Claimed by Preacher

1. Holly

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.

Preacher shrugged. “Didn’t mean he trusted them.”

I peeled the envelope free and opened it.

Five hundred dollars in twenties stared back at me.

A laugh escaped before I could stop it, and for a second the office didn’t feel quite so heavy.

Then I caught Preacher watching me, and that awareness came back immediately.

I straightened and tucked the envelope into the open file box on the desk. “I’ll add it to the estate.”

“Rowan would tell you to buy something stupid with it.”

“He’d also tell me to keep it in case the government collapsed.”

I sat on the edge of the desk and folded my arms. “So what brings you here? Besides helping me locate Dad’s secret fortune.”

His gaze dropped to the folder beside me. “What’s that?”

“The reason I’m here.”

He reached for it, but I put my hand over the papers first. When his eyes lifted to mine, I said, “Ask first.”

Something flashed across his face, there and gone. “Can I see it?”

“That wasn’t difficult was it?” I slid the folder toward him before he could turn my name into another warning. “It’s an offer for the business.”

He stayed on his feet while he opened it and read the first page, then the second, and the longer he read, the less I liked his expression.

“What?”

“Who brought this to you?” He asked.

“A business acquisition broker contacted the estate attorney. They’re representing a buyer who wants the whole operation.”

“Who?”

“The buyer’s using an acquisition company. The attorney checked the paperwork. It’s legitimate.”

“That wasn’t what I asked.”

“I know. It’s also all I know right now.”

His jaw tightened as he glanced back at the offer. “And you’re considering this?”

“I’m accepting it.”

His eyes came up sharply enough to stop me. “No.”

I stared at him long enough for him to hear himself. “Excuse me?”

“Don’t sign it.”

“That is a slightly different sentence, but I’m still going to need more.”

Preacher put the folder down. “The price is too good to be true.”

“That’s usually considered a benefit when you’re selling.”

“Not when somebody’s paying so much more than they need to.”

I slid off the desk. “A buyer offering more than I expected isn’t evidence of criminal conspiracy.”

“I didn’t say it was.”

“You didn’t have to. You’ve got the face on.”

His eyebrows drew together. “What face?”

“The one that suggests somebody’s about to disappear into the desert.”

His mouth twitched again, but it didn’t soften his eyes. “You know what this place is worth?”

“I’ve had it valued, and yes, this offer is higher. It’s high enough to make selling the obvious decision.”

His jaw tightened, and I sighed. “Preacher, I’ve spent a month going through Dad’s numbers.

Two trucks need major work, we lost a regional contract before he died, another customer is sixty days behind paying, and payroll eats what little cash flow there is.

I can pour money into a freight company I don’t know how to run, or I can take a strong offer from somebody who does want it. This isn’t complicated.”

“It is if they don’t want the company.”

I paused, trying to follow his point. “What does that mean?”

His gaze went past me toward the warehouse outside. “Means I want to know what they actually want before you sell.”

“It’s a freight business. I’m going to make a wild guess and say freight.”

“Property. Yard. Storage. Trucks. Existing routes.”

“Yes. Those things are generally included in a freight business.”

He looked back at me. “Give me two days to find out who’s behind the offer.”

I laughed once because he sounded absurdly certain. “Are you serious?”

His stare narrowed. “Two days, Holly.”

“And then I decide, Preacher.”

I suddenly remembered how much space he could take up without moving. Dad used to call him the most polite dangerous man in New Mexico, which unfortunately didn’t make him any less sexy to me. He stepped closer until the space between us felt noticeably smaller. “You’ve been gone a long time.”

“There it is. The part where you explain Salvation to me because I left.”

“I’m just saying things have changed.”

“So have I.”

His gaze dropped to my mouth for half a second, shifting the air in the office. “Yes,” he said quietly. “I noticed.”

Heat climbed my neck, and I hated that he could still do that to me. Before I could answer, tires crunched over gravel outside and a dark SUV stopped beside Preacher’s bike.

He turned toward the window. “You expecting somebody?”

“No.”

A man in a pale dress shirt got out carrying a slim leather case, expensive sunglasses and shoes that were going to hate the freight yard.

Preacher went very still beside me. “Is that the broker?”

“No idea. I’ve only spoken to him by phone.”

The man entered after a quick knock and gave me a polished smile. “Ms. Curtis. I was hoping I’d catch you.”

“You could’ve called first.”

“I was just passing through.”

Preacher made a quiet sound that wasn’t quite a laugh.

The man’s attention shifted to him. His smile stayed in place, but something behind it changed. “I don’t believe we’ve met.”

“Preacher.”

There was no offered hand or explanation, and apparently that was enough. The representative looked back at me.

“I wanted to see whether you’d had a chance to review the revised closing schedule. My client is prepared to move immediately if we can have signatures by Friday.”

“Friday?” I asked. “You said next week.”

“We’ve simplified the due diligence requirements. Given the company’s current position, my client sees no benefit in prolonging the process.”

Preacher’s eyes hardened, but I kept mine on the representative. “What exactly do you mean by the company’s current position?”

He hesitated, only slightly, but I caught it. “The financial position you disclosed.”

“I didn’t disclose the unpaid regional account.”

Silence filled the office before the representative recovered. “I may be confusing that with another file.”

“Which regional account?” Preacher asked.

The man looked at him as though he’d misheard. “I’m sorry?”

“You said you were confusing it with another file. Holly didn’t tell you which account was behind, so which one did you think she meant?”

The polished smile disappeared, and unease prickled over my skin. The representative closed his case. “This is clearly a bad time. Ms. Curtis, I’ll call you this afternoon.”

“You do that.”

He left without another word, and we watched through the window as he crossed to the SUV without looking back. Preacher waited until the vehicle disappeared beyond the gate before picking up the offer again.

“You still signing Friday?”

I folded my arms, annoyed that the answer wasn’t as immediate as it had been ten minutes ago. “I’m still selling the company.”

“That wasn’t the question.”

“No, I’m not signing Friday, so don’t look so pleased with yourself.”

“I’m not pleased. I’m trying to work out what he knows.”

I looked at him and found whatever heat had been in his eyes earlier replaced by something colder.

“What?”

He tapped the papers against the desk. “Man didn’t drive out here to save himself a phone call. He came to see whether you were ready to sign, and he knew something he shouldn’t know.”

“That doesn’t automatically mean—”

“No.” Preacher’s gaze settled on me. “But it means I’m looking into this.”

I wanted to argue, mostly because Preacher had walked into Dad’s office acting as though my decisions required club approval. Instead, I kept thinking about the representative’s hesitation, the rush and the number on the offer.

Preacher moved closer and lowered his voice. “Two days, Holly. Don’t sign anything until I know who wants this place.”

I looked up at him, close enough now to see the fine lines at the corners of his eyes and the gray threaded through the dark stubble on his jaw.

He was Dad’s best friend, the man who’d been fully grown while I was still worrying about college, and the last person in Salvation I should have been noticing like this.

My body clearly hadn’t received the memo. “You get two days.”

His attention dropped to my mouth again, and this time neither of us pretended it hadn’t. Then his expression went flat and dangerous as he looked toward the yard.

“Good,” he said. “Because somebody wants Curtis Freight badly enough to pay too much for it, and I want to know why.”