Outlaw Carson (10 page)

Kit stopped in the act of buckling,
surprised and strangely hurt by the stark yearning on her face. He
felt the pain and confusion of her wanting, and his anger at Dr.
John Garraty, Middle East specialist, increased. He contemplated
dropping his belt to the floor and taking her for his own in a
manner that would replace the pain with pleasure and completely
wipe out any confusion she harbored about the making of love.

Or he could give her time. Few decisions in
his life had been as difficult, and Sang Phala had taught him
nothing about the taking of women. He’d learned it all on his own.
His knowledge had stood him well over the years, but Kristine was
quite different from the other women he’d known. Concubine . . . He
couldn’t have been further off the mark.

The acceptance of his first mistake enabled
him to back away emotionally. He finished slipping the belt through
its loop. “I’m sorry I ruined our dinner. Let me take you out.”

She nodded. She’d do anything to get out of
there.

“Good. We’ll start our work again in the
morning. We still have two good days.”

Two days, then what? she wondered, stumbling
ahead of him out the door. She didn’t need him to write up the
historical research. She was in the process of duplicating his
journals, and he had triple copies of his photographs and the
negatives. Any conferencing they needed to do could be accomplished
by phone, with her alone in her mountain house and him—where? Where
in the whole wide world would he go when he left her?

* * *

She had only herself to blame, Kristine
thought. She stood in the darkened doorway of the bar and wished
she’d chosen more wisely. The neon promise of hamburgers and beer
had lured Kit in there, and she’d followed, foolishly. A redneck
bar on the backside of the reservoir, full of drugstore cowboys and
a few of the real thing, wasn’t the best place to bring a man with
a braid and bracelets. The blatant, aggressive stares following
them around the room proved her point.

Every farm-equipment manufacturer and feed
supplier in the States was well represented on baseball caps pulled
low over a dozen foreheads. The Stetsons and Baileys were pulled
even lower, especially the black ones. She felt distinctly
uncomfortable, though she’d been in the bar before. She’d come with
a couple of girlfriends one night, and had been handily welcomed
and two-stepped around the dance floor. She and Grant had stopped
off after their last date and been ignored. But Kit created
animosity with his exotic looks and foreign attire. If she could
feel it, his instincts must be racing.

“Interesting place,” he said, his voice the
epitome of calm as he pulled out her chair.

She sat down and grabbed a menu. “The
hamburgers are good. The Mexican food will probably kill you.”
Didn’t he know he was the focal point of all those beady-eyed
glares?

He laughed. “Then we’ll have hamburgers.
We’re too young to die tonight, Kreestine.”

Apparently not, she thought, burying her
face in the menu.

The waitress took her sweet time about
coming for their order of hamburgers and beer, but once she showed
up, she seemed disinclined to leave. Kristine didn’t have any
trouble figuring out why.

“You’re not from around here, are you,
sugar?” she asked Kit.

“No. I come from Nepal,” “Sugar” told her,
smiling one of his friendlier smiles. He had a thousand of them,
and Kristine figured he’d used a good half-dozen on the nymphet
blond already. She was poured into a black and lime-green Lycra top
that was more appropriate for the gym than a public restaurant. At
least most of her was poured into it. A fair portion of cleavage
just wouldn’t fit. Slim-hipped in a pair of painted-on jeans and
busty—some women had all the luck, Kristine thought, feeling gauche
in her mustard-yellow blouse. The blouse hadn’t been cheap, but it
felt like a big rag when she compared it to the sexy lines of
Lycra.

“I had a boyfriend once, a climber,” the
waitress said. “He went to Nepal. Didn’t come back, though.” The
girl rested one booted foot on top of the other and leaned against
the table, effectively blocking Kristine from the conversation and
blowing any chance she had of a good tip. That was a small
consolation to Kristine. Very small.

“Many men do not return from the mountains,”
Kit said. “I’m sorry.”

“Oh, he didn’t die, sugar. He just didn’t
come back. But hey, as long as Nepal keeps sending us men like you,
what’s to miss?”

“There are no others in Nepal like me.”

A low, throaty chuckle preceded the
waitress’s reply as she used one of those slim hips to push off the
table. “Honey, there aren’t many like you anywhere.”

To his everlasting credit, Kit didn’t follow
the cute sway of the girls bottom down the length of the barroom,
but when he spoke, Kristine almost wished he had.

“Who is John Garraty?”

“John Garraty?” she repeated, her voice
leaden.

“Did I mispronounce the name?” he asked with
a lift of his eyebrows.

“No,” she busied herself with a random
search of her purse, looking for an excuse. For the first time she
understood why so many women carried compacts and lipstick. They
were handy things to hide behind.

“Who is he?”

“A professor at the university in Boulder,
just like he said.”

Their beers arrived, giving her a moment of
reprieve, but only a moment. After a couple of sugar this’s and
sugar that’s, the waitress sashayed back to the bar.

“He’s a friend of yours?”

“Not exactly.” She bet the waitress had two
compacts and three lipsticks in her purse. Kristine had to make do
with an old tube of Chapstick.

“Then why did you plan a long journey with
him?”

She glanced up. “It was a mistake.”

“Good.” A very satisfied smile followed his
pronouncement, and he lifted his beer to his mouth.

Kristine dropped the lip balm back in her
purse, unused, and sighed. She’d been crazy to tangle herself up
with him,
Kāh-gyur
, Chatren-Ma, kisses, non-kisses, and all.
One more “sugar” and she’d probably belt that waitress. She’d lost
her appetite, and she couldn’t wait to get home and burn her
blouse. He’d done nothing but add upheaval to a life she usually
managed to keep in a state of constant disorientation all by
herself.

And to top it all off, he
could
read her mind. If things were going to get any worse, she didn’t
want to be around when they did.

The hamburgers arrived hot, greasy, and
dripping with cheese, just the way she liked them. Too bad she
couldn’t eat, Kristine thought. She pushed her french fries around
the plate, working herself up for a question.

“What did you mean when you said you were
taken away?” There, she’d said it. She looked up, waiting for Kit’s
answer. When he didn’t immediately reply, she gave him another
hint. “By Sang Phala? Your second father?”

Kit had met a few people with blue eyes, not
many, but enough to know that hers were rare not only in their
violet shade, but in their inherent warmth. They pulled at him on
that same hidden plane his jealousy had discovered, asking for a
truth he seldom gave.

But this woman no sooner asked than he
discovered a need to answer.

“Sang Phala came for me when I was nine,” he
said, holding her gaze. “He paid the Khampas—the warrior
bandits—dearly, trading the life of his brother’s son for mine.” He
softened the harsh reality of his words with a slight smile as he
picked up his beer. “He regretted the trade many times when I was a
boy. I did not make a proper novice.”

Watching her lean forward, her hands clasped
tightly in her lap, trying to hide her shock, he broadened his
grin. She’d be horrified if she knew what a poor job she was
doing.

“Trading his nephew? Why?” Her voice had the
purely feminine mixture of breathlessness and small catches he
found so sweet . . . and erotic. He’d spent the night dreaming of
her voice whispering close to him in the dark, breathless with
pleasure and catching each time he moved inside her. He shifted
restlessly in his chair, once again surprised at the powerful ease
of his response to her.

“An old promise to the old man my father
became after my mother died giving birth to me,” he explained,
forcing his concentration back to the conversation and the facts
he’d long ago accepted. “In the few years we spent together, until
I was seven, I don’t think he ever forgave me for being the cause
of his loss. Sang Phala was much more generous in that respect, but
in no others. He eventually beat the wildness out of me, and in the
end I did learn.”

“And then you ran away?”

“And then I ran away,” he agreed before
taking another long swallow of beer.

“What happened to your first father?”

“He was killed by a rifle on Thorong La.” He
shrugged, a slight lifting of one shoulder. “There were many such
misunderstandings on the high passes after the Chinese
invasion.”

“You call murder a misunderstanding?” Her
voice rose to an incredulous degree.

“It is a sin, but one others will pay for.”
He knew the words sounded callous, but he’d spoken the simple
truth.

“Who? Who will pay?”

“I will never know. He wasn’t killed in our
camp. The Khampas denied any responsibility, though they were the
ones who came for me. Sang Phala found me two years later.” To ease
her distress, he tried to explain further. “My father chose his
life. He chose to take my mother with him into a wild land. He
chose the place of my birth. He chose to sacrifice himself in the
name of scholarly research. I did not choose these things for him,
Kreestine. I cannot live with regrets for his choices.”

Scholarly research in Tibet, Kristine mused.
An American murdered in Nepal . . . She put the information
together in her mind, then added a guess at his age. Slowly, she
sank back in her chair. All of the pieces fit, and she felt like an
idiot for not having put them together earlier.

“Dwayne Carson was your father,” she
said.

Kit lifted one eyebrow. “He never published
his work, and his research was lost. How do you know his name?”

“Bertolli mentioned him in
A Land of
Snows
, credited him with finding the tomb of Nachukha.”
Suddenly the mystery of Kit Carson no longer existed. She felt
relieved, a little disappointed, and inexplicably sad. She’d
discerned no emotional scars in him, but at one time he must have
hurt badly, as a child, when the wounds of life cut much more
deeply.

Kit reached across the table and took her
hands into both of his. “Sang Phala healed me well, Kreestine.
There is no need for sadness. And as for the other . . .” A slow
smile lifted one corner of his mouth. “There is much still to
discover.”

“Don’t . . . don’t do that, please.” She
pulled her hands free, disturbed by the clarity of his
understanding. She’d have to watch herself very carefully around
him, and she’d never been any good at watching herself. More often
than not, words hit her mouth at the same time they hit her brain.
In either case, she wasn’t safe from him.

Kit reached for her again, for no other
reason than that he wanted to touch her, to feel the vibrancy of
her life and the satin smoothness of her skin. Her thick lashes hid
her eyes from him, but even so he felt her compassion for a
stranger who wished to become more. Soft of heart and strong of
mind, with a passion tamped so far down inside her, he doubted she
knew it was there, she drew him ever stronger, ever closer. “I
think the lady said no, mister.” A meaty hand landed palm down on
the table, jiggling the beer bottles. “Or is it miss?”

Kit and Kristine both looked up at the
intruder, but only one gaze was wide-eyed with surprise. Kit
remained calm as he assessed the size—quite large—and the
sensibilities—quite crude—of the man he’d felt approaching their
table. He wore a rumpled flannel shirt, the sleeves rolled up over
hairy forearms, and a pair of dirty jeans hanging low beneath a
broad belly. A mop of unruly brown hair stuck out from beneath his
baseball cap.

“You have misunderstood,” Kit said. “Leave
us, please.” He returned his attention to Kristine.

“You haven’t answered my question, miss.”
The insult was delivered in a slurred baritone drawl, and the man
planted another hand on the table, leaning closer. He reached up
and flicked Kit’s braid. “Where’d you get your pigtail, son? Or
should I be calling you girly-girl?”

“You may call me Kautilya,” Kit said, his
voice losing a trace of his lilt, “and I wear the plait by
choice.”

“Well, it’s mighty pretty, girly-girl. How
about if’n I take it as a kind of souvenir? I could hang it on the
wall with my hunting trophies.” The big man laughed, inordinately
amused by his own joke.

“You would not be the first to try,” Kit
said softly.

Kristine instantly recalled his chamois bag
and the long cord of auburn hair woven into the silk and leather
strap. Someone had more than tried, she thought. They’d
succeeded.

“Yep,” the intruder said. “The more I think
about it, the more I like the idea, girly-girl.” The man’s voice
lowered to match Kit’s, and he pulled a pocket knife out of his
jeans. His hand was unsteady. Kristine didn’t know what frightened
her more, the little knife, or the wavering hand holding it. “Now
you just sit real still like and I’ll be real careful not to cut
you.”

The man was drunk, his gray eyes bloodshot,
and he must he crazy to boot, she thought. Kit didn’t have the look
of a man easily intimidated. Quite the contrary. Belligerent
glances were one thing, but any fool would have kept his distance.
She should’ve known better than to bring him in there. The culture
shock was obviously too much for these life forms on the low end of
the food chain.