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