Bittersweet Return (Dancing Moon Ranch Book 6) Read online

  Swiping a finger beneath each eye, she said, "Kit seems very nice, honey, but maybe you could be a little careful and take precautions. After what happened to Adam, it's not a good example for your siblings, especially Maddy."

  Marc looked at her, baffled. "What are you talking about? What happened to Adam?"

  A frown on her brow, Grace said, "I forgot. You left about the time Emily broke off their engagement. She was pregnant with Jesse when she married Erik, and Adam didn't know he had a son until Jesse was almost three. Adam and Emily have been married less than a year. Things are fine with them now, but since Adam was the brother Maddy looked up to most, his getting Emily pregnant before they were married really let Maddy down."

  Marc couldn't help feeling a little ripple of triumph. He'd grown up in Adam's shadow, not only because he'd always felt second to Adam in his father's eye, but because his siblings seemed to take Adam's word as gospel. Adam was the one winning the rodeo competitions and coaching his younger siblings in riding, while the only thing their other brother was interested in was digging in the dirt for a few broken pieces of pottery and some arrowheads. "Don't worry," he said. "I can stick to the rules. Kit doesn't give me a choice."

  "Then you really aren't..." She stopped.

  "Sleeping with her?" Marc gave her an ironic smile. "No, Mom. We're just a couple of field archaeologists doing a job. That is, if Dad gives his approval." And that was a big if, he realized, as he walked away from his mother and returned to the truck.

  While they drove back to get Kit's truck, Kit said, "Your mother's sweet, but she doesn't approve of me being here with you. I think I should stay in town somewhere."

  "She understands now," Marc said. "I made it clear we were an archaeological team, not an item. She's worried because my brother Adam messed up and got his fiancée pregnant before they were married."

  Kit caught him suppressing a smile. "You're happy about it."

  "Maybe some," Marc admitted. "Like I said, whatever Adam wants Adam gets, except this time his fiancée ran off with her old boyfriend and married him just before she and Adam were supposed to be married, and she was already pregnant with Adam's son. She and Adam haven't been married a year yet. I don't know the details, but their son is three." Again, his lips twitched.

  "You know, you really need to stop wallowing in your own crap," Kit said. "You're jealous of your brother, probably for no well-founded reason, and you resent your father because you think he favors your brother, and that's yet to be determined, but your mother was distraught that you were gone so long, and now she's anxious about why you're back and what you plan next. You need to cut them all some slack."

  "I plan to," Marc said. "How long are you willing to sit on an Indian mound and wait till the time's right to start digging?"

  "I can wait as long as it takes," Kit said. "Money's no object, at least not for a few months. Wally had another hang-up. He insisted on being the breadwinner, probably because he was lacking in other ways, which gave me three years to save money."

  "Good, because it might be a long wait," Marc replied. And then, it came to him that maybe his father would take a second look at his second son, now that number-one-son had toppled from grace. For some reason, that thought brought no satisfaction.

  But he did have some satisfaction in that he'd convinced his mother he wasn't loose with the women, at least not with Kit. Not even close to loose. After he kissed her the day at the site, it hit him that, a little more kissing and he'd be hooked because she'd felt so damn good in his arms, and the kiss had sent his testosterone level skyrocketing, and having Kit in his tent for just one night would keep him in a constant state of arousal afterward, which seemed to happen a good part of the time anyway. But every reaction he'd had during and after the kiss was bringing him that much closer to commitment, and Kit wasn't the one pushing for it. In fact, she threw in the Hansens more frequently than he did the Korbans. It was all teamwork now with her, and that was good. He supposed. Still, that one kiss haunted him.

  "Then you're absolutely sure your mother's okay with us in tents?" Kit asked.

  "Mostly," Marc replied. "We might put some distance between them, though." He wondered if he was talking for himself and the urge to crawl into Kit's tent one night when he was hot, but not from the heat, or because of his parents concern. His mother had reservations, which he thought he'd just put to rest, but his father was a different matter. He was pretty radical when it came to sex in the south forty, and he expected his sons to set examples for Maddy so she wouldn't get the idea that boyfriends did girlfriends as a matter of course, but should choose boys like her brothers, who respected the sanctity of a woman's body. The lectures went back as far as he could remember… probably to about the time each of them discovered that the thing between their legs had a far greater purpose in life than just for peeing and playing with.

  He wondered about Kit's family's rules about cohabitation. He'd never asked because there hadn't been a reason beyond small talk at the dig in Belize, which didn't go into comparing family structure. Looking askance at her, he said, "So, did your parents have a problem with you living with Wally?"

  Kit let out a little snicker. "They adjusted. It was my older sister who had the problem. She thought Wally was a total jerk from the start. It just took me three years to decide she was right. As for living with a guy, I was already twenty-one so I guess they decided I could make my own decision about that. When I have kids I'll have some rules though, more like your parents. Kids don't need to start sleeping with each other just because the guy has something sticking out and the girl thinks it would be pretty cool to feel what it would be like to have it pumping in and out of her, since her girlfriends assured her it was all totally, totally romantic."

  "I'm with your folks," Marc said. "If I ever have kids I'll guide them some, but not have all the rules like mine do. Kids need to lead their own lives and learn by their mistakes."

  "So," Kit mused, "when Maddy wants to have sex with her boyfriend when she turns fifteen, and move in with him when she graduates from high school, you won't have a problem with that."

  "Maddy won't do that," Marc said. "She has other interests, like horses and scouts. She won't even be thinking about sex."

  "Honey, if your little sister has breasts and pubic hair she's already thinking about it," Kit said. "And don't read anything into the honey, Hansen. I was just trying to ram my point home."

  "Did you, when you were Maddy's age?" Marc asked.

  "What? Have breasts and pubic hair when I was fourteen, or think about sex?"

  "Well, all of it, I suppose," Marc said.

  "You're right on all counts," Kit replied, "but I'm much more selective about men now, so I guess my three years with Wally wasn't a loss."

  "I don't need any cream," Marc said, then realized how random and irrelevant that was.

  "That wasn't my issue with Wally," Kit replied, "but since you're not in the running, whether or not you need cream doesn't matter, but I'll keep it in mind."

  Another curve ball, Marc thought, and another reason to separate the tents by maybe a couple hundred feet. "You never mentioned when it was you broke up with Wally," he said, and wondered why he hadn't inquired before. He wondered a lot of things now. Three weeks with Kit in the jungles of Central America and he'd barely gotten to know her. He'd noticed her. The image of her in the shower definitely got his notice, along with the tight shirts, damp from perspiration and open to mid chest, and the sweat-dampened cleavage, and nice shapely butt, and the way she walked, and gestured with her hands to get a point across, and eyed him with irony when she was pinning him down about something. Yeah, he'd definitely noticed her. And the last week at the site, the kiss had him thinking some, but not commitment, just having her in his tent for six days straight, and to hell with overseeing a team of field archaeologists...

  "We broke up just before the dig," Kit said. "In fact, I still have stuff at Wally's house."

  For some reason tha
t bothered Marc, imagining Kit's things intermingling with some faceless jerk's things. Imagining other things too, like their underwear in the same clothes hamper, and Kit in the guy's bed having, probably not very hot sex. He couldn't stop the smile tugging at the corner of his mouth. Poor, faceless Wally needed creams.

  "Why are you smiling?" Kit asked.

  Marc looked askance at Kit, and replied, "Because I have big balls and Wally doesn't."

  "You didn't need to tell me that," Kit said. "Besides, it still doesn't make a difference."

  "It does to me," Marc replied. "So tell me, besides Wally's shortcomings, what does he look like?" He imagined an accountant wearing glasses, not more than a couple of inches taller than Kit and not very well muscled. Small feet too, since that was supposed to determine the size of a man's cock. Probably slender fingers, maybe soft palms, which may or may not have been a drawback if Kit liked the feel of soft hands on her.

  He couldn't help turning one palm out from the wheel and looking at it, finding calluses on the inside pads of every knuckle and across his palm. Definitely work-hardened, but he could use creams to soften them, and after that he'd pass the jar to Kit and she'd take it from there.

  "Wally's six-four, two-hundred-twenty pounds of solid muscle and lifts weights in competitions," Kit replied. "He's actually a really good-looking guy, and smart. He's an actuary now. He just has hang-ups."

  "And small balls," Marc reminded her then realized he sounded jealous, but he didn't like the image Kit described. She could still be attracted to the guy and not care about the rest, which would also say something about Kit, and what an archaeologist with dirty fingernails had to offer her, which wouldn't be much if balls didn't matter. Except she seemed to like his hair. "So, did Mr. America have short or long hair?" he asked, still sounding jealous, he realized too late.

  "It was long when I met him and short after I told him he looked like a caveman," Kit replied, throwing him another curve.

  "So you don't like men with long hair," Marc said, still sounding jealous, which really, really bothered him. Obsessing over a woman didn't sit well with him.

  "Hansen, you're okay the way you are," Kit said. "Your problem isn't whether you have big balls and long hair. It's that damn chip on your shoulder. The rest of you isn't bad."

  So what the hell does 'isn't bad' mean...?

  Kit gave his ponytail a little jerk. "You might consider cutting this for your mother though, which I suspect isn't so much about what she thinks of men with ponytails as what your father will think."

  "I'm twenty-five-years old," Marc said. "I'm not cutting my hair to please my father. If he doesn't like what he sees he can shove it."

  "Great attitude," Kit said. "That should have us cleared for digging in a couple of decades."

  Marc said nothing, because there was some truth in what Kit said. But there was also some truth in what he'd said. During the years he'd been away he'd managed to do well for himself, and if the length of his hair was an issue, his father would either have to accept him for the pretty damn accomplished archaeologist he was, or send him on his way. But if it came to that, he wouldn't break contact with his mother. The look on her face haunted him now, and he wanted to see the old light in her eyes again, along with her beautiful smile...

  Two hours later, Marc stood on the mound while Kit walked around with a trenching shovel, digging little pockets of dirt while surveying the area. "It's definitely a midden," she said, "and there's enough debitage and refuse scatter around to make it worthwhile. There's also little chance of it being a burial ground, so all we need to do is convince your father. I looked up Oregon rules for digs, and all artifacts found are the property of the land owner."

  "The key word is artifacts," Marc said. "Bones and sacred items bring in the authorities and that's what will worry my father."

  "Then if we dig up a bone we'll cover it up and your father will never know," Kit said.

  Marc gave a little snort. "You don't know my father. Once we start in he'll be out here practically directing the dig. At least your tent's a good ways from mine. That might count for something."

  He looked to where Kit had her encampment set up some distance away. As soon as she'd spotted the clearing then learned that the hot springs wasn’t more than a ten minute hike away, she made a beeline over there and staked her claim, then drove her truck as close as she could, which was a short distance from the stable. After removing a tarp that covered whatever was mounded high in the bed of the pickup, she began carrying things to the camp site. He hadn't bothered to see what all was there.

  "Come see how I have my place set up," Kit said. "It's beautiful over there among the ferns and evergreens, and the idea of hiking on forest trails and soaking in a hot springs pool while your father makes up his mind about letting us dig won't be a problem."

  Marc laughed and walked with Kit to where her new, double-wide, forest-green tent stood. Just outside the wide front flap was a coco mat with the word WELCOME on it, which had its own implication. She already had an oversized rain fly stretched tight over the top of the tent and staked down, and with its large front overhang, it created a cozy covered entry, which made the welcome mat seem even less random, like maybe it was there for more than just cleaning the soles of boots. Under the canopy were two folding wooden chairs with canvas seats, a large folding table with a two-burner propane stove on it, an ice chest, and a covered plastic storage bin with what looked to be pots, kitchenware, and other cooking gear.

  Kit sat on one of the chairs and removed her boots, then placed them together just off to the side of the tent entrance. Holding back the entry flap, she said, "Come on in and see how I have it fixed up inside. Take off your boots first though."

  "You have a foot mat," Marc said. "I'll wipe my boots off."

  "That's for effect," Kit insisted. "No boots in the house."

  Marc begrudgingly tugged off his boots, a reminder of how it was with his mother and grandmother and boots. They stayed in a line-up in the mudroom. Placing his boots beside Kit's, he ducked inside and was surprised to find a double-wide mattress covered with a quilt with triangular patterns on it, the kind she might have picked up at Walmart for the occasion, a bedside stand with in a small table cloth over it and a propane lantern on top, a three-drawer plastic storage dresser, a rattan clothes hamper, and another wooden folding chair a couple of feet from the foot of the mattress.

  "Make yourself at home," Kit said.

  While Marc lowered himself to the chair, Kit sat cross-legged on the mattress, facing him. "So, what do you think?" she asked.

  "Definitely cushy," Marc replied, which also reinforced what he'd surmised earlier. Following digs was definitely not Kit's bag. Eyeing the hamper, he said, "What will you do with all your dirty clothes? Haul them into town to the dry cleaners?"

  "Are you hung up on Wally or something?" Kit asked. "You keep coming back to him."

  "I didn't come back to him."

  "Yes you did. You mentioned dry cleaning, so obviously you were referring to him."

  Marc gave a cynical laugh. "Why should I be hung up on a guy who's the size of a two-hundred-pound keg of dynamite with a two inch fuse?" he said, and wondered why he couldn't sound convincing. He was hung up on the elusive six-foot-four Wally, who weighed two-hundred-twenty-pounds of solid muscle from lifting weights and still had Kit's stuff at his house.

  "A four inch fuse, actually," Kit replied. "But your rhetorical question didn't tell me why you keep returning to Wally."

  "Just small talk," Marc said.

  Kit gave him an ironic smile. "Actually, Hansen, if I didn't know better, I'd say you're jealous, which makes no sense because you have just what it takes to get that long-fingered, big-busted goddess breathing heavy. And Wally calls his mother every night at seven."

  Marc gritted his teeth. She'd done it again, mixed a Hansen with the you have just what it takes bit, which means she'd taken note. "Did he you?" he asked, wishing to hell he could get off t
he Wally kick. But the guy just kept coming back.

  "Did he me what?" Kit asked.

  "Get you breathing heavy?"

  "There you go again, coming back to Wally. And no, he didn't get me breathing heavy," Kit said. "He barely got the job done. Now, can we go on to another subject? You sound like a man who's making himself available, or at least leading in the direction of availability, which doesn't fit the no-commitment guy in the jungles of Belize."

  "Marc?" Jack Hansen's deep voice came from just outside the tent.

  "Oh shit!" Marc said. "Just what we need. My father catching us in here." When Marc ducked beneath the door flap to greet his father, after walking out of his life over four years before, the look on his father's face said it all. He was not happy his second son was back.

  CHAPTER 5

  Deciding it would be better to exit the tent right behind Marc, rather than raise further suspicions that she might be stretched out on the mattress, still hot and damp from some non-existing lovemaking, Kit ducked outside and prepared to meet Jack Hansen, the patriarch of the Hansen family. She'd heard a little about Jack’s twin brother, Sam, but it was clear Jack was the dominant twin, just as Adam had been the dominant twin, even though he and Marc weren't twins, which still confused her some.

  Standing in her stocking feet beside Marc, who was also in his stocking feet, which didn't bode well for whatever would come next, especially with Jack Hansen's eyes darting between the his-and-hers-boots standing together at the entrance to her tent, Kit smiled at Jack Hansen and waited to be introduced. The man didn't smile back.

  "Uh, Dad, this is Kit Korban," Marc said, grabbing Kit's arm.

  Jack eyed Kit with displeasure, then made an effort to neutralize it by saying to her, "We'd put you up but the rooms are filled in the lodge and the cabins are occupied."

  "I'm fine," Kit said, offering her hand. Jack took it in a firm grip, which was what she'd expected from a man his size. "As you can see, I'm comfortable here. Marc's tent is way over there." She emphasized the word, way, and pointed in the distance to where Marc's tent stood off to the side of the Indian mound. She wanted to make sure the older Hansen understood that the younger Hansen wasn't sleeping with the woman he'd arrived with, unannounced, after four years. But that still didn't explain why Marc had crawled out of her tent only moments before.