Bride On The Run (Historical Romance) Read Online Free PDF Page A

bounty hunters would come.
    The wind had picked up, carrying the first elusive drops of rain. Anna licked the moisture from her dusty lips, savoring the coolness as Malachi pushed ahead of her once more. “Let’s get moving,” he said. “Storm’s going to break soon, and this stretch of the road is prone to slides.”
    He kneed his mule to a brisk trot. Not wanting to be left behind, Anna jabbed her heels into Lucifer’s flanks and was rewarded by a sudden burst of speed. She gripped the collar, her teeth clenched against the pain that jarred her pelvis and chafed her thighs with every bounce. Walking would be agony tomorrow—if she survived that long.
    Lightning cracked across the sky, casting buttes and mesas into stark blue relief. The earsplitting boom of thunder echoed across the canyon, and in the next instant the rain began to fall. Not a gentle shower but a stinging, lashing torrent. Within seconds it had plastered Anna’s clothes to her body and turned the road into a seething river of mud.
    Startled by nature’s sudden savagery, the perverse Lucifer stopped dead in his tracks and began wheezing like a ruptured steam calliope.
    “Come on!” Malachi swung back toward Anna and yanked the frightened animal into motion again. “There’s an overhang about a mile down the road!” he shouted above the rain. “We can stop there till the worst of this passes!”
    He swung ahead of her to lead the way and was at once swallowed up by darkness and rain. All but blinded by the stinging raindrops, Anna gripped Lucifer’scollar, trusting her life to the erratic beast. The mule knew the way home, she reminded herself. As long as she stayed on its back, she would be safe. All the same, it was hard not to be terrified when water was gushing over the road with a force that threatened to wash away the entire hillside.
    “Keep him away from the edge!” She could hear Malachi’s voice shouting from somewhere off to her left. “This way!”
    Another lightning bolt split the sky above the gorge. In its ghostly flash she saw him plunging toward her, one arm outstretched in an effort to grasp her mount’s harness. Then thunder broke like the roar of cannon fire, and Lucifer lost his footing. Squalling and kicking, the mule went down and began to slide.
    Anna screamed as she felt herself flying through the black rain, felt the twisting jerk as Malachi’s powerful hand caught her wrist, wrenching her upright. She slammed into the side of his mule and hung there, her breath coming in hard little sobs.
    “We’ve got to get out of here!” Malachi was hauling her upward. Wild with terror she fought against the pull of his arm.
    “Lucifer!” she gasped. “We’ve got to save him!”
    “He’ll have to save himself! Get up here, damn you!” He was dragging her alongside the mule, almost twisting her arm out of its socket.
    “Please—” she started to argue. Then she heard it—a roar of sound that rose out of the rain like a demon out of the sea, growing, building until it became the scream of the earth itself.
    Landslide!
    Malachi bent down and caught her waist, sweepingher off her feet as the mule shot forward. Anna used the harness to clamber up behind him, and they rocketed down the road, skidding around curves, dodging boulders and exploding through mud pits.
    Too terrified to think, Anna pressed against Malachi’s back, her arms encircling his lean, muscular waist, her knees spoon-cupped against the backs of his thighs. From behind them she could hear the rush of water and the rumble of falling earth. She could hear it gaining on them, moving closer with every breath, every heartbeat.
    Malachi’s body strained forward against her clasping hands. His muscles bunched and lengthened through the rain-soaked shirt as he lashed the mule’s flanks with a loose harness buckle. Startled by a crashing boulder, the mule skidded sideways, giving Anna a fleeting glimpse of a whitish rock outcrop that loomed perhaps a