The Marshal Takes a Bride. Renee Ryan

looked from one woman to the other. “Laney Dupree and Katherine Taylor, I’ll not stand by and watch you degrade this child.”

      Katherine narrowed her eyes, depositing every bit of the formidable schoolteacher in her expression. “A bath is not degrading.”

      Trey dropped his gaze to Molly, and his gut twisted. She looked so sad and pitiful with her lower lip trembling. “It can’t wait until tomorrow?” he asked.

      Katherine pulled her lips into a tight knot of disapproval.

      Sensing a stalemate, he appealed to the wisdom of the group. “Laney, do something.”

      Marc’s wife shook her finger at him as though he was the one who’d committed a terrible wrong. “I’m going to have to agree with Katherine. The child needs a bath.”

      “No,” Molly cried. She twisted out of her sister’s grip, rushed to Trey and hooked her hand in his. “Mr. Trey says I don’t have to if I don’t wanna.”

      Laney chuckled, instantly sobering when Katherine leveled a glare on her.

      Sighing, Katherine spun back to look at Molly, the first signs of frustration flushing in her cheeks. With fists planted firmly on her hips, she said, “A bath is not going to kill you, young lady. Just look at you. Not a clean spot to be found.”

      In a gesture identical to her sister’s, Molly jammed her balled fists on her hips. “We was playing marshals and bank robbers with the other Charity House kids.”

      “And losing, from the sight of you,” declared Katherine.

      Trey took exception.

      “We were just letting them win.” He winked at the little girl. “Isn’t that right, Molly?”

      She favored him with a big gap-toothed grin. “Right. We can’t never, not ever, let them stinkin’ outlaws get the best of us.”

      Katherine gasped. “Did you teach her that?”

      Trey had the presence of mind to cast his gaze to the sky before he responded. “Maybe.”

      Marc joined them on the porch, turning into the voice of reason. “It’s over, Trey.”

      Trey looked from Katherine to Marc to Laney, then back to Katherine again. Ignoring the satisfied expressions on the faces of the three other adults, he crouched down to the five-year-old little girl’s level. Plucking at one of Molly’s braids, he said, “Sorry, kitten. Looks like you’re taking that bath today.”

      Her eyelashes fluttered, and one fat tear rolled down her cheek.

      Before he gave in to the pleading look, Trey squeezed his eyes shut, rose and shifted out of the way. He opened his lids in time for Katherine to link her disapproving gaze with his. “Stick around…Marshal. I’m not through with you.”

      With that, she spun around and marched inside the house, Molly in tow.

      Laney poked him in the chest. “You just made a big mistake, my friend. Big mistake.”

      Chapter Two

      With her resolve firmly in place, Katherine marched up the back stairs of the twenty-year-old mansion turned orphanage, tugging a reluctant little girl along with her. The moment her gaze landed on Molly’s tear-streaked face, Katherine’s determination turned into heart-wrenching guilt.

      By engaging in that senseless battle with Marshal Scott, she’d hurt the very person she’d set out to protect.

      What kind of big sister did that make her? Usually, she turned to God to help her with the overwhelming task of raising her newfound sister.

      Today she’d allowed emotion to get the best of her.

      Sighing, she caressed Molly’s hair and steered her into the recently refurbished bathroom, where Marc had installed multiple basins for the home’s many children to wash up for the evening. On the outside, Charity House looked identical to the rest of the fancy homes on Larimer Street. But inside, the mansion had been perfectly altered to house forty special children and the adults who cared for them.

      “Come on, Moll.” Katherine clicked the door shut behind them. “Let’s get you out of those filthy clothes.”

      Molly crossed her tiny arms over her chest. “I was having fun, Katherine.”

      Inhaling a deep, calming breath, Katherine knelt on the floor and cupped the child’s cheek. “I know you were. And you can go back outside—”

      Molly darted away from the claw-foot tub, but Katherine caught her by the sleeve. “After we get you cleaned up.”

      “But Mr. Trey said playtime was more important than a bath.”

      “I just bet he did.” Frustration speared Katherine’s previous remorse into something deeper, darker. Uglier…

      Take captive every thought and make it obedient to Christ.

      Katherine swallowed back her rising annoyance and forced her voice into an even tone. “Let’s leave Marshal Scott out of this for now.”

      Molly scrunched her face into a frown, her expression reminiscent of one Katherine had seen in her own mirror often enough before she’d made peace with her past, the same one permanently stuck on their mother’s face every day before she’d finally succumbed to tuberculosis.

      “Don’t you like Mr. Trey?” Molly asked.

      Katherine’s throat tightened. Her feelings for the U.S. marshal could never be classified as something so benign as “like.” Explosive, precarious, frightening—those were far better descriptions for the disturbing emotions the man brought out in her.

      She closed her eyes and took a deep breath.

      Perhaps he’d had good intentions at first. But there was no question in her mind that Marshal Scott was a difficult man, with his own personal demons to battle. Katherine knew, to devastating ends, what such a man was capable of doing when a woman let down her guard. She absently touched the top button of her blouse, made sure it was fastened.

      Truth be told, Trey Scott was too dangerous. Too bold. Too everything to trust. He simply had to go. Especially now that God had given Katherine the gift of finding the little sister she hadn’t known existed until six months ago.

      Straightening her shoulders, Katherine turned her attention back to Molly. “Let’s get you into the tub, pumpkin.”

      Molly arranged her face in an expression identical to the one Trey had leveled on her just moments ago on the back porch. “Don’t wanna.”

      Katherine was long past being amused. “Well, sometimes we have to do things we don’t want.”

      “That’s not fair to me.”

      “Life’s not fair,” Katherine said, with a sigh.

      A heart-wrenching sob flew out of Molly. “I wish you’d never come for me. I hate you.”

      Holding back a sob of her own, Katherine prayed for the right words to ease Molly’s resentment. The set of the child’s jaw was so similar to the look on her face the day Katherine had found her in that bleak mining camp, with only a threadbare blanket on a dirt floor as her bed. The child had been so quiet, so…alone and scared, having been left to fend for herself after her father’s fatal accident in the mine.

      Katherine pushed a lock of hair off her sister’s forehead, praying she could offer her sister a good life here at Charity House. “I know you think you hate me now, but I’ll always love you, Molly. You’re my sister.”

      The five-year-old responded with a hiccuping sigh.

      To keep from speaking out in anger, Katherine bit down on her lower lip. The realization that her sister blamed her for what had happened today wounded her far more than the child’s hurtful words. Before Trey Scott had entered their lives, Molly had never openly