?” She took a step closer, her eyes drilling holes in his face. “I’ve known some cold-blooded, self-righteous prigs in my day, but you, Mr. Malachi Stone—you deserve the blue ribbon! You take the all-time first prize!”
Chapter Three
The darkness shimmered with the storm’s electric glow as Malachi stared down at her—this small, hysterical creature who had suddenly flown at him like a bantam hen defending her nest.
Cold-blooded? Self-righteous? Priggish? Lord, how his friends from the old days would have laughed at her description of him. Malachi didn’t much like the names she was calling him, but for the moment, at least, he was too bone-tired to respond.
“So you paid top dollar for that mule, did you?” she lashed him “How much did you pay for me, Mr. Stone? And what would you have said if I’d been the one to tumble off the side of the road and disappear in the storm?” She squared her shoulders and thrust out her trembling chin in imitation of a male swagger. “Paid top dollar for that fool woman!” she drawled in a voice that was startlingly deep for the size of her. “Damned shame she’s gone, but I reckon it can’t be helped. ‘Luck of the draw in these parts.’ But what the hell, there’s always more where she came from. Maybe I’ll order a taller one next time.”
Under different circumstances, Malachi would have laughed. But there was nothing funny about anything that had happened today. She was making too much of his words, and he was becoming irritated. “That’s a low blow,” he growled. “You don’t know enough about me to go making snap judgments, lady, and as for—”
“My name is Anna,” she said, cutting him off, “and you’ve already made it quite clear that I’m no lady in your eyes! As for making snap judgments, I haven’t a patch on a certain so-called gentleman I could name. Talk about the pot calling the kettle black—”
“Now, listen—” Malachi took a tentative step toward her. In that same instant lightning flashed behind him, illuminating her face to reveal wet strings of hair, bloodshot eyes and a full lower lip that was quivering like a little girl’s. Only then did he realize how cold and miserable she must be.
“No, you listen!” Her teeth were chattering now. “To hear you talk, one would think that anyone—anything—is expendable!”
“To hear me talk? That’s a joke! I can’t get a word in edgewise!”
She went on as if he hadn’t spoken. “Break an axle, lose a mule—fine! You just pick up a replacement the next time you’re in town! Lose a woman—” She struggled to finish the sentence, but cold and exhaustion were clearly winning out. “Lose a woman, and all you have to do is wire your efficient Mr. Wilkinson to send you another! It’s that…simple to you, isn’t it?” She was shaking uncontrollably now, fueled only by her own anger. Malachi knew that if he didn’t do something to ward off her chills she would be sick, if she wasn’t sick already.
Hellfire, what he wouldn’t give for a flask of good whiskey!
“How many others have there been?” she raged. “How many other mail-order brides before me? Did they run off, or have you got them all locked up down there in your—”
Her tirade ended in a startled gasp as he caught her shoulders, jerked her against his chest and wrapped her tightly in his arms.
“What do you think you’re doing?” She fought like a wet cat, squirming and twisting in protest. Malachi could feel her small, shivering body through his clothes. He tightened his none too gentle embrace.
“I’m trying to keep you warm. Hold still, damn it!”
“I will not! This is outrageous!” she hissed, craning her neck to glare up at him. “Let me go this instant!”
Malachi did not loosen his grip on her. “Listen to me for a change,” he ordered. “You’ve taken a bad chill. If we don’t get you warmed up fast, you’re going to be down with double pneumonia, and the last thing I need is a sick, whining female on my hands. Is that clear?”
“Clear?” She gave a disdainful little snort that could have meant either yes or no. “What a question! After the way you’ve treated me, I’d rather snuggle up to Beelzebub over there!”
Malachi swallowed the temptation to let her try exactly that. She was so cold it frightened him, and her teeth were chattering like Spanish castanets.
He dredged the well of his patience, his arms tightening around her as he spoke. “I wouldn’t recommend that. Beelzebub is covered with mud, and even when he’s dry he has a disposition like a snapping turtle’s. So unless you want to catch your death, Anna, I’m afraid I’m your last and only resort.”
Even then she resisted, triggering a burr of annoyance that rankled Malachi beyond the point of self-control. “If you’re worried about your precious so-called virtue, believe me, you’ve nothing to fear,” he snapped. “I’m so damned cold and tired myself that I couldn’t take advantage of you even if I wanted to!”
Anna had gone rigid in his arms. He could feel the rage pulsing through her body, the ragged intake of breath as she groped for a retort that would hurt him as much as he had just hurt her. “What was it I called you earlier?” she asked in a raw-edged whisper.
“As I recall, you called me a cold-blooded, self-righteous prig,” Malachi said.
“So I did.” Anna’s eyes glinted like an angry bobcat’s. “Well, I was wrong, and I would like to apologize.”
“Apologize?” Malachi raised his guard.
“Yes.” She spoke in brittle phrases, not quite veiling the sentiment that if she’d had a knife she would have cheerfully buried it to the hilt in his gut. “I fear that I was guilty of gross understatement. If the truth be told, Mr. Stone, you are the most sanctimonious, high-handed, hypocritical bast—”
“Shut up, Anna.” He jerked his arms tight, crushing her against him so abruptly that the breath whooshed out of her lungs. Her throat made incoherent little grunts of anger as she wriggled and squirmed against his vise-like grasp. Malachi felt the sudden gush of heat in the depths of his own body, and for the space of a breath he wrestled with the idea of silencing her full, plum-ripe mouth with his own. A sharp kick against his shinbone jarred him back to reality. This woman had every reason to hate him. Married or not, he had no business kissing her.
Steeling himself, he kept his hold on her. “I’m well aware of who and what I am,” he said, spitting out the words syllable by syllable, “and right now all I’m trying to do is keep you from freezing.”
For an instant longer he felt her straining in his arms. Then she muttered something under her breath and sagged wearily against his chest. It was a victory of sorts, but as he held her Malachi realized he had no idea what he’d won.
The dark hollow beneath the rock had grown disturbingly quiet. He could hear the steady drizzle of rain pouring off the edge of the outcrop and the low gurgle of the mule’s gut as the animal shifted in the shadows. He could hear the wind soughing down the canyon and feel, where his hand cradled Anna’s ribs, the low, rapid beating of her heart, like the tick of a tiny watch against his palm.
She had ceased all effort to move or speak. Her stillness only heightened Malachi’s awareness of his aching groin. He had told her, none too gently, that she had nothing to fear from him. Too late, he realized how wrong he had been. Anna had as much to fear from him as from any man, and the fact that she was his legal wife only made matters worse.
Had she told him the truth about her reason for coming here, he wondered, or was she lying to him just as she’d admitted lying to Stuart? Only a fool would trust such a creature, and life had long since kicked all the foolishness out of him. So why was he suddenly overcome by the urge to keep her safe, to protect her and fight off her fears? His emotions were making no sense, least of all to himself.
He leaned back against the rock, her wet hair drizzling down the front of his shirt. She smelled of rain and lilacs and sweet, clean woman. The subtle aroma swam in Malachi’s senses, fueling the blaze that her voluptuous little body had ignited in his vitals. He bit back a groan as she stirred against him. Lord, didn’t she know she was tormenting his body and soul? Hellfire, of course she did. Anna was the kind of woman who would know exactly how to trigger a man’s desire. She was probably playing with him, laughing inside as she drove him to a slow frenzy.
And, heaven help him, he didn’t want her to stop.
“Who are you really, Anna?” His voice came out thick and muzzy, as if he had just been roused from sleep. “Where did you come from and what the blazes are you doing here?”
“Does it matter?” Her voice carried an edge of weariness. “Would you believe me even if I told you?”
Malachi sighed, knowing he needed the distraction of talk. “Maybe not. But I could use a good story.”
She hesitated, then laughed huskily, low in her throat. “In that case, I’m the missing heir to the throne of Montenegro. My father the king—a good sort, but desperate for aid against the Turks—was forced to pledge my hand to the evil and repulsive Prince of Transylvania. On the eve of the wedding, I stole the crown jewels and fled westward with a band of roving gypsies. The prince’s agents are everywhere, and if they catch me, I’ll be forced to wed their warty master. The next day, after a hellish wedding night, my bleeding head will be impaled on a pole outside the palace gates.” Anna had spoken so rapidly that when she paused for breath, the sharp inhalation pressed her ripe, lovely bosom into Malachi’s chest. “There, are you satisfied?” she asked.
Malachi groaned.
“You told me you wanted a story.”
“I’d have preferred the truth.”
“I told you the truth earlier. See where it got me.” Her voice rasped with exhaustion. She sagged in his arms for the space of a heartbeat, then seemed to rally. “What about you? What black secrets lie behind that great, stony face of yours?”
Malachi shifted his back against the lumpy rock. “What did my cousin tell you?”
“That you were a widower…and an upright, God-fearing man. Are you?”
Malachi laughed roughly. “A widower? Yes. The rest is a matter of opinion.”
“Could you shed some light on that?” Her small, square-jawed face tilted upward in the dim light and, once more, Malachi was seized by the insane urge to kiss her—kiss her brutally, as she deserved for the lies that had brought her to his world. He imagined arching her against him, his free hand ravishing every luscious curve and hollow of her body, then cupping her buttocks to grind her softness against his burning arousal until she whimpered with need. He imagined flinging her to the ground and taking her right here, in the cold, muddy darkness, under the legs of the mule. What the hell, in her line of work, she’d likely done that and more. He could even offer to pay—
“Malachi?”
Her voice, and the sudden tension in her body, shocked him back to reality and brought a rush of heat to his face. He remembered that she had asked him a question. But he could not remember for the life of him what that question was.
“Try that again,” he said thickly.
“Never mind. I think I’m quite warm enough now.” She pulled away from him and this time Malachi let her go. She folded her arms tightly across her chest and turned to stare out at the dwindling rain. “Maybe we should try to go,” she said in a cold voice that left little doubt she’d guessed what he was thinking.
“Rain’s letting up. Let’s give it a few minutes.” He moved forward to stand beside her under the lip of the outcrop. Moonlight shone through a break in the clouds, brushing the rain-slicked rocks with a patina of silver. Malachi bit back a curse as self-disgust washed away his desire. He had to get this woman out of here before she brought back all the things he had once been—things that could destroy the peaceful life he had built for himself and his children.
He was staring into the canyon, wondering how big the slide was and how many days of backbreaking labor it would take to build a road over the slippage when he heard it—the faint but unmistakable crunch of heavy footsteps moving across the scree. Something was out there. Something big. And it was coming toward them.
Anna had heard it, too. “What is it?” she whispered.
“Don’t know,” Malachi muttered, peering into the night. “It’s too noisy for a cougar or an Indian.” But not for a white man, he added silently, remembering too late that he had left his rifle under the wagon seat. There was little to fear from the animals that roamed the canyon. But rumors of gold or the promise of a safe hiding place from the law could, and did, lure vermin of the two-legged sort. This was not a good time to be caught unarmed, with a helpless and beautiful woman to protect.
He saw that Anna had bent to pick up a sharp-edged rock. “Keep back,” he cautioned as she edged forward. “Stay behind me, and whatever happens, do exactly what I—”
He never finished the sentence because, at that instant, all hell broke loose. Pandemonium exploded in the small space as a huge, dark shape came hurtling in from the darkness, knocking him to the ground. Something struck his head as he went down. Through the spinning blur of pain he could hear Beelzebub wheezing wildly—which struck him as odd because the wheezer of the two mules was—
Malachi cursed with relief as his vision cleared. Lucifer, caked with mud and bleeding from a gash on his flank, stood quivering beneath the rock. Anna was clinging to the mule’s neck, fussing and crooning over the miserable beast as if she’d just recovered a long-lost relative.
They rode double to spare the injured Lucifer on the way down to the ferry. Anna clung to Malachi’s back in wretched silence. She was cold and hungry, and the hostility that radiated from his tense body did nothing at all to warm her. She knew what he thought of her, and she knew it would be a waste of time to try to set him straight. There was no chance of resolution here for either of them. The sooner she got out of this place, the better it would be for them both.
The storm had passed as swiftly as it had begun, leaving a wake of wispy clouds that trailed across the moon. Stars, as cold as they were beautiful, glittered like spilled diamonds across a black velvet sky.
She had felt Malachi’s desire when he’d held her. And she had felt the hot flame of her own response—the throbbing deep in her loins, the moisture that had trickled between her thighs, betraying her readiness for his thrust. How long had it been since a man’s touch had made her ache like that? How many nights? How many years?
Too many, Anna lashed herself. This was no time to be dwelling on what she had once had, and lost. The past was dead and buried, and a new life awaited her in California, as soon as she could find the means to get there. She would be a fool not to look ahead, to hope for better times.
The darkness around her quivered with sound—clicks, croaks and squeaks from a myriad of tiny creatures displaced by the storm. The small cries of life filled Anna with a melancholy so deep that it threatened to burst her heart. Desperate to ease it, she spoke into the sullen void of Malachi’s silence.
“How much farther?” she asked, knowing she sounded like an impatient child.
“Not far. Another mile or so.” His tone was flat and impersonal, as if he were reading some stranger’s obituary in the newspaper. “Why? Do you need to stop?”
Anna chose to ignore the question. “You must be anxious to get back to your children,” she said, pressing against the barricade of his reserve. “Can you tell me more about them?”
He sighed wearily. “Not that much to tell. Young Joshua’s a typical boy. Likes to ride and fish and help with the stock. Carrie…” he paused, as if conjuring the girl up in his mind. “She does a fine job of running the house. She’s getting tall. Going to be a pretty woman one day, like her mother.”
Anna felt the tremor in his chest as he swallowed. She could not doubt that Malachi’s drowned wife had been beautiful, nor that he still loved her deeply.
“What do you do about their schooling?” she asked, shifting the talk to safer ground.
“They school themselves—with help from me when the ferry traffic’s slow. We’re not as uncivilized as you might think. There are plenty of books at the ferry—Shakespeare, Dickens, Plutarch. There’s even a piano that I bought off a Mormon family in Kanab and hauled down to the house. Carrie plays a little—but only by ear. Can’t read the one music book we’ve got.”
“I could teach her—” Anna gulped back the rest of the offer. There would be no time for piano lessons. As soon as Malachi could clear the road and repair the buckboard she would be gone.
“It sounds as if you’ve done a fine job of raising them.”
“Credit their mother for that. It’s been a struggle for me just to keep them fed and schooled this past year, let alone dress them decently and teach them proper manners. They need the touch of a good woman at home.” He hesitated. “We all do.”
A good woman, Anna thought, feeling the sting of his words like brine in a razor cut. But certainly not this woman!
Suddenly it was all too much. She wanted to wound him, to ravage his pride as he had ravaged hers. “So, how many others have their been?” she asked casually.
“What?” She felt him jerk.
“How many other women has your cousin, Mr. Wilkinson, sent down to you?” she pressed him. “How many others, before me, have left because they couldn’t measure up to the perfect wife you lost?”
Malachi’s body had gone rigid beneath her hands, and Anna knew she had pushed him too far. But then, what did it matter? She had endured the long, punishing ride on the freight wagon, the dust, the flies, the blinding desert sun, only to come face-to-face with a man who’d despised her on sight. A man who’d by turns ignored her, insulted her and treated her like a tramp. She was soaked, frozen, half-starved and so sore she could barely move without wincing. If he didn’t like her question, the high-minded Mr. Malachi Stone could go skin himself with a rusty hatchet!
“How many do you think?” She could almost hear his teeth grinding as he bit back his irritation.
“I asked you,” she shot back. “You certainly can’t expect me to guess about such a delicate matter.”
He growled something Anna couldn’t understand. “Blast it, you know you’re the first, don’t you?”
“The very first?” Anna feigned shock. “But surely not the last! Do you plan to try again and hope for better luck?”
“Not until I’ve wrung Stuart Wilkinson’s neck and hired myself a new matchmaker.”
“Why not give me that job?” Anna needled him. “I could find you the ideal wife! All I’d have to do is look for a woman the exact opposite of me—as big as a barn door, as strong as a lumberjack and as proper as a nun! Now that would be worth the fare to San Francisco, wouldn’t it?”
Malachi swore under his breath, probably thinking that he would cheerfully pay her passage to hell and back if she would just leave him alone. Surely a railroad ticket to California wouldn’t be too much to ask of him.
Anna was about to push her request once more when a glimmer of light, far below the road, caught her eye. She strained outward, peering down into the darkness of the canyon. Malachi, sensing her excitement, said quietly, “It’s the ferry. They’ve hung out the lantern.”
Both of them fell silent as they wound their way into the depths of the great chasm. Anna could hear the hissing rush of the swollen Colorado. She could feel the air warming around her, growing as damp and heavy as a muggy New Orleans night.
The mules, in their eagerness to be home, had broken into yet another bone-jarring trot. This time Malachi made no effort to hold them back. Anna clung grimly to his waist, her jaw clenched against the agony of her strained hip joints and raw thighs. Drugged by exhaustion, she forced herself to stay awake, to think of the hot coffee and clean bed that would surely be waiting for her at the end of the ride. She would strip off her wet clothes, crawl between the sheets and sleep for hours—maybe for days. Malachi Stone had already declared their contract null and void. She was under no obligation to clean his house, cook his meals or wash his clothes. She could take her leisure while he repaired the road and the wagon. Then she could put this awful experience behind her once and for all.