The Lies Uncovered Trilogy (Books 4, 5, and 6 of The Dancing Moon Ranch Series) (44 page)

"What's the story with Adam and Emily?" Marc asked. "All Mom said was they've only been married less than a year, and that Adam just learned he had a son. When I left here they were two weeks from getting married."

"It's pretty troubling," Rick said. "Erik, the guy Emily went with in high school, turned out to be a sociopath. He had the mind control thing going with her, and every time she'd almost be free of him, he'd work her over and she'd be back. She did manage to divorce Erik, but then he came after her, intending to kill her and Jesse, so Adam took them into the mountains, but Erik tracked them down and confronted Adam, but while that was going on, a mountain lion that had been tracking Erik attacked him and snapped his neck. The ironic thing was, Adam shot and killed the lion at the same instant the lion killed Erik. A couple of seconds earlier, and the lion would have been dead, and Erik would still be alive. But in the end, Adam got the women he's been in love with for years, along with Jesse, but it's been a tough go for him."

Marc felt, for the first time in years, empathy for Adam. And a better understanding about commitment. There was no question Adam was committed to Emily. He had been for years. And maybe it was the same for Emily, just a tough situation that had to run its course. He started to ask Rick about their mother, to try and understand why she didn't want him, and Rick's father, who turned him over to be raised by someone else, but he'd save that for another time. It might open up a Pandora's Box he wouldn't be able to shut, at least not for a while.

Catching the aroma of baby talc, and feeling the warm weight of little Marc leaning back against him, he looked down and saw that the toddler was asleep.

Rick glanced over, and said, "You want me to take him now?"

Marc shook his head. "He's okay..." Like maybe he belonged there a little while longer. He eyed the wavy golden-brown hair and thought, maybe when the kid was around eight or nine, Sophie and Rick would let him take little Marc on his first dig, something important, like spending a week mapping out the passageways in a pyramid with the use of muon detectors. That wasn't so long from now, seven more years. Before then, he could teach him other things...

"So, what's the deal with you and Kit?" Rick asked.

"What do you mean?"

"I mean, you're about where I was three years ago, hanging out, obsessing over a woman. It only gets worse and eventually you do something about it."

"Something like, having sex with her?" Marc asked.

Rick laughed. "With Sophie? Keep dreaming. Well, actually there was a little just before we got married, but before then I did a whole lot of fantasizing in a cold shower. The something I'm talking about is getting married. It's the greatest thing going. You have it all, and that’s 24/7."

"Sex too?"

"Like I said, 24/7, which includes the middle of the night when she wakes you up and says she's lonely, which is Sophie's euphemism for being horny, but you work out your own marital euphemisms. It's great. Some get very creative."

"Kit and I have pterodactyls."

Rick looked askance at him. "Then I take it you and Kit are more than just associates?"

"Unfortunately, no," Marc said, "but I'm working on it."

"You might want to explain the pterodactyl," Rick said. "I'm getting a pretty bizarre picture."

Marc laughed. "A tattoo. I had it done in Mexico. And no, it doesn't have its wings wrapped around it—Kit's description when I told her about it. She's pretty creative too."

Rick's face sobered. "So, you really like her that way?"

"To have sex with her? Sure," Marc said, "but Kit doesn't do one-nighters."

"I'm thinking more long term," Rick said, "like sex with her for the rest of your lives."

Marc looked at little Marc again, who was sleeping soundly, then glanced around at all the womanly touches, and spotted Sophie's slippers kicked over and around Rick's slippers, and Rick's jacket thrown across the back of the chair where Sophie's sweater was draped, and at the end of the hallway was the Jacuzzi.

And Kit was in her tent, wondering why he never came back. He was wondering too. When he was at the hot springs it seemed more important to be where he was now, with little Marc in his lap and a book about dinosaurs to read to him. But now he was ready to sit on the mattress with Kit and sort things out. Maybe it would finally begin to make some sense.

CHAPTER 10

Kit awakened with a start. She'd expected Marc to return after having dinner with his family, but after a while, when he didn't, she stretched out on her mattress and drifted off.

"Korban," the sound came again. "Kit."

That got her attention. It was the first time she'd heard Marc call her Kit. It sounded strange coming from him. Strange, but good, like the relationship had moved to a new level. "Take off your boots and come in if you want," she called back.

After a few minutes, Marc ducked through the front flaps and stood looking down at her. "It's not even eight o'clock," he said. "Were you asleep?"

"I'm not sure, but I guess I was, because you woke me up." Kit raked her fingers through her hair and said, while looking up at him, "What happened? I thought you were coming back after dinner." She resisted the urge to grab his hand and pull him down on the mattress beside her and stretch out with him and kiss him senseless. Instead, she patted the mattress, and said, "It's okay for you to sit here. We can communicate better."

Marc lowered himself to the mattress, but instead of sitting, he stretched out and propped his upper body on his elbow, and said, "After dinner I felt like going to see Rick. Little Marc was still awake so I showed him my book of dinosaurs."

Kit looked at his animated face and felt a little frisson of pleasure that he was excited about spending time with his nephew. He was coming around a lot faster than she'd expected. "Then you had to have brought the book with you, like you planned to read to him," she said.

Marc nodded. "But that was after I talked to Maddy. I used to read the book to her and she liked it, so I decided to read it to little Marc."

"So, did it go any better with Maddy?" Kit asked, while thinking Marc had the kind of face she'd like to look at across the breakfast table for maybe, the rest of her life.

Marc nodded. "It was okay. She warmed up some, but it's like I lost my little sister and a new one moved into her room. She's different. She used to want to hug me."

"Did you want her to?" Kit asked.

Marc shrugged. "Yeah. It was awkward."

"Give her time," Kit said. "You've been gone four years and she needs to get to know you again, but she's also fourteen and teenage girls are a different species."

"I suppose," Marc said. "I talked to Mom about it and she said pretty much the same thing. But it doesn't bother me that Tyler's four years older, just Maddy."

"That's because Tyler was never wrapped in pink and wearing tiny socks with lace around them. But you can't have that sweet, adorable baby sister forever. If you want another baby girl wrapped in pink you'll have to activate your pterodactyl and create your own. So tell me about little Marc. You said you read him a book," Kit said, leaving Marc with images of a little daughter. He was definitely moving into family mode.

"You're messing with my head again," Marc said.

"I have no idea what you're talking about," Kit replied, while brushing the tip of her finger across his knuckles.

"Just for the record, my pterodactyl's already activated," Marc said.

"I know." Kit replied. "Khakis are a dead giveaway. So tell me about little Marc. I suppose he sat in your lap and listened in rapt attention while you told him all about dinosaurs."

Marc's face became animated again, as he said, "Yeah, and he called me Dada."

"Okay then." Kit moved to sit cross-legged, held her thumb and index finger about a half inch apart, and said, "The gap just closed some."

"What's with the gap?" Marc asked, while staring at her fingers. "What did I say?"

Kit reached around and tugged the rubber band from his ponytail then ran her fingers through his hair, and said, "You told me Marc called you Dada and you liked the sound of it."

Marc rolled his eyes up, like he was trying to see what she was doing with his hair, and said, "I didn't say I liked the sound of it. How did you know?"

"Just a guess," Kit replied, "and the fact that you went over there with a book of dinosaurs to read to a little boy when you could have been here trying to show me your tattoo instead."

"He looked at the pictures like he was interested," Marc said. "He'd put his hand over each dinosaur then look up at me like he wanted me to tell him what it was called, and I think he might have wanted to try to say the names, but he was more interested in turning the pages so he could see the next dinosaur."

"Keep talking like that and the gap's going to snap shut." Kit kissed him on the forehead. "So he has your name, your hair, your eyes, and loves dinosaurs. What's your next plan?"

"I was thinking about maybe taking him on a dig when he's around eight or nine. He seems unusually smart, so I'm sure he could understand about muon tomography by the time he's that age if I simplified it some," Marc replied, clearly more interested in talking about little Marc than what Kit was doing, which was to comb her fingers through his hair and study the color.

As she did, she said, "But he's going to grow up on a ranch so he might be more interested in bull riding than muons." She used her fingers to comb his hair back from his face so she could look at him. He really was a handsome guy, getting more so every time she was with him. And those incredible eyes... A little distant at the moment, for very encouraging reasons.

"I don't think he'll be a bull rider," Marc said. "We've got the Indian mound here and I plan to start him on a collection of fossils."

"Or you could put together your own team of paleontologists," Kit said. "That's why God gave you a pterodactyl to play with when you were a little boy, and someone else to play with when you became a man and didn't want to put away your childish toys."

Marc eyed her with mild irritation. "This is the half of the time you don't make any sense. Are we talking about turning my pterodactyl loose now?"

"No," Kit said. "I'm just pointing out the obvious. You want to teach little Marc about dinosaurs and get him started on fossils but it takes more than a book and a few fossils to keep a child interested. You actually have to spend time with them." She toyed with a thatch of hair, studying its golden highlights. "You do have nice hair," she mused. "A daughter would be lucky to get it. She'd never have to curl it or add highlights, and girls like to dig too."

Marc grabbed her hand to stop what she was doing, and said, "You're playing with my hair and making me horny. How far is this going tonight? I need to have some direction."

"Not far enough to create a team of paleontologists," Kit said, "but it could include a little field archaeology above the waist."

Marc eyed her, dubiously. "Both of us?"

"We're not all that different above the waist," Kit said. "I just have a little more debitage under my mounds than you do. If we follow standard archeological procedure, the surface inspection is the first step in investigating the target area, and if the target lacks sufficient definition, systematic subsurface coring is called for."

"Korban, I hope to hell you know what you're doing because you could get us both in a lot of trouble. I don't have any condoms."

"That's why we're stopping at the waist," Kit said. "Well, that and a few other reasons I mentioned earlier."

"You're still messing with my head. What reasons?"

"Love, commitment, getting rid of a little more baggage," Kit replied. "But we can talk about that some if you want."

Marc dragged himself up to a sitting position, and said, "Yeah, that might be a good idea because what's going on now isn't working for me. I don't really feel like playing with myself, and you're talking metaphor and making things worse."

"The gap just closed another centimeter."

"That's what I mean," Marc groused. "You still don't make much sense."

"You stopped what I was doing to talk. That’s a giant step forward."

"Great, so go ahead and talk."

"Maybe we could have a little more interaction here," Kit said.

Marc drew in a long breath and let it out slowly, and waited silently, like maybe he was actually ready to listen, and when he said nothing more, Kit moved around so she was facing him, and said, "I learned something very interesting when I was talking to Maddy earlier today."

That got Marc's attention. "Something interesting, like what?"

"Maddy told me it was your father who insisted everyone leave your room the way it was when you left, not your mother. Your mother was too upset to go in there. But your father spent a lot of time reading your notebooks."

Marc looked at her, baffled. "I don't know why he would. He was never interested in any of it before."

"Maybe he wanted to get to know his son," Kit said. "Maybe he never could figure you out, which is understandable since you're a very complex man, and were probably equally as complex as a kid, and he wanted to know what he did wrong and how to fix it if you ever came back."

Marc folded his arms. Kit immediately untangled them, and said, "Don't do that. You're shutting him out again. Is it so hard for you to believe he loves you as much as he loves your brothers and Maddy? He brought you home from the hospital. He's had you since you were an infant. Look how quickly you've bonded with little Marc and he's not even your son."

"He looks like me," Marc said.

"Don't try and pull the
'my father loves all my brothers more because they look like him bit,
' because that won't work with me," Kit said. "Besides, little Marc doesn't look like you. He has your hair and eyes, which he got from your mother, but he has Rick's features. You bonded with him because he's like a link between you and your family. But I also saw the way your father was looking at you when we first got here. He was angry because you left and never contacted them, and he was worried about your mother, but there was no question he loves you as much as a father can love a son. You just don't see it."

Marc started to fold his arms again, but Kit reached out and stopped him. "Don't do this," she said. "We're not through talking yet."

"How long is this going to go on?" Marc groused.

"Until you get rid of all the baggage," Kit replied. "You still have some left."

"What if I don't want to get into a committed relationship?" Marc said, eyeing her intently.

"Then I'll find out before we consummate whatever this is we have going on," Kit replied, "which, I admit, is pretty convoluted."

"Why are you so determined to do this?" Marc asked, a slight frown on his brow.

"Because I have this annoying investigative streak in me that won't let me quit," Kit replied. She placed her hand on his face and said, while running her thumb along his lips, "And because I happen to think you're a man worth loving."

Marc started to fold his arms again, but when Kit reached out to stop him, he curved his hands around her arms, pulled her to him, and kissed her. And she responded by wrapping her arms around his neck and kissing him back the way she'd been wanting to all day, and all evening, and about every moment she'd been with him since the day she'd first laid eyes on him and watched him dab deet on his chest while standing in front of a team of archeologists and giving them a dry account of how he planned to proceed with the dig.

Marc's hands came up to cup her breasts, and this time Kit didn't stop what he was doing, and instead, gave a little moan of pleasure and ran her hands up his back and down and started to tug at his shirt to pull it out from his khakis so she could feel bare flesh against her palms. Then she gave another little moan of pleasure as she moved her hands up his bare muscular back and over the angles of his shoulder blades and down the indentation along the center of his spine.

Breaking the kiss, Marc said, "Are you sure you're okay with the waist-up plan?"

"Yes, as long as you can stop at the waist," Kit said. "And we need to get rid of this." She started unbuttoning his shirt, but before she was done, Marc tugged it over his head and tossed it aside then started unbuttoning her shirt. Kit looked down at the big fingers releasing each button, and said to him, "Are we breaking your father's rules?"

"Dad was pretty specific when he talked to us, and it was all about keeping it in our pants. It's still there, so I guess we're okay." Marc dragged her shirt from around her, released her bra, and began a thorough exploration with his tongue and his lips, until Kit felt her breath coming fast and shallow, and little plaintive moans escaped her lips. Tangling her fingers in his hair, she scrunched it in her hands and released it and tangled it again, then ran her hands down his bare back and up to his shoulders and down, and a little further down.

Extending the boundaries a little wouldn't matter...

And inside the waistband of his khakis in back, where she felt the rise of his butt and the side of his hip. She let out another little moan of pleasure as her hand moved a little further around to the front.

Then his hands began doing wondrous things—one cupping and teasing and stroking where his lips had been, the other slipping inside the waistband of her khakis and moving down her belly.

I hope to hell you know what you're doing...

Which didn't seem as important right now, because what Marc was doing felt so good