Bittersweet Return (Dancing Moon Ranch Book 6)

by Patricia Watters

  The showers were crude arrangements, open on top and made minimally private by the use of several sheets of plywood that were propped against, and hanging from, trees. But, other than occasional encounters where plywood sheets moved with the wind or the sway of the trees, and someone happened to be walking past at the time, no one seemed to care. Marc, of course, probably wouldn't notice her if she walked naked from the shower to her tent.

  It was Friday, so they'd planned in advance to go to a nearby town where a couple of the guys would prowl around looking for willing females, and she and the two other women on the team, along with the guys the women had paired off with during the past three weeks, and whose tents they were now sharing, would find a place to eat. But just as they were about to leave, she spotted Marc standing beneath the canopy of the field lab, cleaning off a transit.

  She remained talking to the others for a few minutes, while deliberating whether to ask Marc if he wanted to join them. She knew he was pretty obsessive-compulsive about cleaning the equipment at the end of the day, and meticulous about record keeping, but it occurred to her that maybe the reason he stayed busy instead of going with them was because no one asked him to go. But he'd also managed to keep his distance from the start of the dig, staying off to himself during lunch at the site, or pouring over notes and documents, or cataloging finds. But with less than a week until they'd all be going their separate ways, she decided, what the heck, there was nothing to lose, and walked over to where he was sitting at one of the long tables, meticulously cleaning his field camera, unlike the other team members who simply stuffed their cameras into canvas camera bags and were done.

  "Hansen," she called out as she approached. When Marc glanced up at her, she said, "Do you go through this regimen every night?"

  "Don't you?" he asked, sending her a rhetorical comeback.

  "Yes, but not quite as anally as you," Kit replied.

  "Anally, maybe, but I don't want a piece of shit for a camera." Placing the camera inside a camera bag, he said, "So, Korban, how do you end the day? I know you wash your underwear because it's always flapping in the humidity." As he looked up at her, Kit could see golden-green flecks in his gray-green eyes. Or were they green-brown with golden flecks? They were different than they were at the site. Now they were like beautifully-polished natural cat's eye stones.

  Again she wondered if he was interested in her, or just making more small talk. Mentioning her underwear was definitely an odd topic for small talk, especially coming from the professor. From the other guys it would be right on target, along with a comment about maybe getting lucky and finding a big furry tarantula in her panties to crawl around and give her a buzz, or some other such comment.

  Marc reached for the unit notebook, but before making his entries, he looked at her and waited for her response to his question about how she ended her day. So, maybe there was mild interest. "After I finish socializing with our teammates, unlike some people around here," Kit replied, "I clear my tent of anything that crawls or buzzes, then strip down to as little as possible and update my daily log." There were the green-brown eyes again, but now his pupils were large, like something caught his attention and made his eye color change and darken.

  "So, you're not into having male companionship in your tent at night, I take it," Marc said. "Your female teammates seem to be getting the satisfaction they want while they're here."

  "There's actually a lot of satisfaction in updating a log," Kit said.

  "I'll keep that in mind," Marc replied, and gave her a slight smile. But there was something cryptic about the smile, like it meant something, and she didn't get it.

  She'd always thought of men as being pretty much the wooden panel with a single on-off switch, as compared to a female panel covered in switches and dials. But Marc Hansen was definitely not a one-switch man. She couldn't begin to size up the kind of man he was. Brilliant. That was certain. Drop-dead handsome. Absolutely. Someone she'd like to spend an entire evening alone with. That would scare the crap out of her. Just that afternoon she'd started to see a whole new side of the man and she didn't know what to make of it. They'd worked together for three weeks, and during the entire time, any exchange had been all about the dig. Then this afternoon, he actually started a dialogue.

  While she was mulling that over, Marc opened the unit log and grabbed a pencil, but before getting started, he looked up at her and again waited, and she realized he was wondering why she'd walked over to where he was. Normally, after going over with the team what they'd be doing the following day, he stayed to himself and the team went about their business, aside from Fridays, when they all went to town, except for Marc. So her hanging around inside the field lab with him was an anomaly that obviously required an explanation.

  Remembering her reason for being there, she said, "You have all evening to update the unit log, so why don't you come to town with us. Simpson and Lewis are going to roam around the streets looking for willing women, but the rest of us are going to find a place to eat. You could either go with Simpson and Lewis or stay with us and eat, but at least you'd be socializing."

  Marc eyed her for a few moments, then gave her an ironic smile, and said, "Thanks, but I think I'll stay here and play with myself."

  Kit felt heat rush up her face. When she said nothing, because her tongue seemed stuck to the roof of her mouth, Marc sat back, folded his arms, and said, "You might want to leave with the others before I get carried away and embarrass both of us right here."

  "I'm sorry," Kit said. "You weren't supposed to have heard that. The guys made some comments that pissed me off, and I only said what I did to make them shut up."

  "Well, they got the picture," Marc said, "and so did I."

  "Hey Kit!" Georgia Jenkins called out. "Come on. We're all getting hungry over here and Lewis and Simpson are getting horny and want to find some women."

  Glancing at Marc, whose expression was unreadable, Kit said, "I guess I'd better go," then turned and walked toward the others, feeling Marc's eyes on her as she did.

  So much for getting anything started with him.

  Then she reminded herself that he was the last guy on Planet Earth she should get something going with. He might be one hunky male, and there was no question he got her heart pumping and her progesterone flowing, but she'd had her fill of men with personal baggage, and there was no question, Marc Hansen was carrying a whole carload of it. She was all too familiar with that kind of man. But unlike Wally, Marc was a man on the move whose only roots, it seemed, were planted in a storage unit in Texas. Yet, there was something about the man she couldn't let go.

  CHAPTER 2

  Marc watched Kit Korban walking off. The brain below his waist wanted to trail along with the team and get something going with her so she'd stay overnight in his tent where he'd show her he was capable of doing a hell of a lot more than just playing with himself. Fortunately, the brain above his waist overruled. The last thing he wanted was a relationship. Kit was one in the making. She'd blindsided him with her interest in digging up the Indian mound, coupled with reciting the only poem he'd ever liked enough to memorize. Both took him away from his goal, which was to remain free of entanglements and follow the digs, wherever they took him, except to an Indian mound on the Dancing Moon Ranch.

  As his life was now, nothing stood between him and a whole lot of digs. No ties. No commitments, no apartment to worry about. Just a big room over his grandparents' garage and a storage unit where he stowed his few material belongings and his gear between digs. Maybe someday he'd settle somewhere, but that wasn't even on the horizon.

  He glanced over to where Kit seemed to be bowing out of the trip to town while talking to Georgia and the others and gesturing, and glancing his way, and wagging her hand as if erasing something in the air, something she was trying to explain, like why she was opting out of an evening with them in order to spend it with the professor who played with himself.

  The memory of her words brought the same reac
tion it had when he'd overheard her spiel. The urge to drag Kit into his tent and prove there was something to what Lewis accused her of. He could bring out hot in Kit. He'd seen the look in her eyes. But the reality was, one night with Kit would lead to another night with her, then another, and another, because he hadn't missed the shape of her either, which looked just about right to connect to him in all the places that mattered, which also meant he'd follow the brain below his waist into a commitment trap.

  I take it you don't plan to put down roots anywhere...

  The first sign of a trap. A woman talking about putting down roots. He could feel the trap closing, the hang-up-the-shovels-and-settle-down trap. It wouldn't be immediate with Kit because she was still into fieldwork, but her heart wasn't into following digs. That cushy life was calling. Half the women who'd attended the six-week field school with him quit archaeology right after and went on to other fields, or got married.

  As he feared, in a practical sense, Kit left the others and started toward him. She looked worried, as if she were deliberating what to say to him. He glanced beyond her and saw the others talking and looking his way, a couple of them giving each other high fives like they'd made a bet, maybe whether or not they'd find Kit in the professor's tent when they returned.

  As she approached, Kit pressed her lips into a smile he knew was feigned, and said, "I changed my mind. It's too hot to go to town."

  "Yeah, it's a lot cooler in here," Marc said, as perspiration ran down the side of his face. "Are you sure you want to hang out with the professor? If your teammates come back and find you in my tent they'll know you have the hots for me, but if they come back and you're not in my tent, they'll assume I'm in there playing with myself. Either way, we both lose."

  "But if they come back and we're updating our journals or cleaning and cataloging artifacts, wouldn't that pretty much put it all to rest?" Kit asked.

  "Maybe for them, but it would make me wonder why you're here with me in the first place," Marc said, eyeing her closely, noticing for the first time that her bottom lip had an unusual fullness to it, one he found... intriguing. "Why are you here?" he asked, his eyes still on the lip.

  "I wanted to square things away," Kit replied. "Besides, going to town didn't sound as good as it did earlier."

  "What changed?" Marc asked.

  Kit shrugged. "You started talking."

  Definitely a trap about to spring...

  "I don't do commitments," Marc said, wanting to make sure she understood.

  "Who's talking about commitments?" Kit asked. "I just wanted to get to know you a little better before we go our separate ways."

  "But not well enough to stay in my tent with me tonight," Marc said.

  "I don't do one night stands," Kit replied.

  "We still have six more days," Marc said. "It doesn't have to be a one-nighter. I'll make it worth your while." He knew that would be a turn-off for a woman like Kit. Georgia, on the other hand, would already be half way inside his tent and tugging him in after her.

  "Now you sound like Lewis and Simpson," Kit replied.

  "That's because I'm a guy and I'd rather have a woman in my tent than play with myself, and you seem to be available, or at least working up to availability." That made her bristle some. But he didn't like what was happening. Kit wasn't a Georgia, which made her a threat.

  Kit walked away from him and he figured she'd gotten the picture. But instead of leaving the area, she collected the box of artifacts she'd uncovered and labeled from the day's dig and carried it over and stood holding it. "I don't really think you're like the others," she said, sizing him up too quickly for his peace of mind. "I just said that because you're trying to act like them. So, since you don't do commitments and I don't do one-to-six night stands we might as well update our journals and wash and catalog artifacts. Do you have a problem with that?"

  Marc felt increasingly uneasy with all this. It smacked of the becoming-friends-first thing, which would lead into some really hot sex when they moved to the next level, which would be followed by the I-need-a-commitment thing. But with only six days to go, little could come of it. "Okay, Korban, take a seat and we'll brush teeth and pick away jerky and engage in small talk."

  "You do a lot of that," Kit said, "but I guess that's better than listening to you explain muons." She placed the box on the ground and sat on the bench opposite him.

  Marc eyed her across the table. Talking about muons had also been meant to discourage her. Another short spiel would finish the job. "If you want to be an archaeologist you have to get with the program, and that leads to muons."

  "Actually," Kit said, "I know enough about them to know that ground-penetrating radar does the same thing, and in the end, why do you need technology that penetrates miles into the ground when we're only talking about a 150 feet with a pyramid. Muons seem like overkill. Besides, according to the experiment conducted by Luis Alvarez on the Second Pyramid of Chephren in Egypt, the muon detector was large, unwieldy and weighed over a ton."

  Marc looked at Kit with curiosity, surprised she knew as much as she did. Her credentials had been good, but even half his colleagues didn't know shit about the physics behind muons. "That's the old design," he said. "The prototype detectors weigh only two hundred pounds."

  Kit eyed him across the table. "About as much as you. Still pretty large and unwieldy to drop down a hole. But since the Maya dropped virgins down cenotes, maybe it wouldn't be too difficult to drop an archaeologist and his detector down a muon hole."

  Marc was actually finding her amusing. He hadn't expected to enjoy Kit's company. "You said an archaeologist and his detector. Do you have a problem with male archaeologists?" he asked.

  "Yeah, kinda," Kit replied. "Most have two-track minds. One's on digging through craploads of dirt. I don't need to tell you what the other is."

  Marc laughed. He didn't need a reminder. It was in the process of raising its ugly head. The lip was what did it, and the shirt, which was unbuttoned to where he saw sweat clinging to Kit's cleavage, which wasn't formed by huge mounds of female flesh like Georgia's. What Kit had was just about right to fit nicely in his hands. "So, Korban," he said, "would you qualify to be dropped down a cenote if it was the Maya days of glory?" He wasn't doubting she'd lost her virginity, only wondering about the guy who divested her of it.

  "If you mean, am I still a virgin," Kit clarified, "I'd be safe from the cenote."

  Marc looked at her, while trying to ignore the cleavage, the lip, and the warning signs that told him it could still be a trap, with six more days to go, and said, "Then it was more than a six-night stand with you I take it, since that seems to be your starting point."

  "Try three years," Kit replied. "He was also from Albuquerque, and he also graduated from the University of New Mexico, but we went to different high schools and didn't meet until we were in college. He already had his degree in accounting and was working on his masters, and I thought it was the real thing when I moved in with him, but he couldn't quite make up his mind if I was really what he wanted. He had a thing about my hooking hangers on the rod in the wrong direction, and the toilet paper had to roll out from the top, which I sometimes forgot, and when I returned from a dig, everything had to go to the dry cleaners before it could come into the house, and sometimes I'd think, what the heck, and throw it all in the washer. He also called his mother every day at seven, and on occasion I was on the phone at that time. Other than that, Wally was a pretty okay guy. Well, there were a few dozen other little hang-ups, but I could live with those."

  "Wally?"

  "Yeah, maybe I should have suspected from his name that he'd have hang-ups that included calling his mother every day at seven," Kit said. "Any mother who named her son Wally was laying the groundwork for keeping him close to home, and that was his given name. I saw his birth certificate framed and hanging on the wall in his mother's bedroom."

  A woman sticking with a man like that was definitely into commitment, Marc mused, determined
to keep it in mind. He was coming up with far too many reasons why having Kit in his tent for a few nights wouldn't really lead to commitment. "Three years takes you back to age twenty-one," he said.

  "How did you know that?" Kit asked, looking at him with curiosity.

  "Your application," Marc replied.

  "Why did you read my application?" This time her face looked hopeful. Or maybe it was more wishful thinking on his part. Having her in his tent was taking priority now. The cleavage got it up, but that was simple male-female physiology. It was her bottom lip that held his attention. And her top one too. And the way her tongue came out on occasion to pass between them and leave her lips parted and her mouth shining.

  Don't forget the trap...

  "Well?" Kit asked. "You read my application because...?" She paused and waited.

  "Not to learn your statistics," Marc assured her. "Everyone's applications were passed on to me. I'm field supervisor so I get to pick. You'll do the same when you're supervisor. You'll get to check out the incoming crop and choose the ones who give you the hots."

  "Did you?" Kit asked, looking a little pissed.

  "Guys don't give me the hots," Marc said, "and four of the team members I chose are guys."

  "But three are girls," Kit reminded him.

  "Quotas," Marc said.

  "You're kidding. You only chose Georgia, Lindy and me to fill a quota?"

  Marc laughed. "No, I selected the three of you because you didn't have polished fingernails and wear trendy clothes. I figured you didn't mind getting down in the dirt and digging."