He dropped the towel next to her shampoo and sat down behind her in the stream. His hands cupped her shoulders. “Morning.”
“Morning.”
“Why are you crying?” he pulled her hair back and cupped her chin in one hand, holding her face in profile as he studied it.
“I just splashed water on my face.”
“I don’t want you to go around miserable.”
“Okay.”
He rested a hand along her cheek, his fingertips trailing over her skin as she faced forward again. “I don’t want you to ask me for permission to get out of bed, either.”
“Okay, I won’t do it again.”
“I want things to be like they were between us before. Like there was no bargain. ‘Cause there isn’t a bargain. There’s only a compromise between …”
“Two people who need to be together. I know. Okay.”
His fingers curved over her shoulders and shook lightly. “Stop that. Stop agreeing to everything like you don’t have a choice.”
“What kind of choice do I have? I already said I’d do whatever you tell me, and you already said I wouldn’t like some of it.”
“I didn’t do anything you hated last night, did I?” He pushed her hair aside and slid his hands down her back, stroking her spine with his thumbs.
“You were full of bourbon. You fell asleep five seconds after you grabbed me.”
“Grabbed you?”
“Yeah. I felt like a teddy bear.”
“Whatd’you think I was going to do?”
“Something besides fall asleep.”
“Disappointed?” He soaped his hands and began washing her back, sliding his fingertips in slow circles.
“I don’t know. Everything’s so different between us now.”
He stopped washing and rested his forehead against the back of her head. His hands closed around her arms. “Tell you what, Kat Woman. I’ll treat you like a teddy bear until you’re ready to stop thinking that way. You say when.”
Breathing quickly, a familiar tickle of desire growing in her stomach, Kat couldn’t ignore him. His concern for her happiness pretty much destroyed any doubts she’d had about his motives. Yes, Nathan cared about her, and he was willing to do anything to make her forget about the land problem.
She’d never forget, though. It would always be between them. But she hadn’t been lying to him last night when she’d said that she wanted things to be right again, too. She didn’t think they ever would be, but she had to try.
Her throat closed with anger. He could afford to be that word, magnanimous. He held everything in the palm of his hand—the future of the land, her future, her love.
“What if I’m never ready to make love to you again?” she asked.
He laughed softly and reached for the shampoo. “You will be ‘fore too long,” he promised, as his hands sank into her hair.
KAT AND ERICA sat in the Kirkland’s intimate country tearoom at the same window table where they’d first discussed Dove’s legacy, two months earlier, except that Tess wasn’t with them. Beyond the window with its curtains of white eyelet the dogwood tree that had reached out to them with delicate blossoms now stroked its lush summer foliage against the panes, as if seeking to come indoors from the August heat.
Erica, tall and lanky, had changed over two months in subtle ways that Kat took a moment to analyze; it wasn’t simply that she’d switched her unflattering gray suit for a tailored white dress or that she now used combs to pull her chestnut hair back from her face; it was her aura of happiness.
The source was no mystery. Ten minutes ago James Tall Wolf had left the tearoom to call his attorney about the mining agreement Holt Gallatin had signed with Eli Chatham. James was certainly tall and certainly one heck of a handsome, well-dressed wolf.
Kat had watched Erica’s loving gaze track him all the way from the room. He’d stopped in the doorway to offer her one last bit of reassurance in the form of a wink and a smile.
Now this was how two people acted when they loved each other.
Kat reminded herself that Nathan’s gold nugget was hidden under her T-shirt. It meant a lot, his giving her that piece of gold to wear. Of course, it was sort of like a collar on a slave, but she wouldn’t think about that too much.
“I wish Tess were here, too,” Erica noted, looking out the window at nothing. “But I don’t think she’s back in the country yet.”
Kat shook her head in awe. “Should we call her Princess Tess now, ya think?”
Erica sighed. “I don’t know. Until this problem came up with Nathan Chatham, I couldn’t wait to see her and find out how she learned that her mother was queen of Kara. Now I can only think about our land.”
Erica cleared her throat, reached into a large white purse, and retrieved a page torn from a magazine. “I have some information on Nathan Chatham for you.”
Her voice was somber, almost regretful as she handed Kat the page. “I found it in an old issue of Forbes.”
Hands trembling, Kat laid the glossy, important-looking page on the table and stared incredulously at a color photograph of Nathan lounging in a cushy executive office, his moccasined feet propped up on a gleaming desk. Behind him a wall-sized window framed the unmistakable skyline of downtown Atlanta—the tall cylinder of the Peachtree Plaza Hotel, the Hyatt Regency with its famous restaurant room on top looking like a flying saucer that had landed on the hotel’s roof.
Nathan wore tan trousers and a blue cashmere pullover similar to the one he’d had on the night she’d landed in his lap at the wrestling arena. His slight smile was confident; his spaniel eyes were half-shut in a knowing look; he was the essence of relaxed power. The cutline underneath confirmed it,
Chatham’s New Age sensibilities and old-fashioned business sense win him raves from environmentalists and a fortune from gold mines.
“A fortune?” Kat repeated, frowning. “He might own our mining rights, but he’s still just a geologist for Tri-State.”
“No,” Erica said softly. “He owns Tri-State. In fact, he owns the company that owns Tri-State.”
After staring at Erica for several seconds while her mind tried to comprehend, Kat numbly looked down at the page and read, “This boy wonder has changed the nature of gold mining and reaped $300 million for Auraria, Inc., a company he started twelve years ago when Suradoran Indians led him to a vein of gold in the Amazon river basin.
“In a cooperative effort that has become his trademark, Chatham made money for both himself and the tribe, which has used its newfound wealth to bring the best of modem living to its people, while preserving ancient traditions. Twenty years from now, when the Suradoran site is mined out, Auraria, Inc. will restore the site fully. Unlike smelter refining, Auraria’s heap-leaching method leaves virtually no permanent toxic effects.”
“He sounds like an admirable man,” Erica allowed. “Except in our situation.”
Kat read the words again, then once more, then out loud. Then she stared blankly out the window and thought. No wonder he has a nice truck. That was the only way she could define $300 million.
“Ladies!” a voice called in a lilting English accent. “I understand from our charming lawyer that you can’t wait to tell me something! I have quite a story, too!”
Kat and Erica twisted in their chairs to gaze at the elegant, darkly exotic young woman who smiled at them affectionately as she floated into the room close beside a ruggedly beautiful blond man.
Her eyes shining with joy, Tess Gallatin introduced her cousins to Jeopard Surprise, whom she described as “the man I adore entirely too much for his ego’s good,” a comment that made his rather guarded expression soften with pleasure. Kat noticed that he watched Tess with loving pride as she returned hugs and excited greetings.
Tess chuckled. “I’ve told him all about our land and our marvelous heritage. And I can’t wait to tell you two about the winery Justis and Katherine started in California during the 1840’s. It’s all so romantic and excitin
g.”
Kat and Erica traded sympathetic looks. Kat patted Tess’s arm wistfully. “We better order a whole pot of tea, English. You’re gonna need it.”
SHIRTLESS, DRESSED IN his buckskin breeches and hiking boots, the tiny gold nugget gleaming in the top of his ear, sweat and grime streaking his hairy chest, Nathan was not what people expected a multimillionaire gold-mining executive to look like. Kat’s heart rate accelerated at the memory of his slow, thorough attention to her hair that morning. Only Nathan could make her feel that she’d been satisfied as well as shampooed.
Kat was surprised to find him and Drake at work again on the Blue Song homeplace, with Echo clucking around behind them, picking up the things they unearthed, a large brown hen instead of a small one, Kat noted wryly.
“That’s Chatham?” Tess said in amazement, as Kat guided the Mustang to the end of the old trail. Tess sat in the front passenger seat, or more precisely, in Jeopard’s lap. Erica had her legs across James’s lap in the Mustang’s small backseat.
It was a good thing everybody was in love, Kat thought.
“Yep. He’s, uhmm, he’s sorta different. He’s not such a bad guy. Like I told you, he helped me find the old Blue Song place.”
“Drake!” Tess exclaimed, as the black-haired giant stepped forward and scrutinized their arrival. She turned her head and looked at Jeopard closely.
“This is news to me,” he responded.
“Drake does some security work for Nathan Chatham’s company,” Erica commented from the backseat. Her voice was puzzled. “You know him. Jeopard?”
Kat glanced at Jeopard Surprise. “You know Drake?”
He smiled, revealing practically nothing, while Tess fiddled with the collar of his white polo shirt and was much less successful at looking inscrutable.
“Drake works for Jeopard sometimes, too,” Tess said pleasantly. “They’re old friends in the security business.”
James, who’d been ominously silent since noticing Drake Lancaster, asked in a soft, grim tone, “Can my sister trust him?”
Jeopard didn’t hesitate. “Drake would die for her. Yes, she can trust him.”
“He has very good taste in women’s lingerie,” Tess quipped.
As everyone got out of the car Nathan tossed his shovel down, slipped a T-shirt over his torso, and strode over to greet them. He met Kat’s eyes, and his somber gaze seemed to say, “So the war party’s finally here.”
Kat introduced him and watched her cousins’ expressions carefully. They didn’t think of Nathan as a monster, since she’d told them about his Cherokee knowledge and sympathies, but they didn’t want him to destroy their land any more than she did.
Drake and Echo walked up. Looking contented, Echo strolled to her brother, and gave him a hug.
“Happy?” he asked.
She said something in Cherokee, smiled, and went back to Drake’s side.
“Kat says you’re giving us a five-year grace period,” Tess told Nathan. “Why?”
Kat clamped her hands together and wondered how Nathan would explain. She didn’t want her cousins to think she was in cahoots with him, maybe trying to get a share of the Blue Song gold. They must never find out about her bargain.
“I have a lot of interest in your heritage,” he explained calmly, nodding to Kat as if she could confirm that.
“So the Gallatins and the Chathams have always feuded?” Erica asked.
“Yep. From Justis and Nathaniel during the Civil War to Holt and Eli to Dove and Micah.” Nathan shrugged and looked at Kat too innocently. “Who knows? We might be the ones to end the feud.”
“Why are you doing all this excavation work?” James asked in a quiet, authoritative voice. “What do you expect in return?”
“Nothing. I like Kat. We’re friends. I don’t have anything against any of you folks. But mining this land is something I have to do for my family, just as you’ve got to take care of your family’s interests. I’ve got a mining lease that’s legal. The transaction was even recorded in the courthouse records up in Arkansas. You can’t fight it.”
“Oh, we can,” Jeopard interjected pleasantly. He held out a hand to Nathan. “But thanks for helping my brother in Surador.”
Kat pressed her fingers to her temples and watched as Nathan shook Jeopard’s hand. What was this—a soap opera? Their lives had crossed one another’s in such unusual ways before they’d all reached this common ground. Had Katlanicha foreseen this? Is that what the medallions were about?
“What does your medallion say?” she asked suddenly, turning toward Tess. “And did it mean anything to you?”
Tess smiled, and Kat noticed how Jeopard’s hand strayed subtly into hers. “It said, ‘A bluebird should follow the sun.’ It brought me home to Jeopard.”
Kat swallowed the lump in her throat. Tess’s medallion had brought her to Jeopard; Erica’s had brought her to James. “I bet when Grandpa Sam figures mine out it’ll say something dumb like ‘Buy two, get one free.’ ”
The smiles around her, including Nathan’s, only made her feel worse.
WITH A FEW more Cherokees, they could start a village.
Everyone changed into casual clothes and came back to work on the excavation. It made Kat’s chest swell with pride, watching her cousins and their men enjoy the discoveries as much as she had.
But it made her uncomfortable, too, having them so close to her and Nathan, having Nathan’s necklace hidden under her shirt, trying not to look at him or touch him in any way that would reveal their true relationship.
Echo and Drake wouldn’t talk about it to the others, and even they didn’t know about Kat’s bargain. What happened between a man and a woman was nobody’s concern but their own. Echo had said solemnly. She and Drake, whom Echo now called Colanneh, the Raven, had agreed.
Nonetheless, Kat found that being around Nathan that day was difficult. The air always seemed a degree or two warmer between him and her, the emotions shimmering like an invisible web.
Heat. Lord, August was so sticky. Fanning herself, Kat left the homesite and walked past Nathan’s truck to an ice chest Jeopard had bought in Gold Ridge. She got a soft drink, started to open it, then noticed a curious rock sticking up from the leaves a dozen yards away.
It had a rough square shape that made her wonder if it had been chiseled. Her drink in one hand, Kat traipsed over, still limping but not badly.
She reached the odd rock and saw that there was a large circle of similar rocks under the leaves. “Hey, guys!” she called, and putting her fingers to her lips, pierced the air with a whistle. “Look what I found!”
Then she stepped into the center of the circle, and the whole world gave way.
Cool. Damp. Close. Like a wet grave. Those reactions ran through Kat’s mind as soon as she stopped falling. She looked up and found the top of the hole only a dozen feet overhead, but it might have been a mile.
Shaking, Kat laughed when she saw that she still held the soft drink can. She dropped it and hugged herself. This was no ordinary hole; it had carefully constructed rock walls. Under her feet—oh no, her injured ankle hurt like hell—the walls had caved in long ago, making a jumble of rock and mud.
Boots crashed through the leaves aboveground, followed by a louder crash as Nathan threw himself on his stomach at the edge of the hole. “Katie!”
“I’m okay.”
“Get against the wall. I’m jumping down.”
She pressed herself to flat stones and felt water trickle along her neck. Nathan rolled over the lip of the hole and dropped lithely beside her. They were chest to chest in the small area.
“Kitty Kat, I thought you’d lost one of your nine lives,” he said gruffly, his hands stroking her head, cupping her face, then running down her arms as he tried to examine her in their narrow confines.
“I just hurt my ankle some.” She wound her arms around his neck and he drew her close. Kat rested her head on his shoulder and wanted to cry, her emotions jarred free by the fall. “I n
eed you,” she whispered raggedly.
He brushed his lips over her hair and curved one hand over her head protectively. “I need you, too, gal.”
“Nathan,” a voice called in soft warning.
They looked up to find Drake peering at them anxiously. The others were coming. Quickly Kat stepped back as best she could. Nathan’s fingers slid down her arm and he squeezed her hand in a silent good-bye.
Soon everyone was clustered around the hole. Nathan called up, “I’ll put her on my shoulders and y’all lift her out.”
“I’ll do it,” Drake said, and dangled a long arm the size of a tree toward them.
Kat laid her hands on Nathan’s shoulders tentatively, as if she hadn’t grown accustomed to caressing the ruddy skin under his T-shirt, as if her fingernails hadn’t left marks in that skin at times.
“Can you climb onto my shoulders with your bad foot?” he asked.
“Us Flying Campanellis never forget how.”
She scrambled up his body as if he were a ladder, almost smiling when her foot wedged a little too close to his groin. He muttered under his breath, “Wanta be a teddy bear the rest of your life?”
No, she thought with a fervor that shook her. She wanted to be in his arms, away from everyone else, being doctored in his Cherokee ways and soothed in his other ways, ways that men in every culture knew—or ought to know.
Drake pulled her upward as if she were a feather. James grabbed her around the waist with hands that had once crushed quarterbacks in professional football, but held her delicately. Jeopard caught her legs and deftly swung them out, his easy grace making her feel as if she were Ginger and he were Fred in a strange sort of dance.
The men put her fanny-first on the ground and she sat there looking up expectantly as Erica and Tess hovered over her. “I haven’t had so much fun since I tag-teamed with the Russian Roulette Brothers.”
They laughed with relief.
“There’s something down here!” Nathan called.
Kat was nearly the first one back at the opening. “You okay, sweetcakes?” she called, facedown at the edge of the darkness.