They ambled along. She began using the shovel like a cane. Nathan stopped, frowning. “Time to quit. You need to go soak that foot.”
“Relax, Mommy, I’m fine.” She pointed the shovel toward a little clearing a few yards away. “Let’s go over there.”
“Nope. This is like eating popcorn. At some point you just have to say, I’m stopping for now’ and then—Kat, come on back. Kat, give it up for today.”
“Nope.” She limped toward the clearing.
“I’m not following.”
“Yeah, you are too.”
His voice rose. “Katlanicha.”
The way he said her full name made an odd feeling wash over her. She kept walking and called, “Sir, you need to indulge me on this.”
Sir, you need to indulge me on this?
Where had that come from? She’d never said anything so formal-sounding in her whole life.
Well, it worked, at any rate. She turned around and found Nathan striding toward her, looking very exasperated, the metal detector gripped tightly in one hand. He raised the other hand and shook his finger at her.
“Katie Blue Song, I’ve told you before that—”
He stopped, frowning deeply. They stared at each other. “Told me what?” Kat asked, while the odd feeling grew more potent inside her. “Katie Blue Song?”
Nathan shook his head. “I don’t know what I was going to say.” He glanced down at the metal detector and his mouth opened in shock.
Kat almost fell down hurrying to cover the yard of leafy ground that separated them. Her heart racing, she looked at the detector’s needle.
It was going wild.
CHAPTER 5
KAT JABBED THE shovel into the ground, barely missing the toe of his hiking boot. He jumped.
“Take it easy,” Nathan urged. “We have a lot of work to do. Go slow and steady.”
“I can’t!” She tried to balance on her good foot and push the shovel with her injured one; the pain was too great. She levered all her upper-body weight on the shovel and managed to sink it only a few inches into the soft humus. “Arrrgh.”
Chuckling, Nathan took the shovel away. “You look like a little brown hen trying to scratch a hole in concrete. Take the metal detector and let me dig.”
She grabbed the detector and circled him, watching the needle. Kat was so excited she wasn’t sure which was shaking harder—she or the indicator. “There’s something. And there. And there. More. Yes! Oh, Nathan. Yes! More!”
“Yes, more, oh, Nathan, more,” he muttered. “Women are never satisfied.” Shaking his head in mock disgust, he shoveled leaves and dirt aside.
Kat laughed giddily and ranged farther, yipping each time the needle danced. “What do you think we’ve found?”
“Who knows? Keep track of your area. Try to find the perimeter.”
Whump. “Ouch! Dammit!”
“What’d you do?”
“Ran into a tree.” Smiling sheepishly, she rubbed her forehead and kept walking.
He choked back laughter. “Kitty Kat, look up every once in a while.”
Now she hurt at both ends, but she hardly noticed. With adrenaline firing her energy, she swung the metal detector and watched the needle carefully.
Fifteen minutes later she made her way back to Nathan. He’d dug a square hole about five feet wide and a foot deep.
“Why aren’t you finding anything?” she asked plaintively.
“Patience, gal, patience.”
Gal Yes, a very good sign. He’d probably find something any minute. Kat pointed at the surrounding woods. “The needle stops moving when I get past that big oak over there, that maple over there, and the whatever-it-is …”
“Walnut tree.”
“Walnut tree over there.”
“Good. Now all we have to do is dig.”
Kat got down on her knees and vigorously scratched leaves out of the way. If she had to paw through this soil with her bare hands she was going to find evidence that the Blue Songs had lived here.
Nathan laughed. “Cluuuck, cluck-cluck.”
“Quiet. If I’m a hen, you’re a big ol’ gopher.”
“I’ve got another shovel in the back of the truck.”
“Can’t wait that long,” she said, puffing excited little breaths while she dug.
“Kat Woman, you’re not going to find any—”
“I found a piece of metal!”
Nathan knelt beside her and looked. Just a few inches beneath the humus her fingers had scratched something flat and rusty. “Let me,” he told her, easing her hands aside and edging the shovel under the discovery.
Kat clasped her dirty hands to her mouth and watched raptly as Nathan pried a large door hinge out of the ground.
To her it might have been a bar of gold. “A door hinge,” she said in awe. “Oh, Nathan, we found their house!”
“Maybe.” He brushed dirt from the corroded metal. It was spread open, the axis rusted solid. “Made of iron, I think. Handmade by a blacksmith, probably. Looks like it even might have had some fancy scrollwork on it.”
“That’d mean they had something nicer than a cabin?”
“Maybe.”
“Look!” She scratched into the ground and held up something else. “Nails!”
Nathan took them. “Handmade.” He smiled at her with an explorer’s gleam of discovery in his eyes. “That’d be right for the time period, Kat. Early eighteen hundreds. I think we’re on to something.”
Kat whooped with glee, grasped his face between her hands, and planted a smacking kiss on his mouth. Then she drew back, laughing and pleasantly delirious. In a more deliberate spirit he slid both arms around her waist, curved himself over her possessively, and lowered his mouth on hers.
Kat felt his arms bending her, letting her drape backward as he brushed her lips gently, then took full command with a poignantly controlled tenderness that hinted at less patient intentions.
It wasn’t a lingering kiss, but it was a thorough one, covering every inch of her lips, imprinting her with the complete taste and feel of him as he turned it into a series of teasing movements. Over and over he paused, lifted, almost broke contact, then pressed downward again.
Kat moaned softly and lifted her mouth to seek more. She thought she knew how to kiss, she thought she’d been kissed well before; now she realized that Nathan Chatham had just raised her standard to a level no other man was likely to satisfy.
He lapped his tongue forward just a little and she touched hers to it wetly. With that brief, very intimate ending, like a dramatic coda for a sweet piece of music, he sat back and let go of her.
Kat saw the ruddy desire in his face and the troubled remorse in his half-shut eyes. It confused and depressed her. Why would kissing her make him feel bad?
“I always get excited when I find rusty metal,” he quipped, his voice gruff.
“Sure. Me, too.” Kat gestured awkwardly toward the ground. “Are you going to do that every time I find a nail?” I’ll dig faster, if that’s the case.
“Nah. You’re safe.” He scrubbed a hand over his face, as if making sure he hadn’t lost something in the exchange.
Kat bit her lip. “I, uhmmm, I got dirt on your mouth.”
He laughed hoarsely. “I didn’t notice.”
“Sorry.”
“I like the taste of topsoil.”
“Here, let me wipe it off.” Embarrassed, Kat licked her fingers in preparation, and got dirt on her tongue. “Yaaah!” She covered her mouth and turned away from Nathan, spitting and trying to be delicate about it.
If his roaring laughter was any indication, he’d just seen the funniest sight of his life. Kat reached back and flailed at him. When she finally looked up again, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand, he was smoothing tears from the corners of his eyes.
Well, at least she’d changed the awkward, heated mood.
“Dig, gopher,” she ordered, her mouth quirking with humor.
He smiled. “Scratch
, hen.”
BY EARLY AFTERNOON they’d assembled a small pile of nails, three door hinges, something that looked like the handle of a cooking pot, and various pieces of iron that had been part of implements they couldn’t identify.
Nathan watched Kat work and marveled at her tenacity. Her T-shirt clung to her like a wet rag—which gave him an even better reason to watch. She had sweaty streaks of grime on her arms and legs, loose strands of inky-black hair clung to her face, and her hands were covered in dirt.
But she was smiling.
He thrust his shovel into the soil and ripped out another piece of Blue Song land. The symbolism of what he was doing stabbed him with anger and frustration. The scars he made in her land today were a faint scratch compared to what he planned to do later.
Again he thrust the shovel downward, feeling disgusted and letting the aggression leap into his work. With a dull clang the blade hit something large and very solid.
“Kat!”
She limped over quickly. “What?”
They both knelt down. Nathan dug his hands into the soil and grunted with the effort of dislodging the heavy piece. “What the hell?”
“It looks like a big bar of iron.”
“Not a bar—a, ummmph, rod.” The thick, rusty object came loose and Nathan lifted it up. “Must be fifteen, twenty pounds.”
They both looked at it curiously. The corrosion had left its surface pitted and lumpy. It was about a foot and a half long and nearly as thick as a man’s wrist.
“Something to fight with?” Kat asked. “Look, there’s a hanger on one end.”
Nathan turned the rod upright and studied the crude eyelet forged to it. Understanding dawned quickly. “It’s a window sash weight!”
Kat touched the strange device curiously. “You mean to make a window stay open when you raise it?”
“Yeah. There were two for each window—four if you wanted both halves of the window to move. Do you know what this means?”
“No.” She gazed up at him with wide green eyes.
“It means the Blue Songs had a really nice house. A house with expensive glass-paned windows that only people with money could afford.”
He studied the sash weight intensely. “When the Cherokees were kicked out of north Georgia there wasn’t much more here than crude gold mines and one-mule farms. The Blue Songs may have owned one of the nicest places around, Cherokee or white.”
Kat grabbed his arm. The yearning look in her eyes nearly tore him apart. “Do you think we could find the foundation of the house?”
Nathan nodded. If she asked him with that childlike eagerness, he’d search for ice water in hell “And if we find most of these sash weights, we can get an idea of how many windows there were.” He angled his head toward the forest beyond. “I bet we can even get some idea of where the outbuildings were—barns, smokehouse, stuff like that.”
She sank down and gave him a teary smile. “Thank you, sweetcakes, thank you. I would never have found this place if you hadn’t been here.”
His heart thudding with pleasure, he told her, “We need help with this. Somebody trustworthy, somebody who won’t go over to Gold Ridge and talk. The last thing we want are souvenir hunters coming out here from town.”
He paused, thinking. “Got it. I’ll call a friend who works for … with me.”
She didn’t notice his slip of the tongue, and she stroked his arm with her small, gentle hand. “Na than,” she asked softly, “why are you doing all this for me?”
Because I want you to have something from this old homeplace to remember. Because I don’t want you to feel so hurt later. Because I’m crazy about you.
Nathan offered her a jaunty grin. “I told you, finding rusty metal is exciting.”
SHE WAS BLISSFULLY exhausted, and so happy she didn’t care if she looked like a dirt dauber. Riding in the plush comfort of Nathan’s truck, listening to a tape of music made by Cujimo Indians in some little South American country called Surador, she watched mountainside farms give way to the small-town charm of Gold Ridge.
What had once been a bawdy gold boomtown full of saloons, brothels, and gambling houses had become in modern times a cozy place of bed-and-breakfast inns, shops, and restaurants. There was a picturesque college campus right off a courthouse square crowded with big oak trees, and places a short walk from the main street where tourists paid five dollars an hour to pan for gold dust. Mountains rose like an exquisitely hand-painted backdrop in the distance.
“I could really be happy in a little place like this,” Kat noted.
Nathan turned the tape player off and tapped the steering wheel rhythmically, thinking. “I’ve got a great idea. Let’s get a couple of rooms at one of the inns and celebrate by staying in town tonight.”
“We couldn’t get service at a drive-through window, the way we look.”
“We’ll go shopping. We’ll get the rooms and take a bath … baths.”
Kat squirmed inwardly. She had no money for such things. “Nah.”
“You shouldn’t go back to the campsite today. You’ve already been on your bad foot too long.”
“I’m okay.”
“I’ll pay.”
“Nope.”
Nathan slipped a hand under the seat and withdrew a sturdy plastic box. He handed it to her. “Open it.”
Inside Kat found a half dozen major credit cards and a wad of money as big as her fist. The top bill was a fifty. Were all the others fifties?
“Nathan, is it too late for me to learn geology? I want to be rich, too.”
He smiled. “Then you’ll let me pay.”
“No—”
“You wouldn’t be out of work right now if you hadn’t rescued me from Lady Savage. You’re losing money, and I’m responsible. I owe ya, kid, I owe ya.”
She was still staring at the money and cards. What did he do—carry his life savings around with him? Maybe it wasn’t all he had, but it was undoubtedly a lot more than her life savings.
“Okay. But nothing fancy.”
She didn’t trust the mischievous sound of his laughter.
NATHAN SLID BACK into the truck with a big smile on his face. “All set. A great place. I see why you and your cousins liked it.”
Kat peered around him at the Kirkland Inn, a noble old house with an upper gallery, lots of rocking chairs, and a yard filled with azaleas and dogwoods under an umbrella of stately beech trees.
“Well, we only stayed here a little while when we came to see Dove’s lawyer about the will. But Tess said it has the ambience of an English farmhouse, and Erica said it has strong floor joists.”
Nathan pursed his mouth and looked away, smiling. “You and your cousins have got to be an interesting trio.”
She punched him lightly on the shoulder. “Now what?”
He cranked the truck. “Clothes.”
Fifteen minutes later she stood in the aisle of a boutique, being eyed by a saleswoman who obviously thought she was an ethnic hobo of some sort. Kat went to Nathan, who sat on a wooden bench by the door, looking as happy as a clam—a dirt-covered clam in grimy buckskins, hiking boots, and a sweaty, stained T-shirt.
Kat bent over and whispered. “That walrus acts like we’re scum. She’s afraid I’m gonna steal something. Let’s leave.”
He flipped the stem of his empty pipe into his mouth and grinned rakishly around it. “Whatd’ya care? She’ll jump when she sees money.”
Kat frowned at him. “I hate it when salespeople look at me this way. Circus people aren’t trusted, especially in little towns. I grew up with women like that making me feel like a thief.”
His smile faded and he pressed her hand gently. “You know, if you’d stop checking all the price tags she might relax.”
Kat lowered her voice even more. “Stuff here costs too much, Nathan.”
“We’re not leaving until you buy everything you need. No more looking at price tags. Hurry up. I’ve got to get some clean clothes too, you know. And a bath. And I’m
hungry. And I want to smoke my pipe.”
“All right!”
He counted on his fingers. “A dress, shoes, underwear, and whatever else females need. I want to see it all on the counter. Don’t hold back.”
She smiled at him with clenched teeth. “The only thing I’m holding back is my fist.”
Kat felt a mixture of horror and victorious thrill fifteen minutes later when Nathan calmly handed the saleswoman two hundred dollars plus change. With two hundred dollars Kat could have bought a whole year’s wardrobe.
The woman’s eyes bugged a little and her attitude became a great deal more pleasant. Kat gripped the counter. She’d never spent that much money on one outfit before.
“I’m sorry, Nathan,” she said fervently, as they walked to the truck. “Lord, I’m so sorry. I should have looked at the prices.”
“Kat, quit yowling.” He tossed her shopping bags into the back of the truck. “It’s all right.”
“No, it’s not. It’s not right for you to spend this much money.”
“Think I expect something in return?” he asked coolly, one dark brow arched in warning.
“If you do, I sure feel obligated!”
The color drained out of his face. “I didn’t realize that you trade sex for clothes. I should have bought you more.”
She shook her head angrily. “You know what I mean!”
He gripped her shoulders hard and looked down at her with eyes gone the cold pewter color that meant he was angry. He said softly, “If I want anything from you, I’ll just ask. I won’t bribe you for it.”
She was so flustered that she almost said. So ask. Instead, she nodded numbly. “Sorry. I’m not used to gentlemen.”
“Well, get used.”
I’d love to, Nathan. Especially a gentleman with a cute tattooed behind and a sexy pierced ear. Kat limped to her side of the truck but didn’t get a chance to touch the door. Nathan leaped in front of her, pulled it open, and bowed, his expression droll but still a little angry.
“Hah,” she said imperiously, and got inside.
SHE HAD A lovely room full of antiques. It opened on to the inn’s back gallery, and when she walked to the railing she could touch the limb of a beech tree close by.