His shoes intrigued me right off. They did not seem to really go with his priestly garb, so time-worn and austerely unrefined. By contrast, you understand, his shoes were sturdy, serviceable and expensive. Would I have noticed him if not for the shoes? Indeed. But I would not have been intrigued.

Well, I might have been intrigued. But it would have been for an entirely different reason.

As it so happened, however, I kept my eyes discretely lowered for some time as the stage bounced its way from Mesa to Tucson. It was more than just expected that a young woman traveling alone should keep meekly to herself when sitting in a stage that carried three men, strangers all, with her.

Now, simply because my eyes were lowered did not mean that I did not have ample opportunity to study and assess my three traveling companions. A woman learns early on in this life to look without being observed looking. And if she's caught, why, a quick blushing smile is all she needs to be forgiven.

We were almost three hours out of Mesa before I ever saw his eyes. He glanced up, shyly, from beneath the dusty, rounded black hat he'd had securely tucked over his face while he slept. Because he was a priest, the fact my lowered eyes looked upon his face from beneath my eyelashes was acceptable, of course, for what woman need fear a priest?

His eyes were the most amazing shade of greenish blue. There was an intelligence, a living awareness in them that I remarked upon to myself upon first seeing them. This, then, would have been something that I would have noticed about him, with or without the mystery of his shoes.

He'd been asleep when I'd been handed up into the stagecoach and had settled into the seat across from him. No one really spoke as we embarked on this journey to Tucson. Four strangers, locked together in the customary cramped quarters of the stage, we did the usual manner of studying the landscape and avoiding each other's eyes.

But I am curious by nature. And I have learned to covertly study others so that I can assess them. Riding with me were this priest with the good shoes, a widowed shopkeeper on his way to visit his new grandson and a 'gentleman gambler' hoping to extend his stake in a new town. Also aboard the stage, but not riding inside the relative comfort of the cabin, were the driver, the brakeman and, stationed directly above us, a U.S. Marshal to offer protection even as he traveled from one post to his new one in Tucson.

Of course, I did not know their stories until many miles after we began this journey. It was at our first stop for a meal that they divulged the first details to me. By the time we stopped for our evening meal and to spend the night at a station half way on our journey's route, everyone seemed relaxed; more had been shared. I wondered what they'd feel to know that what I shared was a quite incredible series of ingenious re-telling of the truth?

The gambler and the shopkeeper spoke their stories to us as we ate, all of the passengers sharing a table. Why would we not? By then, it seemed, we had a bond only by virtue of our willingness to be polite company.

In the afternoon, before we made our final stop of that first day, we discussed many inconsequential things. The priest barely spoke unless I drew him out by directly addressing a question to him. The other two men enjoyed demonstrating their knowledge, their worldly ways, their skill at their chosen occupations.

It was never that I wanted to know about them. It was more that I wanted to be considered inconsequential, mere window dressing. If a woman is too mysterious, men are drawn to her. If she is too obvious in her interest, they suspect and notice details they will remember. If she is simply a blank slate, they may admire the turn of her ankle but they have no reason nor care to call up her face weeks or months later.

But then there was the priest. He was not so easily taken in; perhaps because he had sworn himself to celibacy to serve his God, perhaps he was not so easily taken in by a pretty face.

His face, I hated to admit, was attractive. It was sun-bronzed, clean-shaven, strong-jawed, clear-eyed, sweet-lipped masculine. What a shame he was a priest. He wore his chestnut mane longish, as if he could not be bothered to devote wasted time to that particular vanity of grooming. There was a quiet dignity, almost an elegance, about him that his mean clothing only seemed to accentuate the longer I was around him.

After a while, I could not help but be struck by the sense of virility, masculinity that clung to him more surely than the road's dust. Not that I knew priests, as I am not a Catholic, but I had yet to meet one in my travels who seemed as he did. Yet, I could not quite place my fingers on it. I passed long hours of the afternoon imagining him nude, panting as a real man might. He spouted pieties, yet he was a man for all he might have feigned a disinterest in the fleshly delights for which men, in my experience, lusted with every breath they took.

What a waste, I thought as I gazed out upon a barren landscape. I wondered ... were priests ever tempted to break those legendary vows of chastity? Did they pray harder to their God to deliver them if they ever felt that natural desire they denied themselves? Did they prostrate themselves before their icons and statues to drive the demon lust away from its tormenting presence within their bodies?

After dinner that first evening, I strolled out of the rough confines of the stationhouse. There was a stream near us with the only tiny scrap of green tree leaves I'd seen all day growing near its life-giving banks. Even at night, I could tell where the stream was as much from the soft scent of red clay mud as from the nearly inaudible whisper of weak current flowing through hardscrabble desert rock-lined riverbed.

The priest offered to accompany me on my stroll. As we reached the stream, I asked him to hold my hand as I undid my boots, hiked up my skirts and waded genteelly into the stream.

"What brings a priest on a trip like this?" I asked him as I watched water flow sweet and pure over my calves.

"A man of God goes where His flock has need," the priest said.

"So you are going to take over one of the churches in Tucson?"

"Not in Tucson."

"Then where?"

"I am not certain until I get to Tucson where my calling will take me."

"Would you obey any order?"

"Ma'am?"

I hid a smile as I kept my head lowered. I imagined many unholy orders I might give this man of God who could wear all the shabby clothes he wished and still could not hide a body that I would have worshiped. What would he have thought of me if he had known I had such unclean thoughts? Ah, it made me feel powerful and bad in a whole new way to harbor and nurture these unsaintly thoughts of mine.

"From your God, I meant. Would you obey any order He sent you? Go, do whatever He may instruct?"

He studied my face as I looked up at him. No doubt, he was considering how a child as innocent as I was should be addressed on this subject. Imagine the orders a God might give a priest? Perhaps he would send him to minister heathens in Mexico or Africa. Perhaps he would order him to help the lepers of India. Perhaps he would instruct him to go sacrifice himself to the Japanese warriors I had read so much about.

"My child, I would obey. I am a supplicant." I watched as his eyes blinked and he looked off. I hitched my skirts up a bit higher. "Are you a supplicant? Child?"

"Father?" I looked over to find him now watching my legs.

"Would you care to confess ... your sins?"

"Why would you think I had sins to confess?"

"The Bible teaches us that there is not one among us without sin."

"Even you, Father?" I smiled at him. But his eyes hardened as he licked his lips in this slow look of a thirsty man. I wondered for what a man of God thirsts.

"Yes, I am a man with sin. Am I not a child of the Lord?"

"My sins ... I could tell them to you? Would you absolve me, Father? Give me back a clean soul? This is what I understood Catholics believe." I walked toward him. He stood his ground. "Would you absolve me of lusting for you, Father? This has been my sin today."

I touched his shirt, its rough fabric the only barrier to him save his faith and vow of celibacy.

"Are you sent as my temptation, child?" he whispered to me, his voice hoarse.

"I would tempt you, Father, but even I have some lingering vestiges of pity for a priest's collar." 

He didn't follow me when I turned, picked up my boots and picked my way back over the rocky path to the stationhouse. I slipped into my room after bidding the other men a good night's sleep. Just before my eyes closed, I turned my head on the thin pillow and looked at the moon through the curtains I'd parted over the small window in the room

That had been foolhardy, what I'd done with the priest. It was merciful, though, to have some release of the pent up energy and fear I'd been living under for far too long. Thankfully, I'd picked a man who would feel bound to never reveal our words and what they must have shown him ... that contrary to every appearance I might have given in the trip, I was not a demure young woman. I was using that guise as a masquerade lest the U.S. Marshal riding with us ever felt there was a reason to look at me harder. If he ever did ... I would no longer be able to say that I was always one step ahead of those who chased me.

The truth was told in my dreams. I did dream of the priest. It was a dream that made me smile when I remembered it upon waking. There was simply something about him.

At breakfast, I studied him with a bit more curiosity about something that nagged at me but which I could never quite put my finger upon.

It was the way he held himself. Not quite as pious as I had initially thought him. It was the quick flash of his eyes, the way they missed nothing, including my study of him. It was the careful, precise way his hands moved, fingers curling over the spoon he held and the strength of his grip over his mug of coffee. And it was also in the neatness of his personal grooming. Neater this morning, I saw. His hair freshly washed. His face freshly shaved. Even his clothes seemed a bit crisper if still rough. His shoes, those incongruous shoes, were buffed.

As I settled into the stage seat, I watched him climb up, look around for a brief moment, meet my eyes ... and then choose the seat next to me.

He opened the conversation that morning after we had left the station behind. If our luck held, he said, we should be in Tucson by sundown.

"Is it luck you would put your trust in, Father?" I asked him softly, sweetly. The gambler's head turned my way from his window. "You are not instead praying to your God or one of your saints? Or perhaps you are one of those who doesn't pray for such things, instead placing your fate in the hands of your Lord and trusting him to provide?"

"Your words come close to blasphemy, asking a priest that," the shopkeeper said sharply.

"I meant no harm, sir. I was only curious. I've never met a priest before. I have always wondered what it is about Catholics that makes them so different," I said, still sweet.

"How else is a young woman to learn the ways of the world in safety if she does not ask a man such as me?" the priest said, smiling over at the shopkeeper. Then turning to me. Still smiling, but a sharp glint in those eyes. Amusement, I realized. "I trust the Lord to provide for me in my want. But I also pray in case he cares to hear my opinion."

I laughed, gay and coy, secretly pleased to have discovered he would meet me head on in this new day, rather than turn skittish as he'd been the night before. "What sorts of things do you pray for?"

"I pray that my body's needs would be satisfied. That is all a man needs, after all, isn't it? All the rest is up to him. I do not need God to tell me to act on my own behalf or on the behalf of those who may need my help."

"Your body's needs," I said, looking at his body. "Food, water, a place to sleep ..."

"A place to sleep ..." he echoed, nodding, as if now he knew I was following him.

"What else?"

For a moment, he simply stared at me. Then he seemed to gain a different look in his eyes. Caution, I realized. "Strength of soul to do His bidding. All else is irrelevant."

"His glory above all else?" the gambler asked, breaking into the conversation.

"When you are right with the Lord, brother, nothing else matters. Does it?" the priest asked, turning again to place his back against the seat, now gazing over at the gambler. "And what do you pray for, friend?"

"Four aces and a pot that will make me a fortune."

The gambler said it with a smile. We all laughed.

"I pray at this moment for the safety of my daughter and her family," the shopkeeper said into the silence that followed.

We all smiled at him. He looked at me, asking, "Miss, what is it you pray for? Do you pray for a husband to enter your life?"

I wondered if he understood the loss of my smile. I doubt it. He probably thought it sadness, not the resolve to never again be another man's fool. But I kept my voice soft to reply, "Right now I am simply praying that our trip be a safe one today. I would not wish to have us accosted by savages or outlaws."

After lunch, the priest sat down under the shade of the stage where the men had bade me to stay lest the heat of the day overwhelm me. The other men had wandered away, answering the call of nature or simply stretching their legs.

"It is permissible to pray for love," the priest said.

"Love? Father, love is a fallacy if part of the equation is a man," I said softly.

"Such cynicism in one so young," he said. His hand took mine. I noted the strength within in, the size of it, the fine way his fingers tapered.

"Perhaps a priest has that view because he has no experience at physical love with a woman," I said. His eyebrows rose but his eyes remained downcast. "Until you've proven yourself a man in that sense, Father, you have not proven that you would not be like other men because I can surely tell you that men do women harm without a care to what they cause. Men take what they want only to leave a woman when they grow bored. Men profess one thing and prove to have been liars of the vilest sort."

"Is this what has caused you to stray from the path of righteousness, my child? Do you seek revenge on men and manipulate their weaknesses against them? When will it be enough for you to find your way back to the righteous path?" And now his eyes came up to mine, stabbing into me, pinning me in place.

"I have not strayed, Father. I was never on that path."

"Yes, once you were, child. You cannot fool a man such as me. You may wish to tell yourself that little lie, but it does you more harm."

"You could not possibly know that," I whispered, taken by surprise that he had apparently been so able to assess me through all the misleading details I had let him see about me. From the shy, demure girl to the temptation of the night before to the morning's non-believer.

"Yet I do seem to know about you. Perhaps my Lord whispered your tale in my ear. Perhaps he sent me into your life to show you the way back to the straight and narrow."

"Then you waste your time, Father. I have no desire for such a mundane life."

I rose from where we had come closer in the course of the conversation. I walked purposefully away from the stage, passing the shopkeeper as he made his way back. He offered to accompany me, to be sure I came to no harm. I looked back at the priest, leaning back against the wooden wheel, studying me. And so the shopkeeper walked with me for the time we had remaining for this stop to water horses, have our lunch, stretch our legs, relieve our bodies.

More than anything, I did not want the priest to have any other opportunities to figure out my real story. I feared any errant word from him raising the suspicions of the others. Perhaps one would say something to the Marshal.

Sloppy, sloppy, sloppy, I whispered inside my brain. 

And then we heard the gunshots.  The shopkeeper looked about wildly, unsure what to do.

"Here," I said to him, grabbing his hand and running with him to an outcropping. We hid from view, listening to shouts, gunfire and horses racing across the desert's floor. The horses that came from our rear took us both by surprise.

We ran from where we thought we had been safe, outlaws on horseback racing around us even as we made a wayward path back toward the coach. It was our only refuge. Those defending it aimed their fire at the two men chasing us down. It was the only way we made it back to where they'd taken cover atop an outcropping overlooking the coach.

In a lull that came not long after we stumbled to where they were, the men had heated, short words on what their strategy should be. The priest volunteered to venture out on his own. Hi belief was that his collar would induce the outlaws to speak with him, to allow him to bargain for our safe passage.

I poked my head over the rocky outcropping and watched them atop the stage, throwing suitcases down. My heart sunk.

"Yes. Do it now. You must let him. He's our only hope," I babbled out to them. "We'll die otherwise."

They were silent as I studied them. Finally the Marshal nodded and the priest rose from where he was, smoothed his jacket and vest down, gave me a smile, and then simply walked toward the coach. His hands were out from his body, showing that he was unarmed.

The outlaws, five of them, watched him approach. They stopped what they were doing and simply waited on him.

We could not hear him from where we were. We saw him gesture toward us and the five outlaws looked our way then back at the priest.

"Let's all pray," I said softly.

Every head bent over the pistols clutched in their hands. I watched the priest continue to talk. He would like that we were praying, I thought. Perhaps this was his last act on this mortal sphere.

"They're leaving!" I said. Their heads jerked up from their prayers. Together we watched, agape, as the outlaws waved at the priest and rode off to the west. It took us all long moments of disbelief before we rose, dusted ourselves off and began making our way down the hill toward where the priest waited for us.

"How'd ya do that, padre?" the driver asked, planting a hard pat of congratulations on the priest's stolid back.

"Father! You're a hero! You were so brave the way you faced them down!" I told him, my voice giddy with relief as I hugged him. His arms held me against his chest for just a moment.

Over my head, as he released me, he said, "Well, it was not much, really. They were Christians and saw no reason to bring God's wrath on their head by accosting a man of the Lord."

"Well, they sure made a mess of some of our bags," the gambler grumbled as he began to pick up some of the cases from the piles the outlaws had created in their haphazard attempts to raid our belongings.

My eyes scanned the bags. I counted ... one, two, three ... Oh. Oh no. My heart sunk.

"Is everything all right, my child?" the priest asked softly, his hand at my elbow.

"One of my bags ... My valise!" I said, pointing weakly between the ground and the top of the coach where my bags had once been.

"They did take several cases with them, I fear," he said, addressing that comment to the others. "I felt it was a small trade for our lives to let them take what they could carry."

"What else is missing?" the Marshal asked brusquely. "Why would they have taken the lady's bag and ..."

"One of mine was also among those taken," the priest said.

"I think they got the payroll bags, Marshal," the driver said. "All three of 'em. Yessiree. Got 'em."

"That I'd expected," the Marshal said, looking hard at me.

Well, I know what to do in these cases. I worked up the tears. As I sniffed and dabbed at my eyes with my dainty hanky, I said, "The brutes! Why would they do such a dastardly thing to a lady?"

The priest cleared his throat, shuffled his feet. A blush came upon his face. At the Marshal's insistence, he spoke up. "Well, it was the valise in which ... I did not look, mind you, I only overheard their talk ... the lady's fair dainty garments, so to speak ..."

The men looked at the Marshal. The Marshal blinked, thought, and finally got it.

Well, I know what to do in this case as well. I executed a perfect swoon into the nearby arms of the gambler.

He lifted me into the stagecoach. As I laid upon the bench, deep within my faint, I listened to the men discussing just what they imagined those outlaws might be doing with my undergarments. Men. They are all alike. Finally, the priest had enough and kindly instructed them that such thoughts were inappropriate debasements of their better nature. Men, better nature? Hah.

I came to only after the strewn baggage was tied upon the stage's top and we were jostling again upon the road toward Tucson. The priest was again seated next to me. When he'd gotten in, he'd somewhat ungently moved me into a sitting position, letting my fair head bounce against the coach's side as he took his seat. To get him back, I let the jostling of the coach bounce me about until my head was on his shoulder and my body was pressed up against him. I heard the gambler make some crude remark. A moment later, my eyelids fluttered and I came awake with a small gasp.

The remainder of the trek to Tucson was subdued. Each of us deep within thought. They were thinking of how close they had come to losing their lives. I was mourning the loss of my valise. It was not the undergarments within it that I was going to miss.

We made Tucson just after night had fallen. The hotel that faced the stagecoach's terminal was four stories high, brightly lit and warmly inviting to all of us except the shopkeeper. His son-in-law was there within short order to pick him up. Off he took; our last view of him was sitting tall and stiff next to his son-in-law as they turned a corner.

The Marshal wished for me to make a report of my valise and its contents so that he could include in his official roster of the thievery of the three bags of federal script that had been under his watch over the route. I feigned deep fatigue and swore on the paper he handed me that the only things in my valise were personal clothing. By the time he was finished with me, I stood alone in the city's night and gazed across the street at the hotel's inviting yellow-orange glow.

The driver carried two of my bags and I did my best with the third. Inside the hotel, he relinquished his duties to the night porter. I was escorted to my room, my bags deposited upon stands, and then I was alone.

I had barely removed my outer garments when a light tapping at the door signaled the arrival of the hotel's maid bringing in the buckets of warm water for my bath. When she left, I stripped and sank gratefully into the tub. I nearly fell asleep after scrubbing the dust and muck of the days on the coach from my skin and hair. I don't honestly remember stumbling to bed but surely I did for when I woke, I was snug in the big feather bed.

For long moments, I stretched in the sunlight that cascaded into the room after I threw open the heavy curtains. But then I remembered my loss. "What am I going to do now?" I thought.

Well, certainly, I had to be a realist. I still had to survive. I had lost more in my life. Though this was devastating. But still ... one must be realistic. One still had to go on. I could figure out what to do when survival was at stake.

So the worse thing that could happen had happened. Hadn't I known it was a possibility? It would be tough but I would find the way forward. All I needed was a stake.

At breakfast, I sat in the hotel's dining area and considered my options. Surely there was a gambling hall near ... and then I thought of the gambler who'd been with us on our trip.

"I am so glad to see that the morning's cheerful sun has breathed a more cheerful spirit into you, my child," the priest said as he stood near my table.

"Oh! Father! How wonderful to see you. Won't you join me?"

"Then your terrible travails of yesterday no longer weigh on your soul? I am happy to see that you are the kind of woman who will not let such an event be the cause of a petulant spirit."

"The Lord provides for those who provide for themselves, isn't that what you said, Father?"

"In so many words," he said, his eyes sharp on mine. "Was there anything of value in the case that was stolen by those ruffians?"

"Only sentimental value."

His eyebrows went up as he patted my hand and told me he was sorry such meanness had robbed me of something that meant something personal to me.

Once again, I was struck by the incongruity of his clothing to both his bearing and his shoes. Why was I noticing this, I wondered. But I thought I knew. It was because with him, my old feminine wiles would not work. He was a man, indeed, but he was a man foresworn of the flesh. His ability to see past all my modest yet normally effective masquerades was not to be underestimated.

As soon as possible, I made an excuse to wander away from him.

However, throughout that day and the one that followed, he would turn up at odd places and times. He kept trying to get me to come to the main cathedral and pray with him ... he told me stories of various saints of his religion known to intercede in finding lost items, in hopeless cases, in mysteries, in times of loss.

None of this unnerved me in the slightest until the second night when he happened to be standing at the bar of the gambling hall that our fellow rider, the gentleman gambler, agreed to escort me to that evening.

I had come with a small stake. Small but enough. I was having a modest run of beginner's luck. This was not like barrooms in flea-bitten, dust-choked towns along wayside trails where a woman would be a novelty at a poker table. Here, I had to be even more clever. Not too obvious. Not too grasping. Try not to make my entire killing on one night, no matter how tempting.

But as my luck would have it over the past few days, just as I began a slow, believable streak of winning, the priest chose that moment to come take a seat at the table. The gambler from the coach, sitting next to me, tried to explain to the priest that this was a place for serious games and he was taking the seat that a paying player may have wanted to take.

With that, the priest pulled out a small roll from his pocket. We all looked at him as he asked if this would be enough to enter into the game.

"You do understand we will not treat you kindly just because you are a novice wearing a collar?" the man on my other side said gruffly.

"The Lord will provide me whatever cards I need," the priest replied. Our eyes met briefly across the table. "And may I say that if you are reluctant to include me, then I have to wonder what kind of gentlemen would take advantage of a young girl obviously making an unwise choice for entertainment in a city of which she is unfamiliar?"

Well, what is a girl to do in this case? Any chance to downplay my presence and simply begin setting the trap that I would likely not set for a few more nights, once they were used to and comfortable with me in their midst, was now destroyed thanks to the priest.

Perhaps he knew this, I thought to myself. I banked my anger at him, attempting to let it flow away. But the first hand went very badly against me while he enjoyed modest success. The second hand should have been mine but he forced me into a bet that, were I to have made it, would have been a bit too obvious that perhaps I really did know more than I should.

By the third hand, my luck had shifted. In the fourth hand, my losses became pivotal. My luck was now in a serious nosedive. And all throughout this, the priest sat across from me, steady and calm.

By the fifth hand, I realized my night was shot. I could retire gracefully and return in the morrow. My meager stake was now genuinely in peril of not being enough if I didn't take what little I had left on the table and leave.

They made the appropriate protestations when I reluctantly gathered my things and bid them a very good and prosperous evening. The gambler from the coach saw me to a buggy he tipped generously to take me safely to the hotel.

I did not miss his sigh of relief to have me gone. No gambler likes to have someone else's bad luck streak rub off on him.

On the ride back to the hotel, I grew angrier and angrier at the priest. I began to calculate exactly what it was he had cost me. If I considered the cards that would have come my way if not for his involvement in the game messing with the count ... and if I considered that the likelihood was that he had simply inserted himself into that game only because of some misguided, religious notion that he was saving my soul or some other tripe!

Always trying to get me to go pray at his damned cathedral. Wasn't it in some ways his fault those nasty outlaws had taken off with my valise and landed me in this mess in the first place?

How long before I would be found? I could only stay steps ahead if I was moving. Into my mind swam the image of what might come if I was not back on the move soon. He would track me here. I had done my best but ... my chest rose hard as I felt the fear of that fateful day I'd been running from for more than four years.

I had once been so close to having the money I needed to really escape, buy my way to San Francisco, melt in with a new identity inside that city that was big and wild enough to be a welcome port of last resort for me. But for more than two years, that money had remained out of reach. It was safe in a vault box inside a bank in Kansas City. But I could not yet return there for I knew without help that there was no way I'd ever get in and then get out. With no one to trust to help me, the money simply stayed where I'd hidden it.

And until I could reclaim it, I ran the games I knew to earn a living. The last of my real stake had been hidden inside that valise. Without it, I needed to get more money so I could stay ever moving on, never long enough in one place to be captured.

My eyes fell over the bottles of liquor sitting sedately upon the mantle-side table. I had not touched a drop since I'd been at the hotel. I had needed to stay sharp. No mistakes. What the hell difference did it make now?

By the time the knocking on the door came, I'd drained two glasses of whiskey and soda. Not drunk, not even close; just a warmth in my chest that had begun to spread languor through my limbs.

The very last person I would have expected to see at my door was the priest. Yet, there he stood, with that pious expression on his face, pious words of concern for me about to come from his lips.

I tried to slam the door in his face but his hand braced against it. He shoved just enough for it to move me back; he shut it firmly behind him.

"What do you think you're doing? Even a priest may not enter a lady's bedroom without her permission ..."

"If there was a lady in this bedroom, perhaps that would count," he said, his voice smooth as silk. "Is there one in here?"

"How dare you!"

"Does this look familiar?" he said, pulling my valise from behind him, holding it up before me. I had not even noticed it; I must have been so consumed with rage at this man who'd disrupted all my plans, then turned up at my door and insulted me from the instant I resisted his overture.

But upon seeing my little case, all I could do was rush toward him to grab it. "My case! Oh my! Where did you find it? How ..."

"No, no. Not that easy, honey," he said, suddenly holding the case out of my reach and nodding over to where the liquor bottles were. "Make me a drink first, then we talk about what it is about this valise that's so important to you. And don't even think I'd believe it's the silky scraps of fabric in here. Though, frankly, the idea of you in them has done wonders for my dreams of late."

My mouth dropped open. "You're a priest! You're not allowed to ..."

"Notice a woman?" He set the valise down at his feet and poured a long slosh of whiskey into a crystal tumbler. Then looked at me, his eyes traveling from my feet up to my head, as he slowly sipped and took his time surveying my body. "I've done more than notice you, honey. I've thought a lot about you. About what you'd feel like. About what you'd taste like."

Everything spun around me. I was torn in too many directions. My eyes were greedy on the valise yet also couldn't help but notice the man before me, the priest ... the way his stance was now a bit more threatening. I was giddy with excitement and relief that my valise was there with me again ... but I was also aware that whatever I thought was going on was probably a fallacy.

Where I wanted to rush toward the priest and grab my valise ... I also realized that he now seemed to be a danger even if I didn't really understand why.

So I stood my ground and prepared to flee if I had to. My fingers itched for my bag. "Who are you?" I finally asked.

"At last. She's not quite as slow as I was beginning to think."

"How did you get that?" I asked, pointing toward my bag. "And why are you returning it to me? And why have you been masquerading as a priest?"

"Very good!" He smiled at me; his eyes crinkled. "Now, if you'll just answer my question about this case, I'll answer yours. I think you'll come to see we can help each other."

"My case?" I asked, licking my lips, smoothing down my skirt. He nodded at me, this amused look on his face. "Well. Um. Yes. My case. Well ..."

"Let me help. What have you hidden in it?"

"Hidden?" I bit my lip. I began to pace before him. "See, the thing is, there's this man ..."

"The one who treated you so bad that you don't much like men anymore?" he asked, his voice much softer.

I remembered the conversation we'd had when I'd thought he was a priest. I nodded at him. "I stole something from him when I left."

"What'd you steal?"

"Bearer bonds."

"What? Jesus. How much?"

"Enough. More than enough."

"They're not in here," he said, his foot kicking against the valise. "I would have seen them."

"No. They're not. But the key ... it's in there."

He tilted his head at me. His eyes flashed down toward the valise and then back up at me. "No key. I would have found it."

"No. It's sewn into the lining." I shrugged my shoulders. "It's the key to a safety deposit box in Kansas City."

He narrowed his eyes at me. "A safety deposit box? That's where you put the bonds? Why Kansas City?"

"It's where I took them. They were in his box, see? I took them from his, went to another bank, put them in there. He doesn't know. He thinks I have them on me. But I don't."

"Who is he?"

"He?"

"Stop that. Just answer the damned question."

"He ... mmm ... uhmm ... he's my husband."

"Okay." He nodded at me, took his tumbler and walked over to sink down into one of the large armchairs that faced the small sofa in the sitting area of the suite. "Come sit down. Let's talk about how we might be able to help each other."

"You won't be able to just take the key and go get the bonds," I said as I lowered myself to the couch. "Only I can. The account's in my name."

"I wasn't interested in the bonds."

"You're not?"

"Well, I am now, but I wasn't to begin with. All I knew was that something in that valise meant so much to you that you were growing desperate."

"Then what are you interested in?"

He gave me this grin that took me by total surprise. It was purely sexual. Pure and oh so very dangerous. But then he leaned back in the chair and the look slipped away to be replaced by a hard-bitten, no-nonsense stare.

"You're in trouble. That much I knew. It appears you're on the run from this husband. Chances are, he's looking for a single woman traveling alone. You'd be relatively easy to trace, Molly, though I suspect you've taken some kind of steps to travel to places you don't think he'd look for you."

"I bleached my hair," I said, fingering my lighter hair. "Use a different name. Keep to myself."

"Gamble in poker halls. Bet that never gets noticed," he snorted.

"For your information, he has no idea I can play poker. I learned after I left him."

"Are you any good?"

"Yes, dammit."

"What's your real stake?"

"I had a few of the bonds with me. Cashed them in. But I started running low. Made a few mistakes early on," I said softly. My eyes dropped to my lap.

"More men you shouldn't have trusted?"

"Men will tell you anything."

"Yes. We will."

My eyes came up to him. Those last words were spoken with a velvet voice that I'd not heard from him before. "Who are you really? You still haven't told me and I've told you all this about myself. What do you want with me? I know you want something. You bring me the case but you would never let me just have it, would you?"

"No. I wouldn't."

"Then what?"

"Haven't you wondered why I'm traveling around pretending to be a priest? Why I have your valise?"

"Sure. I figure you're on the run from the law. Just like me."

"He turned you in for stealing the bonds?" He shook his head as he rose to refill his glass. "You picked some great gent."

"You don't know the half of it."

"But I intend to."

His eyes pinned me in place. There was within them a danger, stark in its intent, that made me stop breathing until he finally looked away.

"Who are you? How did you get the valise? Did you know those men who robbed the stage? Is that how you got it?"

He sipped his drink and walked slowly toward me, kicking the valise forward with each stop until the bag was at my feet. "Show me where you hid the key."

"Okay." I reached for the bag but he quickly sunk down before me and put his hand over mine just as I touched the main clasp.

"Slowly. And no tricks. Got me?"

I nodded at him. His hand stayed atop mine for a moment. Then he drew his hand up my arm, slowly, purposefully. Our eyes stayed on each other. His had my measure. It made me shiver with the realization that this man might have been more man than I'd ever come across in my life. And all this time ... I'd never looked close enough to see that about him, not dismissing him out of hand because he was only a priest.

As I opened the valise, his eyes dropped down and I finally looked into the bag I'd about died to lose. "It's in the lining."

And with that, I gave a tiny tug along the basted seam I'd mended after placing my valuables down between the lining and the outer cover. It had been ingenious, really, and had served me well as a hiding place for many miles and many months.

I slipped my fingers in and pulled out the brass key with its wide head. He held out his hand; I dropped the key in it and watched as he closed his fingers over it.

"It does you no good without me," I said softly.

"So you said," he said, his eyes still on the valise.

"Now what?" I asked him, closing the valise's top, crossing my legs, shifting back in the seat. "You didn't know what I had in there ... so you obviously had some other reason you were wanting to see me."

"Is that a proposition, Miss Carmine?" he said softly. I was watching him intently. He still crouched at my feet. His eyes were no longer on the valise. Now they were on my boot; his free hand teasing with the hem of my skirt. I swallowed hard. It wasn't that this wasn't a new place for me to be, but it never was an easy thing, realizing that sometimes a woman has to do things just to make it in this cruel world.

"It wasn't a proposition. I just hoped you'd tell me what's to become of me. Is it too much to ask that you'll simply leave me the key and walk out of here?"

"Yes. It's too much."

His hand rubbed over my knee. He smiled up at me, crooked, trying to be charming. I bit my lip at first and then forced a smile in return. "You're not going to kill me. That would be of no use to you. Are you going to make me go back to Kansas City with you? Get the bonds from the bank?"

"You're going somewhere with me ... Kansas City might be as good a place as any ... but for right now ... there's something else I want you to tell me."

Kansas City! In some ways ... maybe that wasn't such a bad thing ... not that this was ever how I saw myself going back there if I ever did return, which I sure as hell did not. "Tell you?"

"Yeah. I want you to tell me just how stupid you really think I am?" he said. His voice was soft but there was no mistaking the lethal quality within it. I shook my head at him. He reached suddenly for the valise and this little cry of surprise escaped me.

His big hands yanked the case open; he dumped everything out, letting it all fall around me. I forced myself to stay where I was when what I wanted more than anything was to grab the case and run. When it was empty, he righted the case and then simply ripped the lining out. And as he did, ten sheets of blue-green paper fell out from where I'd hidden them in Kansas City.

"Bearer bonds," he said, in that still-too-soft voice. "Fancy that. When were you planning to tell me about this stash?"

"Never," I whispered.

He started chuckling. "At least you're honest. Sometimes."

"It's all I had ... I took a few, I told you that ... I needed a stake ... I needed ..." I shrugged my shoulders.

He was examining them. Gave a low whistle. "How many more in that bank?"

"A lot."

"Yeah?" And now he grinned at me, his eyes sparkling with mischief. "Well, now, I think maybe now you really got my interest in Kansas City."

"If you think for one minute that I'm just going to hand all that over to you ..."

He was in my face so fast that I couldn't really react more than to lean back in the chair as he leaned in over me, his face right above mine, his eyes drilling into me. "You'll what? You think you're in any position to threaten me?"

"Please ... just don't hurt me."

His eyes closed for a moment. When he looked at me again, they were softer somehow. His hand slowly reached for my face, stroking down my cheek. I trembled under him. "I'm not gonna hurt you. Not like you mean. I'm not that way. If I want a woman, I want her to want me, too. So your virtue, such as it is, is safe with me. What I want from you is not to take you against your will ..."

Moments passed like hours as I stared into his eyes; my panic began to ebb. "Then what do you want with me?"

"I need a traveling companion. As a cover. Someone who'll come voluntarily. Someone who doesn't have anything to lose if she's helping break the law. Someone who's not afraid. Someone who's got some experience at playing a masquerade on folks."

"But why? Your masquerade as a priest was working ... why would you need to change that?"

"Because they're gonna be looking for the priest now." He shrugged his shoulders. "It's kinda like you, isn't it? Your husband's looking for a young woman who's traveling alone. The posse that's hunting me is gonna pick up my trail. If not back in Mesa, then here. And they'll be looking for a priest."

"What? You were with the gang that robbed us? I don't believe it. Why wouldn't you have just killed us all, taken the money and ..."

"We should have," he said quickly. His hard voice shook me. I think the blood must have drained from my face at the thought of how little life meant to this man. Hadn't I known plenty of other men like that, though? Maybe that's why I believed him. Maybe that's why it shook me. To think I'd been friendly with him and all the time he was secretly planning to kill all of us just because we were unlucky enough to ride that stage.

If he wanted me compliant with whatever his new scheme was, he must have realized that having me that frightened of him was not really the best route to take at this point.

He sat back on his haunches, his hand lingering to stroke gently over my thigh. It was a seemingly absent-minded gesture on his part; rather like a man would pat and calm a jittery mare.

"I wasn't with them. Truth. I negotiated our way out because I wanted to live. Okay?" I tried to nod. He sighed, irritated. "All they wanted were the three money bags the Marshal was escorting. I talked them into leaving us alive. It's one thing to steal from a coach; it's another thing to kill a U.S. Marshal in this territory. One gets you on a wanted poster; the other gets you killed."

"But they took my valise and you got it ..."

He smiled at me, that evil smirk of his that still made my heart beat funny. "Nah. They didn't take the valise. I hid it in my bag. Had it in mind to return it to you, see how grateful you'd be. Besides, I already had you pegged as not being what you said you were. And, like I say, I was already thinking ahead to a new identity for myself."

"A new identity?"

"Can't be a priest when I leave Tucson. Makes the trail too easy."

"You really have a posse after you?"

"Kill a Marshal ... I guarantee they take that personal."

"You ... you killed a Marshal?"

"Nope. My boss did. But I was there. And they think I did it. That's what counts. They'll hang me first; ask me if I did it as they bury me."

"Your boss?"

He shook his head. "You don't want to know too much, honey. Trust me."

"Well, what do you want with me?"

"They're looking for a man traveling alone. Your husband's looking for a woman traveling alone."

I took in a hard breath. "You're not possibly thinking of ..."

"Neither is looking for a couple. A nice, ordinary, sweet couple traveling to Kansas City to see her dear old mom, who's taken sickly and might not make it. Doesn't that just break your heart?"

"You and me? You must be mad."

"What? You think we can't pass for married?"

"Look how you're dressed! No one would believe it. Not for a second."

"I have other clothes. Don't be such a Boston blue blood."

"I am not. It's simply that ... well, it's impossible. I have somewhere else I need to be and ..."

He stood up; yanked up on his britches and just looked down at me. His eyes were cold. I shut up as I felt the air leave the room. "You want to live, you'll come with me. You want that fortune you got stashed in Kansas City, you'll make this good. You cross me, woman, and I won't be held accountable for what I'll do to you."