“Yeah.”
“Sweetcakes?” Tess repeated.
“Sweetcakes,” Erica mused.
“Aw, I call everybody that.”
Nathan was on his knees, scooping mud from around the jumbled rocks. “It’s a half-dry spring. Must of been a couple of feet deeper before it caved in. I think there’s something wedged here, if I can just get it, there. Huh! A couple of spoons.”
The sweetcakes business was temporarily forgotten as everyone crowded closer to the edge. “What are spoons doing in the bottom of a well?” Erica asked.
“Unless the Blue Songs dumped them there for a reason,” James suggested. “Cherokee families hid what they could before the army came. If they were in a hurry they would have dumped things down the well.”
“Get me a shovel!” Nathan called. “And a bucket!”
Tess and Erica nearly collided as they ran to get one. Kat started to rise, favoring her ankle. Nathan glanced up at her, said something jovial in Cherokee, and Echo put a restraining hand on her shoulder.
“He says, ‘Make the hummingbird keep her bent wing still.’ ”
Kat eyed him, then chuckled with helpless devotion. “Okay, you bossy gopher.”
From the comer of her eye she saw Jeopard studying her expression. Kat looked up at him, and he smiled quickly, as if to put her at ease.
A thread of alarm trickled down Kat’s spine. What would her cousins think if they realized that she loved the man who was going to tear up their land and steal their gold? She didn’t want them to hate her or think she wanted the gold.
“Hey, Chatham,” she called to Nathan in an ugly voice. “Don’t slip any of our spoons into your pockets.”
He stopped examining the blackened, corroded silverware and stared up at her as if she’d just threatened to bury him in the well.
“Are you serious?”
“You better believe it. The silverware’s not yours just because it came out of the ground.”
The slow tightening of his face and body assured Kat that she’d accomplished what she’d intended—she’d made him forget about being nice to her.
“I don’t want anything but what’s due my family,” he said in a soft, lethal voice.
“I can’t tell. You got mighty funny definitions of what’s due your family.”
He tossed the spoons up to her. “Take ’em. And leave me alone.”
“Can do.” Her throat tight with sorrow for them both, she left him in the old well glaring up at her.
THE MEN TOOK turns digging, and by late afternoon the women had scrubbed over forty pieces of silverware, some bearing on their handles the still-legible Cherokee symbols for Blue Song. The heavy sterling was ruined beyond anything except sentimental value, but the cousins cried over the lost dreams it represented.
Then Jeopard’s shovel found other pieces of sterling—a tea set, a soup tureen, a tray so corroded that it broke in two when he handed it out of the well.
“I hope there’s no more,” Kat said, her throat raw as she watched Tess and Erica hug separate halves of the tray. “This is like a funeral.”
“Well, better find it all while you have the chance,” Nathan warned. He stood on the sidelines, watching, his eyes cold.
“We’ve got five years,” she shot back.
“Yeah. Consider yourself lucky.”
He gave her a commanding look that reminded her why they had five years, and she crumpled inside. Oh, he wanted her to think that he and she had a friendly agreement, that he cared about her so much that he’d postponed the mining.
But she wasn’t supposed to forget that he could change his mind if she didn’t do exactly as she’d promised.
I’m a slave, she thought again, and the gold nugget lying between her breasts made her chest move heavily, as if it could smother her.
SHE AWOKE THE instant she heard the soft rattle of the key in the inn’s old-fashioned door lock. Kat scooted up in bed, reached frantically for the night-stand, then remembered that she’d left the Beretta back in her tent.
But when the door opened, the faint light of a hall lamp fell across Nathan’s face—angular and harsh in the shadows. Kat groaned softly with relief, her heart still in overdrive.
“What are you doing here? My cousins have rooms on either side of this one.”
He shut the door, throwing the room into the deep ink of a moonless night. Kat quivered when she heard him lock the door. Then there was nothing but silence, a silence she listened to while breath pooled in her lungs.
Slowly he settled on the bed beside her, and she smelled the mingled traces of woodsmoke and a brisk, fresh scent that told her he’d scrubbed himself in the stream after everyone left.
“We can’t sleep together tonight,” she murmured, almost begging. “If my cousins figure us out they won’t understand.”
“Who said anything about sleep?” His voice was soft and gruff, whether from leftover anger she couldn’t tell. “Lie back down.”
Kat shut her eyes, analyzed the emotions that were making her vibrate with awareness, and admitted that she wanted him in bed with her, no matter what.
She slid down and put her hands beside her head on the pillow. His fingertips grazed her shoulder, skimmed over the soft cotton of her T-shirt, then trailed down her arm.
Kat tilted her head back on the pillow and heard herself breathing faster in the stillness of the room. It was an incredible sensation, to lie there in total darkness, knowing that Nathan was beside her but feeling only the provocative caress of his callused fingertips, not knowing what part of her he might touch next, or in what way.
He covered her hand with his, simply letting his hand rest there quietly atop hers, and the sensation was so exquisite that Kat made a soft keening sound.
“I don’t mean to scare you,” he said grimly.
“That wasn’t fear you heard,” she whispered. “I’m sorry I hurt your feelings today. I did it to make things easier in front of everyone.”
“That’s what I came here tonight to find out.”
His hand tightened, then slowly slid away. A second later she felt its pressure on her stomach, his blunt, scarred fingers incredibly adept as they eased her panties down to her thighs, hardly brushing her skin, setting off storms of sensation when they did.
Kat bit her lip to keep from shifting in blissful agony as his hand touched her stomach again. This time there was the seductive whisper of cotton on her skin as he lifted her T-shirt, then the breath of night air scattering goose bumps on her bare stomach and breasts.
For a moment he stopped touching her at all, and it took considerable willpower for her not to reach for him. Then his fingertips surrounded her nipples with wetness from his mouth.
The combination was fire and ice as he rubbed them—just the tips, very slowly and very lightly—into peaks so hard they barely flexed under his caress.
“This woman is of the Blue clan,” he whispered. “Her name is Katlanicha. I am adopted of the Deer clan, my name is Tahchee. Draw near to listen. Our souls have come together. I am da-nitaka, standing in her soul. She can never look away.”
His fingers left her and she inhaled weakly, the sound a plea. A moment later, wet again, they slid between her thighs. He stroked the sleek skin and whispered over her soft cries, “Your body, I take it. Your flesh, I take it. Your heart, I take it.”
He said those words again and again, a soft, guttural chant in rhythm with the movement of his fingers until sensation and sound mingled with the roaring in her ears and she heard nothing, knew nothing except waves of pleasure that made her body strain to follow the crests.
In the slow collapsing afterward, she heard him say, his voice tormented with restraint, “I am da-nitaka, standing in her soul. I have always been there. I will always be there. It was decided long ago.”
Kat was still fighting for breath, her head lolled to one side on the pillow, feeling the dampness of her perspiration, when he rose off the bed. She turned her face to search for him hopelessly in the
darkness, then sensed him and lay still, poised for whatever he did next, whatever he asked, anything.
His mouth brushed hers, his mustache tickling her upper lip as he drew away. Kat waited, too limp to move, every ounce of her energy tuned to him. When he unlocked the door, slipped out, and locked it behind him, she exhaled so long and slow that her body seemed to melt into the bed.
Spellbound, she fell asleep just as he had left her.
When morning came she found a note from him on the bedside table. It told her what she had to do that day, and she wondered sadly if this was only the beginning of the requests she would not like.
CHAPTER 9
NATHAN CERTAINLY LIKED to stay on top of his job. In fact he lived on top of it in a penthouse complex with a Jacuzzi, a sun deck, rooms full of native artwork from all over the world, a master bedroom that rivaled something from a Moroccan fantasy, and a huge garden room that looked toward the cityscape of Atlanta.
No, it wasn’t a garden room, Kat corrected herself as she stood in the midst of vine-draped tropical trees, it was a jungle room.
“Do you have everything you need?” Nathan’s administrative assistant inquired politely, in a lyrical accent the Jamaican tourist bureau ought to hire.
Kat turned toward the young man, studied his jeans, sports shirt, and dreadlocks, then concluded that maybe she wouldn’t feel out of place in Nathan’s mixed-up business/fantasy world.
“Yeah, I’m fine. Thanks for carrying my duffel bag up.”
“No problem.” He handed her an envelope. “Key to the private elevator, key to the apartment door, a note with my phone extension downstairs. You’re welcome to a tour of the company anytime. Just come on down.”
“Thanks.” No way, Kat added silently. The last thing she wanted was to be the prime source of gossip on five floors of Auraria, Inc.
After the assistant left she wandered around the huge apartment, listening to the lonely squeak of her Reeboks on polished slate, parquet, and handmade Spanish tiles, her hands sunk in her jeans pockets because she was afraid to touch anything.
Not that Nathan’s place looked formal—no, it was warm, exotic, inviting—but it was so damned expensive. His note hadn’t warned her. It merely had told her to go to Atlanta, move into the apartment, and make herself at home.
Well, sure, but she’d never lived in a Native Peoples exhibit before.
Kat went into his bedroom and stared at rich wall hangings, rugs so deep she could get lost in them, and a big bed filled with fringed pillows and canopied in dark silks. If she tried to describe this room to anyone it’d either sound silly or self-indulgent, but it wasn’t. It was incredibly masculine in a way that made her think of incense mingling with the erotic scent of seduction, of low-burning lamplight glistened on naked skin.
She sat down on the bed and burst into tears. It was a perfect place for a slave girl to please her master.
Where the hell was Nathan? she thought with un-slavelike rudeness, wiping her eyes. He hadn’t even said when he planned to follow her here, or even if he would follow. She still ached inside from telling her cousins a lie. They thought she was back on the wrestling tour, doing ringside commentary until her ankle healed completely.
Fifteen minutes later the phone rang. Kat sidled up to a heavily carved bedside table and gazed warily at the black phone sitting there. It looked ordinary. Well, at least she could touch this safely.
“Hi.”
“Ms. Gallatin, I’m Cassandra, from Neiman-Marcus.”
“Okay.”
“Are you ready to go? I have a limousine waiting.”
“Go where?”
“Shopping.”
“I don’t shop.”
“Uhmm, Mr. Chatham says”—Kat heard the Cassandra person rattling a piece of paper—”he says you’re to spend at least three thousand dollars before the store closes this evening.”
Kat sat down weakly and hugged a fringed pillow. “Oh. How many hours have we got?”
“Five.”
That was six hundred bucks an hour. She’d have to stand in the middle of the store and give away cash.
“I can’t,” she whispered.
“Mr. Chatham said you wouldn’t have any problem with the plan.”
“Oh.” This was an order from Nathan, then. A really odd kind of order. Was this another example of the stuff she was supposed to do whether she liked it or not?
Kat sighed. “I’ll be right down.”
As soon as I get over being shocked.
This was Nathan’s guilt at work. He had a lot of regrets where she was concerned, because of the Blue Song land, and maybe his kindness was motivated more by those than by affection for her.
Well, they’d play this game then, this sad game, until one of them lost.
NATHAN PAUSED AT the apartment’s double doors, his hand on the gold-plated doorknob, trembling. All right, so he was bullying her. Yesterday’s Neiman-Marcus thing must have set her teeth on edge; he could only imagine what she’d thought when she got up this morning and found a man waiting downstairs to take her shopping for a new car.
But she’d get used to all that, she’d see what kind of life he could give her, and she wouldn’t be able to resist. He’d dazzle her until she couldn’t think straight, and then he’d marry her.
He’d donate all the money from the Blue Song mining operation to charity, so she and her cousins might eventually forgive him for turning their land into a huge gravel pit. Then her family would be happy, his family would be revenged, and Kat would love him as much as he loved her.
It was simple, Nathan thought. So why was he worried?
“Kat?” he called nonchalantly, as he strolled into the apartment. The lights were low, and through an arched doorway he could see that she’d shut the garden room blinds against the afternoon sun. He walked into a den done in Cherokee art, plush earth tones, and with a floor-to-ceiling stereo system.
The harmonies of a soft instrumental tape resonated through the room.
“Kat?” he called, and wondered grimly if concern made his voice sound little like Buckwheat’s on Our Gang.
“Hi.” She floated into the den from the hall that led to his bedroom. Her lithe little body was draped in nothing but a robe of pale green silk which matched her eyes; her hair had been curled and fluffed and moussed into one of those sexy “I’ve just come from bed” styles.
The gold nugget gleamed at the V of her robe, and small gold-and-jade studs decorated her earlobes. When she swept up to him and latched her arms around his neck, he inhaled a sensuous designer perfume, something with a decadent name, he figured.
“I’m glad you’re finally here,” she whispered, smiling.
Nathan didn’t know if he liked what money had done to her basic feminine appeal, but he liked having her smile at him, and the knowledge that she was happy made him even more determined to keep her that way.
“Do you like—” he began, but she raised herself up and kissed him.
“I’m taking you to bed for the rest of the day,” she whispered, and slipping her hand into his, she did just that.
Night was in the room when he woke, his body still heavy and satiated from everything she’d done so slowly and so well. Nathan sat up in bed, feeling silk sheets slide down his stomach the way Kat’s hands had done earlier.
But Kat was gone.
He threw a dark russet kimono—a gift from a Japanese business associate—around his shoulders and left the room quickly, his heart pounding with a strange dread.
She’s left me before.
Nathan exhaled raggedly when he found her curled, asleep, on an overstuffed couch in the den. She’s left me before? Kat had never left him—and he’d make sure she never would. Shaking his head at the idea, he went to her and knelt down.
She wore one of her silly WOW-Wild Women of Wrestling T-shirts, with her green silk robe jumbled over her legs like a blanket. Her face was streaked with dried tears and her arms were wrapped around one of the ru
sty, pitted window sash weights from the Blue Song home.
Sorrow and confusion tore at Nathan. Then he realized what she’d done—she’d put on a grand show for him today because she thought she had to repay him for all the damned gifts.
He almost choked on the knowledge that she’d made love to him for that reason. Oh, she hadn’t faked her body’s reaction, he was sure of that, but she’d faked her happiness.
His chest tightened with disappointment. Wearily he slid his arms under her. She stirred, then blinked up at him with swollen, worried eyes.
“Sssh,” he said, because it was all he could manage easily.
Nathan carried her and her whimsical keepsake to bed. She held it, and he held her.
SHE DRAGGED HERSELF around her beautiful prison, wishing she’d get over the awkward feeling. She’d lived here for ten days. In nomad terms, that was a long time.
Kat roamed from room to room, absorbed with thoughts of how cheerful Nathan had been before he left that morning. He had to fly to New York on business, and he wouldn’t be back until tomorrow. He hadn’t asked her to go with him.
Kat wondered if she weren’t good enough to take to New York. She reminded herself that Nathan was proud of her, and now that she knew the kind of family background he’d come from—grandpa an alcoholic, father a worthless drifter—she had even less reason to worry that he looked down on her.
But a question kept nagging at her—Was he proud of her, or had he brought her here to spruce her up so that he could be proud of her? Heck, he’d sent the Mustang to a body shop so she’d have to drive the new Toyota she’d picked out. Maybe he wanted her retooled, too.
Kat went to her purse, got out a personal calendar book, and checked to see where the Wild Women of Wrestling tour was at the moment. Tonight in Jacksonville, Florida. She noted the name of the motel the tour always used in Jacksonville and placed a call to Muffie.
“Kat, when ya comin’ back?” Muffie bellowed.
“Don’t know.” Kat tested her ankle and felt a little guilty because it was completely healed. “What’s cooking?”
“We need ya, we need ya. Mary sprained her knee last night in Orlando. She’s out for a couple of days.”
Follow the Sun Page 41
