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