Bittersweet Return (Dancing Moon Ranch Book 6) Read online

  "It was a good-looking mummy." Marc released her hair then, and said, "I'm heading back to the site and I want you to come along."

  "What did you have in mind?" Kit asked, both excited and scared to be completely alone with Marc at the site. He was just too much man for her. Not only did his above-average intellect challenge her, but the sight of his above-average body triggered all manner of female groupie behavior, which her logical mind told her was ridiculous because he was just a man, like any other man on the dig, except that right now he looked like a cave man who was ready to drag her into his cave, and the places in her body that were distinctly female were urging her to go. And while she was imagining what would take place in that cave, Marc was still eyeing her hair. She'd never worn it down, not only because it was so hot it made her neck and face sweaty, but because it collected dirt, and excavation debris, and whatever was clinging to the jungle.

  Marc shifted his gaze from her hair to her face, and said, "Just before we left the site I found a patch of discoloration on the floor and I want your opinion on what it is."

  "Discoloration?" Kit said, while contemplating the color of Marc's eyes again. Brownish around the rims of his irises now, but green-gray toward the pupils, with little flecks of gold in the gray-green. "You have interesting eyes," she found herself saying.

  "Is that a yes, or a no?" Marc asked.

  She looked at him puzzled.

  "I was talking about a discoloration on the floor at the site and you seem to have equated it with the color of my eyes, which happens frequently."

  "Who's eyes? Your mother's or your father's?" Kit asked.

  "I take it you want me to talk about muons again," Marc replied.

  "I'd rather talk about giant scorpions," Kit said. "Incidentally, that was a yes about looking at the discoloration. Do I need to bring anything along or will this be a brief stop."

  "I'll bring what we need. You might want to pull your hair back before we go though, or you might find things tangled in it."

  "Things like what?"

  "My fingers."

  Kit laughed a nervous giddy laugh, because Marc had just thrown her another curve.

  The man could flirt!

  She also felt apprehensive about how she'd respond if he did run his fingers through her hair, or gather it in his fist and pull her toward him and kiss her. It wouldn't be a tentative kiss like Wally did their first time. Marc Hansen was way too much man for that. So, when she went to her tent before leaving with him, in addition to sweeping her hair up and back in a ponytail, she pulled on a baseball cap with a scarf pinned in back to keep the sun off her neck, which made her feel less vulnerable. She wasn't ready to find out just how much man Marc really was. And when she met him at his truck and saw he'd put on a shirt, she was both relieved and disappointed.

  Getting to the site involved driving across rough terrain and along an old logging road for about twenty minutes, which gave Kit one more shot at cracking through the armor surrounding the man. He'd volunteered the whole convoluted story about his unorthodox conception, so she felt reasonably comfortable clarifying a few things.

  "So, I understand the part about how you were conceived, and the mix up at the fertility clinic," she started in, "but then you lost me with the part about twins. Your adoptive father and his brother were identical twins, I got that much, but then you said something about your mother wanting to have a baby because of your half-brother, and that's where you lost me."

  "My half-brother had a blood disorder and needed a cord blood transplant, so that's why I was conceived in the first place. Kind of like a nine-month-long lab experiment. Actually, my fraternal twin, who really isn't a twin, was expected to be the match and wasn't, and against all odds I was, even though I was from a different gene pool. But after my half-brother got my cord blood, I wasn't much use to my mother and her husband because they'd have to clothe me and feed me and do all those inconvenient things, so my aunt and uncle volunteered to take me rather than turn me over to the local animal shelter."

  Definitely a lot of personal baggage, Kit mused. "But you said your fraternal twin wasn't a twin," she pressed on. At least the man was shedding some light on his personal baggage.

  "He's actually nothing to me, genetically speaking," Marc said. "We were raised as fraternal twins, but I was never told we weren't even related so I wouldn't be loaded down with a crapload of complexes and hang-ups and identity crises when I was growing up."

  "Well, that sure worked out fine," Kit said. "So now you're pissed at your parents for raising you on a ranch with lots of siblings to play with, and instead of, I don't know what, maybe giving them a call and saying hello, or dropping your mother a card and thanking her for wiping your butt and cleaning up all the throw-up when you were a baby, and all the other joys of raising a kid, instead you're carrying around a giant-sized chip on your shoulder."

  Marc wheeled the truck onto the logging road leading to the site, and ignoring her diatribe, said to her, "When a team examined the hair of the good-looking mummy, her carbon and nitrogen isotopes showed a major shift in diet from plants like potatoes to maize and meat a year before her death, which showed a change in social status since tubers were the food of peasants, and maize and meat, foods of the rich, which suggested she was being made ready for sacrifice."

  "Are you always like this when you don't want to talk about something?" Kit asked.

  "No, Korban," Marc replied. "I can be a much bigger pain in the butt when I want to."

  There was the Korban again. Kit came to the conclusion that every time she began to get a little too close, Marc threw in her last name to make sure she kept her distance. She suspected he did that with everyone, or played it safe by staying to himself. "Okay," she said, "then, tell me more about the discolored spot on the floor…"

  Ten minutes later, Kit crouched on the ground in the lowest level of the excavation, and with the tip of her finger, traced a circular path around the patch of discolored soil. "At first glance it could be anything from a privy pit to a pit for artifacts or perishable foods, or even a burial pit."

  "I thought about a burial pit," Marc said, "but this was a wealthy household. I'd expect any burial to have been more elaborate. I took pictures earlier so you can dig around some."

  Kit took a pointed trowel and carefully scraped away a little soil along one edge of the circle, then looked at it closely. "This eliminates the privy or artifact pit theory," she said. "The pit's lined with clay." As she dug outward some, carefully picking her way along, she wedged out a small stone, then she made her way around a circle that appeared to have been well lined in stones. "You want me to keep going?" she asked, then looked up to see Marc's reaction.

  He shook his head. "It's obviously another food storage pit. That makes four in this household. Seems everyone had their own cache and didn't share. Teenage boys no doubt."

  "Are you serious?" Kit looked up again and saw Marc smiling. And felt a little dense. But she was also beginning to get a handle on Marc's sense of humor. Like the rest of the team, they didn't think he had one.

  "So, Korban," he said, "What's your take on what kind of food went in?"

  "I'd guess it was for long-term storage like tubers, where burrowing rodents would be a problem. You want me to dig around and see if I can find any charcoal fragments. It could have been a cooking pit."

  "No, I want to avoid rote excavation," Marc said. "We'll go at it systematically when we come back."

  "Then are we done here?" Kit asked, standing. When she turned, Marc was right behind her.

  "Yeah, we're done." He reached out and took her hat with its attached scarf off, and said, while moving ever so nearer, "Why did you wear this? We're not in the sun here."

  Kit shrugged, and replied, "I thought it would keep the critters away."

  "What kind of critters?" Marc asked, while continuing to move toward her, until his lips were approaching hers.

  "The 200 pound kind who could fit down a muon detecto
r hole," Kit replied. "And you just threw me another curve ball."

  Marc stopped moving toward her, eyed her with bafflement, and said, "What are you talking about?"

  Kit looked at him in amusement because, for the first time, she'd actually stymied Professor Hansen, which made her feel slightly empowered. "You looked like you were about to kiss me and you'd just called me Korban, which is what you do when I start messing with your head and you want out of the conversation."

  "Are you messing with my head now?" Marc asked.

  "Maybe," Kit replied. "So, whose eyes do you have? Your mother's or your father's? If my theory's right, you'll start talking about mummies or giant scorpions."

  "Like I said, I can be a real pain in the butt when I want to." Pulling Kit into his arms, Marc kissed her, a long, open-mouth kiss that Kit responded to by wrapping her arms around his neck and kissing him back, kissing him in a way that told him she'd be in his tent that night, even though she wouldn't be, but she couldn't seem to make herself break away from the mouth-to-mouth connection with a man who'd had her hormones skipping and jumping ever since he demonstrated the deet. And the feel of his tongue rasping against hers, and the taste of something minty on his breath, like maybe he'd planned the kiss in advance, was a total aphrodisiac.

  But since she really, really didn't intend to stay the night with him, she broke the kiss, tipped her head back some so she could look at him, and said, "You're right, Hansen, you're a real pain in the butt when you want to be, but I still won't stay in your tent tonight."

  "I didn't think you would," Marc replied, "but it was worth a try."

  "It also added another switch to your already cluttered panel," Kit said, then turned and headed for the truck, deciding to let him figure that one out on his own. She liked being one tiny baby step ahead of him because she knew, about the time she'd think she was beginning to understand Marc Hansen, he'd no doubt throw her another curve, but that didn't stop her from wanting to get to the core of the man, or from wanting to crawl into his tent. But he wasn't into commitments, and she was definitely not into one-to-six night stands.

  ***

  "Ever been in love?" Kit asked Marc, the following day, as she brushed the last vestiges of excavation dirt off the remains of the once plaster-covered bench.

  "No." Marc looked at Kit with wariness. He had no intention of getting into a philosophical discussion with her about love. "Be sure to brush all the crevices well."

  "Ever love anything?" Kit asked, redirecting the conversation.

  "Yeah. Steak and a cold mug of beer," Marc replied, and hoped she got the point.

  "You must love yourself," Kit said, while continuing to brush off the bench.

  Marc eyed her with misgiving. When women started getting schmaltzy it made him uneasy. Picking up a trowel, he reached around and said, while scratching his back with it, "An archaeologist's most indispensable tool is his trowel. Without it he's useless. But it's also good for—" he smacked a fly mid-air "—swatting flies."

  "Please don't use it as a spatula now," Kit said. "It's got fly goo on it."

  "Yeah, but if we toss the salad with it, the team will never know."

  "I must be treading into unwanted verbal territory again," Kit said. "So, you've never been in love, and you claim you don't love anything but steak and beer," she mused, "but you must love yourself some because there are lots of cenotes around here and if you didn't love yourself, you'd make a really great sacrificial lamb."

  Marc looked at Kit with curiosity. She was zeroing in on something, but he hadn't a clue what it was. But she was still on the typically female subject of love. "Is there a point?" he asked.

  "Yes. With all those Maya gods, there must be at least one goddess—because of quotas," Kit said, glancing up at him. "Finding a guy like you at the bottom of her cenote would probably give her an orgasm."

  "Okay, you've got my interest now," Marc said, amused. "What do I have that would get her breathing heavy?"

  "Other than the obvious—" Kit scanned the length of him, pausing on his crotch "—you have nice hair. It's long, like Adam's. She could run her fingers through it."

  "Adam's never had long hair," Marc said, baffled. He'd never mentioned Adam's name to Kit. He wondered if she had some kind of female intuition because, only a few minutes before, he'd been thinking about his twin, wondering why they'd never been close. Yet, he would have been his best man when Adam married Emily.

  "Adam had to have had long hair," Kit said, "because obsidian blades hadn't been invented yet, or rubber bands."

  Marc looked at her, puzzled, then realized she wasn't referring to his twin, who wasn't really a twin he remembered, but to the other Adam. Still, Kit made no sense. "So, where are you going with this, Korban?"

  "Nowhere. It's just small talk," Kit replied. "I don't want to talk about muons or mummies or giant scorpions, and I'm trying to keep a dialog going. Did you ever have a pet?"

  A little safer territory, Marc decided. "Two cats when I was a kid."

  "Names?"

  "Blue Boy and Coco."

  "Interesting. One of them was named after a painting."

  "No, he was blue, so my mother... adoptive mother, named him Blue Boy," Marc said. "He was a Blue Burmese, smoky gray coat, big gold eyes, a total prig like his mother." He pictured old Mei Ling, curled up in his mother's lap, and his mother stroking Mei Ling's velvety-blue-gray fur. But he also remembered the winter his mother knitted the cat sweater for Blue Boy. He was old by then, and his coat was getting thin. For a few moments he held the image of his mother knitting. She knitted a lot when he was growing up, mainly because his father claimed the only socks that fit his big wide feet right were the ones she knit.

  "Did you pet Blue Boy? Cuddle him? Love him?" Kit asked.

  "He slept with me," Marc replied, "And followed me around the house." And played a cat version of hide and seek, and reached his blue paws under the door of the bathroom to play bat the toilet paper wad. "He was my buddy, a great cat."

  He glanced at Kit and found himself staring at the way she was sitting. She had a nice butt, he noted, and sitting on one hip the way she was, with her legs tucked under her, gave her a twist that brought one breast straining against her shirt and pointing directly at him. "Looking good," he said, imagining the small pink nipple a couple of layers of material beneath. It would be a nice tight nub against his thumb if he moved it back and forth.

  "Thanks," Kit replied, oblivious to what he was talking about. "So," she continued, "it's established that whereas you've never been in love, you do in fact love yourself, and steak and beer, and a cat with golden eyes who was named Blue Boy."

  Marc finally figured it out. The ah hah! moment. This was the getting-to-know-you part that preceded the fast-friends phase. But next would come the only worthwhile part of a relationship, the really hot sex. But with only five days left, chances of that were pretty much zilch.

  "Your siblings?" Kit said. "Were they PIBs, or did you like having one or two around?"

  "What's a PIB?" Marc asked.

  Kit stood and dusted her hands together. "Someone who's a pain in the butt." She gave him another ironic smile. "Actually, let's cut to the chase, Hansen. Who's your youngest sibling?"

  "My little sister, Maddy," Marc replied, visualizing his sister. Sweet. Pretty. Tiny when surrounded by a pack of big brothers.

  "Age?"

  "Ten... well maybe eleven now—" Marc stopped. Maddy had been almost ten when he left, which was over four years ago…

  "Cute? Annoying? A total PIB?"

  "Maddy's okay," Marc said, and wondered. She was okay how? Happy? Picked on at school? But that wouldn't happen with four big brothers to look after her. Except that, Ryan, Jeremy and Josh would have graduated from high school, which would make Maddy... "Fourteen," he pondered aloud. "Maddy must be fourteen by now."

  "Yeah, time marches on," Kit said. "You mentioned you had six brothers. Or was that five brothers and you?"

  "Five,"
Marc answered. Then remembered Rick. "Actually six," he corrected. "I have a half-brother..." although he still thought of Rick as a cousin. But as brothers, would he and Rick have been close, the way Rick and Adam had been? It always bothered him that Adam and Rick were like brothers. Rick would have also stepped in as Adam's best man when Adam and Emily were married right after he left home, but Adam probably wanted Rick as his best man from the start, so like always, Adam got his way...

  "Any nieces or nephews?" Kit asked.

  A frown drawing his brows together, Marc said, in a weighty voice, "I don't know. My brother and his wife could have one by now, maybe a baby girl." He remembered the day his mom and dad came home from the hospital with Maddy. He'd never much cared about being around kids, especially babies, but Maddy was different...

  "Why a girl?" Kit asked.

  Marc looked at her puzzled.

  "You said your brother and his wife could have a baby girl. Why not a boy?"

  "I was thinking about my little sister," Marc replied. "Mom had her wrapped from head to toe in pink, even tiny pink socks with lace around the tops, and when my dad held her, he was different than when he'd held my brothers, like Maddy might break. Then Maddy started squalling and Mom opened her blouse and nursed her, and it looked natural to see Mom nursing a baby again. And now Maddy's fourteen."

  When he looked at Kit he found her staring at him, the expression on her face absorbed, as if she'd read his thoughts. He found it even more curious when she said, "And now she probably has a cute little figure, and the boys must take note. I hope she has a lot of brothers around to ward them off. So, where's this ranch located?"

  Marc folded his arms and eyed her dubiously. "Is this small talk or part of a plan?" he asked.

  Kit shrugged. "Maybe just curiosity. I'm trying to picture you on a ranch as a cowboy, and all I get is Fabio in a leopard skin loincloth."

  "Who's Fabio?" Marc asked.

  "No one special," Kit replied. "You just kind of remind me of him. It's the hair. Well, maybe the chest and the loincloth too. But if you decide to throw yourself down a cenote, the loincloth will have to go if you want to get that long-fingered, big-busted goddess breathing heavy."