by Unknown
“Almost,” she said as she pulled away and began applying her magic touch to his feet, moving slowly up his well-corded calves, past his knees to the muscles now twitching in his thighs.
Hunter didn’t speak. He was long past the point of relaxation. What she was building now was a new kind of tension, and he didn’t know how much he could take.
“Turn over,” she said, and leaned back on her heels.
“Not in this lifetime, wild woman.”
“Why? What’s wrong?”
“Just what kind of master did you learn from?”
“She worked with a group of chiropractors, why?”
“You’d be a smash down at Sadie’s Special Parlor. I’ll bet those chiropractors did a booming business.”
“Oh.” Now she understood why he didn’t want to turn over. Suddenly, the good feelings began to evaporate. She recapped the liniment, stood, and made her way to the bike, where she stored the medication.
At that moment a bullfrog’s baroque call echoed through the night.
Fortune brushed off her feet and sat on her sleeping bag. “I wish I had a light. I’d like to study those clues a little more.”
For a long time Hunter didn’t speak. “Tomorrow will be soon enough, Fortune,” he finally said. “We’ll get a good night’s sleep, and come morning, we’ll be on our way. With any luck we’ll stumble across another answer or two.”
“Fine,” Fortune agreed, and slid down into the bag. She lay listening to the sounds of the night, thinking about the day and how pleasant it had been. She hadn’t expected it to be.
Her partner was so cynical, so determined to be cool. He seemed to separate himself from everybody, even his family. She remembered his reference to his father as his mother’s husband. Yet every now and then his dry sense of humor slipped out, and when it happened, he quickly retreated behind his laid-back, uninterested manner.
In the darkness Hunter’s body throbbed insistently. Everything about him rejected being close to someone. Yet he couldn’t control his response to his partner. He knew there was nothing sexual intended in the massage. She simply helped everyone who needed help.
No, she didn’t simply help, she helped with blind determination. She was such a little thing, yet there was nothing small about her heart or her plans. She’d expected to win the contest and use the money to repair the roof on the house where her motley group of children hung out.
Children. He couldn’t get over the way she’d hugged Mickey, comforted the tall, gangly boy who was worried about his friend. She’d done the same for him, expressing her compassion first by touching his arm, then with the hug, and finally with her fingertips.
“Fortune?”
“Yes.”
“Thanks for the rubdown. I really needed it. I’m sorry I said what I did about Sadie’s.”
“That’s okay. I never worked in one of those kinds of parlors, but who knows, under different circumstances I might have. Can I get you something for the pain?”
“No, I’ll be fine now.”
He knew full well that the only pain she could treat was a pain he refused to acknowledge. He had to force himself to look at their journey one day at a time. He’d got through the first one. He had seven more to go.
Hunter closed his eyes and tried to relax. It wasn’t the days that he was worried about, it was the nights.
Four
The drive to Franklin, North Carolina, was incredibly beautiful. After a quick cup of early morning take-out coffee, Fortune and Hunter were more than ready for a lunch of country ham and spiced apples at the hundred-year-old Whittier Mill Inn. They ate on an open porch built out over the river that turned the mill to grind the corn.
“Do you always eat so heartily?” Hunter asked with amusement.
Fortune paused in her chewing and reflected on his question. “I suppose I do. And I eat much too fast. I guess it’s a holdover from my childhood.”
“Why, were you afraid somebody was going to take it away from you?”
“Yes.”
Hunter was only joking until he saw the stricken look his words caused. “Sorry, I didn’t mean anything, wild woman.”
“Why do you keep calling me that? I’m not wild. At least I don’t consider myself wild—unless you try to hurt someone I care about. Then I’m likely to turn into one of those panthers our motorcycle is named for.”
This morning she wasn’t wearing any makeup. Her freckles were tinted the pale pink of someone who’d spent time in the sun. Her cheeks were pink as well, made so by the hot wind as they rode. She had a wide-eyed innocent look about her. But the pressure of her breasts against his back as they rode definitely belied the image of her as a young girl.
Still dressed in her cutoffs, she’d exchanged the tank top for the olive-drab T-shirt he’d bought. That was a mistake. At least the tank top had some kind of stretchy stitching that allowed it to expand. The T-shirt was plain, formfitting, and clung to her small breasts. Fortune looked like anything but a fourteen-year-old child. Today her hair had lost its stiff peaks. Now it was merely short, windblown, and charming.
“I suppose I call you ‘wild woman’ for the same reason you call me ‘cowboy.’ It was the first impression I had of you, dancing around on one foot and spitting mad. Does it offend you?”
“No,” she answered, and realized she meant it.
Two kinds of people had nicknames. There were the Vicky, Sherry, and Barbie people, important to the person giving the nickname. Then there were the insider names allotted to people so totally irksome that the name was always cruel or unpleasant. She didn’t need to call those to mind—she’d heard them often enough as a child.
While “wild woman” wasn’t an endearing nickname, it wasn’t unpleasant. In fact, it appealed to her in a way she couldn’t explain. She smiled.
“Does it bother you for me to call you ‘cowboy’?”
He considered her question. “Not at all. I guess it’s the first personal nickname I’ve ever had that wasn’t a put-down.”
“You mean other than Bounty Hunter?”
“That’s different. That’s business, or it was. I guess those outlaws riding the circuit are glad the Bounty Hunter got shot down at the pass. Are you about finished eating?”
He stood. Fortune allowed him to hurry her. She had the feeling he’d revealed something about himself that he’d like to take back. It couldn’t be the reference to being a bounty hunter. That was business. The only thing left was the personal reference, the reference to a put-down.
Hunter Kincaid wouldn’t take being put down easily, and she’d already figured out that he didn’t get close enough to people to have any kind of personal relationship at all, certainly not nicknames.
“Okay, cowboy, I think we ought to plan where we’re going next, assuming that the Franklin mines clue pans out.”
“Pans out?” He paused. “Puns and limericks, but no sculleries. Shall we get to it, partner?”
There it was again. That droll humor and the quick, half-hidden smile that disappeared as quickly as it came.
“Good idea,” she agreed, and followed him to the gazebo outside the inn where they could sit undisturbed in the sun. “Bobby Bear, we know. That’s in Nashville. I’ve been thinking the new hat clue might suggest Minnie Pearl. You know, the country-music comedienne who always wears the hat with the price tag.”
“I know. We could head for Nashville from here.”
“It’s the others I’m stumped on. I’ve been thinking about the Lithia gold and the crying creature. Nothing rings a bell. Maybe we ought to buy some more travel guides, the kind that tell you places to see and how to get there.”
Hunter swore. He should have thought of that. If he hadn’t been so tied up with his new partner, he would have. “Great,” he snapped, “now you think of deluxe travel guides, when we’re out in the middle of nowhere.”
“I’m guessing there’ll be a local bookstore in Franklin. Sometimes the owners are historians an
d stock the kind of thing we’re looking for; if not, at least they’ll have tourist information.”
“Uh-oh. If I’m not mistaken, one of our competitors just drove by.”
“Oh, no! We’d better go.”
“Yeah.” Hunter stood, then stopped and stretched, pressing his lower back with his hand, as if he were mashing out the kinks.
“How’s the back doing?” she asked, suddenly remembering her hands had been in that same spot the night before. She’d successfully avoided thinking about the massage she’d given Hunter in the dark by the lake. She didn’t want to remember the results of her attempts to relieve his tension. But saying it and doing it were two different things.
The tension between them was still there and getting stronger. Hunter knew it as well as she. He swallowed hard and started back to the parking area. His body stance answered her question better than words could have.
At the visitors’ station outside Franklin they ran into their first real decision: which mine to visit. There were several in the area.
“Read the clue again, Fortune.”
“ ‘Dig out one of Franks, let the sun shine through. And you will have solved an important clue.’ It doesn’t specify any particular mine, Kincaid, just that we find a ‘red one.’ So, pick whatever sounds good.”
Hunter studied the list and the map. There were several mines on Allen Road. He didn’t suppose it mattered which one they chose.
Six miles down the highway the signs directed him to either Youkon Mine or Caler Creek Mine. Youkon struck him as too commercial, and he passed it by, turning instead at the less pretentious Caler Creek sign.
Past the rail fence, topping the hill, he came to a stop in the parking area opposite a long trough with a shed over it. People were busily working what looked like screens back and forth.
“This is it?” Fortune questioned. “Where’s the mine?”
“Let’s ask.” Hunter unwound his long legs and reached back to assist Fortune.
The lady at the entrance building identified herself as Zeena and collected the entrance fee. She explained that the dirt was pre-dug, from the site, and transported to the shed for easy mining. “Three buckets for one dollar,” she said, “and you can stay the whole day.”
“How will we know if we have a ruby?” Hunter asked.
“My husband’s out there. He’ll tell you.”
“If we hold the ruby up to the light, can we see the sun through it?”
The woman cut her eyes toward the parking lot and then back to Hunter and Fortune. She began to smile. “You two on that scavenger hunt?”
“Yes, we are. How’d you know?” Fortune’s distrust showed in her voice.
“It’s all over the news. Heard about it last night. Yes. If you hold the stone up to the light, you can see through it.”
Hunter paid for three buckets’ worth of dirt and carried them, inside, or outside, as it turned out to be. For a moment he studied the other miners who were sifting their dirt through the fine-netted object that he’d have called a strainer, and washing it away with the water that was being pumped through the sluice, leaving only the small rocks and stones behind. In no time they’d unearthed not one but three stones that the mine owner declared to be rubies. Fortune held them up to the light and verified that the sun shone through. On their way out the woman named Zeena called them over to the counter and handed them an envelope.
“They told me to give you this envelope when you left”
Fortune looked at Hunter. “Envelope?”
Hunter slid his sunglasses from the top of his head back down to the bridge of his nose. “Ah, yes. They did warn us that there’d be surprises. Looks like we’ve just gotten our first one.” He led the way over to a picnic table beneath the trees. “Okay, open it.”
Inside there was a slip of paper.
“ ‘Catch the Chattanooga Choo-Choo. They have a room for you. Get your tickets stamped, and there’s an extra prize too.’ ”
Both she and Hunter understood that clue. They were being directed to the old Southern Railway Terminal Station in Chattanooga. Enterprising businessmen had transformed the terminal into the finest array of restaurants in the city. Private rail cars had been transformed into sleepers, and the baggage-storage areas into little shops. A modern full-service hotel had been built adjacent to the railroad lines for those guests who preferred more modern conveniences.
“Well, that settles that. We’re on our way to Chattanooga,” Fortune said, folding the paper and replacing it in the envelope.
“Not necessarily. Maybe they’re trying to divert us. Claiming an extra prize could cost us the big one.”
“Could be,” Fortune agreed.
Hunter retrieved his road map and began studying it. “On the other hand we have to spend the night somewhere, and Chattanooga is between us and Nashville. You call it, wild woman, shall we stop off at the Choo-Choo?”
“A room?” Fortune questioned. “As in take a real bath and sleep in a real bed? Oops, I forgot. Sorry, cowboy, you can always sleep on the floor.”
Fortune wiped the perspiration from her upper lip. She added the rubies to the envelope with the bonus clue and thought about their situation. Hunter had gamely carried on, but she knew that his back had to be bothering him. A hot soak in the tub followed by another massage was probably a good idea.
“A floor with a carpet sounds good to me right now.”
“Then I say, let’s go for it. Unless,” she amended, “we run into something else along the way.”
“Like what?”
“I don’t know, but it seems that these first clues have been almost too easy to solve. We have too much time left. Maybe we’re going to discover lots of little diversions along the way.”
Hunter had been thinking the same thing. Though neither of them had any idea about the Lithia gold, or the creature, the other clues were like following the Yellow Brick Road. Sooner or later he was sure they’d hit a real zinger. Maybe a comfortable night’s sleep was wise.
“Okay, wild woman. Let’s get out of here.”
As they were leaving the Caler Creek Mine, a second Panther pulled up, and the man and woman slid off and hurried inside, ignoring Fortune and Hunter in their haste.
“Looks as if we got here first this time, but not by much,” observed Hunter, glancing at his watch. “I think we’ll hunt out a bookstore here in Franklin. We need to do some research.”
They headed back to town, stopping at a service station where Hunter used some of their traveling money to fill the motorcycle’s tank.
“The station operator says there’s a bookstore in a shopping center not too far away,” he said as he cranked the engine and pulled back onto the highway.
The store manager was very helpful in providing tourist guides published by the various oil companies. They highlighted everything in the southeastern area, with a list and directions to nearby restaurants and hotels.
Fortune put aside her normal inclination to tear into the books immediately and followed Hunter’s suggestion that they wait until they reached Chattanooga to study them.
“Suppose what we’re looking for is between here and Chattanooga?” Fortune asked.
“Then we’ll see it, just the way you spotted the Indian mounds. Keep a sharp eye, wild woman.”
She did. But nothing presented itself, nothing but a more intimate acquaintance with Hunter’s back and powerful thighs. Even the touch of pink mountain laurel and crab-apple blossoms that were beginning to burst into bloom didn’t divert her attention. And she badly needed diverting.
If she’d been standing, she would have said her knees were wobbling. From the position she was occupying, she had to call it more of a jiggle, a jiggle that began in the pit of her stomach and radiated downward to the tips of her newly encased toes.
“Something wrong?” Hunter called over his shoulder.
“No!” She had to lean forward, pressing her cheek against his shoulder, to be heard.
&n
bsp; “Then why are you manhandling my body?”
Hellfire, her elbows were dug into his sides, and her fingertips were underneath his T-shirt, finger-painting his chest, and she didn’t know how they’d got there. “Sorry!” she yelled, moved her hands, and got rocked back by the air pressure whipping around Hunter’s body. “Whoa!”
Hunter pulled over to the side of the road and brought the cycle to a stop. He lifted his leg across the handlebars and turned to face Fortune.
“Look, wild woman. We’re going to have to get past this sex thing, or we’re heading for trouble.”
“Sex thing? How dare you? I’m not interested in you or your body, cowboy.”
“Oh, no?” His gaze drifted down her face, then her neck, and came to a pause on her breasts.
She watched her nipples turn into tight buds under the soft fabric of her shirt.
“Let’s not lie to each other, Fortune. You’re one lush lady, and I’m having just as much trouble with this partnership as you are. What do you think we ought to do about it?”
Fortune crossed her arms over her chest and let out a long breath. “I think that we’d better get moving, Kincaid. I’ll take care of my problems, and you take care of yours.”
“Oh?” His eyebrows lifted.
“That’s not what I meant. What I meant was—Oh, hell. I don’t know what I meant. There was a woman from …” But this time she couldn’t make a rhyme. Hunter had a way of stealing her words as well as her thoughts. She couldn’t even think of a limerick.
“We’re already in trouble, aren’t we, wild woman?”
“I’m afraid so.”
She was practically melting against him, on the side of a public highway, in the midafternoon sun. The smell of laurel wafted through the air. The earth was bright and new and green. Fortune took another deep breath.
“Hunter, I think you’d better drive this motorcycle to Chattanooga. Whatever is happening between us has to stop. We have miles to go before we can—”
“You’re right,” he agreed. “Get your feet up, wild woman. I don’t want to destroy those new shoes.”