Читать книгу In Name Only - Peggy Moreland, Peggy Moreland - Страница 9

Troy was dreaming. He was sure he was, though there were no color or images in the dream. Just sound. An irritating scrape and clatter that began to work on his nerves. A metallic jiggling sound, as if someone was testing a lock. A squeak of hinges badly in need of oil. Then a loud, indignant inhalation of breath.

It was at that moment that Troy realized this was no dream.

But the realization came too late for him to react. A hand closed over his bare shoulder, blunt nails biting deep.

“What do you think you’re doing in my daughter’s bed? Get out! Out! Do you hear me? Out!”

There was a yank on his shoulder—a yank that lacked the strength required to budge a man of Troy’s size—and Troy blinked open his eyes and met those of Shelby’s father. He knew the man had to be her father. There was enough righteous indignation in his dark eyes to condemn a hundred men to hell for their sins.

Troy heard a soft moan beside him, then the fullness and curve of a hip bump up against his. Nervously he released the hand he still held and cleared his throat. “Shelby?” he said quietly, hauling himself to a sitting position. “Sweetheart, I think you better wake up.”

The man staggered back as if Troy had punched him. His chest swelled, his nostrils flared and his neck turned a mottled red against the white collar that bound it. “Shelby Ruth Cannon,” he ground out through clenched teeth. “You’d better have an explanation for this abomination. A very good one,” he warned and spun to drop down onto one of the wicker chairs. He sat, his spine rigid, his hands splayed along thighs covered by unrelieved black gabardine, and drummed his fingers, waiting, his eyes narrowed on the window in front of him.

Shelby slowly pushed herself up on one elbow, swallowing hard as she stared at her father’s profile. “Good morning, Daddy.”

“Good morning?” he raged, snapping his head around to glare at her, his eyes shooting fire. “And what is good about a morning in which a father finds a strange man in his maiden daughter’s bed?”

“He’s not a stranger, Daddy,” she said quietly. “He’s my husband.”

The man was on his feet so fast it made Troy’s head swim.

“Husband!” he roared.

Though Troy felt inclined to offer an explanation of some kind, he thought it best to remain silent and let Shelby do the talking. After all, she was the one with all the answers, not him.

He felt the mattress shift slightly as she slipped from beneath the covers to stand beside it. “Yes, Daddy,” she said as she pulled on her robe. “My husband. Troy and I were married yesterday.”

“Married! Where?”

“Las Vegas.”

The preacher sent Troy to hell with one damning look. “You took my daughter, my innocent daughter, to Las Vegas? What kind of man are you!”

“Daddy, please—” Shelby began.

He waved away her plea with an angry swipe of his hand. “You told your mother and I that you were going to Denver to spend Labor Day weekend with your cousin. I suppose that was a lie, as were the buying trips you’ve been taking for the past several months.”

When Shelby guiltily dropped her gaze, he swelled his chest, his face a furious red as he turned his glare on Troy. Obviously he didn’t like what he saw. “Is that your truck and trailer parked in the alley, and your horse tied to it?”

Troy refused to be cowed and met the man’s eyes squarely. “Yes sir, it is.”

“Am I to assume, then, that you are a cowboy?”

“I like to think so.”

Troy’s flippant response seemed to anger the man even more. He whirled to face his daughter. “I’ll have the marriage annulled.”

“Daddy!” Shelby cried in horror. “You can’t!”

The preacher stared at her a long, gut-clenching moment, his eyes narrowing to suspicious slits. “And may I ask why not?”

Troy glanced at Shelby and watched the blood drain from her face.

“B-because—” She faltered for a moment, then gave her chin a stubborn lift. “Because I’m an adult and responsible for my own actions.”

“Responsible?” her father said contemptuously. “And eloping with this—this cowboy is what you consider acting responsibly?”

Though the slight was directed at him, Troy ignored it, more concerned with the effect the man’s words were having on Shelby. Her face had gone from ghostly pale to beet-red in a matter of seconds, and she was trembling like a leaf. Though he’d had very little experience with pregnant women, he suspected emotional scenes like the current one being played out couldn’t be good for her or her baby.

Hoping to intercede before any damage was done, he swung his legs across the bed and rose to his feet to stand beside her. Though the Reverend Daniel Cannon was tall, Troy was taller, and broader as well, a fact that he thought, for some stupid reason, might count in his favor.

But he’d failed to remember that he’d grown uncomfortable in the night and unfastened the waist of his jeans.

“For God’s sake, man,” the preacher cried, whirling away from the sight and covering his eyes. “Have you no sense of decency?”

Troy turned and quickly snagged up his zipper, shooting an apologetic look Shelby’s way before turning back around.

“Mr. Cannon—”

The preacher stiffened, but kept his back to the two. “Reverend Cannon,” he clarified with an imperious lift of his chin.

Troy set his jaw. “Reverend Cannon,” he amended, putting the same inflection on the title the preacher had. “I’d appreciate it if you would lower your voice. You’re upsetting my wife.”

The man turned then, and the look of contempt in his eye was so strong Troy felt it like acid against his skin.

“In God’s eyes, and my eyes, she isn’t your wife and won’t be,” he added, turning to glower at Shelby, “until you are properly married in a church.”

“But, Daddy—” Shelby cried.

He held up a hand, cutting her off. “I don’t have time to discuss this further. I have a men’s Bible class to teach.” He gave his waistcoat a tug, then marched for the door. At the threshold he stopped and looked back, singeing them both with a last, contemptuous look. “We’ll discuss this at dinner tonight. Seven sharp. Don’t be late.” Before either could form a response, he slammed the door behind him with enough force to rattle the windows and set the art on the wall askew.

With the slam of the door reverberating in the small room, Troy crossed to the window, braced a wide hand on its frame and looked down below. Shelby knew by his frown that he was monitoring her father’s departure.

She wanted desperately to throw something, anything. Rant, scream, chase down the stairs after her father and rail at him until she’d freed herself of the anger that burned through her.

But she didn’t.

Instead she did as she’d learned to do years before—she took a deep breath…another…then yet another…suppressing the anger, the frustration, until it was nothing but a knot of burning tension in her stomach.

“I’m sorry, Troy. You didn’t deserve that.”

He lifted a shoulder. “Doesn’t matter.”

But it did matter. More, she suspected, than he would ever admit. “Yes, it does,” she insisted. “He had no right to speak to you in that way.”

His scowl deepening, he closed his hand into a fist on the window frame, making the muscles cord across his bare back. “He was angry. I was the natural target.”