Stealing the Preacher Read Online Free PDF Page A

back. Raising his gaze from the hilt of the knife to Silas’s face, Crockett watched victory flare in his adversary’s eyes. Perhaps the old dog had teeth after all.
    “And Joanna,” Silas said with a point of his finger, “if you’re not back in an hour, I’m comin’ to fetch you, private matter or not. Understand me?”
    “Yes, Daddy.”
    Apparently the pixie had challenged the dragon enough for one day.

    Feeling as if she were trapped in an hourglass with sand threatening to bury her if she didn’t get all her words out in time, Joanna blurted out her desires the moment they reached the road and were safely out of her father’s hearing.
    “I prayed for a preacher to come.”
    Mr. Archer’s stride stuttered a bit, but he recovered quickly. “Why do you need one?”
    She tugged her hand from his arm and focused on the ground in front of her as they walked. Touching him was a distraction she could ill afford at that moment. And though his voice sounded kind and politely curious, she suddenly felt very young and foolish. Why was it that thoughts and plans always made more sense when confined to one’s mind than when they exited one’s mouth?
    “To save my father’s soul.”
    The crunch of the parson’s footfalls ceased. Joanna plodded on, however, sure he would snap out of his stupor momentarily. Besides, it was easier to keep moving than to look at whatever shocked expression surely lined his face.
    “He’s a good-hearted man.” She rushed to add, “Truly,” before he could dispute the point. “My father might not open himself up to many, but when he does, he gives his all. You should have seen the way he loved my mother. She softened him, he said. Made him laugh. Made him a better man. I tend to think he was always a good man; he just needed someone to believe in him. Losing her nearly broke him.”
    They passed beneath the shadow of a large oak, and Joanna fought down the sadness that stirred at the thought of her mother. “He made a point to stay strong for me. For his men. For our ranch. He’s not one to let down the people who depend on him.”

    “Yet he holds up trains.” Brother Archer’s long legs caught him up to her quickly.
    She snuck a peek at him. His furrowed brow spoke more of a man wrestling to make sense of a contradiction than of one handing down tacit disapproval. Thanking the Lord for small miracles, she continued her explanation.
    “He’s been an honest rancher for sixteen years.” Joanna kicked at a pebble in the road in front of her, her hackles rising in her father’s defense. “In his younger days he might have robbed a few stagecoaches and a handful of trains, but he’s reformed.”
    “Begging your pardon, miss,” the parson interrupted her. The laughter she heard in his voice rankled. “But the man I met today held a carload of rail passengers at gunpoint and abducted one of them. He doesn’t seem all that reformed to me.”
    Joanna spun to face him, words coiling inside her like a nest of baby rattlers. “Can’t you see that he only did what he did out of love?” Her hand slashed the air. “I don’t condone his methods, but his motives were pure. He had no idea what I wanted with a preacher. If he did, he likely never would have fetched you. All he knew was that I missed my mama. Since she and I always attended services together, he must’ve hoped that having a preacher at hand would ease my grief a little. That’s what drove him. Not some twisted need to terrorize people.”
    Mr. Archer said nothing. He simply stared at her as if she were an oddity in a curiosity shop. Maybe that’s what she was. Heaven knew that’s how she felt most days. Odd Joanna Robbins. The girl who’d rather hide away in her father’s loft with her paints than attend a barn dance. The one who never knew what to say or how to fit in. Whose skin was too pale, freckles too plentiful, and eyes too colorless to ever catch a beau. Hair that resembled copper wire fresh from the