Bride On The Run (Historical Romance) Read Free Page B

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 toher. 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
    T he 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 longearedmount 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