Reaching out, she tucked her fingers into the callused roughness of Brad’s palm. Though he didn’t look down, she felt his twitch of surprise. She couldn’t blame him. She didn’t exactly have a reputation for doing the right thing, but then again, she owed him. Rather than reprimanding her for her disrespect toward the judge, he’d stood up for her, defending her when she wasn’t even sure her own mother would have. She owed him better than betrayal. Heart in her throat, nerves jangling like a dinner bell, she made a decision. “Finish the ceremony.”
Behind her, her mother broke into sobs. Beside her, Brad’s fingers curled around hers. And squeezed.
“SO HOW DOES it feel to be a married man?”
Brad flicked his smoke into the dirt and glared at Cougar and Clint as they joined him outside the livery, which had been cleaned and decorated for the event. Evie’s family had spared no expense celebrating Evie’s return to respectability.
“Like the posse just caught up with me.”
Strains of fiddle music drifted on the warm June air.
“Hell, Brad,” Cougar grunted, “it’s not that bad a match. The woman might be a little wild, but you’re not exactly tame.”
“Can’t get much tamer than a preacher.” He offered Cougar a smoke. The big man looked at it longingly, but shook his head.
“Mara still snapping at your heels about your habit?”
“Hell, she doesn’t have to hound him,” Clint interrupted, leaning back against the rail. “One dismayed look and the man is fair tossing his smokes away.”
Cougar smiled. “I like a warm bed.”
“Keep liking it to that extent and the woman will be pregnant for sure,” Brad slung back.
Cougar paled. “Hell no.”
“You can’t stop nature, Cougar.”
If looks could kill, Brad would be dead. “Mara’s too small to bear children.”
“You don’t know that.”
“Even Doc is worried.”
“She’s determined to be a mother,” Asa interjected.
“There are plenty of kids who need homes.”
“But she wants yours,” Clint pointed out.
“Lord knows why,” Cougar groused. “They’ll all come out heathens, with my blood.”
“Or hellions, with Mara’s blood.”
Cougar snapped around. “You insulting my wife, Asa?”
“Nope. Just pointing out that a woman with spirit isn’t going to give you mild-natured children.”
“There’s nothing sweeter than Mara.”
“I’ll take your word for it.”
A body could take Cougar’s word for anything. The man never lied and would take a promise to the grave. If they weren’t on opposite sides of the law, Brad would call him friend, but they were, and at some point, that code of honor the man held so dear was going to send his honor to war against his promise. Brad’s skin prickled with a sense of impending doom and his nerves tightened.
He shot a quick glare heavenward.
How long do you intend to play this game out?
There was no answer. There never was, but Brad didn’t need one to know God wasn’t done with him yet. The sense of restlessness grew. He’d tossed the cigarette too soon; now he had nothing to do with the surge of energy that always accompanied contemplation of how this was all going to end. Truth was, he should have left town months ago. He looked at both McKinnelys. “Tell me something.”
“What?”
“Why didn’t either of you put an end to this before it went this far?”
Clint shrugged. “We talked about it.”
“And?”
Cougar tipped his hat back. “We decided everyone deserves a second chance.”
Shit. “Hell of a time to get generous.”
Clint hitched his hip up on the porch rail. “We have our moments.”
“So you just decided to sacrifice Evie to my second chance?”
“She did that herself.”
“And her second chance will come when?”
“If you hurt her and I have to put your ass in the ground,” Clint retorted.
That at least was a normal McKinnely response.
“Now I have to ask something,” Cougar said, folding his arms across his powerful chest.
Brad had a feeling he knew what was coming. “What?”
“What on earth made you pose for her?”
“I didn’t.”
“Not many men have a thunderbolt carved on their thigh.”
“I know.” He really wished he hadn’t thrown his smoke away. He debated taking out another, but tobacco was dear on a minister’s pay. And as generous as the townsfolk were, they were pretty steadfast in the fact that he should not have vices, and tobacco was considered one. Which made the smokes he had precious. Too precious to waste on a moment of nerves.
Looking through the window into the livery, he could see Millicent and Dorothy clearly, but the only part of Evie he could see was the edge of her dark blue dress. An internal hunger surged the way it did whenever he got Evie within his sight. He always seemed to want more when it came to her, which made her a very dangerous woman. To whom he was now married.
Hell.
Millicent stepped aside, her head tipping back as she laughed. He had a clear view of his wife. Evie’s answering smile was full-blown, unfettered, free of artifice and restraint. Brad remembered how she’d snapped at that sanctimonious judge. Everything about Evie was natural and passionate. Including that temper. Not that Evie ever flaunted herself beyond the voicing of the more outrageous of her beliefs when the restrictions of society hobbled her, but passion was there in her walk, the way she approached new things, new situations. Brad had always thought Evie would make some man a hell of a wife. And now she was his, through trickery and deceit. He still didn’t know how he felt about that, what he was going to do about it. “But I didn’t pose for Evie.”
“So you think the woman went around spying on you when you were naked?” Clint asked.
“That’s a bit far-fetched,” Asa cut in. “Evie’s got a wild side for sure, but she’s not sneaky.”
Brad didn’t like Asa noticing Evie’s wild side any more than he liked him calling her Evie. “May I remind you, that’s my wife you’re talking about?”
Asa’s response was a twitch of his lips and a raise of his brows. “Going to be a possessive son of a bitch?”
Yes, he was. Always had been. A man developed the tendency when he grew up with everything he valued being regularly and deliberately taken away. “I might be.”
“Does Evie know that?” Clint asked, the same amusement on his face that was on Asa’s.
“Doubt it.” Cougar poured the punch in his cup over the side of the rail. “Seeing as I’ve heard Evie preach more than once about women not being chattel subject to a man’s rule.”
“Then she’s going to have to change her mind.” Because not only was he a possessive son of a bitch, he was a bossy one, too. At least when it came to the woman in his bed, and Evie was definitely going to be in his bed. If he was giving up his freedom, she was going to have to give up a bit of hers. His cock, semihard since she’d said “
I do
,” completed the journey to hard.
He’d always considered Evie to be the town’s treasure. Too independent for propriety, but not a wild child. More of a passionate soul looking for an outlet. He ran his gaze over her slender hips and pert breasts, the soft pink of her inviting mouth. His fingers closed on the images. He could definitely give her that.
Cougar reached up above the edge of the roof to the lip of the overhang. There was the sound of glass against wood and then he pulled out a bottle of whiskey. The contents caught the light, glowing amber with temptation. “You got a cup stashed out here somewhere, Swanson?”
Brad eyed the full bottle. “Doc know you’ve raided his stash of sipping whiskey?”
“Who do you think put the bottle up there?” Doc asked, coming through the open door with four of Dorothy’s precious crystal punch glasses dangling from his fingers by their fragile handles.
“You make a habit of storing whiskey around and about?” Brad asked.
If Doc did, it would be worth knowing. No doubt, as a newly married man, he would benefit from running across a few of them.
Doc held out the glasses. “Nah, just on stressful occasions.”
Brad took one. “I think this qualifies.”
“You’d be hard put to find someone to argue with that,” Asa said, taking a glass.
“You still haven’t answered the question of how you think Evie got a glimpse of you naked.”
“Have you seen the portrait?”
“Nope. But I’ve heard it’s very detailed.”
“A shame we never got a look at it.”
Detailed didn’t even begin to cover it. Unfortunately, if anybody ever got a peek at those details, Brad would never hear the end of it for however long it took to build the gallows from which to hang his sorry ass.
Cougar held up the bottle. Brad held out his glass. “And you’re not ever going to.”
“That’s a damn miserly attitude,” Cougar pointed out.
“Especially for somebody who had their picture painted by Evie Washington. Subject matter aside, I hear she’s very good,” Doc offered.
And that was the problem. She was too good. She just didn’t know squat about a man’s anatomy. Not only did the image show too much, it made him look like a freak. “That’s just my mean nature coming out.”
“You’re a lot of things, Swanson, some that are at odds with each other, but mean without provocation isn’t one of them,” Clint stated quietly.
The compliment jerked his chin up.
Clint shrugged. “Don’t look so surprised. You think we’d let you marry Evie if we had any doubts about your true character? You took your preacher vows, and no one makes promises like that to God without good backing them.”
Brad was glad they were so confident. Truth was, he hadn’t fought the marriage hard because he thought there was no way the McKinnelys—the only people who knew who he really was—would spill his secret rather than let the wedding proceed.
“That was also under duress.” The beating his father had delivered him when he was sixteen had about killed him. And when the violence was done, Brad had promised to follow in his father’s footsteps. Ten minutes later he had been ordained.
Cougar snorted. “Rev, the one thing everyone knows is your promises are gold.”
“Not that one.”
“That explains why you’re not stinking rich from all your thieving,” Doc interjected.
It was an uncomfortable feeling finding out his secrets weren’t so secret. “Gold’s worth more spent.”
“How so?”
“People with a bit in their pocket tend to keep their mouths shut,” Brad said.
“You didn’t need to get shot stepping between that whore and her customer either,” Asa drawled.
Hell, if he stood there long enough they’d make him out to be a saint. “I’d paid for her time first.”
At least that’s what he told everyone. Truth was, he lost perspective when a man beat up a woman. It was a weakness he couldn’t afford, but one he couldn’t seem to shake.
Clint sputtered on his whiskey. Asa slapped him on the back and muttered, “As if any woman ever charged Shadow Svensen.”
Brad glanced around quickly. They seemed to be alone. “Shadow Svensen is dead.” Transformed into the Reverend Swanson, but as disguises went, it wasn’t that solid.
Asa shook his head. “Sorry, but it’s still true.”
“So because you think you know me you decided to play God with Evie’s future?”
Asa took a philosophical sip. “The girl needed settling. She’s had a few near misses. That can’t be allowed to continue.”
Brad was almost afraid to ask. “What kind of near misses?”
“Last month she decided to liberate the soiled doves over at the Pleasure Emporium. Big Luke took exception to her actions.” Cougar took a drink of his whiskey. “If Elijah hadn’t been hanging around, she would have been joining the doves working that night.”
Damn! Brad knew Evie had been getting more reckless, but he hadn’t known she’d gone that far. “Elijah’s back in town?”
“For the moment.”
“How’s he look?”
“Rattlesnake mean.”
That was hard to believe. Elijah had left the outlaw life for little Amy. Settled down to be a farmer. Swore he was never going back. And from the first time Brad had seen him with his wife, he’d believed him. Twenty years of hard living had just seemed to dissolve from his face. He’d been happy. If he’d gone back to outlawing after his wife and daughter’s death from fever, it was the only time in his life Elijah had gone back on his word. And that was serious business.
“Anything I should know about?”
The other men stilled. Asa put their worry into words. “Any particular reason you ask?”
He felt the pull, the urge to feed the assumptions they were throwing at him. He took a drink of his whiskey. It was smooth and smoky, with a bite. A taste of the good life he’d never thought was for him. “Nope. Not a one.”
“This is your chance, Swanson. Don’t mess it up.”
“Why? Because you’ll be ready to take me apart if I do?”
Cougar smiled. It didn’t lighten his expression. “Something like that.”
Brad tossed back his whiskey. “Why wait?”
Cougar pointed to the window where the wedding guests were mingling. “Because your pretty bride might object to her husband coming to her bed too busted up to perform.”
Brad followed the gesture, his gaze going instinctively to Evie. She was talking to old Ruth. The woman was deaf, with a tendency to long-winded tales, mostly about her deceased husband. He knew Evie was probably bored, but her smile didn’t slip and her gaze didn’t wander. It was one of the things he liked best about her, her ability to make the person she was talking to feel like they had her full attention. It spoke of a generosity of spirit that appealed to him. With her position in town society, her looks, her wit, she could easily be cruel, but she wasn’t. At least, not to those who could be hurt. When it came to him, it was a whole different story. On him, she was more than willing to wield the sharp edge of her temper.