by Janzen, Tara
“Why not?” she murmured aloud. It was more a question to herself than to him, but he answered.
“It didn’t seem wise to make a record of where I was and what I was doing in May. But you need not worry. I have the information I promised you, and the lack of a journal will not affect the published account of the historical sites.”
“Oh,” was all she managed to reply. The man had the memory of an elephant. Or he was telepathic, a possibility that was seeming less ridiculous all the time.
He’d been at Chatren-Ma in May, of course, and under circumstances she wouldn’t want written down either, for fear the journals would fall into the wrong hands or even the right hands. Still, she felt cheated out of the best part of the story. She’d come across vague references to the monastery in her professional studies, and more than one account of hearsay in another scholar’s work, along the lines of “an old man told of a man he knew whose brother-in-law, etcetera, etcetera.” Pure fiction for all practical purposes, but to have had a firsthand account, and from someone with Kit’s capacity for remembering even trivial details, would have been incredible.
But then, that was what he’d promised her, a firsthand account, to do with as she wished, all for the price of three meals a day and a bed. Not only that, he’d insisted on reimbursing her for the meals as soon as his finances took a turn to the legally exchangeable side. She’d made worse bargains in her life.
* * *
After dinner Kit startled her again, but in a thoroughly different manner. The sun had barely set when he rose quickly from his chair, crossed the office to the door that led to the deck, and slipped outside. If she hadn’t seen him, she certainly wouldn’t have heard him. Not even the silver rings on his boots had made a sound, or maybe she’d grown accustomed to the light jangling. No other explanation made sense.
Neither did the way he disappeared on the other side of the glass door. She held her curiosity in check for about thirty seconds, then followed him. The night was dark, waiting for the moon to rise, but light from the door and the living room windows cast a soft glow over the wood deck.
She padded around the perimeter, skinned her knee on the picnic table bench, cursed softly, and continued around to the sunroom side of the house.
“You felt it too?” she heard Kit say.
Stopping at the sound of his voice, she was on the verge of answering—if only to figure out where he was—when she realized he wasn’t talking to her.
Mancos loped over to the stand of aspen trees skirting the driveway, the low growl in his throat turning to a whine.
Felt what? she wondered. She hadn’t felt anything except the scrape on her knee and a bit of unease over his disappearing act.
“We must be careful, eh?” His voice drifted up to where she stood on the deck, and her uneasiness increased.
The man was no fool. He’d been proving that to her all day long, and if he was going to be careful, maybe she should be too. But careful of what? The wind?
“The Turk is fast,” he said as if in answer, “especially when he rides alone. If he comes we must be faster, Mancos.” The words were delivered like a lesson, patient but serious, heavy with an importance Kristine found difficult to match in herself.
If he’d spoken about international antiquities thieves, or some man in a suit and tie trading contraband, she might have been able to rustle up some extra wariness. But he spoke of bandits, and a third world bandit at that. Everything she’d read about such men, from National Geographic to professional journals, depicted them as local people, usually poor and uneducated, who dealt only with the next man up on the scale.
She admitted she might be misunderstanding Kit, or that someone called “the Turk” might possibly be the next man up on the scale, but she figured if Kit Carson was going to be jumping at the wind, their project would be better served by someone else keeping both feet firmly on the ground. Not really her forte, she also admitted, but no one could say Kristine Richards didn’t come through in a pinch.
She slipped back inside before he caught her out on the deck, listening to him talk to her dog. She talked to Mancos, too, but their conversations tended to revolve around food or the lack thereof. She’d never considered the animal a confidant, and he drooled too much to make a good cuddle-buddy. Kit Carson, on the other hand, would make a very good cuddle-buddy.
Oh, grow up, Kristine, she told herself, irritated with the one-track expressway he’d made of her mind with just one kiss.
Kit waited until she was gone before he delivered his final warning to the dog. He’d known she had followed him, and would have been disappointed if she hadn’t. It would have meant he’d misjudged her, and misjudgments of any kind were exactly what wasn’t allowed for the next few days.
He didn’t want her frightened or losing sleep. He wanted her as fresh and excited as she’d been all day. She was the most intriguing mixture of confidence and doubts. He’d panicked her a couple times, asking for files she’d misplaced, but he had soon realized she misplaced everything. He also made her nervous when he got close to her. He felt her awareness heighten, all her senses come into play, but it was a good nervous. Not good enough, not yet, but soon.
Growing up with a scarcity of possessions and the unbending discipline of the monastery, he found her Bohemian ways a rare challenge to keep up with and strangely fascinating. He kept wondering when and if she was actually going to lose one of the journals he’d risked his life to compile.
He liked watching her, watching her work, watching her think, watching her tuck ever-straying tendrils of hair behind her ear. More than once he’d been tempted to reach out and perform the task himself, not because the loose strands bothered him, but solely for the opportunity to touch her.
He wanted to touch her. In truth, he’d thought of little else since he’d kissed her. The pale creaminess of her skin was like a magnet to his fingers, the soft lushness of her lips like a lodestone to his mouth. Her dark mane of hair seemed to cry out for his hands to smooth it across his pillow, or wrap it around his fist as he drew her to him.
He knew some called him a barbarian, but none had made him feel more so than the woman with the violet eyes. He’d always considered himself the most civilized of men, more civilized than those who chose to call him an outlaw. This was the legacy of years of contemplation, of hours and often days of meditation on many things not easily apparent.
But, tonight . . . tonight he wished he could take her for his own. She appeared untouched, though he knew the mores of Western culture made that supposition doubtful. He also knew he wouldn’t have her tonight. His instincts were very sure of that.
He turned his attention back to the dog, scratching him behind the ears. “Stay close to her, Mancos. Guard her well, and if the need arises, call for me. Can you do that?”
The dog answered with a series of rumbling howls, bringing a grin to Kit’s face.
“Good dog.”
Inside the house, Kristine scrambled to her feet. What were they doing out there? Trying to wake half the mountain?
In her haste, she knocked over her coffee cup and barely saved one of his manuscripts from a soaking. She threw half a dozen tissues on the floor and turned back to the door, when the phone rang.
She hesitated for a moment before curiosity won out.
“Hello?” she said into the receiver.
“Kris, it’s John.” The voice sounded through the whole room, and she eyed the phone, wondering which button to push to get it off of the speaker.
Rudeness, not ignorance, compelled her to ask, “John who?” when she knew darn well John who.
“Garraty.”
She had all kinds of buttons to choose from, direct-dial buttons, hold buttons, on-off buttons, a battery-dead button that wasn’t really a button at all, and a couple of other miscellaneous buttons and switches. She pushed one and the line went dead. It was a solution of sorts, but not for long.
The phone rang again.
“Hell
o?”
“Okay, okay. You’ve made your point.”
“I’m not trying to make a point, Dr. Garraty. I’m trying to—” She pushed another button and was blessed with silence.
The phone rang once more. She knew it was him. It had to be. But maybe it was someone else, like her mother. It might even be her sister. She hadn’t talked to Sarah all week.
“Hello?”
“Dammit, Kris. If you hang up on me again, I’ll just come up there.”
It was him.
“I didn’t hang up on you,” she said. “I’ve got a problem with the speaker phone.” A problem she didn’t dare have again, not with the possibility of him driving up there hanging over her head.
“Well, quite fooling with it and I’ll bet you don’t have any more problems.”
He was so smart, she thought sourly. Smart enough to dump her, smart enough to cause a scandal that had almost torn her family apart. He’d not only dumped her, he’d dumped her for her own cousin, and worse yet, he’d gotten said cousin pregnant while he’d still been engaged to Kristine. There had been so much finger counting that year, her relatives had almost worn themselves out. She had to put up with him and his brood at Christmas and the Fourth of July. She certainly didn’t like having to put up with him in her own home, not even on long distance.
“What do you want?” she asked. It came out as “waddyawant,” with hardly a break and not even a whisper of politeness.
“I’m calling to see how you’re doing.”
He was so thoughtful, she mused, glaring at the phone. Thoughtful enough to mortify her right out of her assistant professorship at the University of Colorado. She’d stupidly resigned in a fit of outraged pride and had been fighting ever since to make up the lost ground.
“I’m fine,” she said. “How’s Lisa?” Low blow, Kristine, she told herself. Really tacky. She swore she wouldn’t do it again.
“Everybody’s fine. Lisa and the kids are looking forward to the picnic on the Fourth. She’s got a new potato salad everybody’s going to go crazy over.”
“No doubt,” Kristine said without even half the possible sarcasm. He was so proud of Lisa’s salads. He could have had brilliance, but he’d settled for potato salad—and great sex, if two kids in four years and another on the way was any indication.
“But I didn’t call to talk about potato salad,” he said.
“Thank you.” A touch of sarcasm slipped in.
“I called to talk about Carson.”
Playing dumb didn’t come easily to her, but she stretched herself. “Carson who?”
“Kit Carson. I know he’s here in Colorado, and I don’t think you should get involved.”
Well, well, she thought, imagine that. John Garraty a day late and a dollar short. Make that two days late.
“The smartest thing you could do right now is dump the project,” he continued. “I’d be willing to talk to Dean Chambers and have the contract shifted over to Boulder. We’re better prepared to handle the heat. And Carson is hot, Kris, don’t fool yourself. They don’t call him an outlaw for nothing.”
“Hmmm,” she murmured, not having a glib remark handy. John didn’t know how close to the truth he was.
“The guy has been walking the line between research and treasure hunting for so long, he probably has grooves in the soles of his boots. Who knows what he’s really up to? Who knows what he found out there?”
“Careful, Dr. Garraty. Your aspirations are starting to leak through your concern.”
“The Chinese are mad for a reason.”
“I’ve heard the rumors,” she admitted, dropping into her swivel chair.
“Everybody has heard the rumors.” John’s voice grew harder, less conciliatory. “I’m more interested in the facts.”
“Which facts are these, Kreestine?”
She jumped out of her chair. How long had Kit been standing in the doorway?
“Who’s that?” John asked, sounding confused.
How much had he heard? she wondered, staring at him.
“Kris?”
“What?” She continued looking at Kit, not knowing how much to explain of what he may or may not have heard.
“Is there someone else there?” John asked.
Etiquette was the only answer to the situation. Kristine took a deep breath and said, “John, I’d like you to meet Kit Carson.”
With predictable arrogance, John didn’t sound the least bit embarrassed. Quite the contrary. He started right in with the hard sell. “John Garraty, Kit, Middle East specialist for the University of Colorado. We’ve been hearing a lot about you lately.”
“So it seems,” Kit replied, not at all sure he liked what he’d overheard. He didn’t mind the references to himself; he’d certainly heard worse. But the edge in Kristine’s voice told him there was something between the Middle East specialist and her that went beyond a professional relationship. He hadn’t considered such a possibility.
“You know,” John went on, orally filling in his resume, “I’ve traveled quite extensively in your part of the world, the East. I directed an expedition to Petra and I’ve worked with a couple of people out of Karachi, Dr. Singh and Dr. Alexander.” He dropped the two famous names with ease, but with no noticeable effect.
“No, I didn’t know this,” Kit said, watching a blush spread across Kristine’s cheeks.
John ignored the literal interpretation and continued. “As a matter of fact, Kristine and I had planned a trip to Nepal. We were hoping to get into Tibet, but you know how tricky that can be.”
“This I do know.” Kristine saw his eyes narrow at her from across the room as he asked her, “When did you plan this trip, bahini?”
She didn’t understand the word, but it sounded disturbingly like an endearment when spoken in his deep, singsong voice, and it did little to restore the composure John had ripped out from under her. The Nepal trip was supposed to have been their honeymoon—he and Lisa had gone to Hawaii, showing little or no imagination—and she couldn’t believe he’d had the nerve to mention it.
Kit felt the underlying tension in the room rise again, and suddenly he knew one more thing about her: John Garraty had hurt her. His own reaction to that knowledge caught him off-guard, causing him to stumble inside on some hidden plane.
He knew how to cope with anger. He’d learned in the monastery to dismiss it as a wrong path, and learned in the outside world to use it only for his own survival. But jealousy was a perplexing unknown, and a day, or even an hour, earlier he would have thought himself incapable of such a worthless emotion. He didn’t take the revelation lightly.
“It was a long time ago,” Kristine said, filling in the endless silence and wondering what it was she saw darkening Kit’s eyes.
“Apparently not long enough, bahini,” he said, his voice an unusual monotone of strain. With a slight touching of his palms and a light jangle of bracelets, he bowed, then strode out of the office.
“All of us over here in Boulder are interested in your latest project,” John said, oblivious to the absence of his chosen audience, “and we’re able to offer you—”
“He’s gone, John,” Kristine interrupted.
“Gone where?”
“To bed, probably,” she said without thinking, but the meaning wasn’t lost on John.
“Dammit, Kris. What are you up—”
She pushed one button, then another, and another, then unplugged the phone from the wall.
Slumping down in her chair, she finished the last inch of coffee in her cup as she stared at the door. She’d been warned three times, by Dean Chambers, by Jenny, and now by John.
But she wasn’t going to back off. Wild horses and rabid dogs couldn’t make her.
Five
Kristine stabbed again at the roasted chicken sitting on a platter in the middle of her kitchen table. She shouldn’t have bothered. Kit hadn’t shown up for breakfast, he hadn’t shown up for lunch, and it didn’t look like he was going to show up
for dinner. The chicken was cold, the peas had dried up, and the biscuits were turning to rocks. She really shouldn’t have bothered. Lord only knew why she had. She’d never impressed anyone with her culinary skills.
What was he doing up there in his room? Starting a religious fast? She looked out the window at her detached garage. An evening breeze fanned the pine trees, sending waves of golden pollen dancing through the sunset like handfuls of glitter.
Figuring she might as well give in sooner rather than later, she pushed away from the table and let herself out the back door. The man had to eat, and they had work to do.
Her palms were sweating as she climbed the outside stairs to the second-floor apartment. Her pulse quickened as she faced the door. She lifted her hand to knock, then hesitated.
Maybe she imagined hearing the word “enter”, but after a moment she slipped out of the fading light and into the warm dark room.
Her eyes adjusted slowly; her heart didn’t adjust at all. He sat opposite the door on a softly worn sheepskin, naked except for a pair of black shorts. Perspiration glistened on his forehead and closed eyelids. Dampness graced the curved muscles in his arms, the breadth of his chest, and the long length of his legs. The soles of his bare feet rested upturned on his inner thighs.
The quiet, peaceful beauty of him took her breath away, and it was long seconds before she remembered to exhale. She shouldn’t have come, but neither could she force herself to leave.
The breeze blew in through an open window and lightly tousled the loose, shorter hair framing his face. The strands spread like a feather across his cheekbone, drawing her gaze back to his face. His eyes were now open, but no less blind than they had been before.
She automatically took a step back, then stopped, held in place by her own overreacting instincts. He didn’t want her to leave. Or did he? She wasn’t sure . . . of anything.
She shifted her gaze away, lightening the spell but not breaking it. Wiping her palms on the front of her jeans, she looked around his room, for he’d definitely made it his own. The trunks and bed filled most of the floor space, and a hundred other objects covered them. Brass bells, a Tibetan prayer wheel, rugs and tapestries, a copper bowl, a pottery dish filled with turquoise nuggets, another of tourmaline. An eerily familiar gold mask, a chunk of rock crystal bigger than both of her fists. The treasure trove of an adventurer with eclectic tastes.
