Bittersweet Return (Dancing Moon Ranch Book 6)

by Patricia Watters

  CHAPTER 9

  On returning to her campsite, Kit found Marc standing under the canopy, looking off in the direction of his tent. When he heard her coming he turned, and said, "Look, I'm sorry about what happened. I didn't mean to stare. I just didn't expect to see you... like that."

  Kit was surprised he was so serious. She'd expected him to make some kind of comment about sharing the hot spring pool or maybe pretending she was the long-fingered goddess and they were in a cenote. "Forget it," she said. "I don't have hang-ups about being seen under circumstances like that. But we do need to establish some kind of warning system, maybe a little sign to put near the entrance."

  "I'll figure something out," Marc said. Again he looked at her, much like he had at the spring, except now he also looked lonely, like he needed both sex and companionship. Someone to hold during the night to make his world a little better. Worried that maybe it hadn't gone well with Maddy, she said, "How did it go? Is Maddy okay now?"

  "I suppose. She said she was sorry," Marc replied, "but she's changed."

  "I know," Kit said. "It happens between ages ten and fourteen. It's called puberty and it's very confusing. She's hit with that along with a lot of family issues. But you said she's changed. Did she change for the better?"

  "I don't know," Marc replied. "What did you say to her?"

  Kit removed the towel turban. "I just told her how it was with you," she said, while combing her fingers through her hair. "She's smart, and she understood."

  "So, how is it with me, from your perspective?" Marc asked, while eyeing her steadily.

  "It's not all that complicated," Kit replied. She picked up a wide-tooth comb and started working at the snarls. "I told her you thought your parents raised you out of obligation, and the reason you never contacted them was because you didn't think anyone cared that you left."

  "You shouldn't have told her that," Marc said. "Now she feels guilty."

  "She's fourteen. She can handle a little guilt," Kit replied, while working through the tangles, "but she's also old enough to understand what's going on with you, even if you don't."

  "And you assume to know," Marc said, eyeing her hair, like he wanted to touch it.

  Kit set the comb aside so he wouldn't be distracted. "I know you don't feel loved or lovable."

  "Whether or not I feel either isn't an issue," Marc said. The hint of irritation creeping into his voice told Kit otherwise. In fact, she was beginning to realize that the whole issue with Marc was about not feeling loved, which could also be the basis for him avoiding a relationship where he could give it his all, only to be dumped because he wasn't lovable.

  "What if I asked you to stay in my tent with me tonight," Kit said. "Would you feel loved?"

  "No, I'd think you were in the mood for sex," Marc replied.

  "If I just wanted sex I could ask one of your brothers—male plumbing's pretty much the same—but I'm talking about you staying with me. Why would I choose you over your brothers?"

  Marc shrugged. "I don't know. Maybe you're tired of hearing about bulls."

  "Okay then," Kit said. "What if I asked you to stay with me tonight but told you I didn't want to have sex with you, but just wanted you to sleep with me and hold me?"

  "I'd tell you you'd better not ask me into your tent," Marc replied.

  "Do you equate sex with love?" Kit asked.

  "No. Sex is basic physiology. The sex drive guarantees continuation of the species."

  "What about when people are married. Do you think love and sex are two separate compartments in their life together?" Kit asked.

  Marc eyed her warily. "Where are you going with this?"

  Kit walked up to him and put her arms around his neck, and said, "I'm trying to make you understand that you're a lovable man and you don't see it, and you have a family who loves you."

  Marc pulled her arms from around his neck, and said, while holding her hands away from him, "I also had a mother who didn't give a shit about me, and a legal father who wanted one son but not the other."

  Kit pulled her hands from his grip and put them around his neck again and kissed him, and said, "I give shit about you." She kissed him again. "And I'm not even related to you by blood." She kissed him again. "How do you figure that?"

  "I don't know," Marc said. "You don't make much sense half the time."

  "Which half of the time do I make sense?" Kit asked. "The half when I'm messing with your head or the half when I'm out digging in the dirt with you?"

  Marc reached back and wrapped his hands around her wrists, like he was about to drag them away again, but instead of doing that, he glided his palms along the length of her arms, and when he got to her shoulders, continued around them and down her sides, allowing his thumbs to trail over the outside curves of her breasts, and said, "Are you asking me to stay with you tonight?"

  "I'm asking something," Kit said, holding his gaze, "but I don't really know what it is."

  Marc looked at her intently. "Is that a yes or a no?"

  "If you stayed, would you be having sex with me because of basic physiology, or would there be more to it than that, maybe something deeper, and a little bit scary?"

  "I'm not going to be dishonest with you," Marc said. "If I stay here tonight there will be a whole lot of basic physiology going on. If that puts me on the same level with my brothers, then that's the way it is right now."

  "At least you're honest," Kit said. She turned out of his arms. "I don't feel much like having dinner with your folks again tonight, mainly because it's nice and quiet here and I still have a block of ice in my cooler, along with all the makings for ham sandwiches, and I want to update my log book, so will you pass that on to your mom for me?"

  "That's it?" Marc said, brows gathered in a frown. "You were just talking about me staying with you and I was being honest. Would you rather I tell you something you want to hear just so I can have sex with you?"

  "No, I appreciate your honesty," Kit replied, "but sex for the sake of sex doesn't do it for me. There has to be more."

  "Love?"

  "That's a start."

  "So, if I convinced you I loved you, it would be okay?"

  "Not unless you convinced me you loved you first then convinced me you loved me. But I'd still have to love you in return or we'd be back to sex for the sake of sex, and I don't do that. But even loving each other doesn't necessarily include commitment, but for sex to be meaningful there has to be commitment. But I still like the way you kiss."

  "You know what, Korban. You're sending me a hell of a lot of signals and they're all crisscrossing in a big untidy knot in front of me." He took her hands and put them around his neck again, and this time he kissed her long and hard, and after they'd finished exploring each other's mouths, he looked at her intensely, and said, "Do you feel anything for me?"

  Kit pulled one arm from around him and held her thumb and forefinger about an inch apart, and said, "I'm about this close to falling in love with you, but you're the one who has to fill in the gap. Meanwhile, you originally went to the spring to bathe and you still haven't done that, so when you're finished soaking, you can have dinner with your family, and after that we can sit on my bed and try to sort through things. Does that make sense?"

  "No," Marc said, "but I'll go for the bath."

  ***

  As Marc sat in the hot spring pool, his mind was a cache of contradictions. He had no idea where he stood with Kit. She was all over the place.

  I'm about this close to falling in love with you...

  For some reason her words just hit him. When she'd said them, he'd still been hung up on the fact that it was like she was offering him a bargain. Sex for commitment...

  It's pretty scary, isn't it...

  Maybe not as scary as it was. Rick and Sophie had been committed to each other since they were kids and still were. And his parents—total commitment. They'd end up being the old couple who died hours apart because life wasn't worth living without each other.

/>   Sex for the sake of sex doesn't do it for me. There has to be more...

  Maybe there was, and he just needed time.

  After he got out of the pool and dressed, his mind was a little clearer. But instead of returning to Kit's camp after having dinner with his folks, he spent a little time with Maddy, then went in his room to look for an old picture book. It took him some time, and while he searched, he realized someone had been going through his notebooks, but nothing was missing, just things a little out of order, so he didn't care. Finding the picture book, he told the family good night and headed for Rick and Sophie's house and hoped little Marc would still be awake.

  Sophie met him at the door. "I'm glad you're here," she said. "Rick's been wanting to spend some time with you. If you can wait around, he's rocking little Marc. The girls are almost asleep, but little Marc's a night owl. Takes after his dad. Honey," Sophie called to Rick, "Marc's here."

  Rick emerged from the hallway with his son in the curve of his arm, and said, "Your namesake's trying to put me to bed instead of the other way around. Here, you can take over."

  "Good, I intended to." Marc took little Marc and sat on the couch. Looking down at him, he said, "You're going to get your second lesson in dinosaurs."

  Sophie rolled her eyes. "Kindred spirits. I suppose we'll be finding old bones and little tin buckets of dirt from the mound hidden under his bed in a couple of years."

  "Could be," Marc said. He situated little Marc on his lap, but before he could reach for the book he'd set on the coffee table, the toddler tipped his head back, reached up and patted Marc's mouth, and said, "Dada."

  Marc laughed. "You're gonna get me in trouble, buddy, especially since we have the same hair and eyes." But he kind of liked the sound of the word dada.

  Grabbing the Giant Book of Dinosaurs, he turned to the opening page. Little Marc slapped his hand against the picture of a large, colorful dinosaur, and looked up at Marc.

  "That's a brontosaurus," Marc said, knowing little Marc had no idea what he was talking about, but amused that the kid seemed interested. He wondered now where he'd gotten the book. It just one day appeared. But he also remembered, even before he started kindergarten, enunciating the names of the dinosaurs to anyone who'd listen, because the adults always made a big fuss over him when he did.

  "Dada," little Marc repeated, while shoving the page to push it aside for the next page.

  "Don't worry," Rick said, "he calls everyone Dada, even Mama."

  After Sophie excused herself to make sure the girls were still in their cribs, Marc said to Rick, "So, tell me something. How is it here with a wife and three kids? Do you ever feel like you want a little space sometime?"

  "I think you already know the answer to that," Rick said. "I used to be the ranch joke because I was so obsessed with Sophie even though she didn't know I existed, at least not in that way. Well, she did, but she didn't. It was kind of complicated back then."

  "Then you don't have any regrets?" Marc asked, not sure where he was going with this but feeling a need to get some answers. He was becoming increasingly preoccupied with the idea of commitment and that didn't fit with the long-term scheme of things.

  "Look around me, little brother," Rick said. "Do you see anything here I should regret?"

  Marc smiled. "Was the little brother bit because you're bigger than me or older than me?"

  Rick eyed him, guardedly. "Is it going to be a problem, you being my little brother?"

  Marc laughed. "Not unless you try to throw your weight around," he said, realizing this was the first time in their lives he'd sat with Rick and talked about personal things. To be talking with Rick the way brothers would talk was also a little strange, but gratifying. Something he'd never done with Adam. Then he felt a little twinge of guilt that maybe it would bother Adam that Rick had aligned himself with a different brother. But then, maybe it was different with Rick and Adam now because they had wives and children to fill their lives, and brothers would not be so important. Which bothered him too, knowing Rick was a brother he might relate to, but maybe the time had come and gone, and it was time for a wife to fill that spot for him too.

  Dismissing the idea of a wife, while exploring that of being Rick's brother, he said, "Then it doesn't bother you to be here on the ranch? I'd be afraid everyone would try to run my life."

  "They don't," Rick said. "They're all trying to run their own lives. The parents are getting older, and their focus is on the grandkids, which works fine, and your brothers are so involved in bull riding and chasing girls that they barely know Sophie and I are here. It's great, and a good place for the kids to grow up. I know it was for me."

  "What about Adam and Emily?" Marc asked, and tried to sound neutral.

  "If you mean, are they interfering in our lives, no. They'll be just up the road from us, but they don't want to be in our bedroom any more than we want to be in theirs. It's different when you're married. You want to be to yourselves. Maybe if the sex and the hot-tubbing wears off someday when we're around ninety-five it'll be different, but right now we all like our privacy."

  "What's the story with Adam and Emily?" Marc asked. "All Mom said was that they've only been married less than a year, and that Adam just learned he had a son. When I left here they were two weeks from getting married."

  "It's pretty troubling," Rick said. "Erik, the guy Emily went with in high school, turned out to be a sociopath. He had the mind control thing going with her and every time she'd almost be free of him, he'd work her over and she'd be back. She did manage to divorce Erik, but then he came after her, intending to kill her and Jesse, so Adam took them into the mountains, but Erik tracked them down and confronted Adam, but while that was going on, a mountain lion that had been tracking Erik attacked him and snapped his neck. The ironic thing was, Adam shot and killed the lion at the same instant the lion killed Erik. A couple of seconds earlier, and the lion would have been dead, and Erik would still be alive. But in the end, Adam got the women he's been in love with for years, along with Jesse, but it's been a tough go for him."

  Marc felt, for the first time in years, empathy for Adam. And a better understanding about commitment. There was no question Adam was committed to Emily. He had been for years. And maybe it was the same for Emily, just a tough situation that had to run its course. He started to ask Rick about their mother, to try and understand why she didn't want him, and Rick's father, who turned him over to be raised by someone else, but he'd save that for another time. It might open up a Pandora's Box he wouldn't be able to shut, at least not for a while.

  Catching the aroma of baby talc, and feeling the warm weight of little Marc leaning back against him, he looked down and saw that the toddler was asleep.

  Rick glanced over, and said, "You want me to take him now?"

  Marc shook his head. "He's okay..." Like maybe he belonged there a little while longer. He eyed the wavy golden-brown hair and thought, maybe when the kid was around eight or nine, Sophie and Rick would let him take little Marc on his first dig, something important, like spending a week mapping out the passageways in a pyramid with the use of muon detectors. That wasn't so long from now, seven more years. Before then, he could teach him other things...

  "So, what's the deal with you and Kit?" Rick asked.

  "What do you mean?"

  "I mean, you're about where I was three years ago, hanging out, obsessing over a woman. It only gets worse and eventually you do something about it."

  "Something like, having sex with her?" Marc asked.

  Rick laughed. "With Sophie? Keep dreaming. Well, actually there was a little just before we got married, but before then I did a whole lot of fantasizing in a cold shower. The something I'm talking about is getting married. It's the greatest thing going. You have it all, and that’s 24/7."

  "Sex too?"

  "Like I said, 24/7, which includes the middle of the night when she wakes you up and says she's lonely, which is Sophie's euphemism for being horny, but you work out you
r own marital euphemisms. It's great. Some get very creative."

  "Kit and I have pterodactyls."

  Rick looked askance at him. "Then I take it you and Kit are more than just associates?"

  "Unfortunately, no," Marc said, "but I'm working on it."

  "You might want to explain the pterodactyl," Rick said. "I'm getting a pretty bizarre picture."

  Marc laughed. "A tattoo. I had it done in Mexico. And no, it doesn't have its wings wrapped around it—Kit's description when I told her about it. She's pretty creative too."

  Rick's face sobered. "So, you really like her that way?"

  "To have sex with her? Sure," Marc said, "but Kit doesn't do one-nighters."

  "I'm thinking more long term," Rick said, "like sex with her for the rest of your lives."

  Marc looked at little Marc again, who was sleeping soundly, then glanced around at all the womanly touches, and spotted Sophie's slippers kicked over and around Rick's slippers, and Rick's jacket thrown across the back of the chair where Sophie's sweater was draped, and at the end of the hallway was the Jacuzzi.

  And Kit was in her tent, wondering why he never came back. He was wondering too. When he was at the hot springs it seemed more important to be where he was now, with little Marc in his lap and a book about dinosaurs to read to him. But now he was ready to sit on the mattress with Kit and sort things out. Maybe it would finally begin to make some sense.

  CHAPTER 10

  Kit awakened with a start. She'd expected Marc to return after having dinner with his family, but after a while, when he didn't, she stretched out on her mattress and drifted off.

  "Korban," the sound came again. "Kit."

  That got her attention. It was the first time she'd heard Marc call her Kit. It sounded strange coming from him. Strange, but good, like the relationship had moved to a new level. "Take off your boots and come in if you want," she called back.