It didn’t have any effect on Carlson. “Or what? You’ll gut me?” He sniffed. “I know your reputation, breed, and I’ll have you know I’m not impressed with it or the pardon the governor gave you.”
An angry growl came from the pews.
“How dare you!” Jenna gasped. “Clint?”
Cocking an eyebrow at his normally gentle wife, Clint asked, “Want me to flatten him, sunshine?”
“Yes!”
“If he won’t, I will,” Mara bit off, working her way out of the pews, her red brown hair catching the light in flashes of fire. Behind her, Gray followed protectively, his knife gleaming against the black of his shirt. He loved his aunt as much as he loved his mother, and he worshipped his uncle—the man Carlson had just insulted.
Clint towered over the judge. “It’d be my pleasure.”
Son of a bitch, his wedding was turning into a brawl. Brad caught Mara’s hand as she came alongside. With a careful twist, mindful of the delicacy of her build, he removed the knife tucked into her hand. “Not today, Mara.”
She didn’t look away from the judge. Fury vibrated in the muscles under his grip. “Why not? He just insulted my husband.”
“Because I’m reasonably sure it’s bad luck to start a wedding with bloodshed.”
She looked up at him, cheeks flushed with outrage, her cinnamon brown eyes narrowed. “Well, shoot.”
“Will it soothe your sensibilities if he apologizes?”
“Maybe.”
“Apologize, Judge.”
“For speaking the truth?”
An ugly murmur went through the wedding guests. Pews creaked and floorboards groaned as men got to their feet. A baby wailed.
It was a wonder someone hadn’t killed the fool long before now. Brad gritted his teeth. “We don’t take kindly to strangers coming in here insulting one of our valued citizens.”
“I’m not a stranger. I’m a respected judge—”
“You’re going to have to trot out some proof on that ‘respected’ claim,” Clint interrupted.
Carlson continued as if he hadn’t heard, “In the circuit court of these United States—”
Brad grabbed his shoulder and hauled him around so he was staring square at the crowd. “What you’re going to be is a dead man if you don’t apologize and then shut up. Cougar is one of ours.”
Carlson’s gaze followed his. His face paled as he looked at the wedding guests. Brad couldn’t blame him. They did look more like a lynch mob than a wedding party.
Carlson’s “I’m sorry, McKinnely” was grudging, but at least it gave Brad something to work with. Brad cocked a brow at Mara. “Good enough for you?”
She held out her hand for the knife. “For now.”
Cougar snagged the knife from Brad’s hand before he could hand it back. “I wouldn’t do that.” With a jerk of his chin, he indicated Mara’s mutinous expression. “For now is a rather unspecific term.”
Mara stamped her foot. “Darn it, Cougar!”
The smile on Cougar’s face was gentle. He stroked the back of his fingers down his wife’s cheek. His skin was very dark against hers, the size of his hand emphasizing the differences between them. Where Cougar was tall and big boned, Mara was tiny and slight. “I appreciate the thought, Angel, but it’s nothing I haven’t heard before.”
“You shouldn’t have to listen to garbage like that from men like him.”
“It’s not important.”
She opened her mouth to argue. Cougar bent his head, silencing her in the oldest way known to man, his long hair falling around them, hiding the kiss from view, but nothing could hide the passion and trust that had Mara stepping in to lean against his much bigger body. She’d come a long way from the shattered woman who’d once struggled so hard to rebuild her life.
There was a time Brad might have set his cap for the ex-prostitute, but Mara had been Cougar’s since the day she’d seen him. He’d never stood a chance, and he wasn’t one to fight pointless battles. Cougar raised his hand and touched the corner of Mara’s mouth with his thumb. All the love in the world was in that fleeting caress. “You’re all that matters to me.”
There wasn’t a soul in the room that didn’t believe it.
She blinked. The hard line of Cougar’s mouth softened as tears welled in her eyes. “Gray, take your aunt back to her seat.”
Gray took Mara’s arm. Brad couldn’t resist. The kid was too damn young to always believe the worst. “Killing isn’t always the answer.”
The twitch of the boy’s lips could have been a smile. He looked a lot like Cougar in that moment. “It would be better that you tell my aunt this.”
“I was hoping you’d be more open to the idea.”
He shrugged. Brad sighed as he watched him walk away. The kid had the world by the tail if he would open his eyes to see it.
Clint clapped his hand on his shoulder. “Thanks.”
Brad shook his head. “He’s packing a lot of anger.”
“With reason, but he’ll get through it.”
“Hopefully sooner rather than later.” Cougar sighed before looking up. “The rest of you take your seats, too. We’ve got a wedding to witness.”
“Not without a bride,” Jerome offered in his overly helpful way. The tension evaporated in a flurry of chuckles. Pearl frowned and called to her brother. There wasn’t an answer, just a bit more commotion. Mara resumed her seat. The chuckles grew to laughter, highlighting the farce the wedding had become. But if Evie thought she’d leave him here as the laughingstock, she had another think coming. Brad nodded to the judge.
“Excuse me. I’ll just go check on things.”
Pearl stood as he reached her side, the reticule clutched tightly in her hand. He met her glare with one of his own. “You’ll get your damn wedding.”
Or hear from her own daughter’s lips why it wouldn’t be taking place.
Pearl rapped his hand with her fan. The feather on her hat bobbed in his face. “You can’t swear in church.”
Mara huffed. “Seems to me the good Lord will make excuses for a man being stood up at the altar.”
“Angel,” Cougar warned. “Now is not the time.”
“I can’t think of a better one.”
Cougar shook his head. “Not now.”
Mara’s fingers tightened on the back of the pew. “Would you be forbidding me, Cougar?”
“Sounded like it to me,” Brad offered, feeding the light of battle in Mara’s eyes.
“Aren’t you in enough trouble, Rev?”
No one could tuck a challenge into a smile like Cougar. Brad smiled right back. “Nah. I can always fit in a little more.”
The other man nodded, his muscles taking on a certain tension that every man recognized as preparation. “That’s obliging of you.”
“I try.”
Millie stood, garishly attractive in her bright purple dress that clashed with her equally bright red hair. “Boys, don’t make me go get my spoon.” Millie wielded her giant wooden spoon like other men wielded a knife—with devastating efficiency.
“No need to fetch anything. The Rev and I are just working our way to an understanding.”
“I’m not going to take kindly to anyone who throws Millie off her cooking,” Asa cut in.
“You’re welcome to join in,” Brad invited.
The judge took a step back and snapped his Bible closed. “I came to officiate a wedding, not a brawl.”
“One more step, Judge, and you’ll be sitting on a butt full of birdshot.”
“You get blood on that satin, Asa MacIntyre, and I’m going to take it out of your hide,” Dorothy warned.
Asa cut the judge a glance. “Don’t bleed when I plug you.” With a lift of his brow he asked, “Satisfied, Dorothy?”
“Of course she’s not satisfied,” Doc called, his hair, as always, standing on end. “She’s never satisfied until she gets to the crying part.”
“Ain’t that the truth,” Jerome chimed in. “My Franny
’s the same way. Had to have just the right handkerchief to bring today. Even made me pack a clean one of mine as a spare.”
“Ain’t no one going to get to the crying if the bride don’t show.”
“Except maybe the Reverend,” Cyrus muttered. “Heard tell the girl’s uncle’s got a noose waiting out back. That’s got to be a better show than this.”
A murmur of agreement went through the guests. Just the mention of a noose made Brad’s skin crawl. “No one’s getting hanged.” He glared at the judge. “Stay.”
“You’re in no position to give me orders.”
The man was a pompous ass. It was easy to see why Elizabeth despised him. “Asa?”
“What?”
“If he moves, plug him.”
“Will do.”
He met Carlson’s alarmed gaze. “Satisfied with my position now?”
A nod was his answer.
“Good.”
Another murmur went through the crowd as Brad headed down the aisle. He was probably acting out of character. Brad didn’t care.
“My Evie wouldn’t stand you up,” Pearl called from behind him.
Pearl didn’t have a clue what her Evie would do. The woman’s daughter was mustang wild, chaffing under every societal dictate, to the point that her behavior was all but a plea for someone to take her in hand. If it hadn’t been for the role he was playing, Brad probably already would have. A woman with a wild side that persistent was a real draw.
He headed for the heavy wooden door leading to the alcove. Footsteps sounded behind him. He’d heard them stalking him too many times to mistake to whom they belonged. “Don’t say it, Asa.”
“Don’t say what?”
Asa had a razor-sharp wit and he wielded it with lethal skill. His hand beat Brad’s to the door, holding it closed.
“Whatever irritating thing you’re thinking of saying, I’m not in the mood.”
“I recognize you’re pissed, Rev, and for good reason, but don’t be taking it out on the girl.”
“Get the hell out of my way.”
“This isn’t her fault.”
An elbow in Asa’s gut drove him back a step. Brad wrenched the door open. “Then whose fault is it?”
“THIS IS MY fault.” Evie sat on the hard wooden bench and plucked a petal off a rose in her bouquet.
Her uncle sighed. “No denying that, baby. If you’d only added a pair of pants to that painting, none of us would be here.”
Uncle Paul was always the soul of logic, which made his going along with this wedding not make any sense. “I just don’t understand how anyone could think that portrait is of the Reverend.”
“It’s a very detailed portrait.”
“But I didn’t include his face.”
“Just that scar on his thigh he got last fall at the barn raising.”
“That was artistic embellishment!”
“Darn familiar embellishment.”
Evie didn’t like the tone of his voice. Her uncle couldn’t be thinking what everyone else thought. “What are you saying?”
“He’s saying you were damn foolish.”
There was no mistaking that voice, tight with the edge of anger.
Shoot. Evie did not need him here now. But he was. She turned to find the Reverend Brad standing in the tiny alcove between her and the door. Dressed in black, his thick blond hair combed back from his face, there was no missing the anger in his dark blue eyes, the impatience thinning his normally wide mouth. No telling herself he’d see this as a good thing. “What are you doing here?”
“Collecting my bride.”
She tightened her grip on the bouquet of roses her mother had given her. Roses from her mother’s prized bushes that she’d brought all the way from Missouri as a bride. The roses she’d always told Evie were going to bring her luck when she married the man she loved. “I’ve decided this is a bad idea.”
“Your input is not required.”
“I’m the bride.” Nothing was going to happen without her cooperation.
Brad took a step forward. Her uncle stood. Uncle Paul was a good-sized man but the Reverend Brad dwarfed him, and for all that Brad was reputed to be a man of God, there was a wild side to him. A dangerous edge lurking beneath the civilized facade he presented to the world. She’d spent a year trying to capture that illusive edge on canvas and had never managed it. It just figured it would show itself now when her sketch pad was at her mother’s house and there wasn’t a charcoal in sight. Her luck had been on a downturn for the last six months. Hitching back in the seat until the wall was at her back, she deferred to her uncle. Sometimes propriety was useful, especially for avoiding confrontation.
“Uncle? Could you please handle this?”
“Of course.”
Brad took another step forward, closing the distance between them, never taking his gaze from hers. Her chest tightened the way that it did whenever the Reverend focused his attention on her. “She’s not yours to handle anymore.”
That had an ominous ring to it.
“You’re not married yet.”
“All but, thanks to your wanting to marry her off so badly you jumped on a rumor like a June bug on a candle.”
That was not a pretty analogy. Evie waited for her uncle to dispute the claim. He didn’t.
“The picture spoke clearly.”
“The picture barely grunted, but you let your niece run so wild you didn’t know how to rein her in, so you decided marrying her off to me would restore the respectability she tossed away.” Brad nodded slightly, causing his hair to fall over his forehead. “After all, who’s more upright than the minister?”
The mocking twist to Brad’s mouth did nothing to reduce his good looks, but it did add to the sense of danger coming off him. Evie’s fingers itched to capture the angle of his brow that so expressively conveyed his displeasure. She was so busy studying his face, she didn’t realize he’d grabbed her arm until his fingers wrapped around her wrist like manacles—hard and unbreakable.
Shoot. She needed to pay better attention.
The protest she expected from her uncle at Brad’s high-handedness didn’t come. Instead, Uncle Paul looked at her, his weary expression dosed with apology. “You do right by her.”
“Or what?” Brad countered. “You’ll bring me back in line the way you did her?”
That was entirely too much. Evie yanked on her wrist. “I was never out of line!”
She had Brad’s full attention. His blue eyes were as cold as winter ice. “Woman, you’ve been running amok for years, but that’s over.”
She didn’t want it to be over. She wanted the small freedoms from society’s dictates that she’d fought for. Wanted more. Ignoring his anchoring grip, she set the bouquet carefully on the bench beside her. “I’ve decided I’m not going to marry you.”
Brad didn’t even blink. “You don’t have a choice.”
“Of course I do.” She just needed time to talk it over with her uncle. He always gave her what she wanted. Eventually. And she did not want to marry this hard-souled, handsome-faced person who stood as a man of God, but looked in league with the devil. “Tell him, Uncle Paul. Tell him I don’t have to marry him.”
For the first time in as long as she could remember, her uncle avoided her gaze. A foreign sense of panic gathered in her stomach. “Uncle?”
“It’s time you were settled.”
Nothing in his expression moved as he said those horrible words.
“You can’t mean that!”
Satin rustled a much quieter protest than what was screaming inside her as Brad’s grip on her arm tightened.
“In case you haven’t figured it out yet, princess, people only love you when it’s convenient.”
She refused to look at him, focusing all her attention on her uncle. Her ace in the hole. “That’s not true.”
“Then you tell me why your uncle is standing over there, giving you to me on the flimsiest of excuses?”
Her uncl
e jerked up straight. “It was a painting of you naked, Swanson. I think that says all that needs to be said.”
“You keep telling yourself, but that doesn’t make it the truth. It’s not a painting of me naked, and you damn well know it, because I’m willing to bet your niece told you so.”
Evie had, but she hadn’t been that vehement, mostly because she hadn’t wanted anyone to ask how she’d known what to sketch when it came to his privates. One whiff of what she’d been up to in pursuit of her art, and her uncle would have sent her back East to her maiden aunt. That woman defined bitter and was definitely a believer in the traditional. She’d even threatened her once with a chastity belt, obviously sharing the common opinion that women who painted anything but still lifes of insipid flowers were loose. “I did tell you.”
“While not looking me in the eye,” her uncle scoffed.
“I’ll look you in the eye now.”
“Now is too late,” Brad growled. “Now everyone thinks I molest innocents. Now everyone is wondering if I live by the rules that I preach. My reputation will be ruined if we don’t wed.”
“People in town know you too well to believe that.”
Brad snorted, pulling her away from the bench. “I think the fact that we’re standing here in church with the judge waiting down the aisle says pretty clearly what this town is willing to believe.”
What could she say? He was right. The good townspeople who relied on him for direction had been very eager to believe the worst of him. So eager, she hadn’t really had to lie at all, just look embarrassed, and they’d run with their assumption and made it truth. She just hadn’t expected them to latch onto the idea of a wedding so strongly that she couldn’t talk them out of it once the initial excitement faded. “I’m sorry.”
“A hell of a lot of good your sorries will do us now.”
She bit her lip. “I’ll tell the truth.”
“The time for the truth was a month ago.”
In retrospect it was. If she had ever dreamed that her uncle would want to get rid of her this badly, or that he would force her to marry a man who he had to know hadn’t compromised her, she would have screamed the truth from the rooftops. Heck, she never would have showed her family the painting. She tried again. “Uncle, we need to end this.”
Promises Reveal Page 2
