The Redhead and the Preacher: A Loveswept Historical Romance

by Sandra Chastain

  He’d just as soon have met up with Marshall at his own place in Salem. It was only a few miles off the route. What difference did skipping the first hundred miles make when the trail was more than four thousand miles long? No difference at all, except to people who were totally inflexible or inexcusably sentimental. He didn’t know which Alex was, but neither possibility inclined him to like the guy.

  It didn’t help that he was late. There was nobody on the beach this early but Tom and some woman who’d rolled up at the other end of the parking lot a few minutes ago. She was obviously about to start the TransAm herself—she had a sweet steel-frame touring bike and a trailer for her gear. Looked like she was waiting for someone, which made sense, since women tended not to ride alone.

  He was tempted to say to hell with Marshall and take off. Taryn had already fled the scene. A quick hug, a peck on the cheek, and she’d driven away mere minutes after he’d unpacked his stuff from her SUV. Having set this plan in motion, the last thing she’d wanted was to stay here and watch it unfold—not when the odds were good that Tom would tell Alex all about her meddling and make her look as manipulative as she was.

  With Taryn gone, the only thing keeping him here was the knowledge of how guilty he’d feel if he knowingly stranded a complete stranger on his first day of the TransAm. But wouldn’t that wear off? How many miles could guilt chase him across the country?

  He knew the answer, though. Thousands of miles. Dozens of months. Guilt never gave it a rest.

  The woman started pushing her bike slowly toward him. Fantastic. Now he’d have to make small talk with a stranger about how excited he was to be starting, what he thought about prevailing headwinds, blah blah blah.

  He made up his mind. Marshall had five minutes, and then Tom was out of here.

  “Sorry to bother you, but are you Tom Geiger?” She smiled uncertainly.

  It had been a while since he’d been recognized, but the automatic reply came out as quick as ever. “No comment.”

  She blinked and shook her head, confused. “Is that a yes or a no?”

  “That’s an ‘It’s none of your business.’ ”

  This time, she narrowed her amber eyes at him in a glare that would have been menacing on a two-hundred-pound man. Coming from her, it was actually kind of … cute. Probably not the effect she was going for. “What, your identity is some kind of state secret?” she asked. “All I want to know is if you’re Tom Geiger or not. It’s a pretty simple question.”

  And then he heard it—what he should have heard as soon as she’d opened her mouth. She wanted to know if he was Tom Geiger. Not Tom Vargas. Tom Geiger. Which meant she hadn’t recognized him. The woman was looking for the man he was now, not the guy he used to be.

  While that was still sinking in, she added, “I’m Alex Marshall.”

  Shit.

  “You’re supposed to be a man.”

  She raised an eyebrow. “I neyer said I was a man. Sometimes Alex is a woman’s name.”

  When Tom didn’t reply, she shrugged as if to say What can you do? Life throws curve balls at us all. “It’s short for Alexandra. You can call me Lexie if you like that better. A lot of my friends do.”

  “Well, I’m not your friend.”

  “Not yet, but you’re getting off to a smashing start.” She planted her hands on her hips, staring at him. If she’d been able to breathe fire, he’d be toast by now, but considering her size and general adorableness, it was like being stared down by Tinker Bell.

  “This isn’t going to work,” he said finally.

  “Because I have breasts?”

  Not precisely because she had breasts, no, though at the moment they weren’t a point in her favor. Those breasts were going to make it a lot trickier for him to find the right person to ride with her—he’d have to make sure whoever it was wouldn’t take advantage of her. Which, in turn, meant he was likely to be stuck with her company for a lot longer than he wanted to be.

  That was the problem. Because attractive as she was, the woman screamed Type A. One look at her bike told him everything he needed to know. It was expensive, immaculate, and tricked out with high-end components. The narrow handlebars were choked with accessories, including an air horn to scare off dogs, a flashing LED safety light, a bike computer, and a handlebar bag topped with a plastic map sleeve. Inside the sleeve, she had a TransAm trail map—annotated, if his eyes didn’t deceive him, with tiny tape flags.

  His general aversion to humankind aside, Tom liked women as much as the next guy. But hyperorganized, controlling women like this one reminded him of his ex-wife, and that was a reminder he could live without.

  And if she needed another strike against her, there was the eight-inch reflective orange triangle hanging from the back of her saddle, on which she’d written, in large black letters, “Lexie—TransAm—OR to VA.” It may as well have read: Hi! I enjoy talking to strangers about riding my bike! Please drop whatever you’re doing to engage me in inane conversation.

  Not his cup of tea.

  Tom knew better than to say any of that aloud. He stuck with “This is a bad idea.”

  “Which part?” she asked, with a perplexed shake of her head. She had wavy reddish brown hair pulled back in a tight ponytail. Very pretty.

  Very definitely not a man.

  “Riding together,” he clarified.

  “But wasn’t it your idea? You answered my ad.” She looked irritated with him, a little confused. Vulnerable. He wanted to help her out, except he was the problem.

  This was exactly why he avoided getting tangled up with people. You reached out a helping hand, and the next thing you knew you were up to your neck in quicksand, trying and failing to figure out a way to get everybody back out again.

  “My sister,” he said.

  “What about your sister?”

  “She answered it.”

  “You’re kind of losing me here.”

  “Yeah.” He crossed his arms and stared at her. Maybe if he was rude enough, she’d give up and go home. There was a risk she would cry first, and that would be unpleasant, but he could weather it if he had to.

  She crossed her own arms, mimicking his posture, and stared right back. “Yeah.”

  2

  How on earth had she gotten Tom Geiger so completely wrong?

  Lexie had prepared for this meeting as studiously as she had laid out all of her plans for the trip. The entire way from Astoria this morning, she’d thought about how she would respond when he finally figured out she was a woman. For every potential reaction—surprise, confusion, indignation—she’d considered the best way to overcome it, to smooth over his ruffled feathers and create a strong basis for camaraderie.

  But obviously she hadn’t prepared as thoroughly as she should have, because she didn’t know what to do with the guy standing in front of her. She hadn’t expected him to be this hostile. Or this weird. Or this … young.

  The Tom Geiger of her imagination had been fifty-five, jovial, and balding. This Tom wasn’t any of those things. Not at all.

  She didn’t have the first clue how to cope with him.

  He broke the standoff first. Running a hand over his close-cropped black hair, he took a few steps away from her and turned his attention past the parking lot to the beach. Not leaving—regrouping. Yet even this hint of his possible departure made her nervous.

  Whatever happened, she couldn’t let him get away.

  “Your sister?” she asked, hoping to elicit a fuller explanation.

  “Yeah.”

  That was it, just the one syllable. For crying out loud. She’d arranged to bike across the country with the most taciturn man in Oregon.

  It’s either this guy, or you ride alone.

  An option, but not a good one. Lexie had done the woman-camping-alone thing enough times to know her limits. It was one thing to be a strong, independent woman on the streets of Portland and quite another to fall asleep alone in a tent in the middle of nowhere without worrying about
ax murderers. She could do it—she had done it—but she’d strongly prefer not to.

  Of course, Tom was a stranger, too, with as much ax-murderer potential as the next guy. Still, you had to choose your risks, didn’t you? Even in his obviously aggravated state, he didn’t feel dangerous, and at least he was a biker. She knew his name and where he lived. He worried her considerably less than the alternative.

  Lexie didn’t have the luxury of blowing Tom off. She needed to figure out what his problem was so she could fix it.

  “She … tricked you into this?” He hadn’t said exactly that, but he was standing there with his arms crossed, frowning at the Pacific, and he had the look of a man who’d been outmaneuvered.

  “Mmm-hmm.”

  Two syllables. Score!

  It wasn’t funny—though she had to admit this thing with Tom had all the makings of a farce. For months, she’d exchanged guilty, careful e-mails with him, avoiding any hint of personal detail lest he ask her some question that forced her to come right out and admit she was a woman. Now it seemed she needn’t have bothered with all that self-recrimination, because the “Tom” she’d been planning the trip with wasn’t Tom any more than the “Alex” his sister must have pictured was Lexie.

  Which meant that this Tom—the real one—had been played by two women. No wonder he was grumpy.

  Probably she ought to apologize for her part in the charade, but she doubted it would help. And anyway, it wasn’t as though she’d lied to the man. I’m easy to get along with and am looking forward to a grand adventure! E-mail TransAmAlex@gmail.com. No outright deception there. Only a single—albeit critical—omission.

  And she hadn’t even done it on purpose. Not at first. Until the e-mail responses started to arrive, she hadn’t realized she’d left her name off the Adventure Cycling ad. Unfortunately, when her correspondents found out “TransAmAlex” was a twenty-nine-year-old woman, they’d backed out. Four of them, one right after the other. Apparently, the wives and girlfriends of the nation’s intrepid adventurers didn’t want their menfolk crossing the country with a strange woman. In the end, she’d quit mentioning her complicating gender altogether, assuming she could talk her way into her companion’s good graces once they’d met face-to-face.

  It had all sounded better in theory. The reality of Tom was rather discouraging.

  “So what’s the plan?” she asked.

  He shrugged.

  “You know, it would help a lot if you would speak.” And say more than three words at a time when you do.

  With a sigh, he said, “I want to do the TransAm by myself, but my sister thought I needed a partner, so she set me up with Alex Marshall, who is apparently you.”

  “Why’d she think you need a partner?”

  “She doesn’t want me to die in a ditch and rot unmourned.”

  Had that been humor? She couldn’t tell. Tom’s expression didn’t really suggest he had it in him.

  “Sounds like a good sister.” Her parents and her brother, James, had made pretty much the same argument in favor of her finding someone to ride with.

  “Yeah. But she’s a pushy pain in the ass.”

  She’d have to be, to boss you around. Lexie practiced diplomacy and kept the thought to herself. “Okay, so I’m not sure I’m getting the full picture. You didn’t choose to be here, but you are here. And you don’t want to ride with me because …”

  “Because I don’t want to spend the summer dissecting your relationship problems and fixing your flat tires and cheering you up the passes.”

  His casual misogyny rendered her temporarily speechless. “Wow,” she said after she’d recovered. “Don’t pull your punches on my account, Tom.”

  “I don’t pull punches on anybody’s account.”

  Lexie took a deep breath and let it out slowly, gazing past him to the ocean. This wasn’t working. It really wasn’t even coming close.

  But the thing was, it had to work, because she didn’t have a backup plan. It wasn’t as though Tom had been her first choice. Until last summer, she’d planned to do the trip with her brother. Then he’d gone and married a woman who didn’t ride, and Lexie had decided to take on the TransAm solo.

  Only, her family had hated that idea, and she’d had second thoughts of her own. She’d hoped to find a woman to ride with, but the pool of ads was small, and no other woman had advertised for a west-to-east TransAm companion this summer—nor had anyone female responded to Lexie’s ad.

  Really, Tom was her fourth choice. How pathetic to think she’d been reduced, on Day One of the TransAm, to clinging to her fourth-best hope for companionship.

  “Well, here’s the deal,” she said. “You don’t have to talk to me, and you don’t have to ride with me. Just because I advertised for a companion doesn’t mean I need help fixing flats. I can handle any pass that comes along without you holding my hand, and I can save my womanly yammering for someone who’ll appreciate it. All I want from you is a warm body to pitch my tent next to at night.”

  “I’m not going to sleep with you, either,” Tom replied, flat and condemning.

  Damn, what was it about being twenty-nine and in possession of ovaries that made everyone assume you were desperate for a man? Her friends fixed her up with earnest pharmacist types who wanted to discuss the compatibility of their Life Goals, which interested her not at all, and now she was stuck with Tom, who apparently translated “ride with me” as “fix my flat tires and service my delicate lady parts.”

  She couldn’t win.

  The worst thing was, he was such an obnoxiously attractive man. The Tom Geiger in her mind’s eye had looked exactly like her father. And okay, maybe that hadn’t been very realistic, but who’d have predicted this guy with the south-of-the-border complexion, the black hair, and the chocolate eyes? Who’d have expected him to have a jaw you could crack walnuts on, or those long, thick eyelashes that would’ve looked girly on a less masculine face?

  And then there was his body. The man had a serious Lance Armstrong thing going on under his T-shirt. His muscled forearms alone were drool-worthy, and the wide black bands tattooed around both of his biceps made him look dangerous and interesting, as if he had hidden depths.

  Too bad his hidden depths concealed piranhas.

  No doubt Tom Geiger was some women’s dream guy, but he wasn’t hers. With two broken engagements behind her, Lexie had given up on dream guys a few years back. These days, all her fantasies had wheels.

  “Are you going to be like this all the time?” she asked.

  “I just meant—”

  “Yeah, I heard you. And my husband will be so relieved when I pass that information along.”

  She gave herself a pat on the back for the brilliant improvisation. Sex problem: solved.

  The furrow between Tom’s eyebrows deepened, and his eyes skipped to her right hand. “You don’t have a ring,” he observed.

  “And you don’t have an ounce of tact.”

  His lips twitched. “True.”

  At least he knew. It made him marginally less awful. “What do you say we lay our cards on the table?”

  A curt nod.

  “You seem about as eager to ride with me as I am to ride with you.”

  “Sounds about right.”

  “But I don’t think it’s a great idea for me to do this trip by myself.”

  Another nod, which she hadn’t expected. She’d thought he might make her explain. But then again, Tom had a sister. Maybe he understood.

  “All I want is for you to camp where I camp and call my family if I have some kind of horrible accident.”

  The pause before he answered couldn’t have lasted more than a few seconds, but it was long enough for Lexie to give up. She’d be okay until she found a substitute for Tom. She was a people person by nature, and she definitely preferred company, but she could satisfy her need for conversation by talking to folks she met along the way. As for the nights in the tent, she had a book, and she could always read until she got
so tired that—

  “Fine,” he said, interrupting her internal pep talk. “But the second I find you somebody else to ride with, I’m taking off.”

  A weight lifted from her shoulders. Strange that she should be so pleased to be granted his company, considering how little she liked him. But then, she’d planned to ride with Tom Geiger, and she always hated to change her plans. “Works for me. So can we dip the wheels and get started already? I want to get to Garibaldi today.”

  With that deep frown between his eyebrows, Tom shook his head and said, “Knock yourself out.”

  Lexie pushed her bike across the sand, wishing she’d thought to unhook the trailer first. It wasn’t the easiest thing in the world to shove a fully loaded touring bike across loose sand. It was surprisingly difficult, actually. But she was going to dip her wheel in the Pacific, and three months from now she’d dip it in the Atlantic. That was that.

  Tom had taken a pass. What was up with that? Everyone dipped their tire in the water. If the way this trip was starting out was any indication, he was going to be one hell of a wet blanket.

  Not that it mattered. This was her adventure, and she was going to do it her way. She’d been looking forward to this day since before the training wheels came off her first bike. She and James had grown up on the stories of their parents’ TransAm adventures. In the summer of ’76, Mom and Dad and thousands of other Americans had dusted off their ten-speeds, thrown on some knee socks, and joined the cross-country party on wheels known as Bikecentennial. Having met in the saddle somewhere in Kansas, the Marshalls had been inseparable ever since.

  For as long as she could remember, Lexie had wanted to retrace that journey—to see the country, meet new people, and prove she had what it took to grind through the miles. If one of the forms of fortitude the TransAm required of her was putting up with Tom Geiger, so be it. There were worse things.

  She reached the surf. She dipped. She turned around. The moment lacked some of the symbolic freight she’d hoped for—her tire-dipping daydreams hadn’t included the dead-seaweed smell of the surf or the raucous shrieks of gulls circling overhead—and she had to work hard not to blame Tom for that. He wasn’t actively sucking all the fun out of the first moments of her trip. He was just standing there, silhouetted against a dramatic backdrop of oranges and reds and purples. Standing still with his arms crossed and his head down, ignoring the sunrise and the beauty of the ocean. Scowling at the parking lot. Waiting for her.