Follow the Sun (47 page)

H
E HAD HIMSELF
a neighbor, a student, a patient, and a very big problem since he didn’t think of Kat as the enemy anymore. In fact, after knowing her for only a week, he wanted to run up the white flag, sign a peace treaty, and give her any territorial right her sweet little heart wanted.

She might talk like a wisecracking truckstop waitress and act as if she didn’t care to be sophisticated, but there was a sharp lady under all that fast talk. Her grasp of national and world events would put most people to shame.

Her mind was very quick and as inquisitive as a child’s, as a result, he believed, of growing up in the circus. She always had been traveling, always meeting new people and living in new places. Unlike most adults, she’d never fully lost a child’s fascination with the world.

She was sincere about learning Cherokee lore, and they spent a lot of their time sitting at the campfire
while he talked and she listened, her head tilted to one side, her chin propped on one hand.

She listened the same way whenever he played one of his six harmonicas or his flute or the small guitarlike instrument he’d gotten in South America. They traded stories about his travels as a geologist and her circus experiences and the wrestling tour.

On the other hand, they spent many silent hours together, usually by the stream.

He fished and she read her history books. Periodically she stuck her injured foot in the water and solemnly repeated the formula he’d given her. Now she knew how to say it in Cherokee.

After he’d had time to think about the upsetting scene in the briar patch, he’d continued to keep his flirting lighthearted. Despite her nonchalant assurances that she wasn’t afraid of him, she seemed to feel uncomfortable every time he got close.

Lord, he couldn’t blame her. The little doll had been through hell—raped at twenty, too scared to fool with men for years after that, then so lonely that she married the first man who made her feel loved and safe.

Nathan had learned enough to know that she’d been married for three years to an ambitious car salesman in Miami. How had she described him?
He just wanted to many a housekeeper until he could afford to hire one
.

During her marriage the Flying Campanellis had flown back to Italy and joined a circus there, so her divorce two years ago had left her jobless. With no skills outside the circus, she’d decided that professional wrestling was her best opportunity to make a living.

Nathan emptied his pipe into the fire and got up wearily. It wasn’t wise for him to get to know Kat so well. He’d been happier thinking of her as a sexy clown with bad taste and no brains. Now he was in a dilemma about the Gallatin land, a dilemma built on
promises he’d made to his grandfather. Nothing was ever to happen to the land as long as Dove Gallatin was alive. Grandpa Micah had told him, but after she passed on, the family debt needed to be paid. Grandpa had been an old bastard in some ways—part of the feud was his fault—but in this case he had had a point.

Nathan picked up a bucket and doused the campfire. He stood in darkness lit only by a new moon, gazing at Kat’s tent. That activity seemed to be his only hobby these nights. He’d insisted that she keep his air mattress. Injured foot and all that.

Hell, he really just wanted to know that she was lying where he’d lain. Did she sleep naked? He had a disturbing vision of himself affectionately nuzzling his air mattress after she gave it back.

This kind of nonsense had to stop.

He should be discouraging her interest in her Cherokee past and this land. He ought to tell her the ugly details not only about Holt Gallatin but also about Holt’s daughter. Dove. Kat’s grandfather Joshua had been Dove’s brother, so what did that make Dove? Kat’s great-aunt?

But Joshua Gallatin had had nothing to do with the Chatham-Gallatin feud. He’d joined the Sheffield Brothers Circus as a kid and left home for good. He’d raised Kat’s father in the business, and after her father married a full-blooded Cherokee woman from the reservation up in North Carolina, he’d taken her back to the circus with him.

Kat was born in a circus dressing room, a Cherokee in name only, a damned Gallatin in name only. Kat was innocent. Kat ought not to suffer because of old feuds and old promises.

Nathan rammed his hands through his hair. All right, he had ways to make it up to her—lots of money, more money than she’d ever dreamed possible, and luxuries she couldn’t imagine.

After she learned the truth about him and what he intended, he’d show her how generously he could
apologize and how effectively he could change her track record with men.

S
HE COULDN’T GO
on this way, and yet she never wanted to leave. Kat peeked out of her tent, watching Nathan heat a pot of coffee over the fire. He wore his fringed buckskin breeches, leather hiking boots, and a T-shirt he’d gotten at the Olympics in Korea.

Before going to work for Tri-State the man had hunted for gold all over the world. Now that she knew where and why he’d acquired the tattoo and the pierced ear, she was more fascinated than ever. Kat felt a familiar ache of sadness.

He was friendly, helpful, and very, very kind. He really put her at ease. But then, so did a Boy Scout.

Kat sighed. She didn’t want a Boy Scout, she wanted the wicked man from their first encounters. She wanted him to make her forget good sense and indulge the reckless sensations that seethed inside her so much of the time.

She plopped down and slipped her feet into her pink Reeboks, leaving the laces on the one on the bad foot untied. She could walk pretty well now, dammit. There were no excuses for him to carry her anymore.

Leaving her tent, she put on a bright smile. “Morning, harmonica man.”

He was already watching her intently from his seat by the fire. Kat shivered inside. If he wasn’t interested, why did he study her like some new kind of native each morning when she came out?

“Sleep good, Kitty Kat?”

She smiled at the teasing nickname. It had grown so familiar that she cherished it. “Yeah. But I got a crick in my neck.” She rotated her head, making sure her hair slipped forward like a silky black wave. “Would you mind braiding my hair for me? Until my neck loosens up, it would really hurt for me to do it myself.”

He hesitated, and Kat’s hopes fell. But he cleared
his throat, fiddled with the blackened coffeepot, and said lightly, “No problem. Have a cup of tar.”

Using a towel, he lifted the steaming metal pot and poured thick black coffee into a metal cup that, thank goodness, had an insulated handle. Kat sat down beside him, put an elastic hair band and brush on the ground, and took the cup carefully.

“Ya know, Nathan, this stuff would make great paint remover.”

“It’s good for cleaning carburetors, too.” He took a swallow from his own cup and made a deep, half-growling sound of satisfaction. “Puts hair on my hair.”

“Hair.” She smiled sweetly, turned her back to him, and waited.

After a moment his hands slipped over her shoulders and pulled the thick mane back. Kat’s eyelids became heavy with a languor that had nothing to do with sleep. Good grief, he’d barely touched her and already a warm, tickling wave of pleasure had begun in her belly.

“Don’t ever get this cut,” he said gruffly.

“I haven’t had it more than trimmed since I was ten years old. It looked real dramatic in the circus act—this little bitty girl with hair longer than she was. ‘Course, it really gets attention when I wrestle. Everybody loves it.”

“The men in the audience, huh?”

“Well, yeah. It’s pretty sexy-looking. I wouldn’t be honest if I said I didn’t know that.”

“How do you feel about the things they yell?”

“I don’t much hear ’em.” She hesitated for a second. “I guess there are a lot of ugly things I don’t want to hear.”

He slid his hands down her hair, parting it, lifting it, winding his fingers through it, and then letting go. Nathan’s technique told her a lot about his nature—this was a man who loved to touch. He worshipped her hair, and she suspected that he’d treat the rest of her with the same slow attention.

Kat sighed with pleasure. Asking him to braid her hair was one of the best decisions of her life.

“You don’t deserve to have men treat you like a piece of meat,” he said grimly.

“Well, long as they’re in the audience and I’m in the ring, I just look at it as harmless show biz. They’re not drooling at me, they’re drooling at Princess Talana.”

“You can really separate yourself from it that way?”

“Most of the time,” she said softly. “But some nights I feel embarrassed.”

“What would you do if you could do anything in the world besides wrestle for a living?”

“I’d teach school,” she said immediately. “To me that’s the best of both worlds. It’s show biz, sort of like wrestling, but it’s respectable. And you have to go to college to do it,”

When he finished laughing he said, “Kat, I want to be in your class some day.”

She grinned. “Teacher’s pet.”

He ran his fingers through her hair from the crown of her head to the curve of her back, skimming her spine with his fingertips as he did. Kat fought a desire to earn her name by purring.

“You’d make a great hairdresser,” she said. “You’re awful familiar with the client, though.”

His hands halted. “Want me to stop?”

“Not on your life.”

“You’re one honest woman,” he murmured. “I like that.”

Kat pursed her lips ruefully. She hadn’t been honest about the crick in her neck. With his fingers woven into her hair, she couldn’t feel much remorse. “Yeah, I try to tell it like it is.”

“So what do you do when people aren’t honest back?”

“I drop ’em like hot rocks.”

“Hmmm.” He kept running his fingers down her hair, slowly, tugging just a little, touching her back just a little, delighting her in ways he probably never suspected. “You don’t give people the benefit of the
doubt?” he asked softly, stroking the back of her head. “A second chance? Even if they apologize?”

Kat had her eyes shut. Her body hummed with the kind of delicious alertness that made it feel too heavy to move. She had to think hard to get her mouth in gear. “Well, okay, I’m not hard-nosed if somebody really apologizes. Hmmm.”

“Nothing hard about you,” he agreed. His fingers pressed into her shoulder, massaging. “Where’s the crick?”

“Hmmm. That feels good.”

Any second now she’d curl around his legs with her back arched.

He picked up the brush and put it at the top of her forehead. Slowly he pulled it back, letting each bristle caress her scalp. Kat’s head tilted back loosely.

“What’s that?” he asked. “Did I hurt you? You made a noise.”

She forced her head forward and tried to control herself. “Nah.”

He divided her hair and began to braid it down the center of her back, his fingers skillful and unhurried. Obviously concerned about doing a good job, he stopped frequently to smooth his hand over her head, tickling her earlobes, brushing the edges of her face.

Kat pressed her palms together and found them hot. She had to transfer this heat to Nathan, had to tell him that she adored him and would love to show how much. Surely he found her desirable; he had seemed to at first, before she’d frightened him with the briar incident.

She began to turn Her head. “Nath—”

“All done,” he said abruptly. With a quick pat on her shoulder, he got up and walked toward the food supplies hanging in a nearby tree. “Let’s eat something simple for breakfast. Now that your ankle’s better, we ought to start exploring the land.”

Kat sagged like a rag doll and braced both hands on the ground beside her. She watched him blankly, a groan of dismay trapped in her throat.

He had to have felt her quivering; he had to have known that she was helplessly desperate for his touch. He was either biding his time to make her crazy, or he was politely ignoring her interest.

Lord, she hoped it was the first one. Kat drank her coffee in several huge gulps. Jolt. Caffeine. Reality. She tried to connect her muscles to her bones again.

Hunched over the net full of supplies, his back to her, Nathan fumbled with various items, his hands trembling. In about five minutes he might be able to walk back to the campfire without revealing how he’d made a new sort of camping tent in the front of his buckskins.

Her hair, that was the key. When she was ready to be seduced, he’d start with her hair
.

H
E FROWNED AT
her dedicated attempt at walking, dropped his canvas knapsack, backed up to her, and pointed over his shoulder. “Climb aboard.”

“The top of the ridge is just up there.”

“Never turn down a free pony ride. Come on.”

Kat grinned. What was she, an idiot? “Never.” She grasped his shoulders as he reached behind him and scooped his hands around her thighs. Oh yes, she thought, this pony ride was a wonderful idea.

She straddled his lower back, clamped her arms around his neck, and leaned forward just enough to let her breasts brush his shoulders. He groaned loudly as he bent over to pick up the knapsack.

Good. He’d noticed that she had a bosom
.

“You’re getting heavier,” he said in a strained voice. “Here. Take the knapsack.”

Kat thought about biting his ear, but decided against it. She had no place to put the knapsack except in front of her chest. She sighed with resignation and wedged it there. “Hike on, mule.”

Despite his jovial complaints he easily carried her up the last part of the steep hillside. When they reached the top, sheltered by huge oaks and maples,
he turned around. Kat peered over his shoulder at the magnificent valley. She could make out the stream winding across the far side.

“It’s so beautiful it makes me kind of hurt inside,” she whispered. “I want to hug it.”

“Your great-great-grandmother and her family must have hated to leave here.”

“When was it that all the Cherokees got kicked out? I forgot.”

“Eighteen thirty-eight. Soldiers and state militia rounded ’em up like animals, and mobs of settlers came along behind taking over the farms and stealing everything that wasn’t nailed down.”