“If you’re worried about your precious so-called virtue, believe me, you’ve nothing to fear,” Malachi snapped

“I’m so damned cold and tired that I couldn’t take advantage of you even if I wanted to!”

Anna went rigid in his arms. He could feel the rage pulsing through her body 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, veiling the sentiment that if she’d had a knife, she would have cheerfully buried it to the hilt in his gut. “I feel I was guilty of gross understatement!”

Dear Reader,

With the passing of the true millennium, Harlequin Historicals is putting on a fresh face! We hope you enjoyed our special inside front cover art from recent months. We plan to bring this wonderful “extra” to you every month! You may also have noticed our new branding—a maroon stripe that runs along the right side of the front cover. Hopefully, this will help you find our books more easily in the crowded marketplace. And thanks to those of you who participated in our reader survey. We truly appreciate the feedback you provided, which enables us to bring you more of the stories and authors that you like!

We have four terrific books for you this month. The talented Carolyn Davidson returns with a new Western, Maggie’s Beau, a tender tale of love between experienced rancher Beau Jackson—whom you might recognize from The Wedding Promise—and the young woman he finds hiding in his barn. Catherine Archer brings us her third medieval SEASONS’ BRIDES story, Summer’s Bride, an engaging romance about two willful nobles who finally succumb to a love they’ve long denied.

The Sea Nymph by bestselling author Ruth Langan marks the second book in the SIRENS OF THE SEA series. Here, a proper English lady, who is secretly a privateer, falls in love with a highwayman—only to learn he is really an earl and the richest man in Cornwall! And don’t miss Bride on the Run, an awesome new Western by Elizabeth Lane. True to the title, a woman fleeing from crooked lawmen becomes the mail-order bride of a sexy widower with two kids.

Enjoy! And come back again next month for four more choices of the best in historical romance.

Sincerely,

Tracy Farrell

Senior Editor

Bride on the Run

Elizabeth Lane

www.millsandboon.co.uk

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Available from Harlequin Historicals and ELIZABETH LANE

Wind River #28

Birds of Passage #92

Moonfire #150

MacKenna’s Promise #216

Lydia #302

Apache Fire #436

Shawnee Bride #492

Bride on the Run #546

Other works include:

Silhouette Romance

Hometown Wedding #1194

The Tycoon and the Townie #1250

Silhouette Special Edition

Wild Wings, Wild Heart #936

For my parents,

who gave me a love for rocky canyons and rushing rivers,

and for Tanya.

Contents

Prologue

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Epilogue

Author Note

Prologue

St. Joseph, Missouri

January 4, 1889

“Love, oh, love, oh careless love,

Love, oh, love, oh careless love,

Love, oh, love, oh careless love,

Just see what careless love has done….”

Anna DeCarlo sat on the edge of the tiny stage in a cross-legged pose that offered her audience a tantalizing glimpse of silk-stockinged ankle. Lamplight gleamed on her tawny, upswept hair and glittered on the paste-diamond choker that encircled her creamy throat. Her low, velvety voice flowed like dark honey through the smoky haze that filled the grand salon of the Jack of Diamonds, rising above the piano to mingle with the clink of crystal, the whir of roulette wheels and the low murmur of men’s voices.

From the ring of tables that surrounded the stage, she could feel hungry eyes on her, feel them devouring her small, voluptuous body through the clinging peacock satin gown. Go ahead and look, Anna thought fiercely. You’ll never get another chance!

“Love, oh, love, oh, careless love…”

Did she love Harry Solomon? Anna was not prepared to answer that question. She had stopped believing in love a long time ago. But she liked the dapper, silver-haired owner of the Jack of Diamonds. He was kind and generous and treated her like the lady she had always longed to be. Last week he had asked her to be his wife. Tonight he would get his answer. It would be yes.

“Just see what careless love has done…”

Anna lowered her gaze as the song ended, letting her head fall forward like a wilted blossom. For a long moment silence filled the lamplit circle. Then, as she lifted her face the audience burst into cheers. Smiling radiantly now, she took her bows. It was all over—the smoke-filled rooms, the leering eyes and pawing hands, the haggling over contracts and payment, the endless packing and unpacking. As Mrs. Harry Solomon, she would have a home. She would have the respect and security she had hungered for all her life.

As the applause died away she slipped backstage, pausing only to take up her white merino shawl from its hook on the wall. Wrapping the shawl around her bare shoulders, she hurried through the draughty corridor and up the back stairs. Harry would be in his sumptuous second-floor office now, waiting for her answer. She had kept him on tenterhooks long enough.

For all Anna’s resolve, doubts gnawed at her as she mounted the dark stairway. Harry Solomon was old enough to be her father. Was she doing the right thing by him and by herself? Could she be a loving wife to him? Share his bed? Even give him children?

But she was being foolish now, Anna lectured herself. Harry was the best thing that had ever come into her rough, miserable life. He had offered her the world of her dreams, and she would be generous with her gratitude. She would make him proud, and she would make him happy. Harry Solomon would never be sorry he had married her.

Lost in thought, Anna climbed upward. From the salon, the lusty chords of the grand piano, playing “Beautiful Dreamer,” echoed eerily up the stairwell. Above her, on the landing, she could see the thin crack of light beneath Harry’s door. He would be waiting for her, she knew, with iced champagne and two crystal goblets on the sideboard. Minutes from now they would be toasting their future together.

She was a half dozen steps short of the top when the door flew open and two dark figures burst out onto the landing. They were cloaked against the winter night, their low-brimmed hats shadowing their faces, but she recognized them both. The shorter of the two was Louis Caswell, chief of police in the riverfront precinct and a frequent patron of the Jack of Diamonds. Yes—she could see the black high-heeled boots he wore, custom-made to increase his height. The taller, darker man was little more than a stranger, a shadowy man known to her only as The Russian.

What business would Caswell have with Harry at this hour of the night? Anna was weighing the wisdom of asking when the two men pushed past her without a word and hurried on. Only the startled flash of Caswell’s eyes in his sharp little weasel face indicated that he had seen her at all.

Partway down the stairs she saw The Russian hesitate, glancing up at her. For an instant the light from the open doorway fell on his long, pockmarked face, and Anna felt her heart contract with a sudden, nameless fear. He turned, as if to start back toward her, but then Caswell seized his arm, said something in a low voice, and the two of them vanished into the dark corridor.

“Harry?” Anna’s elegant kidskin boots clicked across the landing as she hurried toward the open door. “Harry, what on earth—”

The words died in her throat as she stepped into the room. Harry Solomon was lying facedown in a spreading pool of blood, among the papers that had spilled from his open safe. A large, bone-handled butcher knife protruded from his back, right over the spot where his heart would be.

Chapter One

Arizona Territory, May, 1889

They would never find her here.

Anna’s lips moved in silent reassurance of that fact as the buckboard creaked down the narrow dugway that had been blasted into the sun-colored sandstone cliff. The silent man who sat beside her, his massive fists keeping a tight rein on the mules, probably thought she was praying. She wasn’t. Anna had given up on God at roughly the same time God had given up on her. By what she judged to be mutual consent, she no longer asked heaven for favors. Not even at times like this.

Above the towering canyon walls, the sky was a blinding turquoise gash. Two great, dark birds, which Anna guessed to be vultures, drifted back and forth, circling and descending on the hot spirals of air. Infinitely patient, they seemed to be waiting for a misstep. For the man. For the mules. For her.

The man glanced coldly at Anna. His name was Malachi, like the last book in the Old Testament. Malachi Stone—a hard-hewn, righteous-sounding name if she’d ever heard one. Malachi’s lead-colored eyes flickered upward in the direction of her gaze. “Ravens,” he said. “You’ll see a lot of them here.”

Anna nodded, twisting the unfamiliar gold band that encircled her left ring finger. This was nothing but a bizarre and frightening dream, she told herself. Any minute now, she would wake up in St. Joseph, warm and secure in her cozy hotel suite. Harry would still be alive, and she would be planning their wedding, not fleeing from town to town in a constant state of terror.

Louis Caswell had known what he was doing that January night when he’d stopped his sinister cohort from killing her. By the time she’d realized her mistake, her clothes, shoes and hands were streaked with Harry’s blood. She had left bloody footprints all over the Persian rug, bloody fingerprints on the knife handle and on Harry’s once immaculate pearl-gray suit. She had wiped her hands on the papers that lay scattered on the rug. She had even left her bloodstained merino shawl at the scene as she fled, panic-stricken, from the room. No jury on earth, she knew, would believe her version of what had happened. She’d had no choice except to run or hang.

Anna had snatched up what little money and valuables she could lay her hands on, packed a few necessities and hired a driver to take her to the railway station. Omaha…Denver…no place was safe for more than a few weeks. She had planned to head for California or perhaps Mexico where no one had ever heard of Anna DeCarlo. But in Salt Lake City her money had run out. She’d been scanning the Salt Lake Tribune, looking for any kind of employment she could find, when she’d spotted the advertisement one Mr. Stuart Wilkinson, Attorney at Law, had placed on behalf of his widowed cousin: “Wife Wanted: Remote ferry location on Colorado River. Must get on well with children and be accustomed to hard work….”

The front wheel of the buckboard lurched over a rock, jarring Anna’s thoughts back to the present. From hundreds of feet below, hidden by rocky ledges, she could hear the rushing sound of the Colorado. Spring was high-water time. Malachi Stone had told her that while they were still trying to make polite conversation. Swollen with runoff from melting mountain snows, the current was too dangerous for any kind of crossing. Having planned for such a time, he had lashed the ferry to the bank, hitched up the mules and turned the buckboard toward the ranch where his nearest neighbors lived. All night he had hunched over the reins, arriving at dawn to meet the stranger who, by virtue of proxy marriage, was already his legal wife.

Anna studied him furtively from under her parasol. Malachi Stone was a big man. Big shoulders, big arms, hands like sledgehammers and, beneath the dusty felt hat, a face that could have been hewn from hickory with the blade of an ax. She liked big men. Always had. Not that it made any difference in this case. The contract she’d signed in Salt Lake City did not include marital duties. She was hired help, plain and simple. The so-called marriage existed only to suit Malachi Stone’s rigid sense of propriety.

That arrangement was fine with her, Anna reminded herself as the buckboard swayed around a stomach-twisting curve. She was not looking for love or permanence, only safety. And Malachi Stone looked as if he could fend off an army of Caswell’s thugs with his big, bare fists.

She ran the tip of her tongue across her front teeth, tasting gritty sand. “How much farther?”

“Not far.” He did not look at her.

“You left your children alone at the ferry?”

His hard gaze flickered in her direction, then returned to the road. “Didn’t have much choice. Not that they can’t look after themselves if need be. Carrie’s eleven, old enough to see to the boy for a couple of days. And the dog’s with them. Good protection in case a cougar or bobcat comes sniffing around. All the same, it’ll be a relief to get home.”

“How long has it been since their mother passed away?”

The silence that followed Anna’s question was broken only by the sound of plodding hooves and the low hiss of the river far below. “A year come this summer,” he said in a flat voice. “We’ve gotten by as well as you might expect. But the two young ones need more care than I can give them on my own. That’s why you’re here.”

“Of course.” Anna gazed past him toward the next bend in the road, where the long, thorny spears of an ocotillo, each one tipped with a bloodred blossom, rose from behind a clump of prickly pear.

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.”

He waited, deliberately standing with folded arms as she glanced from the broad-backed mules to her narrow skirt. For a long moment she hesitated, then shrugged and, to Malachi’s consternation, reached down, gathered up her skirt and petticoat, and hitched them above her knees.

“I’ll need a leg up,” she said.

Malachi swallowed, then bent down without a word and made a cup of his linked hands. The black high-button shoe she placed between his palms was expensively made, as were her fine-knit white stockings and the lace edging on the bottoms of her drawers. The woman had clearly lived well. She’d had money for nice things—or someone to give those things to her. So what in the devil was she doing here, headed for the bottom of the Grand Canyon with a man she’d only met that morning?

It was high time he found out.

Malachi held his breath, steeling himself as she pressed her weight into his hands, gripped the harness and, with a little gasp of effort, flung her free leg over the back of the mule. The scent of her clothes swept over him as her skirts flew up, flooding his senses with the light, sweet odor of musk. He bit back a groan, averting his eyes as she straddled the mule and wriggled into place, tugging her rucked skirts down over the lace-trimmed hems of her drawers.

Would she tell him the truth if he asked her?

What a damn-fool question! The woman would tell him the first story that came into her head and expect him to believe it! But he was no fool. There had to be other ways to learn what this so-called Anna Creer was hiding.

Then again, Malachi reminded himself, why should he bother? He knew her kind well enough, and the thought of where and what she had been filled him with a deep, simmering anger. When he’d paid his cousin to find him a wife, he’d known better than to ask for a virgin. A widow lady would have been fine, even one who’d made a few mistakes, as long as she had a good heart. But he hadn’t counted on a woman like Anna. He had never expected that Stuart would send him a whore.

Chapter Two

The mule wheezed and laid back its ears as Anna settled her tender buttocks atop the bony ridge of its spine. “There now,” she murmured, struggling to soothe the nervous beast. “Take it easy, old boy. You got the best of the deal here. You could be carrying that big hulk of a man instead of me.”

But the mule did not appreciate her logic. It rolled its eyes, shook its dusty hide and began kicking out at the buckboard with its hind legs. Anna groped frantically for reins to control the creature. There were none.

Malachi had mounted the other mule—a much calmer animal than the one he had chosen for her, Anna noted wryly. If he was concerned for her safety, he did not show it. “Just hang on to the collar and give Lucifer his head,” he told her. “He knows the way home.”

“Lucifer?” She shot him a sidelong glare, struck by the aptness of the name. “And, pray tell, who might you be riding? Saint Peter?”

“Beelzebub.” He nudged the flanks of his longeared mount and moved ahead of her on the trail. With a contemptuous wheeze, Lucifer fell into line. Anna clung grimly to the padded leather collar as the massive beast swayed down the road. She’d lied to Malachi about being able to ride—just as she’d lied about other things to Stuart Wilkinson and to the kindly couple who’d let her wait at their ranch for Malachi to arrive. Lies had come more and more easily to her since that shattering night in St. Joseph. By now they were almost second nature.

A fresh breeze, smelling of rain, ruffled Anna’s sweat-dampened hair. She glanced up to see clouds sliding across the jagged gash of sky. In the depths of the canyon the shadows had deepened from mauve to purple. Fear twisted the knot in her stomach as she realized the daylight would soon be gone. They would have to pick their way down the narrow, dizzying roadway in full darkness.

Even now she could feel twilight closing around her. Its bluish haze blended with the back of Malachi’s faded chambray work shirt as he moved in and out of the shadows like a ghost, keeping well ahead of her. He had fallen as silent as the great stone buttresses that lined the canyon. Oh, but she knew what he was thinking. Disappointment had been etched all over his big, craggy face from the first time he looked at her. She was not what he had expected, let alone what he had wanted.

But then, what difference did it make? Anna reminded herself harshly. If she had anything to say about it, the dour Mr. Stone wouldn’t have to put up with her for long. She could only hope that when the time came for goodbyes, he would be decent enough to buy her passage to California.

As the sky deepened a coyote sang out from a distant ridge top. The sharp crescendo of yips climaxing in a long, mournful wail, puckered the skin at the back of Anna’s neck. Malachi’s broad-shouldered back was no more than a flicker in the gathering murk. He was deliberately leaving her farther and farther behind. She could pitch off this accursed beast, tumble into some bottomless ravine, and he would not know—or likely care—until the mule wandered into the corral without her.

“Get up, Lucifer!” She kicked at the mule’s flanks with her sharp little boot heels, but the stubborn animal only wheezed and stopped to nibble at a trailside plant. Anna clung to the harness, kicking and cursing under her breath as the collar slid forward. Malachi had not even glanced back to make sure she was all right. The big, sullen wretch was more than disappointed, she realized with a sinking heart. He was angry. It was almost as if he’d hated her on sight.

Maybe she should have invested her last dollar in a set of itchy woolen long johns and a flour-sack dress. Yes, and braided her hair in scraggly pigtails tied up with rags. Maybe she should have smeared a little mud on her face and practiced belching out loud and saying ain’t and gol-darnit. Would that have elevated her in Malachi Stone’s esteem? Or was this just the way men treated women in these parts?

“Wait up, blast it!” she shouted after Malachi’s vanishing form. “Lucifer won’t budge, and you’re leaving me behind!”

Malachi paused, glancing back over his shoulder. Putting his fingers to his mouth he gave a long, shrill whistle.

Lucifer’s huge, bony head shot up like a catapult, throwing Anna backward as the animal plunged onto the road and broke into a spine-jarring trot. She gripped the collar for dear life, her hips alternately bouncing into the air and slamming down on the mule’s rock-hard back. Malachi sat and watched her, his face hidden by the deepening shadows. If he was laughing at her, Anna vowed, she would kill him for it!

“I thought you told me you could ride,” he said as Lucifer came abreast of his own mount and slowed to a swaying walk.

“I did,” Anna muttered, tugging her skirts over her knees. “I just didn’t specify what I could ride.”

He rewarded her witticism with a scowl. “It’s clouding up. Let’s get moving,” he said, nudging his mule to a brisk trot. This time Lucifer fell into line, bounding down the rutted road like a nine-hundred-pound jackrabbit. Anna clenched her teeth as her raw buttocks pounded the bumpy ridge of Lucifer’s spine. Misery rankled and roiled in her, festering until she could keep her silence no longer.

“You—don’t like—me, do—you?” she muttered, spitting out the words between bounces.

“Did I say that?” Malachi did not look at her.

“You didn’t—have to! Damn it, I’m not stupid!”

“I never said you were.”

“Then slow down, for mercy’s sake!” She seized Lucifer’s harness and by sheer force of will wrenched the big, lumbering animal to a halt. “No matter what you might think of me, I won’t be treated this way!” she said. “Either we come to some kind of understanding here and now, or I’m not budging another inch!”

Malachi, who had already gained half a furlong on her, hesitated, then wheeled his mount and rode back to where she waited. “All right,” he said in a cold voice, “have it your way. Your call.”

Anna’s breath hissed out in a ragged exhalation as she prodded Lucifer to a slow walk and waited for Malachi to fall in alongside her. She swallowed hard, steeling her nerves before she spoke.

“You desperately wanted me here,” she said. “At least that’s what your cousin, Mr. Wilkinson, led me to believe. And I did believe it, or I never would have come such a distance. So why are you treating me as if I’d brought in the plague?”

Malachi’s silence was as long and deep as the shadows that flowed through the craggy hollows of the canyon. The haunting cry of a desert owl shattered the darkness. As the sound echoed across the gorge, Anna realized how alone she was in this place, how helpless, how utterly dependent on this hostile stranger who was her lawful husband. It was too late, this time, to go flouncing off and climb aboard the next train out of town. She was stranded in this alien landscape with no money, no food and no one else who would help her.

“You’ve asked a fair question. I’ll give you that.” Malachi’s voice rumbled out of the shadows, almost startling her. “But not even you can believe this is going to work. I asked Stuart to find me a woman who could survive and pull her own weight in this wild, hard place—a woman who could run the ferry and drive the mules and—”

“You could have hired a man for that,” Anna said curtly.

“Could I have hired a man to help an eleven-year-old girl grow up to be a good woman?” His voice rasped with emotion reined in too tightly for too long. “Could I have hired a man to dry the tears of an eight-year-old boy who still misses his mother?”

Anna let the damp evening wind cool her face for a moment before she spoke into the awkward silence. “So I’m not a fit candidate for the job. Is that what you’re saying?”

Malachi’s answer was a disdainful snort. “Look at you! Your clothes, your hands, the very size of you! Have you ever milked a cow on a morning so cold that the ice froze in the bucket? Have you ever plucked a duck and singed off the pinfeathers over an open fire?”

“As a matter of fact, I have.” That much, at least, was true. The orphanage had had its own dairy barn and kitchen, and Anna had worked long, drudging hours in both.

“Could you pull a pig out of the quicksand or stick a calf that’s bloated on too much spring clover?”

“Could your wife do those things?”

Malachi’s breath sucked in as if he’d been gut-punched. “This has nothing to do with Elise,” he said in a raw-edged voice. “I was asking about you.”

Anna drew herself up, fueled by a slow-welling anger. “Whatever else you may think of me, Mr. Stone, I haven’t had an easy life. There are a good many things I can do if I have to.”

“Yes, I can well imagine.” His cold voice dripped innuendo. Anna recoiled as if he had struck her. She had surmised what he thought of her, but hearing the words spoken, and with such contempt, stung her like an openhanded slap in the face.

She was still groping for a retort when he cleared his throat and continued his assault on her character. “The message Stuart telegraphed to Kanab mentioned you were widowed in a Comanche attack. Is any part of that story true?”

“No.” Anna was too angry to lie. “I thought the story might win Mr. Wilkinson’s sympathy, and I suppose it did. I’m here.”

His eyes narrowed as if he were looking at her down the barrel of a rifle. “So what’s the real story, Anna, or whatever the blazes your real name is?”

“It’s Anna.” She stared between the dark V of Lucifer’s ears, biting back the urge to spill out the whole truth. How could she tell this man that her face was on Wanted posters in three states, and that Louis Caswell himself had put up one thousand dollars of the reward money? How could she tell him about the lawmen and bounty hunters that dogged her trail, the fear-filled days, the sleepless nights?

“I was desperate,” she said, settling on a half truth. “I was out of money, out of work, had no place to go.”

Malachi sighed, his powerful shoulders shifting in the deep indigo twilight. “I wish I could believe you,” he said. “But your kind isn’t exactly known for veracity.”

“My kind?” Anna glared at him, her stomach churning.

“I think you know what I’m talking about.”

She fought the nauseating rage that rose like bile in her throat. “Would it make any difference if I told you I’m not a—” She hesitated, staring down at her pale hands. No, she could not even bring herself to say the word whore. She had known too many of those poor, lost girls. And she had come all too close to sharing their fate. In those homeless, hungry days, only the gift of her voice had saved her from the hell of those upstairs rooms.

“I’m not what you think I am,” she said, recovering her poise. “But of course, I can’t expect you to believe that, can I?”

His silence answered her question, and for the space of a heartbeat Anna was tempted once more to tell this man the whole true story and beg for his protection. But no, she reminded herself, he would not believe her. And even if he did, he would not like what he heard. The upright Malachi Stone would not take kindly to the fact that the woman on his hands was wanted for murder.

Beyond the winding, narrow thread of the road, the canyon was a darkening wonderland of castle-shaped buttes, spires and buttresses. Colors changed with the changing light, deepening from sienna to violet, from indigo to midnight. The wind moaned as it funneled down the arroyos, a lonely, haunting sound that was broken only by the rush of the river and the steady, plodding hoofbeats of the two mules.

Anna gazed upward at the darkening gap of sky. Her spirits sank even deeper as she saw the flicker of lightning and heard, a heartbeat later, the distant roll of thunder.

Malachi had not spoken. Glancing at his stubborn profile, she knew that this was one contest of wills she could not win. Her breath slid out in a long sigh of defeat. “Very well,” she said. “I understand and accept your position, Mr. Stone. If you’ll consent to give me shelter until your wagon is repaired, I’ll be on my way. I assume your cousin Mr. Wilkinson will take care of the contract cancellation…and the divorce.” How strange to say the word, when there had been no semblance of a marriage between them. They were strangers to one another, and would remain so until the end of their days.

Malachi stirred at last, as if awakening from sleep. He shifted his seat on the mule, cleared his throat and spoke. “Where will you go?”

“California, as soon as I can manage the fare. There are plenty of opportunities there for my kind, as you so generously described me.”

She sensed the tightening of his jaw as the irony sank home. “The buckboard shouldn’t take more than a day or two to fix,” he said wearily. “Then I’ll take you as far as Kanab and put you on the stage for Salt Lake. It’s the least I can do to compensate you for your trouble.”

“That’s very kind. Thank you.” Anna spoke through a haze of disappointment. If only he would offer to pay her way to California. She could get work there, maybe even a singing engagement if she changed her name and dyed her hair. If things went well, she could save her money and go anywhere she wished—Mexico, even Europe. But Salt Lake City was too small, too isolated for safety. Sooner or later, she was bound to be noticed. Her face would be matched with the face on the poster, and then the bounty hunters would come.

The wind had picked up, carrying the first elusive drops of rain. Anna licked the moisture from her dusty lips, savoring the coolness as Malachi pushed ahead of her once more. “Let’s get moving,” he said. “Storm’s going to break soon, and this stretch of the road is prone to slides.”

He kneed his mule to a brisk trot. Not wanting to be left behind, Anna jabbed her heels into Lucifer’s flanks and was rewarded by a sudden burst of speed. She gripped the collar, her teeth clenched against the pain that jarred her pelvis and chafed her thighs with every bounce. Walking would be agony tomorrow—if she survived that long.

Lightning cracked across the sky, casting buttes and mesas into stark blue relief. The earsplitting boom of thunder echoed across the canyon, and in the next instant the rain began to fall. Not a gentle shower but a stinging, lashing torrent. Within seconds it had plastered Anna’s clothes to her body and turned the road into a seething river of mud.

Startled by nature’s sudden savagery, the perverse Lucifer stopped dead in his tracks and began wheezing like a ruptured steam calliope.

“Come on!” Malachi swung back toward Anna and yanked the frightened animal into motion again. “There’s an overhang about a mile down the road!” he shouted above the rain. “We can stop there till the worst of this passes!”

He swung ahead of her to lead the way and was at once swallowed up by darkness and rain. All but blinded by the stinging raindrops, Anna gripped Lucifer’s collar, trusting her life to the erratic beast. The mule knew the way home, she reminded herself. As long as she stayed on its back, she would be safe. All the same, it was hard not to be terrified when water was gushing over the road with a force that threatened to wash away the entire hillside.

“Keep him away from the edge!” She could hear Malachi’s voice shouting from somewhere off to her left. “This way!”

Another lightning bolt split the sky above the gorge. In its ghostly flash she saw him plunging toward her, one arm outstretched in an effort to grasp her mount’s harness. Then thunder broke like the roar of cannon fire, and Lucifer lost his footing. Squalling and kicking, the mule went down and began to slide.

Anna screamed as she felt herself flying through the black rain, felt the twisting jerk as Malachi’s powerful hand caught her wrist, wrenching her upright. She slammed into the side of his mule and hung there, her breath coming in hard little sobs.

“We’ve got to get out of here!” Malachi was hauling her upward. Wild with terror she fought against the pull of his arm.

“Lucifer!” she gasped. “We’ve got to save him!”

“He’ll have to save himself! Get up here, damn you!” He was dragging her alongside the mule, almost twisting her arm out of its socket.

“Please—” she started to argue. Then she heard it—a roar of sound that rose out of the rain like a demon out of the sea, growing, building until it became the scream of the earth itself.

Landslide!

Malachi bent down and caught her waist, sweeping her off her feet as the mule shot forward. Anna used the harness to clamber up behind him, and they rocketed down the road, skidding around curves, dodging boulders and exploding through mud pits.

Too terrified to think, Anna pressed against Malachi’s back, her arms encircling his lean, muscular waist, her knees spoon-cupped against the backs of his thighs. From behind them she could hear the rush of water and the rumble of falling earth. She could hear it gaining on them, moving closer with every breath, every heartbeat.

Malachi’s body strained forward against her clasping hands. His muscles bunched and lengthened through the rain-soaked shirt as he lashed the mule’s flanks with a loose harness buckle. Startled by a crashing boulder, the mule skidded sideways, giving Anna a fleeting glimpse of a whitish rock outcrop that loomed perhaps a quarter mile down the road. It had to be the overhang Malachi had mentioned earlier. They had seconds to reach it.

Malachi cursed as the mule wheeled in sudden panic and stopped still, braying and rolling its eyes. “Give me your petticoat!” he shouted. “We’ve got to blindfold him or he won’t move!”

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.

The floor of the canyon had leveled out now, and the sound of the river was very close. Eight-foot clumps of spring willow and feathery tamarisk lined the road, obscuring whatever lay ahead. Minutes crawled by, each one an eternity, before Anna caught the flare of lamplight through the brush. An instant later her view opened wide, revealing a log fence with a lantern hung from a nail on one post. Beyond the fence, the light revealed shadowed glimpses of a barn, a corral, an open ramada and a rambling adobe house with a roof of Mexican tile.

As the mules clattered through the gate, the door of the house burst open, casting a long rectangle of light on the sandy ground. Silhouetted by that same light, two figures, one small and wiry, the other taller, willow-slim, stood framed by the doorway.

As they started forward, the smaller one bounding toward the gate like a terrier, the taller one—the girl—hesitant, hanging back, Anna’s heart shrank in her chest. She had done her best to put this first confrontation out of her thoughts. But that was no longer possible. Ready or not, she was about to meet Malachi’s children.

Chapter Four

Anna saw that the girl was holding a lantern. She raised it high as her father pulled Beelzebub to a halt, but she made no move to come closer. As Malachi had mentioned, she was tall, nearly as tall as Anna herself. But she was as thin as a willow wand, her eleven-year-old figure just short of budding into womanhood. Her hair was braided into frizzy black pigtails, and the pale flannel nightgown she wore barely reached her knees.

“Papa?” The uncertain voice was thin and musical. “Papa, is that you?”

Anna heard Malachi’s low breath of relief as his body slackened. Only then did she realize how worried he had been about leaving his children alone—and how important it had been to find them a mother.

As the girl hesitated, lantern raised high, a smaller form shot past her like a Pawnee arrow. “Pa!” Only Malachi’s carefully extended boot kept the boy from running headlong into the mule’s legs. “Is she here? Did you bring her?”

Anna’s spirit shrank from the eagerness in his young voice. She tried to avoid looking directly down at the boy, who appeared to be wearing nothing but one of his father’s old work shirts cut off at the sleeves. The long tails hung nearly to his small bare ankles.

“I brought her.” Malachi’s reply was flat and weary as he swung a leg forward over the mule’s neck and eased himself down the animal’s shoulder. Anna was left sitting alone on Beelzebub’s back with her skirts hiked above her knees. “Josh,” Malachi said without looking up at her, “this is Anna.”

The round, upturned eyes were dark brown and as friendly as a puppy’s. “Pleased to meet you, ma’am,” Josh piped, ignoring Anna’s bedraggled hair and mud-soaked clothes. “Can I call you Ma yet?”

Anna’s mouth had gone chalky. She clung to the mule’s rain-slicked back, wishing she could melt into the darkness and disappear. She knew the boy was waiting for an answer, but for the life of her she could not speak the hurtful words.

In the awkward silence, the boy turned to his father. “Pa, can I call her—”

“Ma’am will do,” Malachi said gruffly. “She doesn’t plan on sticking around long enough to warrant being called Ma.” He turned and reached up to help Anna down from the mule. The hands he offered her were cool and rigid. His eyes were like silver flints in the lamplit darkness.

The boy edged backward as Anna slid wearily to the ground. She gazed straight ahead, trying not to look down at the small, dejected face, the drooping shoulders. Guilt gnawed at her. She willed herself to ignore it. The boy’s disappointment was Malachi’s problem, not hers. All she wanted right now was a hot tub, some dry clothes and a good night’s sleep.

Malachi’s daughter had remained on the stoop, her shy gaze darting up, down, anywhere but directly at Anna. Only now, as she caught sight of Lucifer’s gashed flank, did she react. With a little cry she ran across the yard to the injured mule. She pressed close to the big, muddy animal, her long, white fingers probing the gashed flank. “What happened to him, Papa?” she demanded. “Is he badly hurt? Wait—I’ll get some salve.”

“I’ll see to the mules,” Malachi said curtly. “You show Anna inside, Carrie. Get her something to eat and show her to the privy if she needs it. Is her room ready?”

“Yes, Papa.” Carrie turned reluctantly from the mule and strode past Anna, head high, in the direction of the house. Anna followed the flash of white nightgown across the yard, her own legs raw and rubbery from the long ride. Clearly the girl did not want her here. But hostility was easier to handle than Josh’s puppyish need for affection, Anna reminded herself. She would not be here long. The less she entangled herself with Malachi’s children, the better for all concerned.

Dragging her tired feet, she crossed the low porch and stumbled over the threshold. One muddy hand groped the door frame as she staggered into the house, eyes blinking in the sudden brightness of a brass lantern that hung from the low ceiling. The house opened into a long common room, furnished with a heavy pine table in its center. One end was occupied by a cluttered kitchen, the other by a massive stone fireplace, three well-worn armchairs, a tall set of shelves overflowing with books, and the piano Malachi had mentioned on the way down the trail. Three doorways opened along the far wall leading, Anna presumed, to the bedrooms. There would be one for Carrie, one for Joshua, and one—

Anna’s throat closed in an audible hiccup as the possibilities struck her. But no, the contract had specified that she would not be expected to share Malachi’s bed. Her sudden attack of stomach flutters was quite unwarranted.

“Are you hungry? There’s a pot of beans on the stove.” Carrie’s voice was strained, her posture tense. The full light showed magnolia skin and huge dark eyes that dominated her heart-shaped face. The girl would be a beauty one day, Anna mused, especially if she could outgrow the shyness that caused her to shrink into herself like a cornered animal.

“I’m too tired to be hungry,” Anna replied. “But some hot coffee might taste good.”

“I can make some.” Carrie turned hastily away and began rattling pans and utensils, making far more noise than necessary. Anna was on the verge of telling her not to bother with the coffee, but she held her tongue. The girl had lost her mother less than a year ago. It stood to reason that she would not take kindly to another woman in the house.

“You don’t have to worry about my taking your mother’s place, Carrie,” Anna said, warmed by impulse. “Your father and I have already agreed that this arrangement isn’t going to work. I’ll be leaving as soon as the road is cleared.”

Carrie did not answer. Her elbows jerked as she pumped water into an enameled coffeepot. Her pretty mouth was set in a grim scowl that made her look startlingly like Malachi. Brooding, Anna surmised, seemed to run in the Stone family.

“Your father said something about a privy.” Anna did not really need one right now, but any excuse was better than standing here in the kitchen making polite, one-sided conversation with this sour child.

“Out the door and to your left. You won’t need a light. Just follow the path around the back of the shed.”

“Thank you.” Anna made a hasty exit, closing the screen door behind her. The yard lay muddy and trampled, silent beneath the moon, with no sign of Malachi, the boy or the mules. Welcoming the nighttime solitude she stepped off the porch and veered to the left.

Her steps slowed as she found the path and followed it through a stand of willows. Cricket songs filled the warm darkness. Anna could hear the rush of the river and smell the sweetness of rain-soaked earth. Above her, on all sides, the walls of the canyon rose like a towering fortress. Anna’s breath eased out in a long, ragged sigh. Her arms dropped to her sides, tension flowing out of her fingers. Here, for the first time in months she felt safe.

How long would it take Malachi to clear the wagon road? she wondered. How long before the chase began again, the haunted nights spent listening for the creak of a floorboard, the terror every time she walked down a public street, heart pounding with the fear that someone would recognize her? The sketch on the Wanted poster was taken from her performance picture—Anna DeCarlo in low-cut satin, her hair piled high on her head, her face artfully painted, her rhinestone earbobs sparkling with light. Her present, subdued appearance had fooled Stuart Wilkinson. But it would not fool a seasoned bounty hunter. One chance encounter, one careless slip, and she would be hauled back to St. Joseph in irons to face Louis Caswell’s own brand of justice—and Anna’s instincts told her she would never live to tell her story in a court of law.

She had spent long hours speculating why Harry had been murdered. Caswell had all the earmarks of a lawman in the protection business. Had Harry threatened to expose him with evidence? Was that why the safe had been rifled? Had Caswell found what he was looking for?

Anna ran a hand through the muddy tangle of her hair, pushing it back from her face. She was tired of questions, long since sick of fear and uncertainty. But even here, in this deep, isolated canyon, there could be no refuge. Her time here would be nothing more than an all too brief respite from terror.

The path meandered through the willows, then curved back behind the barn. Lamplight danced and flickered through the open chinks between the boards. Anna heard murmur of voices and the low, wheezing snort of a mule. This, she swiftly realized, was where Malachi had taken Lucifer to dress his wounded side.

“Well, I don’t care what Carrie thinks. I say she’s pretty and I like her.” Joshua’s voice piped through the wall with bell-like clarity. “Why do you want her to leave, Pa?”

“I didn’t say I wanted her to leave.” Malachi’s shadow moved, blocking the light as he worked. “I said we talked it over and came to an agreement. Anna’s not the kind of woman who’d be happy in a place like this.”

“How did you know? Did she tell you?”

“She didn’t have to tell me.” Malachi muttered a curse as some unseen object clattered to the floor. “Blast it, Josh, she’s not what I expected, let alone what I wanted for you and Carrie. And I’d wager I’m not what she wanted, either. The only thing I can do now is clear the road, drive her back to Kanab and put her on the stage.”

The silence that followed Malachi’s outburst was broken only by the low, wet breathing of the mule. Anna stood frozen to the spot, knowing she should leave at once, but strangely unable to move.

“Well, why don’t you sleep with her for a while before you decide?” Josh’s voice cut through the stillness like the sound of a tin whistle.

Malachi first response was a half-strangled groan. Then, finding his voice, he demanded, “Who the devil put that idea into your head?”

“Eddie Johnson’s pa. When he was here this spring I heard him tell you that the only way to really get to know a woman was to sleep with her.”

“You’ve got big ears,” Malachi growled, “almost as big as Sam Johnson’s mouth.”

“But what about it?” Josh persisted with maddening innocence. “You slept with Ma. And Anna’s your wife now. What’s your bedroll doing laid out here in the tack room?”

Was Malachi grinding his teeth or had Anna only imagined hearing the sound? She bit her cheeks to hold back her amusement as she imagined Josh’s earnest eyes and Malachi’s reddening face.

“Pa?”

She heard the exasperated hiss of Malachi’s breath and waited tensely for the explosion that was bound to follow. Instead, Malachi’s shadow moved lower against the light, as if he had dropped to his son’s eye level. When he spoke his voice was so low that she had to press close against the wall to hear him.

“Son, it isn’t that simple,” he said, stumbling over the words. “When a man and woman share the same bed it’s supposed to mean something.”

“Like what?”

“Like—” Malachi cleared his throat. “It’s like a promise, that they’ll always love each other and stay together. It means they want to be a family—”

“I slept with Cousin Katie when I was six and we went to her house,” Josh interjected. “I didn’t know it meant any of them things, or I’d have climbed out and slept on the floor.”

“Those things.” Malachi pounced on the grammar mistake like a drowning man clutching a life preserver. “It’s those things, not them things.”

“Those things,” Josh corrected himself. “But anyway, I don’t see what all the fuss is about sleeping with somebody.”

“You will when you’re older.” Malachi’s voice rasped with unease. “Anna and I aren’t much more than strangers. Even if she did plan to stay, I wouldn’t be sleeping with her anytime soon. I’d give her some time to get used to me.”

“Oh.” Josh sounded crestfallen. “But what you say can’t be true all the time. Eddie Johnson says there are ladies in Kanab who’ll sleep with anybody who pays them enough money. You don’t even have to—”

“That’s enough!” Malachi cut in irritably. “Hand me that big tin of salve, and stop asking so many questions.”

“But, Pa, how will I ever—”

“I said that’s enough. Go and see if Carrie needs any help with supper. Go on.”

Anna heard the boy moving away. Then he seemed to hesitate. “I didn’t mean any harm by it, Pa, saying you ought to sleep with her.”

“I know you didn’t son. Run along, now.” Tenderness muted Malachi’s voice. Anna pushed herself reluctantly away from the wall. She’d done enough eavesdropping for one night. It was time she found her way back inside before she stumbled into quicksand, got bitten by a snake or carried off by marauding bandits. Some women took wild, dangerous places in stride. Unfortunately, she was not one of them.

Malachi’s tender, stumbling words echoed in her memory as she picked her way through the mud. Would she ever meet a man to whom lovemaking was a promise, a vow to stay together forever and build a family? Not likely, Anna reminded herself. Such blessings came to women who deserved them, not women who’d made the kinds of mistakes she’d made—and certainly not women who were wanted for murder.

Had she taken a wrong turn? Anna gasped in sudden surprise as she stumbled into a muddy hole and felt water seeping into her fragile kidskin boots. The swollen river had spread into the willows here, rousing myriads of small creatures that squeaked and splashed in the darkness. To her left, the massive trunk of a dead tree, its roots likely drowned in some long-ago flood, rose against the sky like a gnarled and twisted hand. She would have remembered such a tree if she’d come this way before. Clearly, she had stumbled onto the wrong path.

As she turned to go back the other way, she heard, on the wind, the now familiar call of a coyote. Faint though it was, the sheer lonesomeness of it prickled the skin on the back of her neck. It was only an animal sound, she knew, but that long, haunting wail seemed to contain all the sorrows of the world. It seemed to rise from the very depths of her own battered, frightened heart.

She listened, her throat tightening as the sound faded away. Then, lifting the sodden remnant of her skirt, she began trudging back along the path. The smell of coffee drifted to her nostrils on the night wind. Giddy with relief, Anna sucked the rich aroma into her senses. Yes, this was the way back. Minutes from now she would be sitting in the warm, cluttered kitchen, holding a hot mug and laughing at her own foolishness.

And yes, by heaven, she would survive this experience. As soon as the road was open she would be gone. She would put this place and this great, brooding hulk of a man behind her and she would never look back. California lay ahead of her with its glittering promise of fame, fortune and freedom. All that and more—maybe even happiness.

She squared her shoulders and began to sing.

“Love, oh, love, oh careless love. Love, oh—”

The song died in her throat as a shaggy, wolf-like form parted the willows ahead of her and glided into the open.

What was it?

Panic rose in Anna’s throat as the creature lowered its head and padded toward her, snarling as it came. She forced her leaden limbs to move, to turn her body and propel it back along the path to her only known chance of safety—the tree.

She ran, gasping with terror and effort, her boots splashing water, her arms stretching, her muscles tensing for one last, desperate leap.

As Joshua’s footsteps faded into the night, Malachi sagged against the workbench. His stomach felt knotted and his knees were as wobbly as a newborn calf’s. The conversation with his son had undone him in a way that he could never have imagined. What business did Sam Johnson and his tobacco-chewing teenage son have, putting such ideas into the head of an innocent boy like Joshua? Josh was only eight, barely out of diapers, or so it seemed. What had happened to the years? Where had they gone?

With an impatient sigh, he jammed the cap onto the tin of Hoskins’ Salve and began gathering up the bloodstained rags he’d used to clean Lucifer’s wound. The mule’s wet coat steamed in the darkness, filling the barn with the odors of blood and animal heat. A bead of sweat broke and trickled down the hollow of Malachi’s neck. He could smell his own sweat, rank beneath his filthy clothes.

Hellfire, had he really meant what he’d told Josh about sleeping with a woman? Or had his words been nothing but self-righteous, hypocritical drivel? Back there on the trail, when he’d held Anna in his arms and felt his flesh rise and harden against her, he’d wanted nothing more than to take her then and there, to fling her on her back, part her thighs and bury himself to the hilt in the moist satin depths of her. Even now, as he thought of her, Malachi felt his body respond, making lies of all his high-sounding words. Even now he wanted her—wanted those slim, pale legs wrapping around his hips while he drowned himself in her sweet hot honey with no thought of promises, tomorrows or honorable intentions.

He would not do it, of course. He was seeking a mother for his children, not a fast, easy roll in the hay. And any entanglement with Anna, or whatever her real name was, would be a sure recipe for regret. The woman was nothing but a tawny-haired, curvaceous bundle of trouble. For his children’s sake and his own, the sooner he sent her packing, the better.

The mule snorted and rubbed its head against a timber, sending down a shower of loose bark. Malachi blew out the lantern and let the animal into the corral with the other stock. Only as he was turning back toward the house did he realize that the dog, who usually hung close at his heels, was nowhere in sight.

“Doubtful?” He whistled softly, the sound blending with the shrill night music of frogs and crickets. “Doubtful? Here, boy!”

There was no answering yelp from the big wolf-shepherd cross he’d bought as a half-starved pup from band of wandering Paiutes. Maybe Doubtful had taken off after a gray fox or a rabbit. Or maybe he’d simply followed Josh to the house and was waiting on the porch. Doubtful was a one-man dog, but he tolerated the children and took it as his duty to protect them. Malachi encouraged that protectiveness, knowing it might well save their lives one day.

“Doubtful?” He whistled again, his instincts stirring cautiously. If the dog had been close by, he would be here by now. Something had drawn him away.

Malachi took a moment to fetch the loaded Winchester rifle from the shed. Then, with the weapon cocked and ready, he slipped through the willows and onto the path that meandered down toward the flooded river.

Anna was still not sure how she’d managed to clamber up the dead tree. She was even less sure how long the dry limb from which she hung, gripping with both arms and legs, would hold her before it snapped under her weight, sending her plummeting down into the jaws of the beast that paced the ground below. As long as she kept still, the wolfish animal remained quiet and calm. But every time she stirred in an effort to ease the strain on her limbs, the awful creature would lunge upward, snarling and snapping, its fangs tearing at the hem of her skirt. She knew she should scream for help, but her throat was so constricted with fear that she could manage little more than a whimper. Even if she were able to shout, Anna realized, the sound of her voice would likely be lost amid the rush and tumble of the Colorado.

The creature glared up at her, its pale eyes reflecting miniature moons in the darkness. Was it a wolf, a very large coyote or some hellish denizen of the canyon, unknown to the outside world? Anna had no wish to find out. She only knew that her hands were bleeding and her arms were getting weaker by the minute. It would only be a matter of time before she lost her grip and fell.

“Doubtful!” Malachi’s low voice came from somewhere beyond the willows, barely rising above the sound of the river. Anna’s pulse leaped. Clutching the limb, she filled her lungs with air and poured her remaining strength into one desperate cry.

“Malachi!”

She could hear his boots splattering water as he ran toward her. For an instant she glimpsed the flash of moonlight on metal. Relief gushed through her body, leaving her weak. Malachi was coming. He had a gun. He would shoot the monster and she would be safe.

The willows rustled as Malachi burst into sight, then stopped in his tracks. The next sound Anna heard was the deep rumble of his laughter.

“Doubtful, you old rascal, what have you treed here? Is it a fox, or maybe a wildcat?”

The creature that had been threatening Anna’s life turned and bounded toward him, tail wagging. Anna was so astounded she almost let go of the limb. The slavering beast was a dog—a blasted pet!

Malachi walked to the foot of the tree and stood scowling up at her. “It’s a mite dark for tree climbing, wouldn’t you say?”

“This isn’t funny!” Anna gripped the rough bark, her nails jagged and broken, her palms bleeding. “Your shaggy friend there tried to attack me!”

“Doubtful’s just doing his job. He’d have done the same to any stranger he caught sneaking around in the dark. You should’ve stayed close to the house. What were you doing out here, anyway?”

“That,” Anna snapped, “is no question to ask a lady! But then, you’ve never thought of me as a lady, have you?”

Malachi ignored her question. He stood scratching the wretched dog’s ears, as if to show her how gentle the beast really was—but only with people worthy of trust. “If you’re talking about the privy, that path branches off twenty yards back,” he said. “This is the path to the bathing place.”

“The bathing place?” Anna blinked in disbelief, almost losing her hold. “You’re saying you don’t even have a bathtub in this miserable place?”

“We’ve got the biggest tub in these parts—the Colorado River. But it’ll be no good for bathing till the flood goes down. Too muddy. If you want to wash, you’ll have to do it at the pump.” He gazed thoughtfully up at her, his fingers working the thick fur at the crest of the dog’s neck. “So, do you plan on spending the night in that tree? I’d be happy to fetch you a quilt.”

Anna clenched her teeth, biting back a hot retort. She was at his mercy. He knew it, and he was toying with her, making a game of her humiliation. As soon as she got her feet on the ground Malachi Stone would pay. He would pay for every taunting, sarcastic word!

“Well?” he asked, waiting.

“I can’t get down,” she muttered.

“What’s that? I couldn’t quite make it out.”

“Damn it, look at me!” Anna exploded despite her resolve to hold her tongue. “I’m hanging from this branch like a blasted possum, and there’s nothing else for me to grab! If I try to climb down, I’ll fall!”

“Then fall, Anna.” Malachi spoke so softly that she could barely hear him above the sound of the river. Out of the corner of her eye she saw that he had lowered the rifle to the ground and was holding out his arms beneath her. “Let go,” he said. “I’ll catch you.”

Anna clung stubbornly to the branch, her pain-numbed fingers weakening by the second. “No,” she said, grinding out the words. “You’re still teasing me! You’ll let me fall. I’ll land in the mud, and even if I don’t break my neck, I’ll be at the mercy of that snarling monster you call Doubtful!”

Malachi exhaled wearily. “You,” he said, “are the most mule-headed woman I ever met in my life! Just let go. Do it now.”

Anna willed herself to disobey him, but her fingers had grown so slippery and sore that they could no longer hold her weight beneath the branch. Little by little she felt her grip weakening. At last, with a furious little cry, she lost her hold altogether. The moon spun in her head as she plummeted down, down into the uncertain darkness below.

She felt the shock as he caught her, and for a moment she could only lie still, gasping for breath. His chest was as hard as an anvil, and the musky, sensual man scent of his body made her head swim. True to his word, Malachi had not let her fall. Here in his arms she was as safe as she had ever been in her rough, tumultuous life.

So why did she suddenly feel so vulnerable? Why was she shaking like a newborn calf, her eyes blinking back hysterical tears?

She reminded herself how he had taunted her while she clung to the tree, how she had vowed to make him pay for everything he said. Where was her anger now? Why wasn’t she clawing the wretched man’s eyes out?

Her hand lay lightly on his chest. Beneath her palm Anna could feel the steady drumming of his heart like the cadence of an army marching to battle. Her own pulse leaped and skittered erratically. She felt like a child in his arms, he was so large, so powerful.

“Are you all right?” he murmured thickly.

“I—think so.” She groped for the simplest words, struggling to reconnect the link between her mind and her tongue. “Just shaken, I think.”

“I can put you down.”

“Yes,” Anna said. “Yes, I know.”

The coyote’s mournful call rose again from a distant mesa, the sound echoing down the moonlit hollow of the canyon. Anna fought its melancholy spell, fought its power to tug at her heart. She needed no one, she reminded herself, least of all this man who held her as if she’d been dipped in snake venom. He had insulted her, humiliated her, dragged her through rain, mud and danger to a place fit for nothing but lizards, coyotes and vultures. All of this for a oneway ticket back to Salt Lake City.

Yes, she would hurt him. She would make Malachi Stone curse the day of his birth. And she would start now, by doing the very thing he feared most.

Driven by cold rage—and a simmering desire that even she could not deny—Anna slid her hand up Malachi’s chest to his shoulder, then, with a quick motion, hooked the back of his neck and jerked his head down toward her face. Before he could react, her moist, yielding lips had captured his mouth in a kiss calculated to melt granite.

She felt the resistance in him, the rigid lips, the straining muscles. Then, as she’d hoped, need overcame pride. With a low moan he crushed her in his arms. His hot, hungry mouth opened to hers, demanding, devouring, awakening responses that surged through her body like rivers of heat. Fighting for self-control, Anna willed the tip of her tongue to invade his mouth in tiny, darting licks, like a bee seeking moisture. Once again he moaned. His arms tightened around her, molding her to his chest as he claimed that tongue, drawing it deeper, meeting its thrust with his own.

Anna felt the seething heat in her body, and she realized, with a shock of dismay, that she was no longer the one in charge. Malachi was master now, and, heaven save her, she needed this man. He was her lawful husband, and her whole being ached for what he alone could give her.

Her hands raked his hair, pulling him deeper, demanding more. His breath rasped as his hand skimmed her thigh. Then, as if sensing he had gone too far, he stiffened against her. She felt his resistance return, felt the pride and self-righteousness that would not let him cross the line he had drawn between them. She felt his loathing as, with a single rough gesture, he tore her away from him and set her firmly on the ground.

Anna swayed dizzily, the darkness surrounding her like a clammy blanket. Frog and cricket calls shrilled in her head, an irritating blur of sound. She looked up to find Malachi glaring down at her, his eyes as hard as flints.

“How many men have you kissed like that, Anna?” he said in a flat, cold voice. “And how much did they pay you for more?”

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