Odd that an image of Kit pregnant with his child should come to mind
"So, you've got your masters and you're working on your PhD," Maureen said. "Your grandfather would have been very proud of you."
Which seemed odd now, Marc thought, since he wasn't even related by blood to the elder Adam Hansen, or the younger one, he remembered. But being back on the ranch, it was easy to forget. "I'm sorry I never got to know him. My other grandparents are pleased though."
"So, you've managed to contact them," Maureen said. "I wondered if you might. It's good you've traced your roots, but you still have roots here, just different kinds. So, how did you manage to find them?"
"It wasn't that hard," Marc replied. "I knew Mom was a widow when she married Dad, and that her name had been Templeton, so before I left I went to see Flo, the woman who worked here when I was born, and asked what she knew about my father. All she remembered was that he was a professor at a university in Texas. It wasn't hard to find him after that. My grandparents were pretty upset with Mom for not telling them about me though, but since I'm their only grandchild they insisted I stay with them. My grandfather's wanting me to look into teaching so I could put down roots, but I like moving from dig to dig."
"Does Kit?"
Marc pictured Kit's campsite and all the comforts she'd never had at the dig at Belize and wondered if she could be happy in the jungles if she had the same set up as she did here. But there would still be the heat, and the bugs, and snakes. Yet, the muon project in Belize would be an opportunity he couldn't afford to pass up. Which was a dilemma now, leaving Kit to go excavate a pyramid. But Kit had her own dreams, which didn't work with his.
He looked at his grandmother, who was waiting for his response, and said, "Kit wants to be curator of a museum."
"And you don't know what to do about it," Maureen said.
"How did you know?" Marc asked.
"Because a woman has wandered into your life, who you weren't expecting, and you're struggling to find a way to hold onto her without making any changes in your life."
"Kit's different," Marc said.
"I know," Maureen replied.
"Then Mom has been talking to you."
"No," Maureen said. "Kit's different because with her in your life all those little empty compartments are starting to fill, and the doubts you have about yourself are beginning to make sense. But if you want to hold onto her, you might have to do a little compromising." She reached out and patted his hand. "Now, that's all the wisdom I intend to pass on. You can ruminate over it or bury it out there in the Indian mound."
Marc looked into his grandmother's perceptive eyes. From as far back as he could remember she'd been passing on nuggets of wisdom for him to mull over, and never once had he thought about burying any of it. But unlike the other times, this time she'd been straight forward in what she was telling him, and what she'd said couldn't be passed off lightly.
It's called marriage, which is even scarier than unmarried commitment...
That, he couldn't deny. But he also couldn't deny that Kit was filling in a lot of empty compartments in his life, while also helping him make sense of it all.
***
Kit spent the following morning updating the unit notebook by documenting the progress of the excavation, which included sketches and diagrams of the holes dug. Marc told her, as she arrived on the site earlier, that before he got back to digging he wanted to spend some time with his grandmother, who'd returned from visiting her brother, so Kit didn't expect him back at the site until after lunch, along with Ryan, Jeremy and Maddy, who stopped by earlier to tell her that she wanted to help too. Marc wouldn't know that yet, but he'd be pleased.
Deciding the best way to make the morning pass more quickly would be to start excavating, she picked up a trowel, and walking over to Unit I, continued scraping away where she and Ryan left off the day before. They'd uncovered a slew of artifacts already, some intact, but mostly broken pieces of what had been arrowheads and bird points and the chipped remains left from tool making. But as they'd made their way down, other artifacts began to appear, household pieces like pottery shards and animal bones, and even one antler that had been used as a scraper. With luck, they'd locate a dugout area where a pit house once stood, which would almost assure a grant sizable enough to enable her to dig up the mound in an organized, methodical way.
But as she began to dig, she realized it was the first time since she'd met Marc, almost four months before, that she was at a site without him, and it seemed strange. Lonely. Especially after last night. Passions heated up fast and she'd been on the verge of letting things take a natural course, but even though she managed to stop what they were doing, she wasn't sure she could the next time. She kept coming up with reasons why sex without commitment would be okay as long as it was with Marc, since their relationship was way beyond a casual one. Maybe a little lopsided though, since she felt commitment on her side. But Marc wasn't that far behind.
Although he didn't realize it yet, he had the makings of a family man, someone who'd put wife and kids above all else, even above putting muon detectors down holes, though she'd never deny him the joy he got from his work. But in the past couple of weeks she'd also wondered if being a field archaeologist wasn't Marc's excuse for not having a place to call home because of his self-imposed estrangement from his family. By moving from dig to dig, he wouldn't have to explain, even to himself, why he didn't want to go home.
We'll work on things...
Yes, they certainly would.
Shortly after lunch, Marc arrived with his siblings. After Kit demonstrated the use of the tools, and went into a lengthy explanation about how they'd be proceeding with the excavations, they broke into digging teams again, but with Maddy joining Marc and Jeremy.
Early on, Kit realized Ryan wouldn't be staying much longer. It happened when he spotted the hickey on her neck. She hadn't been aware when Marc put it there the night before, but when she saw Ryan's eyes fixed on her neck, her hand went up automatically, and she wondered if he was seeing what might possibly be there.
Ryan answered her unasked question, when he said, "It took me a while, but I get the picture now. When we were growing up we all wondered if Marc would ever stray. He was the only one who followed Dad's rules."
"He still is," Kit said.
Ryan smiled in a way that told her he wasn't that dense, and said, "I'll keep digging here, but maybe not with as much enthusiasm, but if Marc gets to be a bore, let me know."
"He won't," Kit said.
"So, what's he got that I don't have?" Ryan asked.
"Round balls," Kit replied.
"You want to run that past me again?"
"Marc's not a bull rider. His balls aren't flat. So he said." And that really didn't come out right. "Marc and I talk about strange things a lot of the time," Kit added by way of explanation. "It happens when you spend hours together digging in the dirt."
"I'm just glad Marc's somewhat human," Ryan said. "And just for the record, bull riding doesn't flatten balls."
"I know, it makes them tougher," Kit said.
Ryan looked at her, soberly. "Do you know that for a fact?"
Kit laughed. "Ha! I got you on that one, but I won't tell Josh."
"Good," Ryan said. "I won't tell him Marc's got octopus tentacles for a mouth and uses your neck for tentacle-sticking practice."
Kit appreciated Ryan's humor, but she was also tempted to go into a long-winded, defensive dissertation by explaining that Marc still hadn't broken his father's rules, and the hickey on her neck was the scope of what went on behind the closed flap of her tent, but decided it was better that Ryan think what he did. It would keep him at bay. More importantly, it would solidify Marc's position at the top of the pack where he needed to be right now. Even something as noble as Marc remaining chaste in high school, because he wanted to please his father, could have been enough to make him an omega wolf among the juveniles.
"So then," Ryan said,
as he continued scraping away at the excavation, "Other than the shape of his balls, what else does Marc have going for him?" He turned and looked at her. "Actually, I'm serious. Dad always thought Marc had the most potential as rodeo material because he was more compact than the rest of us, he was a natural on a horse and he could throw a rope better than we could, but Marc wasn't interested. And he stayed to himself a lot of the time, mostly digging around here, but other times he did experiments that made no sense to us, so half the time we didn't know what he was doing and didn't care."
"I know," Kit said. "It's kind of sad. But I actually understand. He's a complicated, but very amazing man, probably the most intelligent man I've ever known, with so much information stored in his brain it would boggle your mind. But he's also perceptive and insightful, except with himself, and fun and funny, and he has the potential of becoming a really great family man, and he's sensitive in a way that even he doesn't realize, and he makes my…."
Heart start pumping hard and my progesterone rise off the scale, and me want to crawl into bed with him and stay there throughout eternity...
"Like I said, I get the picture," Ryan replied. "Then you two have plans for the future?"
"Ha! I wish. Let's just say Marc's a work in progress and I'm not done yet, but I'm patient, and he's worth the wait."
Ryan looked at her, perplexed. "But that thing on your neck?"
"That's where it stopped," Kit said. "Ranch rules."
"Are you serious!?" Ryan exclaimed. "I can't believe Marc's still that way."
Kit laughed. "He isn't. He's been trying to get in my tent since Belize, but he has a few issues to work through and I reserve the right to insist on commitment before sex, and he doesn't realize he's falling in love yet, so for now we're just a couple of field archaeologists digging up dirt, well, maybe kissing some too. Like I said, Marc's a complicated man so it's not your ordinary courtship. He wouldn't know how to handle that."
Ryan looked over at Marc, and said, "I guess I never knew him very well."
"I doubt many people do, including him," Kit replied. "He's like a newly discovered yet unexplored archaeological site, and I've been given the rare opportunity to be able to scrape away the many layers, and with every level I uncover another treasure." She looked at Marc and smiled because she liked what she was seeing.
Ryan saw her smiling, and said, "Well, if you manage to pull it off, then welcome to the family. But just for the record, if Marc wasn't around and you'd come to the ranch to dig up the mound on your own and you met me instead, would I have been in the running?"
Kit looked at Ryan, whose face was serious, and said, "You're a big handsome guy, and somewhere out there is a beautiful, sexy young lady who can throw a rope, and ride a horse, who'll give you a run for your money, even though she'd actually be setting a trap to land you, and when you least expect it, the trap will spring and you won't know what hit, but you'll be really glad it did."
Ryan smiled. "That's the best brush off I've ever had. I'll keep it in mind."
Kit glanced over at Marc again and saw him crouched on his heels, studying something in his hand. After a while, when he remained where he was, she walked over and saw that he was holding a toy tractor with a blade rusted in place, but with enough paint remaining to know the tractor had once been yellow. Taking the opportunity to touch him, something she'd wanted to do all day, she placed her hand on his shoulder and said, "Should we document it?"
Marc shook his head. "It was Adam's. He got it as a present on our eighth birthday. We had a big fight about something, I don't remember what, but I took the tractor and buried it out here. Later, I got to feeling bad, but when I went to dig it up, I couldn't figure out where I'd buried it. Since I didn't want Dad to know what I'd done, I never said anything, but it always bothered me because Adam wondered what happened to it and he never got a chance to play with it."
He looked toward the line-up of cabins on the creek, and said, "I have some unfinished business. I'll be back in a little while." Taking the tractor, he left the site.
***
After washing and oiling the tractor, Marc headed for Adam and Emily's cabin, hoping to find Adam there. He also brought along a book for Jesse.
Adam answered the door, and looked surprised to see him. Then the surprise changed to wariness, like he didn't know what to expect.
"I have something for you," Marc said. He pulled the tractor out from behind his back and offered it to Adam
Adam looked it, a puzzled frown on his brow. "You're giving me an old tractor?"
"Yeah, maybe you don't remember it. You got it for our eighth birthday and then it disappeared."
Adam took the tractor, and as he studied it, an awareness began to dawn. "It disappeared right after the party," he mused. "Where did you find it?"
"Where I buried it," Marc replied. "It was a rotten thing to do but I was mad at you for some reason. I know we had a pretty big fight."
"I broke your model airplane," Adam said. "You had it hanging from the ceiling and I was practicing throwing my rope. The rope got tangled up in it and when the plane fell, the wings and tail broke off. That was probably about the time Dad decided to add the new rooms. He was afraid we'd kill each other."
Marc had forgotten why they'd had the fight, but he did remember building the model plane. It wasn't much of a model kit, but enough to be a challenge to a seven-year-old. "Then maybe we're even," he said, "except you have your tractor and I still don't have my plane."
Adam smiled. "Are you going to beat the crap out of me again?"
"I never beat the crap out of you," Marc said. "You were always bigger."
"Yeah, but you were a lot quicker," Adam replied. "The only reason I never got beaten up was because Mom always came to your rescue."
Marc laughed. Then he looked beyond Adam to where Jesse was standing in the hallway, watching him, like he wasn't sure whether to come in the room or not, which was understandable. The last time his uncle stopped by he wasn't very friendly. "I have a book for Jesse," he said. He held out the book.
Adam took the book. "My First Book of Space," he mused. "It was your favorite book."
"I've gone a little beyond it now," Marc said. "But I also want Jesse to have Grandpa Hansen's telescope later, if he's interested."
"I'll make sure he is. Or better yet, you can make sure he is," Adam said. "You're the one with the brains in the family. I'm just a cowboy."
"Last I heard you had a degree in ranch management," Marc said.
"Yeah, but last I heard you were going for your PhD," Adam replied. "Grandma Hansen's really proud of you, and Dad too. I was there last night when Dad was having one of his long-winded talks with the boys. He's using you as an example of what can be accomplished if they set their sights a little higher than a bull pen and use the brain in their heads instead of the other one. You know how Dad gets. He's pretty straight-forward with the talk, had us all squirming."
"Why you?" Marc asked. "You're married."
"I'm also Dad's shining example of what happens if you don't keep it in your pants."
"Do you regret it now?" Marc asked.
Adam shrugged. "It's kind of a double-edged sword. If I hadn't gotten Emily pregnant I wouldn't have Jesse, and Emily would probably still be with Erik. I guess you heard about that?"
Marc nodded. "Rick told me. That was tough."
"It was worth it," Adam said. "I have everything I want now and little Gracie on the way."
"So, you're naming her after Mom."
"Emily's idea. Mom's the mother Emily never had, so yeah, we'll have our own little Gracie. Mom will have her dressed head-to-toe in pink, like it was when they brought Maddy home from the hospital. You remember that?"
Marc smiled. "Yeah, I remember." He couldn't get that image out of his head, or the one Kit planted there the night before, a little daughter, a mini version of her mother, with big blue eyes and a mouth with a tiny little bottom lip that stuck out some, but instead of socks with la
ce, Kit would have her in tiny field boots, or maybe mini toe shoes...
Adam looked at Jesse, who was still standing in the hallway, and said, "Come on out, son. Uncle Marc brought you a book about stars. It'll have constellations in it, like what we see when we sleep out at night."
Jesse came over and stood next to Adam, and while looking at the book in his father's hand, said to him, "Will it have the twins in it?"
"Yeah, Gemini will be in it, and the big dipper."
"And the bull?"
"Taurus will be there too," Adam said. "Uncle Marc will read all about them."
Jesse smiled, scampered over to the couch, crawled up onto it and waited.
Adam handed the book to Marc, and said, "I think this next generation's a lot smarter than us. Well, smarter than your bunch of bull-riding brothers, but Dad's really into expanding everyone's horizons now. I know he could use your help."
Marc started to tell him he'd be coming back to the ranch to visit, but he wouldn't be staying, then decided to let things ride. For the moment, he had a nephew waiting on the couch who wanted to know all about the universe. He could handle that.
Sitting on the couch beside Jesse, Marc opened the book, turned to the first page and started reading, "This is how our planet Earth looks from a spaceship. It floats in space like a beautiful blue marble, covered with swirling clouds..."
A little while later, Jesse became restless and went off to do something else, so Emily joined Marc and Adam in the kitchen, and while they were having coffee and visiting, they were startled by a sharp rapping on the door.
When Adam opened it, Kit stepped inside and said, in a frantic voice, "We have a major problem on our hands. While I was working with Maddy and Jeremy, Ryan got carried away and dug deeper than he was supposed to and he uncovered a human skull. Your father's out there right now and he's pretty upset."
CHAPTER 11
By the time Kit returned to the site with Marc, a crowd that included ranch staff, guests, and family had gathered around the dig. Jack broke from the crowd and headed toward them, and from the grave look on his face, Kit knew big trouble was just ahead.
Bittersweet Return (Dancing Moon Ranch Book 6) Page 16
