No Other Will Do (Ladies of Harper's Station #1)(58)
Emma released her hold and reluctantly stepped away from Malachi. Who, she noticed, was looking prayerfully to the sky, jaw clenched tight.
Probably begging the Almighty for patience to endure the crazy woman who kept forcing hugs on him when she knew full well he didn’t like to be embraced.
Where had her restraint gone? Just because they’d shared a moment in the café—a moment when, in her defense, he’d not seemed the least uncomfortable with holding. Touching. Nuzzling. Of course, he’d been the one doing the holding. Her hands had been occupied with the revolver. Still, his guard had lowered and given her reason to hope he might welcome some affection from her. But apparently not.
“Mr. Porter told us about a hidden compartment in his wagon,” Emma explained breezily as she circled around one of the giant black horses to get to Malachi’s mount. “One that might still be sheltering the weapons.” She reached the gray mare and collected the reins. “After Maybelle took over the doctoring, I decided I’d be of more use fetching our goods before someone stumbled across the wagon.” She summoned up the sunniest smile in her arsenal and flashed it at Malachi as she strolled past. He didn’t need to see her disappointment. The man had enough on his plate to worry about. She needed to lighten his load, not add to it.
Besides, he was acting a bit odd. He hadn’t moved a muscle since she’d touched him. Just stood on the edge of the road, arms stretched between a pair of massive draft horses, body frozen in place. Only his eyes moved. They followed her, their dark brown gaze making her stomach dance. An uninterested man wouldn’t stare so intently, would he? Or maybe he was just trying to intimidate her into going back to town. Not that such a tactic would work. Which he knew from experience. He’d never been able to intimidate her. Not even when she’d been a slip of a girl. So there had to be something else in that stare. Something deeper she couldn’t quite decipher.
Whatever it was, it brought an uncomfortable warmth to her cheeks. She lengthened her stride to pass him and turned her attention to tying the mare’s lead to the back of her buckboard. “Did you happen to see Mr. Porter’s wagon while you searched for his horses?” she asked without looking up from her task. “I plan to dig out the guns and salvage whatever else I can find before heading back. I was hoping you’d be able to assist, but it seems you have your hands full. No matter. I can manage. There are less than a dozen rifles, and the revolvers will be easy enough to carry.” She glanced up, caught his scowl, and made a point to approach the driver’s box from the far side of the wagon.
Grabbing a handful of skirt, she fit her foot to a wheel spoke and hoisted herself up. Then she had to scoot across the bench to reach the brake on the left side, making it all too obvious that she’d taken the coward’s way out to avoid being near him. Which hadn’t mattered anyway, because by the time she reached for the brake lever, the man she’d been striving to circumvent had released Porter’s horses, bounded up the near side of the wagon, and covered her hand with his own. His hold was firm and unyielding, not tender in the slightest, yet the possessiveness of it had her pulse fluttering. Her gaze flew to his.
“If you think I’m going to let you roam around out here alone,” he growled through a clenched jaw, “you’re crazy. And for all your independent ideals, I know you ain’t lost yer marbles.” His grammar was slipping, a sure sign of his agitation. “Not yet, anyway.” He muttered the last as he hopped down from the wagon.
He trudged back to Porter’s draft horses and took hold of their halter straps again. Slowly, he edged them past the wagon, his attention focused on the ground in front of him in order to steer them around any uneven patches that might cause them discomfort.
“Porter’s rig is about a quarter mile out. I’ll lead you there, but you’re gonna have to plod along at my pace.” He cast a sharp glance over his shoulder at her. “And for the sake of my nerves, move that shotgun up to your lap. If trouble finds us, I want you to be ready.”
Emma obeyed, too pleased to have his continued company to complain about his high-handed manner. Despite the fact that she’d traveled this very road without a man to guard her more times than she could count, she had to admit—at least to herself—that she’d not been looking forward to doing so today. The attack on Mr. Porter had rattled her. Her adversaries were unpredictable, their strikes calculated and always one step ahead. If she and Malachi had a chance at stopping them, they’d have to ferret out the traitor in the colony. Soon.
Salvaging supplies took less time than Emma expected. Flour, cornmeal, and sugar had scattered to the winds in the crash, thanks to the bandits’ vandalism. Emma collected what little remained inside the sacks and tied off the slashed tops to keep them closed. Mal found the cache of guns right where Mr. Porter had said they would be, in a compartment hidden in the wagon bed directly behind the driver’s box.
The freighter had built three wooden frames at the top of the wagon bed for carting smaller or more delicate objects, like the glass jars of canned goods the Harper’s Station ladies sold. Emma had always thought the compartments terribly clever. Little did she realize that they served a second purpose—camouflage. For the box frames hid the seams in the wood of the wagon bed beneath. Anyone looking at the wagon would see nothing more than what showed on the surface. Mal had tugged on the boxes quite forcefully when trying to figure out the hidden compartment’s location, and the wood had barely budged. It was only when she’d climbed up into the driver’s box to help that she’d discovered the latches against the floor behind the bench. After she’d reached down to undo them, Mal tugged on the box frames again. This time the one in the center slid backward to reveal a rectangular opening. The guns and ammunition had been secreted inside.