by Janzen, Tara
He removed his hand and gestured toward her car, letting her lead the way with her long, stiff strides.
* * *
Kristine fought anger and incomprehensible tears as she ground the car through its gears up the mountain road. She’d never felt so helpless, so vulnerable, and she’d hated it. There should have been something she could have done, could have said, to diffuse the animosity and the stupidity behind it. But no, she’d stood there like a terrified female waiting for some man to do something to save her.
She tore into her driveway, slammed on the brakes, slammed out of the car, and slammed into her house. With each explosion of sound she heard the thud of a man’s body hitting metal, all so he could have some fun. John Garraty was starting to look like a well-bred saint.
“It’s best to let go of your anger, Kreestine.”
She turned on him, unaware that he’d followed her into the house. “You said there wasn’t going to be a fight!”
“That wasn’t a fight.”
“Well, what in the hell else do you call knocking somebody out cold?”
“Expedient.”
“Expedient?” she blustered. “I would have thought someone with your background could have come up with something a little more stylish than beating a guy’s brains out on a truck door!”
“The situation didn’t call for style, and I barely touched him, Kreestine. I think he’d had too much to drink.”
She stared at him, her mouth agape. “Too much to drink?”
He nodded sagely. “Yes. He’d had too much to drink and was feeling territorial. He obviously saw me as a threat to American womankind and decided violence was the answer. A poor choice, as always.”
“Violence is a poor choice?” Her voice rose toward shrill. “This from a man who threatened to kill one of those overgrown idiots?”
“I would not have actually killed one of them,” he said, stepping with her into the kitchen. “But under the circumstances I thought it wise to put the possibility in their minds.”
Kristine watched him open the refrigerator and pull out a bottle of beer, an action that roused Mancos from his sleep in front of the fireplace. The mastiff padded over and stood by Kit, pressing his head against a jean-clad leg and waiting for a treat.
“Sha-sha, Mancos. Sha-sha.”
Mancos let out a grumbly whine, but did as he was told, passing his mistress in a dull dog daze to flop back down in the living room. Kristine didn’t notice his change in loyalties. She was too busy working herself up again. Finally she could hold it no longer.
“You would have let them have me?”
Kit lowered his head against the refrigerator door and sighed, long and hard. She’d accomplished the impossible. She’d gotten under his skin, rattled the patience he’d spent years honing to a fine shield of composure. She’d made him angry.
He slowly turned to face her, forcing his voice to remain calm. He failed. “No, Kreestine. I would not have let them have you. I will not let anyone have you, not in the way they wished.” He took a long draw off the beer, then set the bottle aside and started toward her. “Not now, not ever, because, patni”—he stopped in front of her and captured her face in his hands—“you are mine.”
His mouth covered hers before she had time to think, and afterward she had no need to think, only desire for more of his kiss. She squeezed her hands into small fists, fighting the temptation to hold him, but temptation won. Her fingers trembled as she touched either side of his waist, and he slanted his mouth over hers again, pulling her higher, drawing her closer. She clutched at his tunic and felt the heat of his body spread through to her palms. Growing bolder, she slid her hands up his chest and traced the breadth of his shoulders. The strength of the muscles bunching in his arms made her feel weak and wanton, not helpless, not vulnerable, but waiting.
His low groan mingled with her sighs, and in one powerful move he lifted her to the table top and pulled her snug against him, his hands splayed around her waist, his hips pressed between her thighs. Kristine began to melt from inside out, overwhelmed by the intensity of his passion. His mouth roamed from hers to the tender triangle where jaw met ear and neck, and she discovered a heretofore unknown erogenous zone. In truth, he was turning her whole body into an erogenous zone.
She tilted her head to taste the nape of his neck, but his hand cupped her chin, stopping her.
“Don’t,” he whispered into her ear, and kissed her again. “Unless you are willing to come to my bed.” Another kiss followed the last, lower on her neck, gliding down to the curve of her collarbone. His braid slid over his shoulder, so close to her hand. “Will you come, Kreestine?”
Yes . . .
“Good.” He moved to gather her in his arms, and a cold dose of reality splashed into her fantasy.
“No! I mean . . . no. We hardly know each other. We’ve barely met. I can’t just fall into bed with—with you.” Her voice softened in dismay. She didn’t know what to think anymore.
“Ah, then you only want to play at love.” He kissed the corners of her mouth, teasing her with his tongue, and a bold hand slid up to caress her breast. “I like to play, too, Kreestine, but—” He paused to graze her lower lip with his teeth. “I’m quickly losing patience with the game. Come to me when you are ready.”
He kissed her once more, a lingering exploration of her mouth she couldn’t resist. When he pulled away she found his braid sliding through the hand she’d wrapped around it in an attempt to hold him longer and closer.
Thoroughly embarrassed by the betraying action, she released the plait and lowered her gaze only to have her blush heighten. She watched his large, rough hand slide slowly up her body, leaving a trail of heat along her thigh, over her belly, her breasts, and up to her throat. The tips of his fingers tilted her chin until she was looking at him.
He was smiling, his eyes dark with a slumber to match his voice. “It’s a good game, though, Kreestine. A very good game.”
Seven
He was crazy. She was crazy. The whole world had gone crazy.
Kristine pulled more papers out of the office wastebaskets, muttering silently to herself. Pencil shavings dusted her knees, making grimy lead stains on her blue-and-white-striped jeans. She’d already spilled coffee on the matching T-shirt, and the sun hadn’t even come up yet.
Without including her workplace, the office was immaculately organized, thanks to Kit, but she more than made up for his tidiness with her small area of intense clutter. The man was obsessed with order. She bet he’d never lost anything in his life—until he’d met her.
“Dammit.” She upended the wastebasket and gave it a shake. He’d entrusted her with this breakdown lists of the trunks he’d dismantled on Saturday, but with little else concerning the Kāh-gyur. She’d entered three of the handwritten lists into her computer, but the fourth had disappeared.
Her mustard-yellow blouse fluttered out of the bottom of the wastebasket, and she sat back on her heels and covered her face with her hands. She wished she’d burned the damn thing. She wouldn’t cry. She never cried. Crying would get her nowhere.
She’d kept out of his way all day yesterday, speaking only when spoken to, maintaining her veneer of professionalism at the cost of her nerves and her sleep. He’d worked in the garage taking apart the trunks, identifying each printing block and taking a partial rubbing, numbering the pieces and wrapping them for storage, and making the lists he’d then given to her for safekeeping. He hadn’t asked for her help, and she hadn’t found the courage or the confidence to go to his room and offer it.
What was wrong with her? More prestige than she’d ever dared to hope for was within her reach, and all she could think about was the man who had brought the opportunity to her. He was more than unorthodox. He was a law unto himself. Anyone else would have been crushed by the responsibility he’d taken on, with his daring escapade and flight into exile. She’d awakened twice in the night, once in a cold sweat of fear, worrying over the garage catching
fire, or a freak tornado whirling out of the sky and sucking up the Kāh-gyur, and she’d called herself a fool for getting tangled up with his forbidden treasure. The second time she’d awakened, she hadn’t known what to call herself except overheated, overimaginative, and thoroughly frustrated.
Had he put a spell on her? Her every thought turned to him. Kit Carson had become the bane of her existence. She didn’t know him, didn’t understand him, had never met anyone even remotely similar to him in looks or temperament. His mind worked in unknown ways, and it worked on her. She was fascinated by him, purely and simply fascinated. She’d understood her infatuation with John Garraty. He’d been everything she wanted to be: well known in his field, respected, intellectual, tenured.
Kit Carson was well known, but the rest was up for grabs. He wasn’t at all the kind of man she would have chosen for herself. He was civilized only to a degree, and that degree in another culture; more sensual than intellectual, yet highly intelligent in ways she couldn’t begin to comprehend.
But then, she’d chosen John Garraty with all his tenure and respectability, and had done nothing but regret the choice ever since. Maybe she didn’t know what was good for her. For a moment, just a moment, when she’d awakened for the second time in the middle of the night, she’d thought the only thing that could save her and give her peace was climbing the stairs to Kit’s room and rediscovering the sheer wonder of his kisses.
A muffled groan caught in her throat, and she dropped her hands to her thighs. Damn him. When he put a thought into a person’s head, he really knew how to make it stick.
Come to me when you are ready. The arrogance alone in the remark should have been enough to turn her off. Instead, it had created the exact opposite effect.
She looked down at the rubble piled around her on the floor. The list had been there. The Lois Shepard, and the Thomas Stein were coming to her house tomorrow, and she and Kit had to be ready. If she screwed up the deal, he might never leave.
Crazy, she thought again, slapping her hand over her face. She was going crazy. A thirteenth-century antiquity was slowly being dismantled in her garage and all she could relate it to was the man who’d brought it. What had happened to her sense of history? Her career goals? Her life?
Her hand slid down from her eyes to cover her mouth, and she spotted it, a pale green piece of paper from his journals lying on her desk. She almost collapsed in relief.
* * *
Kit laid a white piece of paper over the eighty-eighth printing block and ran a two-inch square of charcoal down one side. He numbered the paper with a fine-point pen, then marked the blank side with his ink brush, stroking the ancient Mongolian characters into place.
He’d worked throughout the cold night. Sleep had proved to be more labor than rest. He’d waited as he had the previous night for Kristine to come to him, and he would wait longer, until their time ran out.
He set the cotton-bond paper aside and picked up a sheet of rice paper. He took greater care with the second, complete rubbing, for these were his to keep, decipher, and study. For him the words held more importance than the wooden blocks used to make them. When the ink dried on the first piece of paper, he filed it for Shepard and Stein, who would be arriving the next day, then slid another brass bead on his abacus to the right.
What did she want? What did she need from him? The day he’d spent with her had been enlightening, but not in the manner of his youthful enlightenments.
What did he want from her? He’d called her patni, wife, without forethought. Was there meaning in this? he wondered. Sang Phala would have said yes, all of life was rich with meaning, but his second father had passed beyond his reach into the nothingness of Nirvana.
A wave of loneliness washed through his mind, forcing his eyes closed. Jealousy and loneliness. What other surprises did she have in store for him? The monastery had been a haven from the crueler emotions, providing a spiritual oneness against the emptiness he now felt so far from his home.
Patni. Half of a whole, yin to yang. He’d left the monks in search of his manhood and the life he’d been born to live, rebelling against the life his father’s death and Sang Phala’s promise had thrust upon him. For the past fifteen years, since he’d run from the monastery, he had lived with his convictions of freedom tempered by his own conscience, only to reach this place and this time where he was suddenly half of a whole. She was working mysterious magic on him.
He laid his brush aside and sighed. Work was no balm for his distraction. Desire had grown beyond want. He needed Kristine Richards, a very stubborn, creatively haphazard American woman with more ambition than sense. Wanting to make love with her did not surprise him. Wanting to make a life with her did. He had plans she didn’t fit into.
He’d slipped out of Asia like a thief in the night, two steps in front of the internationally recognized law of the Chinese and one step ahead of the Turk, stealing away with a hundred-odd pounds of ancient wood holding the translated words of Buddha. He’d done it as a gesture of faith and, he admitted, because no one had thought he’d find it, let alone get away with it. He’d traded the last of his reputation for his adopted people and his pride. He had no regrets, but neither did he plan on remaining in exile for the rest of this life.
He needed to place the Kāh-gyur safely to put it forever out of the Turk’s reach. He needed to publish his research and regain his legitimate standing. He needed to bide his time, until the storm of threats and recriminations died away. Then he’d go back to the Chinese. He’d go to them and promise them anything if they’d let him back into Tibet.
He needed to return, for many reasons. He’d been born in the frozen wastelands of “the roof of the world,” and the stark purity of its light and the solitude it offered were ingrained in his soul.
But what was solitude to a lonely man? And was the sunlight of the high Himalayas any purer than what he saw in Kristine’s eyes?
Questions, he thought, slowly rising from the floor. Questions were so easy to come by. The temporal world whirled on its axis in a flood of questions, drawing fools and mortals in its wake. He was both, for the answers he sought lay not in his heart and mind, but in Kristine.
He had vowed to protect her from all things, except himself and the unexpected love he felt growing deep inside. Why couldn’t she have been a concubine? Mere lust was easy to conquer. Love, it seemed, could only be surrendered to.
The first light of day rimmed his windowsill, then spilled into the room and spread across the floor. He followed the path of sunshine with a quiet, barefoot tread to look down on the house where she dwelled. Was she sleeping? Were her dreams as troubled as his? Did she understand better than he the forces drawing them together?
Questions. More questions. Weariness bowed his head, and his loneliness grew.
* * *
Kristine squeezed another dollop of cheese spread on another tiny cracker. Her house was clean by anyone’s standards, even her mother’s; Mancos was chained in the backyard, for everyone’s peace of mind; and her third batch of canapés looked better than the first, which she’d consigned to the garbage disposal. White wine cooled in her refrigerator. A fresh pot of coffee brewed on the counter. She had mints, napkins, ashtrays, coasters, and fancy nuts.
A quick glance at her kitchen clock proved all of her worst fears. Shepard and Stein would appear at any minute, and Kit Carson was almost out of her life. The two events were inextricably bound.
With an unsteady hand, she placed a ring of olive on top of each cracker, giving it a little push into the cheese. The last thing she needed was self-destructing canapés. She’d never hosted anything as monumental as the auctioning off of a rare antiquity. Her nerves and her pulse were in a dead heat for the quarter-mile speed record. Sleep was a memory, and she knew that every tossing-and-turning hour was beaten into the bags under her eyes. She’d tried concealer. She’d tried base, mascara, and eyeliner, and she’d wiped it all off twice, opting instead for huge earrings as her major
distraction.
“Kreestine?”
She jumped at the sound of his voice, bumping her head on an open cupboard door. She pretended she hadn’t and pushed another olive ring into the cheese. “What?”
The sharpness of her question sparked an instant flare of anger in Kit. He tamped it down with the force of his will, and was amazed at just how much force and how much will it took to accomplish what had always been an inherently natural act. He was not pleased either with the deterioration of their relationship. He’d left her alone too long to suit him and obviously too long to suit her.
She wore her hair up again, in a style he hadn’t seen. A wide gold clip arced up the back of her head, turning her piles of hair into a cascade of ebony curls. Large, delicate gold earrings, studded with red jewels, hung halfway down her neck, the first jewelry he’d seen her wear. He liked the exoticness of them, the tinkling sound they made when she turned her head. He liked the soft red heavy cotton shirt she wore. It flowed in a single unadorned piece to the middle of her thighs, and matched her skintight, ankle-length pants of the same color and fabric. In his country, he would have had to hide her away in those pants. He liked the bareness of her feet. He did not like the smudges of weariness beneath her eyes.
“All this is not necessary, he said, gesturing at the trays of canapés and the sparkling glasses lining the counter.
Typical, Kristine thought, her mouth tightening. She’d slaved the morning away making everything nearly perfect for his guests, and he had the gall to tell her it wasn’t necessary. What was she supposed to have done? Invited Lois Shepard and Thomas Stein into her home, then popped the tops off a couple of bottles of beer? Men didn’t understand anything.
“But it is very gracious,” he added. “Lo-eese and Thomas will feel welcomed.”
“Thank you,” she said, shoving olives onto crackers, not the least bit mollified by his politeness.
“I am grateful,” he said.
“You’re welcome.” A bit too much strength mashed her last olive ring and broke the cracker beneath. “Dammit.” She tossed the ruined canapé into the sink and set about rearranging the tray. Now it would never match the one sitting in the refrigerator. “Dammit,” she said again. She wanted everything perfect, organized down to the last damn cracker. She had a point to prove to herself.
