Page 1 of Preacher

CHAPTER 1

HOLLY

Salvation looked exactly the way I remembered it, which somehow made coming back worse.

The sun had bleached the buildings along Main Street another shade closer to bone. The old hardware store was boarded up, a FOR LEASE sign hung crookedly in the former pharmacy, and only places like the diner and gas station seemed determined to outlast everything else.

I’d been back for the funeral and twice since to deal with paperwork, but those trips had been short enough that Salvation still felt temporary. This time I had a plan. Sell Curtis Freight, sign whatever needed signing, clear out Dad’s office and leave. It should have been simple.

The freight yard sat on the eastern edge of town behind a chain-link fence that had needed replacing five years ago. Three trucks were parked in the lot, only two running, and the accounts I’d spent the last month untangling made it painfully clear that Dad had kept the place going on stubbornness and money he’d never admitted to spending.

Curtis Freight wasn’t bankrupt, but it was close enough that pretending otherwise would be stupid. I parked beside the office and switched off the engine.

The offer on my passenger seat was the only bright spot I’d found since inheriting the business. Cash, a quick close, and a buyer willing to take the property, contracts, trucks, warehouse and every headache attached to them. The price was generous enough that I’d sent it straight to the estate attorney, who’d found nothing obviously wrong with it.

I grabbed the folder and went inside. The office smelled like paper, dust and Dad’s industrial-strength coffee. I set the offer on the desk, opened the blinds and muttered, “Not happening.” A room smelling like my father wasn’t a reason to stay. I’d built a life outside Salvation. I had an apartment waiting for me, friends who didn’t know every stupid thing I’d done before eighteen and no desire to keep my father’s dying company alive out of guilt. Dad wouldn’t have wanted that, or at least I was reasonably sure he wouldn’t.

The rumble of a motorcycle outside pulled my attention toward the window, and my stomach knew who it was before the bike came fully into view. “Of course,” I said softly as Preacher swung off a black Harley beside my car.

He wore worn jeans, heavy boots and the black leather cut I’d seen on him for most of my life. UNHOLY FEW MC curved across the back. His dark hair was shorter than I remembered from the funeral, with some silver strands starting to show.

I had absolutely tried not to notice. He’d been Dad’s closest friend for as long as I could remember, he was just the guy who drank whiskey with Dad on the porch and showed up at family cookouts. He’d also been the subject of the most humiliating crush of my teenage years, and apparently twenty-seven-year-old me hadn’t developed much immunity to him.

I watched him cross the yard, wide shoulders stretching the leather, moving with the confidence of a man nobody hurried. At eighteen, I’d thought he was the hottest man I’d ever seen, but he’d been thirty-six, fully patched and firmly part of Dad’s world.

Now I was twenty-seven and Preacher was forty-five. Eighteen years still separated us, but I wasn’t a teenager wandering into the kitchen hoping Dad’s best friend would notice me anymore. Unfortunately, time hadn’t done a damn thing to improve my judgment where he was concerned.

He opened the office door without knocking.

“You planning on breaking in every time you visit?” I asked.

His gaze found me, then stopped. I’d seen Preacher angry, amused and bloody once, when he and Dad had come back from somewhere neither had explained, but I’d never seen him look at me quite like that. His eyes moved over me once, not crudely exactly, but definitely not the way a man looked at somebody he still thought of as a kid, and something warm curled low in my stomach before his expression changed, almost like he’d caught himself.

“Holly.”

“Preacher.”

He shut the door behind him. “You didn’t tell me you were coming in today.”

“I didn’t realize I needed to clear my schedule with you.”

The corner of his mouth moved. God, I remembered that almost-smile. At seventeen, I’d once spent an entire afternoon convinced it meant something because he’d used it after I made him laugh. Teenage girls should be banned from interpreting adult men.

He walked farther into the office and looked around. “You been through Rowan’s desk?”

“Most of it.”

“Find the emergency cash taped underneath the bottom drawer?”

I blinked at him, sure I’d heard wrong. “There’s emergency cash taped underneath the bottom drawer?”

That got the full smile, brief but devastating. “Apparently not.”

I crouched, pulled the drawer out and found an envelope taped beneath it. “You’ve got to be kidding me.”

“Your dad didn’t trust banks.”

“My dad owned a business that depended on banks,” I pointed out.