Follow the Sun (44 page)

She’d give anything to know what the tattoo said. Then he turned around and she made a soft squeaking sound of admiration.

All men were not created equal, and the tattoo probably said, “Satisfaction guaranteed.”

He was now lathering his hair forcefully, with great white suds falling on his chest and slithering downward, until all Kat could think of was a tree in the middle of a snowbank. A giant sequoia.

She pressed her hands to her mouth to keep from grinning ridiculously. It was only fair that she enjoy this show, after the show he’d had yesterday. Oh, she’d pay for this later in unfulfilled fantasies, but at least her fantasies would be a heck of a lot more exciting than usual.

Nathan bent forward, doused his head so long that she was afraid he might drown, splashed water all
over himself, then stood up and looked straight at her laurel bush.

“Good morrrning, Kiiitty Kat,” he called in a quaint voice.

She almost lost her balance and fell into the laurel. There was no point in pretending that she wasn’t there, so she confronted this humiliation head-on, the way she handled most problems.

“Hi.” She stepped into the stream and waved. “Turn on the hot water, would you?” He put his hands on his hips and confirmed her impression that he was totally comfortable being naked. In fact, he was a lot more comfortable naked than she was in her T-shirt and swimsuit, at the moment.

And he’d accused
her
of being an exhibitionist!

“It’s not nice to spy on Mother Nature,” he called sternly. “Next time either walk away or join me.”

Kat wished she knew some obscene Cherokee sign language. “This is my stream and my woods and if you want to act like a waterbug, I guess I can stand anywhere I want to and watch you.”

“Peeking through leaves is not the most mature thing to do.”

“Any man with a lick of sense wouldn’t expose himself like some sort of pervert when he
knows
a stranger might be watching.”

The dark brows shot up. “Pervert?” he echoed grimly. “You put on a leather bikini and wrestle women in front of an audience and then call
me
a pervert?”

He waded to the bank, snatched a big white towel off a tree branch, slung it around his waist, and started downstream with long, purposeful strides. “If you really think I’m a pervert, then
run.
”

Kat stared at him in horror. Old memories stirred an irrational amount of fear inside her suddenly. What did she know about this man? Practically nothing.

He was at least a head taller than she, and that body had much more than an average share of muscle, stamina, and quickness. Plus, she could barely walk.
much less run to save herself. If he weren’t trustworthy, if he took her banter as an invitation …

She dived for the sandy bank with a force that sent tremors of agony through her ankle. Kat scrambled upright and pushed into the undergrowth blindly, overcome by a panic that numbed her senses.

She didn’t know where Nathan Chatham was; she hardly knew where she was, and she didn’t care what she might be doing to her fractured ankle. She grabbed a spindly tree for support and went down in a heap when the sapling snapped.

A hand latched on to her shirt. She screamed, twisted onto her back, and looked up into Nathan’s severe frown. He held the towel around his waist with one hand; the other let go of her T-shirt and grasped her wrist firmly.

She realized that she was holding both hands up in a desperate and pathetic attempt to ward him off. Stars burst in front of her eyes because she was hyperventilating badly. “Don’t,” she gasped out, “Please, don’t.”

He got down on his knees, still holding her wrist, still frowning. She scrambled backward, digging her heels and elbows into prickly vines that a small part of her mind recognized as briars. He wouldn’t let go of her wrist.

“Don’t, okay? Please?” Kat begged, and burst into tears. That release of energy cleared her head a little, and she finally realized that he was talking to her.

“Dear God. It’s all right, Kat, it’s all right,” he was crooning. “I’m not going to do anything to you. Sssh. I’m not going to attack you. I swear.”

She was breathing so raggedly that air barely seemed to be getting past her throat. “Really?”

“Really,” he said in a gruff voice. “I never thought you’d suspect me of—Katie, relax. Relax, gal, it’s me. You know I wouldn’t hurt you.”

Katie
. What was so calming about that nickname? And about the way he said
It’s me
, as if she’d known all along but simply forgotten?

Kat cried harder. What was happening to her? Was she so stressed out from the odd turn her life had taken lately that she was imagining things?

“Kat, calm down,” he murmured. He let go of her wrist and held his hand up in a soothing gesture. “Breathe. Breeeathe. Slowly. Slooowly. There. Breathe.”

He coached her for at least a minute, his hand poised over her as if he were pressing air into her lungs with gentle insistence. The world came back to life. She stopped crying and her chest no longer felt like a bellows being pumped by a maniac.

Her ankle was a ball of throbbing pain, and the rest of her felt like a pin cushion from her mad dash into a patch of briars. “J—jeez,” she managed shakily. “You m-must think I’m a n-nut.”

But he was looking at her only with sympathy. He cleared his throat and said hoarsely, “No, I think something pretty awful happened to you once and you thought it was about to happen again.”

Oh Lord, he was too perceptive. She nodded weakly, and embarrassment made her skin bum.

“Kat, I’m so sorry for scaring you,” he said raspily. “I just wanted to see you squirm.”

“Squirm.” She managed a small smile. “And I
scrammed.
”

He sat back on his heels and she finally noticed that beneath the towel his legs were covered in bloody scratches. The man had run not only bare-legged but barefoot into a patch of briars to stop her self-destructive stampede.

“Damn, Nathan, I’m sorry. This is awful.”

But his attention was focused on her badly swollen ankle. “You really were hurt the other night. Why didn’t you say so?”

“Pride,” she murmured, and sat up. Briars clung to her. “You made fun of me.”

He looked at her from under his brows, conveying so much anguish and regret in his gray eyes that she
reached out and patted his jaw. He had a long briar scratch on it.

“You got hurt because you defended me,” he noted.

“Uhmmm, we’re not supposed to let the audience get beaten up.”

He pointed to her ankle. “Did you lose your job because of this?”

“Nah. I can go back when it heals. It’s just a fracture. It doesn’t even need a cast.”

He knelt there looking more and more upset. Kat shifted awkwardly and began pulling briars out of her hair.

“Easy. Be still.” He knotted the towel tighter around his waist and went to work on the briars, gently freeing her. “I’m not going to hurt you.”

He said it several more times, until finally she assured him softly, “I know that now, Nathan. I just freaked out for a minute. I’m okay. I’m not afraid of you anymore.”

“When did someone attack you?” he asked grimly, tugging a briar away from her arm.

“A long time ago. I was twenty. It was somebody I knew, somebody my parents knew. I’d grown up with him. He worked for the circus.”

“Circus?”

“I thought you had a line on everything about me and my cousins.”

He shook his head. “Only your recent history.”

“I was born and raised with the Sheffield Brothers Circus.”

“This guy …”

“He liked to brag that he turned girls into women. Only I wasn’t ready to turn, at least not with him.”

“Did you report him to the police?”

She shook her head. “Local cops don’t care what happens among circus people. They wouldn’t have believed I was raped. I couldn’t tell my family, either. They’d have killed the guy.”

Nathan sighed heavily, dropped his hands against his thighs, and looked at her with distress in his sweet,
lazy eyes. “It must have been worse than you’re making it sound if it still affects you like this.”

“It doesn’t haunt me anymore. No, I just—” She really didn’t want to hurt Nathan’s feelings, so she searched for the right words. “I’ve never been in a situation like this one before. Alone with somebody sort of unpredictable … like you.”

“Great,” he said in weary self-rebuke. “I love knowing that I’m the only man who’s terrorized you into hysteria.”

His reaction made her catch her breath for new reasons. This man might be dangerous in some ways, but he was a gentleman in the best sense of the word. Kat punched his shoulder playfully. “I’m okay. And, hey, now I’m not afraid of you at all. I trust you. You could run naked around my tent and I wouldn’t worry.”

He raised a finger and wagged it in mock reproach. “You know, I’m not sure I like this other extreme, either.”

As he continued to pull briars away, Kat moved her injured leg tentatively. She was vaguely aware of Nathan Chatham’s eyes catching her attempts not to wince with pain. “I’ll pay for freaking out,” she muttered. “I bet I added about a week to my recuperation.”

“Katie, you’re a hell of a gal.” He stroked his fingertips over the swollen ankle, and she tensed up, expecting the touch to aggravate her pain. Instead the throbbing eased a little.

Katie. Gal
. She liked his touch and she liked the way he talked. Again she got the odd notion that she’d always liked these things. Kat gazed at him in awe. “A minute ago why did you say. It’s me. You know I wouldn’t hurt you.’ I mean, we’re strangers.”

He stopped, frowned thoughtfully, and shook his head. “Hmmm. I don’t know why I put it that way. I guess I don’t think of you as a stranger.”

They shared a puzzled look. Kat exhaled slowly and glanced around at huge, gnarled oaks and early morning
shadows. “This is a weird place. Good weird. It makes weird things happen.”

“How weird,” he said drolly.

She cut her eyes at him. “I’ve got a better vocabulary inside my head. I just don’t always use it.”

Nathan smiled and carefully picked the last briar from her leg. “Let’s see if we can get you out of here.” He helped her up, then lifted her into his arms.

Kat’s heart rate accelerated with a pleasant kind of excitement when she found herself nestled against his hard, sweaty chest. She latched her hands behind his neck and tried to look everywhere but into his eyes.

He stepped out of the briar patch and started in the opposite direction from her camp. “I live that way,” she said, pointing over his shoulder.

Nathan halted and gazed at her worriedly. “I have some ice left in a cooler. I’m going to put it on your ankle and make you some breakfast.”

“Ah.” She felt guilty. He looked as if she’d accused him of evil designs again. Kat smiled at him. “Okay.”

After he started forward she searched for neutral conversation. “That stuff you were saying before you took your bath. Was that some kind of Indian language?”

“Yep.” He hesitated a moment. “Cherokee.”

“It was?” Kat forgot any awkwardness and studied him curiously. “Are you part Cherokee?”

“Nope. But I grew up in Arkansas, right next door to the reservation in Oklahoma. I was like a grandson to an old medicine man. He adopted me.”

“Is that why Tri-State sent you down here?’Cause you’re interested in Cherokee stuff?”

He didn’t answer for a minute. “I know a lot about the Oklahoma Gallatins, yeah.”

Kat squirmed with excitement and craned her head so that she could gaze directly into his eyes. “You do? See, my cousins and I only know that our great-great-grandma lived here in Georgia. Granny was a Cherokee named Katlanicha Blue Song and Grandpa was a white gold miner named Justis Gallatin.”

She gripped Nathan’s shoulders. “You mean they ended up in Oklahoma? Like they went on the Trail of Tears or something? Have you ever heard of Holt Gallatin? He was their son and my great-grandfather. I think he was a bandit. That’s all anybody ever told me.

Overwhelmed by her torrent of words, Nathan stopped. His silver gaze held hers without flinching. Finally he sighed as if resigned and said, “I know about him. He killed two of my relatives.”

CHAPTER 3