The Redhead and the Preacher: A Loveswept Historical Romance (39 page)

“That isn’t the same. You must make your pledge. I want to hear the words.”

She felt him tremble as he looked into her eyes and made himself speak, slowly, gently, softly. “Because you have filled the dark places in my heart with light, I, John Brandon Lee, take thee, McKenzie Kathryn Calhoun, to be my wife. I will love and protect you through all our life.”

“Are you sure, Bran? I still don’t know how to cook and I’ll never be a proper lady. I’m not very good at womanly things.”

His mouth curled into a wicked smile. “Macky, I wouldn’t have you any other way. Propriety, goodness, and mercy would be very boring. I love you, Macky. I don’t want you ever to change.”

Macky nodded seriously, then gave him an impish smile. “Then you, sir, may make love to your wife.”

Bran couldn’t refuse. He knew that their life wouldn’t always be like this, carefree and happy.

But this afternoon, in the sun, in the joy of their love, he
accepted what he was being given and he knew that he must give in return.

Shyly, almost reverently, he kissed her. Until this moment he’d consciously tried to remove all gentleness from his life. But this afternoon he reached back in time, into the darkness he’d never tried to penetrate, to find a way to say with his body what he’d never allowed his mind to believe.

Macky’s clothes were discarded with each new exploration of Bran’s lips and hands. She lay back, smiling at him, allowing him this rare moment of discovery, and each new touch became a commitment.

Finally, when she could hold back no longer she forced him to his back beside her and, following his lead, began to remove his clothes, one kiss at a time.

“You’re so beautiful,” she whispered as she planted her mouth on his body, marking him with invisible heat that proclaimed her total possession.

“No, I’m scarred,” he argued. “Both inside and out.”

“Scars only make the beauty more perfect, because they say that you are real.”

Her eyes glistened with moisture in the sunlight. He couldn’t hold back from touching her, if only to remind himself that this was real.

Then her fingertips, followed by her lips, moved lightly up his neck, across his cheek, to his eye. She removed his patch and kissed him in the place where the pain had begun.

“Now,” she whispered, “I’m taking away the hurt. Part of you will forever be mine for part of your pain is inside of me.”

And suddenly, the last sliver of ice melted and turned into a torrent of heat that radiated throughout his being.

“Oh, Trouble,” he said, “you’ve done it now.” He groaned, then shuddered as he felt the heat intensify.

“Is it bad?” she whispered hesitantly, moving back uncertainly.

“Oh, yes. It’s very bad.” The stern set of his lips curved in to a smile. “It’s very bad, just what I like.”

And he kissed her, allowing every newly released feeling to wash over her, cleansing them both of the last shard of doubt.

For just a moment he felt knifed by the thought that he might not make her happy, that something he might do would bring back the darkness and the pain.

“I love you, Bran,” she whispered and touched his eye again. “I can’t promise you that nothing will ever hurt you again, but I will try to love the pain away when it comes. I’ve found the place where I belong.”

And then he knew that it was there, for them both, for the asking. “I know,” he said and caught her shoulders, turning her on her back. “This afternoon I give you all my heart,” he whispered and moved to cover her.

She smiled shyly. “I know. But I’m a demanding wench. I want a lot more. I think the part I need right now is a little lower down.”

Later, Macky lay in his arms, staring up at the sky. “Isn’t this place beautiful, Bran?”

“ ‘Beauty is in the eye of the beholder,’ ” he responded, looking at her, not the landscape, “and I don’t think I’ve ever seen a more beautiful sight.”

“We’ve found it, Bran, our Garden of Eden. And we’ve cast out the snakes. There’s only one thing I have to do. Put a marker on Papa’s grave. Then everything will be perfect.”

She was right. All the demons were gone. Together, they’d found their future and one day they’d have a child, a rebirth to take away the pain of the past.

The sooner the better. And he’d make it a point to tell Ethel Cribbs not to serve any pickled pig’s feet at the dinner-on-the-grounds being held on Sunday to celebrate the dismissal of charges against Macky and Bran’s pardon by the governor.

“McKenzie Kathryn Calhoun Lee, any place with you
would be heaven, and if this isn’t the Garden of Eden, it’s close enough. We’ll mine the silver and build a city befitting of Heaven’s name.”

“But Bran, I like Heaven just as it is, and if the streets aren’t paved with gold, silver will be just fine.”

Welcome to Loveswept!

Next month, enjoy two timeless romances from Linda Cajio: ALL IS FAIR …, where a practical joke turns into a high-stakes game of love and passion, and RESCUING DIANA, in which a guileless Diana engages in a sensuous tango with a man determined to show her the ways of seduction.

We’re also offering another book from Debra Dixon! BAD TO THE BONE has everything you could possibly want from a romance: a thrilling plot, red-hot romance, and unforgettable characters. Don’t miss this dazzling story.

If you love romance … then you’re ready to be
Loveswept
!

Gina Wachtel
Associate Publisher

P.S. Watch for these terrific Loveswept titles coming soon: Here’s what we have in store for you: Judith E. French’s exciting
MORGAN’S WOMAN
and Katie Rose’s enchanting
A CASE FOR ROMANCE
. We’re also releasing six more fantastic books by Debra Dixon:
MIDNIGHT HOUR, MOUNTAIN MYSTIC, PLAYING WITH FIRE, SLOW HANDS, HOT AS SIN
, and
DOC HOLIDAY
. Don’t miss any of these extraordinary reads. I promise that you’ll fall in love and treasure these stories for years to come.…

COMPANION WANTED. TransAmerica Trail. Will start in Astoria, OR, on June 1 and wrap up in Yorktown, VA, by the end of August. Camping as much as possible, with the occasional hotel. I’m easy to get along with and am looking forward to a grand adventure! E-mail [email protected]
.

Tom wiped the chain grease off his hand and answered the shop phone. “Salem Cycles.”

“I found you somebody,” his sister said.

“What are you talking about?”

“For tomorrow. I found you somebody to ride across the country with.”

They’d had this argument months ago, when he’d first told her about his plan to bike the TransAm this summer, and he’d thought they were done with it. He should’ve known she was merely engaged in a strategic retreat.

“Taryn—”

“Just hear me out. I found a guy, Alex, through an Adventure Cycling ad. He’s taking the same route you want to take, and he needs somebody to ride with him. You don’t even have to talk to him if you don’t want to. He cooks, and he’ll pay half on the camping fees. How bad could it be?”

It could be a nightmare. What Tom wanted was to spend a few months on the road alone, listening to the pavement under his tires and taking in forty-two hundred miles of sights. He didn’t want a buddy. He didn’t
do
buddies.

“I don’t need a babysitter.”

“Please, Tom. You can’t ride your bicycle across the country alone. It’s insane. You’ll end up being slaughtered by a serial killer.”

“Taryn, I’m thirty-five, single, tattooed, and antisocial.
I’m
the serial killer.”

“Okay, point taken. But you could get hit by a car and bleed to death by the side of the road.”

“How would riding with another person prevent that?”

“It wouldn’t, but he could call me on his cell phone so you could tell me you love me with your dying breath.”

Tom started pacing the small workspace, weaving around the bike stands and massaging his temple with the fingers of his free hand. He recognized Taryn’s tone of voice. There was something she wasn’t telling him, and whatever it was, he wasn’t going to like it. “I’ve toured alone before. There was the South America trip. Australia. Death Valley last winter. Why worry about me now?”

“I always worry about you. Worrying about you is my job. But for those trips, you didn’t give me enough notice to do anything about it. You just called me from the road to say, ‘Ta-ta, Taryn! I’m off to pedal across the Outback like a crazy person! Try not to lie awake at night imagining dingoes eating my corpse!’ ”

Tom winced. It was true, he’d deliberately left the country before telling Taryn about his plan to ride the Canning Stock Route in Western Australia, but it had been for her own good.
He’d spared her months of fretting—and saved himself a lot of nagging. He’d have done the same thing this time, too, if she hadn’t caught him studying the TransAm maps at his kitchen table one afternoon and managed to worm the information out of him.

Tom wasn’t about to let his sister’s irrational fears stop him from doing what he wanted to do, but given that she was his only nonestranged family member and pretty much his sole friend, he hated to make her unhappy. Taryn had stuck by him through the trial, and he owed her for that. She was probably the only reason he wasn’t living in an unheated cabin in the woods by now, composing paranoid manifestos about secret government conspiracies and mailing them off to
The New York Times
.

Not that she’d managed to turn him into a ray of sunshine. There was a good reason why the guy who owned the bike shop didn’t ask Tom to work the counter unless he absolutely had to. Tom would be the first to admit his social skills were rusty, and he tended to intimidate the customers. He spent his days alone, getting paid to fix bikes and riding them for free, and that was the way he liked it. But Taryn at least made sure he went out to eat now and then, even threw the occasional date his way, and he appreciated her efforts to keep him connected to the land of the living. However tenuously.

“Ground Control, Major Tom,” she said. “We’re having a conversation here, remember?”

“Right.” Another hazard of being a loner—one tended to lose the knack for polite discourse. “There aren’t any dingoes to worry about on the TransAm. It’s thoroughly civilized. Paved, even.” He considered his options, then offered a concession. “I’ll call you from the road every few days if you want. But I’m not going to ride with a partner. It’s not a vacation for me if I have to talk to someone.”

“Yeah, well, here’s the thing. I knew you were going to say that, so I didn’t exactly wait for your permission.”

Bracing a hip against the cluttered workbench, Tom resisted the urge to stick the phone in the stand clamp and press down on the handle until the plastic handset shattered. No one was a more creative meddler than his sister, and her self-satisfied tone told him she’d concocted something extra special this time.

“What did you do?”

“Like I said, I found you a guy. Alex Marshall. You’ve been e-mailing him on and off since April to hash out your plan for the tour, and he’s really excited to start the ride tomorrow. In fact, he sent you a message this morning to confirm he’ll meet you on the beach in Seaside at six
A.M
.”

“You set me up on a blind date with a riding buddy?”

“Oh, I’d say you’re a little more committed than that. Alex is counting on you to go all the way with him. To Virginia, that is.” He could practically hear her winking over the phone. Taryn was pleased with herself.

“So call it off.”

This was absolutely not his problem. But he had the sinking feeling he was going to have to be the one to solve it.

“No way. Alex is at a motel in Astoria as we speak, packing up his gear and getting totally stoked to meet you in the morning.
I’m
not going to be the one to disappoint him.”

Ah, hell. She was going to play it like this. Now he had a picture in his head of friendly old Alex Marshall waiting on the beach in his best jersey, map at the ready, panniers all packed, hopes high, looking around for a riding partner who wasn’t going to show—unless Tom drove a
hundred miles out of his way to meet him. Taryn certainly wouldn’t be coming to the rescue. Once his sister made her mind up, she was stubborn as a pit bull. She would be perfectly happy to leave Alex dangling on the beach as bait for Tom’s heroic impulses.

He kicked the corner of the workbench with one boot-clad toe, causing a few boxed tubes to tumble to the floor.

Taryn knew his weakness for hopeless cases. Achilles had that bum heel, and Tom had an unshakeable compulsion to champion the underdog. It never worked out for him any better than the heel had worked out for the Greek. If Tom hadn’t insisted on playing the hero, he wouldn’t have ended up testifying against his own father, destroying his family and his marriage in one disastrous blow. He’d still be a suit, rather than a guy with grease ground so deep into his fingertips it didn’t wash out.