“You have some pretty nasty scratches here. They need to be cleaned. I have some antiseptic back at camp. How about the rest of you? Feel like anything is broken?”
“No.” She stood still while he brushed the tangle of hair from her face.
He was surprised she was so submissive. Probably not accustomed to having someone show this kind of concern for her, to look after her. From their brief conversation the other day, it sounded as though she’d always been the one to do the looking after.
He gently touched her forehead. “You have a slight cut here. Probably from a stone. Let’s head back to camp so we can take care of it.”
This time, when he took her arm, she did not object. But when she tried to walk, she winced and pulled her arm from his grasp. Bending forward, she lifted the right leg of her jeans.
“Here, let me look at that.” He stooped to examine her scraped knee.
“It’s only a scratch. It’s not the first time.”
“I’m sure it’s not. I’ll roll up the hem so it won’t rub against your knee as you walk.”
“I’ll do it.”
He waited for her to turn the rough denim up to just above her injured knee. Then he took her arm again.
They walked slowly, and she limped only slightly.
“Does it hurt much?”
“No. I’m all right.” She sounded embarrassed and refused to look at him.
They walked a few paces more.
“Katerina, huh? It’s a very pretty name.”
“Yeah.” She still didn’t look at him. “Sounds like a name for someone graceful, doesn’t it? Like a ballerina, maybe. Boy, have my folks been disappointed. Most people call me Kate. Fits a klutz better.”
“You’re too hard on yourself.”
She tried to shrug, but his hold on her arm prevented it. “You don’t have to hold on to me!”
But when he let go of her arm, she looked disappointed. He suppressed a smile.
After they’d slowly covered a few more feet, he suggested, “Why don’t you sit down on that fallen tree over there? I’ll go bring the pickup around.”
“No. I can walk fine. There’s a spring through those trees.” She nodded at a stand of trees just ahead of them. “I can wash off the dirt in it.”
“A spring?” He’d never noticed a spring. “I’ve seen some wet, swampy spots, but no spring.”
She didn’t reply or wait for him, but struck out through the trees, hobbling on her injured leg.
He hurried after her. She stopped near a thick row of low bushes. “Do you hear it?”
He cocked an ear to listen and heard a faint trickle of water. “You can’t get through all that brush to the water, especially with an injured knee.”
“I know. It needs to be cut. Besides, there’s a low bank on the other side.” She hobbled to the edge of the line of bushes and tried to peep over, wobbling on the underbrush.
He hurried up and grasped her arm. “Be careful, you’ll fall. Let me look.” He bent as far as he could over the brush. “All I see is a bed of wet, flat rocks with one little trickle of water that’s clogged with bushes and debris.”
“The water comes from a spring in the rocks.”
“Yeah. It needs a lot of cleaning.” He raised up and looked at her. “Let’s go back to camp. I have a first-aid box there. Do you want me to bring the pickup round for you?”
“No.” Supporting herself with a stick, she hobbled alongside him back to camp.
He poured water from a plastic jug into a pan for her to wash her face and hands.
After she finished, he handed her a towel. “If you’ll sit on this log over here, I’ll help you clean the scrapes on your head and knee.”
* * *
When the alcohol-soaked gauze touched the cut on Kate’s knee, she bit her lip to keep from crying out.
He winced, too. “Sorry. Sometimes we have to hurt to heal.”
She darted a look at his face. What did he mean by that remark?
He concentrated on cleaning the wounds on her head, hands and knee. Then he gently applied antiseptic cream to them and put a loose bandage over the scrape on her knee. When he finished, he stepped back and admired his handiwork. “You’ll soon be good as new.”
Two rows of even white teeth glistened through the black beard.
Feeling a funny tingle in her stomach, she jerked her gaze from his face and began rolling down her jean leg.
“Okay?” he asked when she stood to test the injured leg.
“Better, thanks. I need to get going.”
“Let me find you something to drink first. It’s still surprisingly hot out here and you’ve got to be thirsty after that trek we made.”
Taking a glass jug filled with clear liquid from the cooler, he removed the lid and turned it up to pour some into the red mug she’d drunk from earlier.
“What is it?”
“Water. Clear, kind-of-cool, hauled-from-the-gas-station tap water. But now, thanks to my new neighbor, I can soon have fresh spring water.”
He finished pouring into the red mug and then filled his blue one.
“You and I are neighbors, aren’t we?” He handed her the red mug. “Temporarily, anyway.”
She cast him a hostile glare over the rim of the mug. “Temporary is right. For you anyhow.” She turned up the mug and drained it, then stood. “I’ll be back.”
“You’ll come back soon and help me clean out the spring?”
“I knew there was some reason you were being so nice to me.” She thrust the empty mug at him.
“I only thought you might like nice, cool spring water next time instead of this tepid, watered-down chlorine.”
“Next time? What makes you think there will be a next time—with you anyhow? Maybe I’ll clean out the spring alone and...” she glanced around his camp “...and stay here alone—after I get my land back.”
“Until then, why can’t we work on the spring together?”
She shot him a defiant look. Why not? If he wanted to help clean out her spring, she’d take advantage of the manpower.
“Okay. When do we start?” She glared at him defiantly, but when she caught his eye, she saw him smiling warmly. What was his angle? She wasn’t going to stop until she’d figured him out.
Chapter 4
“Let’s call it a morning and go have lunch.”
Kate glanced at him and nodded...and kept raking.
He shook wet leaves and pine straw from his rake and leaned it against a tree.
A giggle escaped Kate’s lips.
“What?”
“You have mud in your beard.”
He grinned and wiped at it with a muddy hand, plastering more slime from the spring into the scraggly whiskers.
Laughing, she laid down the rake, stepped toward him and lifted a hand toward his face. When he leaned toward her and stuck out his chin, she realized what she was about to do and withdrew her hand.
He grinned and pulled in his chin. “You like cold grilled chicken?”
“Sure.” She picked up a rock and moved it.
He bent, scooped water from the muddy stream and patted it into his beard. “Better?”
Kate smiled. “Not much.”
Walking beside him back to camp, she thought about how well they had worked together that morning, although their only conversation had been what was necessary for the job.
When they sat down at the weathered picnic table to eat, he reached for her hand and bowed his head. Listening to him pray, she found it difficult to reconcile in her mind this congenial, gentle man with the scheming enemy she had described to the lawyer. But she wouldn’t let him deter her from her goal.
When he released her hand, her fingers tingled
from his touch.
“Dig in,” he said. “It’s simple, but filling.”
Tired and hungry, though relaxed from the physical exercise, they talked little as they devoured his cold chicken, canned beans and grapes. Afterward, he picked up his cup and moved from the table to sit on the ground with his back against a tree. He stretched out his long legs and crossed them.
Revived by the food, Kate stood and began clearing the table.
“What’s your rush?” He sounded sleepy. “Let’s rest a bit before we clean up.”
He watched her from beneath heavy eyelids.
Feeling a funny tingling in her stomach, she turned away. “I’m not tired.”
She didn’t want to sit around and socialize, giving him more opportunity to try to win her over with his wide, white smile and those blue eyes that crinkled at the corners when he laughed. She shot him a hostile glare. “Are you going to work some more, or sit here all day?”
He chuckled. “Slave-driving woman if I ever saw one.”
She ignored his remark as she started for the spring.
* * *
He stood and set his cup on the table. She was an interesting woman, if he’d ever seen one. He grinned to himself as he followed her back to the spring.
He never knew what to expect when she opened her mouth to speak, or when he looked at her eyes. One moment she was berating herself, the next him, while the golden speckles in her green eyes sparked like flames of fire. Or she might lapse into a moody silence as her eyes turned dark, almost brown.
And he couldn’t tell what action she might take concerning the property that she insinuated he and her mother had stolen from her. She vacillated between a fierce determination to fight for the land and a passive acceptance of its loss along with the loss of all her hopes and plans.
He had never before found it so difficult to read a woman. Or any person, for that matter. He’d always felt, and been told, that one of his God-given talents was his insight into people. This was one of the things that made him so good at his work. But this woman...
He smiled and shook his head as he watched her pick up a rake and step toward the spring.
* * *
Kate looked up from her raking and watched as he bent to pick up a large stone. Maybe she should act a little more agreeable, see how much work she could get out of him before Mr. Boyer found a way for her to put him off the land.
She smiled when he raised up and looked at her. “It used to be deep enough just below this for me to swim in.”
At his look of surprise, she laughed, a real laugh, not a put-on. “Well, not deep enough to really swim. But I thought I was swimming. It was here I learned to hold my breath under water and kick and flap my arms. Even in the middle of summer, it was so cold. On a hot, sticky day, it felt really good to splash around in it.”
He reached up to swipe the perspiration from his face with the tail of his denim shirt. Eyeing the shallow stream, then her, he grinned. “Do we dare?”
“No, it’s about to get cold. Nights are already pretty cool.”
“But it’s hot today. Unseasonably so. Maybe we could just wet our feet? And dash a little on our faces?”
She glanced at the spring, caught her bottom lip between her teeth and looked at him.
Unable to resist the mock pleading in his eyes, she smiled.
Grinning at each other like mischievous children, they put aside tools and began untying muddy sneakers.
“You have to step in all at once,” she warned as he stepped gingerly toward the stream in bare feet and jeans rolled to the knees. “If you don’t, you’ll back out.”
He was dipping a bare toe in the chilly water when she reached out playfully to push him.
She let out a loud yell as she went down. Realizing too late he had sidestepped her touch, she fell on hands and knees into the chilly water.
The sudden shock of it took her breath away. Then she let out another loud yelp.
Laughing, he bent to help her up. She came up laughing but shivering. Her jeans legs were wet and her shirt splattered with muddy water.
“You’ll catch your death of cold,” he said, and gathered her close to warm her.
Nestled in his arms, she no longer felt cold. But she shivered even harder.
“We’d better get back to camp and dry you out,” he said softly.
With his arm still around her, she shivered as he led her back.
At his campsite he grabbed a blanket from inside the tent and wrapped it around her. She sat on a log and huddled inside the blanket watching as he built a fire. Whoever he was, whatever he did, he was not afraid of manual labor. But he talked like an educated man.
He turned from the fire and smiled. “Do you want a pair of my jeans?”
She felt her pulse quicken and chided herself, Stop it, Kate. He’s just trying to get on your good side by being generous.
“No. I’ll be all right.” An unintentional shiver ran through her again.
He reached for the zip-up sweatshirt she’d hung on a bush before they’d begun work on the spring that morning. “I’ll put some water on to heat, and run back to the spring for our shoes while it heats.” He handed her the shirt. “Need some help?”
“No.”
She put the sweatshirt on over her mud-splattered tee and huddled under the blanket again.
* * *
They sat on the ground beside the fire with hot chocolate Steve had made.
He cradled his warm mug in his hands. She has no idea how cute she looks huddled under that blanket with her damp hair curling about her face.
He took a sip from his cup and wiggled his bare toes in the warmth from the flames.
When she blushed and drew her own feet up under the blanket, he got up and donned a pair of canvas slippers.
He sat back down, resting his back against a log. “This reminds me of roasting hotdogs with my sister, Bet, when we were kids.”
At the sound of ringing, his hand flew to his waist, but his phone wasn’t there.
“It’s mine.” She pulled a cell phone from her sweatshirt pocket, looked at the tiny screen and frowned. The phone rang again before she answered it. “Hello, Mother.”
The crackle of a female voice issued from the phone. Kate held it away from her ear and frowned before placing it to her mouth again. “Aunt El doesn’t try to keep track of me. She doesn’t think she has to know where I am every minute.”
He got up, poured himself another cup of hot chocolate and held the pot out toward Kate.
She shook her head and spoke into the phone. “Mother! She doesn’t want me right under her feet. She told me to feel free to relax and do whatever I please.”
She listened again. “I’m with—” she turned her back to him and lowered her voice “—a friend.”
He smiled. Maybe they were finally getting somewhere.
“I was busy, Mother. I didn’t have the phone with me.” She took a deep breath and blew it out. “Yes, Mother, I’m fine. I’ll try not to do anything else to make a fool of myself while I’m here.” She paused. “Yeah, same to you. Bye.”
* * *
Kate ended the call. When she turned around, he was putting another log on the fire. “My mother,” she said, and wondered why she felt she needed to explain to him.
“Checking to be sure you’re all right?”
“Checking to be sure I’m not doing something to embarrass her. I dumped my plate in my lap at Thanksgiving.”
She saw him hide a grin but didn’t care if he was laughing at her. It didn’t matter what he thought. “I guess you saw the chocolate down the front of my shirt.”
He just grinned.
“I had to get away before she started picking at me again. Like she did just now. She should have
been a shrink.”
“What do you have against therapists?”
“Nothing. I just don’t want one picking at me.” She narrowed her eyes at him. I don’t want you doing it, either.
He studied her. “Has one ever...picked at you?”
“Mother took me once. I refused to go back.”
“Does your mother know you’re not returning to school?”
“It’s my life. I can do what I want with it.” She glanced around the clearing. “Including getting this place back. And camping out here while I fix up the house.”
She stood and handed him the blanket. “Thanks. I have to go.”
“You can’t be dry yet.” He stood. “Stay a while longer.”
“I’m warm now. It won’t matter if my clothes are a little damp.” She stooped to put on her shoes.
“Take the blanket with you.”
“No, thanks.” She couldn’t have Aunt El wondering where she came up with a blanket. She would look suspicious enough coming in with wet jeans.
“You can bring it back tomorrow. I’ll go to church in the morning and have a meal afterwards. But I’ll be here tomorrow afternoon.”
Church? Where? She felt her eyes widen in alarm. What if it was her family’s little church? And he spoke to her? How would she explain to them how she knew him? She needed to hurry up and figure out how to get her land back. This...relationship with that man was already getting too complicated for comfort.
Chapter 5
Kate slipped quietly into a back pew as the morning service began. She had driven her own car because her aunt and uncle were staying after the service for a fellowship dinner. She sure didn’t want to encounter him at a social gathering.
Pulling a hymnal from its rack, she glanced round the sanctuary but didn’t see him anywhere. He must have gone to the big church in town. Even as a sense of relief washed over her, something akin to disappointment settled in her chest.
She glanced round the sanctuary again.
No, no masculine head as dark as his, no unruly black beard.
The Mistaken Heiress Page 4