Her ankle was a ball of throbbing pain, and the rest of her felt like a pin cushion from her mad dash into a patch of briars. “J—jeez,” she managed shakily. “You m-must think I’m a n-nut.”
But he was looking at her only with sympathy. He cleared his throat and said hoarsely, “No, I think something pretty awful happened to you once and you thought it was about to happen again.”
Oh Lord, he was too perceptive. She nodded weakly, and embarrassment made her skin bum.
“Kat, I’m so sorry for scaring you,” he said raspily. “I just wanted to see you squirm.”
“Squirm.” She managed a small smile. “And I scrammed.”
He sat back on his heels and she finally noticed that beneath the towel his legs were covered in bloody scratches. The man had run not only bare-legged but barefoot into a patch of briars to stop her self-destructive stampede.
“Damn, Nathan, I’m sorry. This is awful.”
But his attention was focused on her badly swollen ankle. “You really were hurt the other night. Why didn’t you say so?”
“Pride,” she murmured, and sat up. Briars clung to her. “You made fun of me.”
He looked at her from under his brows, conveying so much anguish and regret in his gray eyes that she reached out and patted his jaw. He had a long briar scratch on it.
“You got hurt because you defended me,” he noted.
“Uhmmm, we’re not supposed to let the audience get beaten up.”
He pointed to her ankle. “Did you lose your job because of this?”
“Nah. I can go back when it heals. It’s just a fracture. It doesn’t even need a cast.”
He knelt there looking more and more upset. Kat shifted awkwardly and began pulling briars out of her hair.
“Easy. Be still.” He knotted the towel tighter around his waist and went to work on the briars, gently freeing her. “I’m not going to hurt you.”
He said it several more times, until finally she assured him softly, “I know that now, Nathan. I just freaked out for a minute. I’m okay. I’m not afraid of you anymore.”
“When did someone attack you?” he asked grimly, tugging a briar away from her arm.
“A long time ago. I was twenty. It was somebody I knew, somebody my parents knew. I’d grown up with him. He worked for the circus.”
“Circus?”
“I thought you had a line on everything about me and my cousins.”
He shook his head. “Only your recent history.”
“I was born and raised with the Sheffield Brothers Circus.”
“This guy …”
“He liked to brag that he turned girls into women. Only I wasn’t ready to turn, at least not with him.”
“Did you report him to the police?”
She shook her head. “Local cops don’t care what happens among circus people. They wouldn’t have believed I was raped. I couldn’t tell my family, either. They’d have killed the guy.”
Nathan sighed heavily, dropped his hands against his thighs, and looked at her with distress in his sweet, lazy eyes. “It must have been worse than you’re making it sound if it still affects you like this.”
“It doesn’t haunt me anymore. No, I just—” She really didn’t want to hurt Nathan’s feelings, so she searched for the right words. “I’ve never been in a situation like this one before. Alone with somebody sort of unpredictable … like you.”
“Great,” he said in weary self-rebuke. “I love knowing that I’m the only man who’s terrorized you into hysteria.”
His reaction made her catch her breath for new reasons. This man might be dangerous in some ways, but he was a gentleman in the best sense of the word. Kat punched his shoulder playfully. “I’m okay. And, hey, now I’m not afraid of you at all. I trust you. You could run naked around my tent and I wouldn’t worry.”
He raised a finger and wagged it in mock reproach. “You know, I’m not sure I like this other extreme, either.”
As he continued to pull briars away, Kat moved her injured leg tentatively. She was vaguely aware of Nathan Chatham’s eyes catching her attempts not to wince with pain. “I’ll pay for freaking out,” she muttered. “I bet I added about a week to my recuperation.”
“Katie, you’re a hell of a gal.” He stroked his fingertips over the swollen ankle, and she tensed up, expecting the touch to aggravate her pain. Instead the throbbing eased a little.
Katie. Gal. She liked his touch and she liked the way he talked. Again she got the odd notion that she’d always liked these things. Kat gazed at him in awe. “A minute ago why did you say. It’s me. You know I wouldn’t hurt you.’ I mean, we’re strangers.”
He stopped, frowned thoughtfully, and shook his head. “Hmmm. I don’t know why I put it that way. I guess I don’t think of you as a stranger.”
They shared a puzzled look. Kat exhaled slowly and glanced around at huge, gnarled oaks and early morning shadows. “This is a weird place. Good weird. It makes weird things happen.”
“How weird,” he said drolly.
She cut her eyes at him. “I’ve got a better vocabulary inside my head. I just don’t always use it.”
Nathan smiled and carefully picked the last briar from her leg. “Let’s see if we can get you out of here.” He helped her up, then lifted her into his arms.
Kat’s heart rate accelerated with a pleasant kind of excitement when she found herself nestled against his hard, sweaty chest. She latched her hands behind his neck and tried to look everywhere but into his eyes.
He stepped out of the briar patch and started in the opposite direction from her camp. “I live that way,” she said, pointing over his shoulder.
Nathan halted and gazed at her worriedly. “I have some ice left in a cooler. I’m going to put it on your ankle and make you some breakfast.”
“Ah.” She felt guilty. He looked as if she’d accused him of evil designs again. Kat smiled at him. “Okay.”
After he started forward she searched for neutral conversation. “That stuff you were saying before you took your bath. Was that some kind of Indian language?”
“Yep.” He hesitated a moment. “Cherokee.”
“It was?” Kat forgot any awkwardness and studied him curiously. “Are you part Cherokee?”
“Nope. But I grew up in Arkansas, right next door to the reservation in Oklahoma. I was like a grandson to an old medicine man. He adopted me.”
“Is that why Tri-State sent you down here?’Cause you’re interested in Cherokee stuff?”
He didn’t answer for a minute. “I know a lot about the Oklahoma Gallatins, yeah.”
Kat squirmed with excitement and craned her head so that she could gaze directly into his eyes. “You do? See, my cousins and I only know that our great-great-grandma lived here in Georgia. Granny was a Cherokee named Katlanicha Blue Song and Grandpa was a white gold miner named Justis Gallatin.”
She gripped Nathan’s shoulders. “You mean they ended up in Oklahoma? Like they went on the Trail of Tears or something? Have you ever heard of Holt Gallatin? He was their son and my great-grandfather. I think he was a bandit. That’s all anybody ever told me.
Overwhelmed by her torrent of words, Nathan stopped. His silver gaze held hers without flinching. Finally he sighed as if resigned and said, “I know about him. He killed two of my relatives.”
CHAPTER 3
HE WALKED ON calmly, as if he hadn’t just announced that her great-grandfather was a killer.
“He did what?” Kat asked, stunned.
“Holt Gallatin ambushed my great-great-grandfather outside a saloon and shot him in the back. Gallatin went into hiding and never came back. It was decades before my great-grandfather caught up with him, and then they killed each other in a gunfight.”
Kat clung to Nathan’s neck, feeling dazed. He chuckled grimly. “You’re digging your claws into me, Kitty Kat.”
“Sorry. I’m just in shock. Are you sure that my great-grandpa went around blasting people?”
>
Nathan nodded. His arms tightened under her as he hopped gingerly from one foot to the other. “Ouch. Dammit.”
Kat realized with a pang of guilt that he hadn’t bothered to get his shoes before carrying her through the forest. “Let me down. I can walk.”
“Nope.”
“I don’t think you like me anymore. I don’t want to be a lot of trouble.”
He rolled his eyes at her accusation and kept going. “You weren’t responsible for our families’ feud.”
“It was a feud? Over what?”
“An old grudge that started during the Civil War. My great-great-grandpa Nathaniel was a Union officer; your great-great-grandpa Justis was Confederate. Mine caught yours, yours escaped, and mine got demoted because of it. He was disgraced. He resigned from a career in the army because of the scandal.”
“But that didn’t have anything to do with Holt Gallatin. That escape was his father’s doing. Besides, why would the Gallatins want revenge on the Chathams if Justis Gallatin got away?”
“We never figured that out. Holt was just the type to pick fights without much reason, according to historical accounts.”
“You mean somebody wrote this story down?”
He nodded. “One of my great-uncles researched it for a book. It was published about twenty years ago by the University of Oklahoma Press.”
“What’s it called? Can I get a copy?”
“Sure. The title’s Blue Fox, Cherokee Renegade.”
Kat drew back and looked at him askance. “That doesn’t sound very fair-minded, especially if a Chatham wrote it. Who’s Blue Fox?”
“That was the Cherokee name Holt Gallatin took during the Civil War. He was just a kid, but he killed a Union soldier so that his father—Justis—could escape from my great-great-grandfather.”
“Now wait a minute. There was a war goin’ on. Justis was supposed to escape if he got a chance. Holt was only doing what everybody else was doing-protecting his family. You can’t blame my relatives for disgracing ol’Nath—you’re named after him?”
“Yeah.”
“Hmmm. This is a real personal thing with you, then, right?”
“I’m not a fanatic about it. I’m just a history buff.”
“Uh-huh,” she answered in a dubious tone.
They reached a small clearing about a dozen yards from the stream. Kat gaped at the large majestic structure that sat there. “A teepee!”
“Let me guess. You saw one once on television.”
“Don’t lecture me,” she said, raising her chin. “I know that the Cherokees lived in little huts. Later on they learned to build cabins and houses.”
“Why, you’ve been reading up a frenzy. You might even learn something.”
She glared mildly at him. Smiling a little, he set her down on a folded blanket beside the circle of rock that held the dead embers from his campfire. Kat was too distracted to pay much attention to anything around her; while he went inside his teepee she stared at the charred wood and mulled over everything he’d told her.
Was she really the great-granddaughter of a murderer? The thought depressed her; she’d been so excited when she finally started studying her Cherokee legacy, and now, to find out that Holt Gallatin had been some awful character who went around calling himself Blue Fox and shooting Chathams, well, it made her remember ugly things her husband had said, things about her being low-class.
“Here. The last of the ice from my cooler.”
Nathan had traded the towel for his khaki hiking shorts, Kat noted thankfully. Lean and bronzed and too sexy for her to feel at ease, he sat down by her feet, holding ice wrapped in something white. The gold stud gleamed at the top of his ear. Wait a minute. It was no ordinary stud, it was a tiny rough nugget, sort of a miniature of the nugget he wore on the chain.
He pushed a hand through his dark brown hair to guide the drying strands into a vague imitation of obedience, then gently pressed the ice pack to her ankle. Kat watched his face in profile, studying the handsome, crooked nose, the provocative mouth, the thick mustache.
What in the world was she doing anywhere near this man? One second he made her want to hold him like a long-lost lover; the next he told her that her family was no-good from way back. Considering what he thought of her work and her lack of sophistication, he must figure that she was worthless.
“I wish you could meet my cousins,” she said coolly. “Tess is a diamond broker. She lives on a sailboat. She graduated from college and she has an English accent. Her mother was an Olympic skier from Sweden.”
Nathan looked at her with one brow arched, as if she’d lost a few marbles. “That’s nice.”
“And my cousin Erica owns her own construction company up in Washington. She was born in Boston.”
“Uh-huh.” He turned his attention back to her ankle, patting the ice bag more firmly into place and then cupping his hands around it.
Kat frowned at his lack of response. “So why’d Tri-State send you here if you don’t like us Gallatins?”
“Because I’m their best gunslinger. Who said I don’t like Gallatins? I just take a lot of pride in my family and I wanted to meet Holt Gallatin’s descendants.”
“Now wait a minute. Erica’s great-granddaddy was Ross Gallatin: Tess’s was Silas Gallatin. Ol’ Justis and Katherine had three sons. I’m the only one related directly to Holt.”
He sighed dramatically. “You’ve got my sympathy.”
Kat jerked her foot away. The ice pack fell off and unrolled before he could catch it. She gazed at it in consternation. It was made from a pair of white briefs. His underwear.
“I don’t let many woman wear my underwear on their feet,” he quipped. “Don’t pass up the thrill of a lifetime.”
“Look, sweetcakes, you and me don’t do so well together. I’m going back to my own camp.”
“Nope. You can’t walk.” He deftly grabbed her big toe. “Stretch that leg out again.”
“Let go of my toe!”
“Did anyone ever tell you that you’re moody?”
“I don’t know what kind of revenge you want to take on us Gallatins, but you can’t bully me.”
He looked at her through half-shut, guarded eyes. “Revenge? What makes you think I’m not simply doing my job for Tri-State?”
“Oh, sure, you hate my family, so you just happen to wrangle an assignment to do tests on our land.” She shook a finger at him. “You’ll go to your boss and tell him that there’s no gold here. Well, me and my cousins think there is, okay? Lots of it. We’ve got medallions that were probably made from gold that came from here. I showed mine to somebody who makes jewelry and he said it was the highest-quality gold he’d ever seen.”
Nathan stroked his mustache and smiled at her patiently. “I thought you weren’t interested in leasing the land to be mined.”
“Well, we probably won’t. But don’t you lie about what you find!”
His smile hardened. “I wouldn’t do that. We already suspect that there’s industrial-grade gold here. If there’s something better, I’ll find it and write an honest report.”
“Good!”
This didn’t make any sense, which was an indication of how much Nathan Chatham rattled her mind. She didn’t want to see this land torn up by a mining company, but she was hotly accusing him of intending to ruin a mining deal.
“Let go of my toe,” she ordered.
“Nope.” He curved his fingers toward her instep. “Ticklish?”
When he smiled wider, she knew he’d read the answer on her face. “I don’t know whether you’re a devil or a saint, you pierced-ear white savage,” she said lethally. “But don’t you mess with me.”
“You sit still, you wild-eyed Kat Woman, and let this ice do some good on your ankle. You may not like my company, but you don’t want to risk making your ankle any worse. Right?”
She gritted her teeth. “Right.”
“Good. Now I’ll make breakfast, and you behave.”
Smilin
g benignly, he released her toe and began stirring the embers of his campfire. Suddenly he reached over and smeared a handful of cold ashes on her scratched shins.
She yelped. “What are you doing?”
“Savage medicine,” Nathan said solemnly. He scooped up more ashes and held them out to her. “Want to do your thighs without my help?”
Kat sighed with defeat and put her hands out for the ashes. “My thighs don’t need your help.”
“Think of me as a doctor.”
“A witch doctor.”
He poured the ashes into her cupped palms. “We’re doing a good job of carrying on the Chatham-Gallatin feud. It ought to make you feel proud.”
“You bet.” Kat’s determination flared, and she suddenly felt protective of her family history, no matter how many lawless Blue Foxes it contained. No Chatham was going to have the last victory.
SHE WOKE UP to the feel of a hand stroking her hair. It dawned on her slowly that the hand belonged to Nathan, but she didn’t open her eyes or rebuke him. Instead she curled cozily on her side and pretended to snooze for another second.
Kat refused to consider that she’d fallen asleep as soon as she lay down on the air mattress he’d put beside his campfire for her, or that she’d smiled groggily when he’d covered her in one of his blankets as protection against the cool morning. She was injured, scratched, and emotionally exhausted; she was also wonderfully stuffed from breakfast. She deserved to be helpless for a little while.
But if this was the way he intended to fight the feud, she’d already lost.
He kept stroking her hair, cupping his hand over the top of her forehead and drawing it slowly downward. Kat felt him lift her hair and knew that he was smoothing it out behind her. Then he returned to caressing it.
She was glad he didn’t know that he was petting a woman who relaxed like a boneless chicken whenever anyone fiddled with her hair.
Kat supposed that the weight of it made her scalp more sensitive than most people’s, more receptive to touch. At any rate, the few times she’d had her hair done in salons she’d dozed blissfully through the wash, trim, and blow-dry, much to the amusement of the stylists.
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