Outlaw Carson (8 page)

Mancos loped over to the stand of aspen
trees skirting the driveway, the low growl in his throat turning to
a whine.

Felt what? she wondered. She hadn’t felt
anything except the scrape on her knee and a bit of unease over his
disappearing act.

“We must be careful, eh?” His voice drifted
up to where she stood on the deck, and her uneasiness
increased.

The man was no fool. He’d been proving that
to her all day long, and if he was going to be careful, maybe she
should be too. But careful of what? The wind?

“The Turk is fast,” he said as if in answer,
“especially when he rides alone. If he comes we must be faster,
Mancos.” The words were delivered like a lesson, patient but
serious, heavy with an importance Kristine found difficult to match
in herself.

If he’d spoken about international
antiquities thieves, or some man in a suit and tie trading
contraband, she might have been able to rustle up some extra
wariness. But he spoke of bandits, and a third world bandit at
that. Everything she’d read about such men, from
National
Geographic
to professional journals, depicted them as local
people, usually poor and uneducated, who dealt only with the next
man up on the scale.

She admitted she might be misunderstanding
Kit, or that someone called “the Turk” might possibly be the next
man up on the scale, but she figured if Kit Carson was going to be
jumping at the wind, their project would be better served by
someone else keeping both feet firmly on the ground. Not really her
forte, she also admitted, but no one could say Kristine Richards
didn’t come through in a pinch.

She slipped back inside before he caught her
out on the deck, listening to him talk to her dog. She talked to
Mancos, too, but their conversations tended to revolve around food
or the lack thereof. She’d never considered the animal a confidant,
and he drooled too much to make a good cuddle-buddy. Kit Carson, on
the other hand, would make a very good cuddle-buddy.

Oh, grow up, Kristine, she told herself,
irritated with the one-track expressway he’d made of her mind with
just one kiss.

Kit waited until she was gone before he
delivered his final warning to the dog. He’d known she had followed
him, and would have been disappointed if she hadn’t. It would have
meant he’d misjudged her, and misjudgments of any kind were exactly
what wasn’t allowed for the next few days.

He didn’t want her frightened or losing
sleep. He wanted her as fresh and excited as she’d been all day.
She was the most intriguing mixture of confidence and doubts. He’d
panicked her a couple times, asking for files she’d misplaced, but
he had soon realized she misplaced everything. He also made her
nervous when he got close to her. He felt her awareness heighten,
all her senses come into play, but it was a good nervous. Not good
enough, not yet, but soon.

Growing up with a scarcity of possessions
and the unbending discipline of the monastery, he found her
Bohemian ways a rare challenge to keep up with and strangely
fascinating. He kept wondering when and if she was actually going
to lose one of the journals he’d risked his life to compile.

He liked watching her, watching her work,
watching her think, watching her tuck ever-straying tendrils of
hair behind her ear. More than once he’d been tempted to reach out
and perform the task himself, not because the loose strands
bothered him, but solely for the opportunity to touch her.

He wanted to touch her. In truth, he’d
thought of little else since he’d kissed her. The pale creaminess
of her skin was like a magnet to his fingers, the soft lushness of
her lips like a lodestone to his mouth. Her dark mane of hair
seemed to cry out for his hands to smooth it across his pillow, or
wrap it around his fist as he drew her to him.

He knew some called him a barbarian, but
none had made him feel more so than the woman with the violet eyes.
He’d always considered himself the most civilized of men, more
civilized than those who chose to call him an outlaw. This was the
legacy of years of contemplation, of hours and often days of
meditation on many things not easily apparent.

But, tonight . . . tonight he wished he
could take her for his own. She appeared untouched, though he knew
the mores of Western culture made that supposition doubtful. He
also knew he wouldn’t have her tonight. His instincts were very
sure of that.

He turned his attention back to the dog,
scratching him behind the ears. “Stay close to her, Mancos. Guard
her well, and if the need arises, call for me. Can you do
that?”

The dog answered with a series of rumbling
howls, bringing a grin to Kit’s face.

“Good dog.”

Inside the house, Kristine scrambled to her
feet. What were they doing out there? Trying to wake half the
mountain?

In her haste, she knocked over her coffee
cup and barely saved one of his manuscripts from a soaking. She
threw half a dozen tissues on the floor and turned back to the
door, when the phone rang.

She hesitated for a moment before curiosity
won out.

“Hello?” she said into the receiver.

“Kris, it’s John.” The voice sounded through
the whole room, and she eyed the phone, wondering which button to
push to get it off of the speaker.

Rudeness, not ignorance, compelled her to
ask, “John who?” when she knew darn well John who.

“Garraty.”

She had all kinds of buttons to choose from,
direct-dial buttons, hold buttons, on-off buttons, a battery-dead
button that wasn’t really a button at all, and a couple of other
miscellaneous buttons and switches. She pushed one and the line
went dead. It was a solution of sorts, but not for long.

The phone rang again.

“Hello?”

“Okay, okay. You’ve made your point.”

“I’m not trying to make a point, Dr.
Garraty. I’m trying to—” She pushed another button and was blessed
with silence.

The phone rang once more. She knew it was
him. It had to be. But maybe it was someone else, like her mother.
It might even be her sister. She hadn’t talked to Sarah all
week.

“Hello?”

“Dammit, Kris. If you hang up on me again,
I’ll just come up there.”

It was him.

“I didn’t hang up on you,” she said. “I’ve
got a problem with the speaker phone.” A problem she didn’t dare
have again, not with the possibility of him driving up there
hanging over her head.

“Well, quite fooling with it and I’ll bet
you don’t have any more problems.”

He was so smart, she thought sourly. Smart
enough to dump her, smart enough to cause a scandal that had almost
torn her family apart. He’d not only dumped her, he’d dumped her
for her own cousin, and worse yet, he’d gotten said cousin pregnant
while he’d still been engaged to Kristine. There had been so much
finger counting that year, her relatives had almost worn themselves
out. She had to put up with him and his brood at Christmas and the
Fourth of July. She certainly didn’t like having to put up with him
in her own home, not even on long distance.

“What do you want?” she asked. It came out
as “waddyawant,” with hardly a break and not even a whisper of
politeness.

“I’m calling to see how you’re doing.”

He was so thoughtful, she mused, glaring at
the phone. Thoughtful enough to mortify her right out of her
assistant professorship at the University of Colorado. She’d
stupidly resigned in a fit of outraged pride and had been fighting
ever since to make up the lost ground.

“I’m fine,” she said. “How’s Lisa?” Low
blow, Kristine, she told herself. Really tacky. She swore she
wouldn’t do it again.

“Everybody’s fine. Lisa and the kids are
looking forward to the picnic on the Fourth. She’s got a new potato
salad everybody’s going to go crazy over.”

“No doubt,” Kristine said without even half
the possible sarcasm. He was so proud of Lisa’s salads. He could
have had brilliance, but he’d settled for potato salad—and great
sex, if two kids in four years and another on the way was any
indication.

“But I didn’t call to talk about potato
salad,” he said.

“Thank you.” A touch of sarcasm slipped
in.

“I called to talk about Carson.”

Playing dumb didn’t come easily to her, but
she stretched herself. “Carson who?”

“Kit Carson. I know he’s here in Colorado,
and I don’t think you should get involved.”

Well, well, she thought, imagine that. John
Garraty a day late and a dollar short. Make that two days late.

“The smartest thing you could do right now
is dump the project,” he continued. “I’d be willing to talk to Dean
Chambers and have the contract shifted over to Boulder. We’re
better prepared to handle the heat. And Carson is hot, Kris, don’t
fool yourself. They don’t call him an outlaw for nothing.”

“Hmmm,” she murmured, not having a glib
remark handy. John didn’t know how close to the truth he was.

“The guy has been walking the line between
research and treasure hunting for so long, he probably has grooves
in the soles of his boots. Who knows what he’s really up to? Who
knows what he found out there?”

“Careful, Dr. Garraty. Your aspirations are
starting to leak through your concern.”

“The Chinese are mad for a reason.”

“I’ve heard the rumors,” she admitted,
dropping into her swivel chair.

“Everybody has heard the rumors.” John’s
voice grew harder, less conciliatory. “I’m more interested in the
facts.”

“Which facts are these, Kreestine?”

She jumped out of her chair. How long had
Kit been standing in the doorway?

“Who’s that?” John asked, sounding
confused.

How much had he heard? she wondered, staring
at him.

“Kris?”

“What?” She continued looking at Kit, not
knowing how much to explain of what he may or may not have
heard.

“Is there someone else there?” John
asked.

Etiquette was the only answer to the
situation. Kristine took a deep breath and said, “John, I’d like
you to meet Kit Carson.”

With predictable arrogance, John didn’t
sound the least bit embarrassed. Quite the contrary. He started
right in with the hard sell. “John Garraty, Kit, Middle East
specialist for the University of Colorado. We’ve been hearing a lot
about you lately.”

“So it seems,” Kit replied, not at all sure
he liked what he’d overheard. He didn’t mind the references to
himself; he’d certainly heard worse. But the edge in Kristine’s
voice told him there was something between the Middle East
specialist and her that went beyond a professional relationship. He
hadn’t considered such a possibility.

“You know,” John went on, orally filling in
his resume, “I’ve traveled quite extensively in your part of the
world, the East. I directed an expedition to Petra and I’ve worked
with a couple of people out of Karachi, Dr. Singh and Dr.
Alexander.” He dropped the two famous names with ease, but with no
noticeable effect.

“No, I didn’t know this,” Kit said, watching
a blush spread across Kristine’s cheeks.

John ignored the literal interpretation and
continued. “As a matter of fact, Kristine and I had planned a trip
to Nepal. We were hoping to get into Tibet, but you know how tricky
that can be.”

“This I do know.” Kristine saw his eyes
narrow at her from across the room as he asked her, “When did you
plan this trip,
bahini
?”

She didn’t understand the word, but it
sounded disturbingly like an endearment when spoken in his deep,
singsong voice, and it did little to restore the composure John had
ripped out from under her. The Nepal trip was supposed to have been
their honeymoon—he and Lisa had gone to Hawaii, showing little or
no imagination—and she couldn’t believe he’d had the nerve to
mention it.

Kit felt the underlying tension in the room
rise again, and suddenly he knew one more thing about her: John
Garraty had hurt her. His own reaction to that knowledge caught him
off-guard, causing him to stumble inside on some hidden plane.

He knew how to cope with anger. He’d learned
in the monastery to dismiss it as a wrong path, and learned in the
outside world to use it only for his own survival. But jealousy was
a perplexing unknown, and a day, or even an hour, earlier he would
have thought himself incapable of such a worthless emotion. He
didn’t take the revelation lightly.

“It was a long time ago,” Kristine said,
filling in the endless silence and wondering what it was she saw
darkening Kit’s eyes.

“Apparently not long enough,
bahini
,” he said, his voice an unusual monotone of strain.
With a slight touching of his palms and a light jangle of
bracelets, he bowed, then strode out of the office.

“All of us over here in Boulder are
interested in your latest project,” John said, oblivious to the
absence of his chosen audience, “and we’re able to offer you—”

“He’s gone, John,” Kristine interrupted.

“Gone where?”

“To bed, probably,” she said without
thinking, but the meaning wasn’t lost on John.

“Dammit, Kris. What are you up—”

She pushed one button, then another, and
another, then unplugged the phone from the wall.

Slumping down in her chair, she finished the
last inch of coffee in her cup as she stared at the door. She’d
been warned three times, by Dean Chambers, by Jenny, and now by
John.

But she wasn’t going to back off. Wild
horses and rabid dogs couldn’t make her.

Kristine stabbed again at the roasted
chicken sitting on a platter in the middle of her kitchen table.
She shouldn’t have bothered. Kit hadn’t shown up for breakfast, he
hadn’t shown up for lunch, and it didn’t look like he was going to
show up for dinner. The chicken was cold, the peas had dried up,
and the biscuits were turning to rocks. She really shouldn’t have
bothered. Lord only knew why she had. She’d never impressed anyone
with her culinary skills.