by Janzen, Tara
“Mind?” Kit repeated. A lustrous, dark tumble of hair slipped free, and he smiled. The woman was exquisite, delicate of face and body, and softly rounded in all the right places. He’d like very much to see her in a silk the color of her eyes.
“Yes, mind,” she said. “You can’t go around ruining people’s hairdos.” A few more tendrils fell free over her forehead. She was losing the battle, inside and out.
“Hairdos?”
“My bun,” she said, tight-lipped. The man was a barbarian. She raised both her hands to salvage the mess and found there was nothing left to stick a pin into. He was fast, too fast.
“Ugly bun,” he said, eyes sparkling with mischief. “Pretty Kreestine.”
She started to sigh, then found her breath stolen by the gentle caress of his thumb across her cheek. For a fleeting instant she thought he was going to kiss her again. Instead, he let his hand fall away, and she didn’t know what to do with the anticipation he’d left behind.
“Do you have a telephone?” he asked.
“Telephone?” she echoed, staring at him, still aware of the warmth he’d left on her skin.
A grin tugged at his mouth. “Yes, telephone.”
She was blushing; she felt the heat and embarrassment stealing over her face. “Telephone,” she said, forcing her gaze away. “Of course, it’s . . . it’s . . .” She glanced around the office, trying to remember where she kept the phone. “It’s on the desk. Of course, it’s on the desk . . . somewhere on the desk.” Her voice trailed off. Lord, what a disaster. She’d never minded it before, but she suddenly hated having her hereditary disorganization exposed to a man whose every movement seemed in tune with the cosmic forces of the universe.
“May I use it?”
“Yes.” If she could find it, she silently added, walking over to the desk that she knew resided under the cascades of paper and books. She caught sight of her modem, the phone had to be close. Where had she put the darn thing after she’d talked to Jenny the last time? Sometimes she stashed it in the drawer if she needed more room to work. A couple of times she’d put it on the floor. Only once had she set it in the metal waste-basket. The resulting echo of the ring had convinced her not to use that particular spot again.
He followed her and moved an untidy stack of manuscript she’d been meaning to file away all afternoon, unerringly finding the phone beneath it. He lifted the receiver and began punching in a series of numbers on her wonder of technology. Long distance, she noted. When he finished he set the receiver back into its cradle and looked up at her with an easy grin. “Will you smile, Kreestine?”
The ringing of the phone punctuated her long silence. Without the slightest hesitation or confusion, she realized, he’d set the phone on its speaker mode. Either the far reaches of Nepal were much more technologically advanced than she’d assumed, or her houseguest had spent a fair amount of time in the more modern and cosmopolitan areas of the Far East. Or, he simply was amazingly adept with high-tech gadgets, something she was not. She wished she’d paid more attention to which buttons he’d pushed. Using the speaker feature on her phone was a trick that had eluded her since she’d lost the directions.
“I can’t smile on command,” she said in response to his strange request.
“Maybe later, then?” His own smile didn’t need any incentive, and Kristine found herself responding, her mouth curving up at the corners. “Thank you,” he said gravely.
“Sure, anytime.” She even laughed a little. She didn’t know what to make of him, this elusive stranger who had invaded her life and her home with his forbidden treasures and easy smiles. Except that she was determined to make the most of him. Or rather, the most of his treasures, she hastened to amend. Make the most of him, indeed. The thought was absurd. She, of all women, was the least prepared to make anything out of an overly friendly kiss. Her sexual failings had been neatly categorized once, and once had been enough. More than enough.
“Lois Sheperd’s office,” a voice came out of the speaker. “May I help you?”
Kristine shot him a surprised glance.
“Lo-eese, please.” He grinned at her again, deepening the creases in his lean cheeks.
“May I ask who’s calling?”
“Kautilya Carson.”
“Hold, please.”
“Thank you.”
No, Kristine thought, her eyes narrowing in suspicion. He couldn’t possibly have called the curator of the largest natural history museum on the West Coast. Given five minutes and a piece of paper, she could have listed twenty museums that would beg for the opportunity to procure what he’d brought out of Tibet. Lois Sheperd of The Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County, Lois Sheperd, curator, would have been the first.
“Kit?” An equally disbelieving feminine voice came on the line.’
“Namaste. Lo-eese.” He picked up one of the many books piled every which way on Kristine’s desk and read the spine.
“Kit! You made it!”
“Made it?” He looked at Kristine, one brow cocked in question.
But Lois Sheperd explained before Kristine had the chance. “You arrived without problems.”
“No, Lo-eese. I had many problems.” He turned to the bookcase and began examining the titles. “But you expected this, no?”
“Well, yes, but if Thomas and I had harbored major doubts, we wouldn’t have involved the museums. We knew what you were up against, but we never lost hope.”
Who was Thomas? Kristine wondered. And since when was the L.A. museum a part of their project? They hadn’t been listed on any of the papers she’d seen, but then neither had Chatren-Ma. The man was more than an outlaw. He was an out-and-out con artist, and he was playing all sides against the middle in some very exalted company. Her professional opinion of him, already heightened by his research, rose another couple of notches. Personally, though, she still didn’t know what to make of him.
“You lost the trunks, Lo-eese,” he said, and Kristine heard the quiet condemnation in his voice. “This carelessness has created complications.” He took one book off the shelf and replaced it with the one in his hand.
“I’m never careless, Kit, never,” Lois replied, seemingly unaffected by his censure. “But I will admit to being self-serving at times. We both know why I couldn’t accept the trunks. I’m sure Thomas felt the same. And of course, you found them.”
“Naturally.”
“Hah! There was nothing natural about the way you—” She paused suddenly. “Where are you?”
“With Kreestine in Colorado.” He walked down the length of the bookcase until he found a spot for the second book. Kristine was pleased to discover it wasn’t only she he never gave a straight answer to.
On the other hand, Lois didn’t sound the least bit pleased. “Kristine? Who is Kristine?”
“A less self-serving woman,” he said vaguely. “She is very pretty.”
And she’d thought he’d embarrassed her before, Kristine thought, covering her face with one hand.
He’d just told one of the most influential curators in America that she was pretty, not exactly the introduction she’d been imagining all day as she’d gone through his journals and dreamed her little dreams of fame and glory.
“I’ve never known you to . . .” Lois started to say, then changed her mind. “It doesn’t matter, I’m sure. When can you come to Los Angeles?”
He picked another book off the desk and glanced at Kristine. “Do you want to go to Los Angeles?”
Mortified by what Lois Sheperd must be thinking, Kristine mouthed the word “no” then immediately realized her mistake.
“Kreestine says no,” he told Lois. “You will come here.”
The woman’s silent surprise shot through the office, but with no more force than Kristine’s. Nobody ordered Lois Sheperd around—except, obviously, Kit Carson.
“So it does matter,” Lois said thoughtfully, then reverted to a businesslike tone. “I can be there Monday. Is that too late?”
“No.”
“Then I’ll see you Monday. What’s the address?”
After he’d given Lois the address and had hung up, Kit punched in another series of numbers on the phone, apparently from memory. “May I eat in here, Kreestine?” he asked, looking up at her again. “We have much work to do before Monday and I’d like to get started.”
Sure, she thought, why not. Nothing else he did now would surprise her.
She should have known better.
“Thomas Stein’s office,” a woman said over the speaker. “May I help you?”
Thomas Stein? Kristine thought. The Thomas Stein?
“I’m not going to Chicago,” she said to Kit to save herself further embarrassment. Then she turned and fled into the kitchen.
Four
Kit confused people besides herself. Kristine saw in the faces of the Thursday morning shoppers. At first glance they dismissed him as a throwback to the sixties, but he always drew second and third glances, and that was where the confusion crept in. He was scrupulously clean, and his demeanor was not one of a lost, searching, or peaceful soul. He was more warrior than saint, though she’d seen in him enough traits of the latter to make her wonder.
The riches encircling his arm revealed wealth in an unaccustomed manner. That wealth was at odds with the roughness of his boots, which Kristine noticed a lot of people bothering to get a look at—especially the women who checked him out from top to bottom.
They had their first disagreement in the produce aisle, shortly after two gawking women ran into each other’s carts. One had a toddler strapped into the little seat in front, and Kristine noticed that the little boy loved the bit of action.
“Mama, bang bang? Bang bang, please.”
The flustered woman shushed her child and kissed his cheek, her own face flushing a bright pink. “No more bang bang. Excuse me,” she said to the other woman, who hadn’t quite come back to earth. “Excuse me.”
“Oh. Yes. Of course, excuse me.”
Their eyes met for an instant, then they simultaneously turned their heads and stared at Kit again. Kristine was beginning to wonder if she had disappeared. Sure, he was intriguing in an exotic sort of way and good looking in any way, but he was just a man. The two women looked back at each other and laughed, a mite breathlessly to Kristine’s ears, before going on their way.
She turned to the counter of bananas and started to put a bunch in the cart, then stopped, aghast. Several pounds already layered the bottom of the cart. “Nobody, and I mean nobody, can eat that many bananas.”
“I like them,” Kit said, and moved over to the melons. He hefted one in each hand, raising them to his nose. Two cantaloupes were within reason, Kristine allowed, but he took four.
She calmly returned three pounds of bananas and two of the melons, and he calmly put them back in the cart.
“I like them.”
She had suggested he stay at home while she did the shopping, and if she’d had any idea of how much attention he’d receive or how much trouble he’d be, she would have insisted. Though she doubted it would have done her much good. For some reason he’d been rather insistent himself about accompanying her. She’d muttered something about Tibetan bandits being rare in this particular part of Colorado, but he’d only smiled and followed her out to the car.
They had their second disagreement in the personal hygiene aisle, only because she’d given up at the meat counter. The man was definitely not a vegetarian.
“I think one is enough,” she said.
“They are very difficult to find,” he said, adding another handful to their burgeoning cart.
“Not in America.”
He nodded slowly, as if considering the truth of her statement, then just as slowly laid another handful of toothbrushes in the cart.
“It is a ritual of my first father,” he said.
“First father?”
“Before Sang Phala took me away to live with the monks.”
Oh, she thought. His first father before the monks. Right. She couldn’t figure him out for all the gold in China, most of which he seemed to have brought with him. While they’d been working the previous night and that morning, he’d matched her knowledge fact for fact. Yet when it came to plain living on the planet, he was out of his depth. Or more specifically, out of his culture. The practical, and probably rude, thing to do would be to ask a mere hundred or so of the questions tripping over one another in her mind. Practicality had never been her strong suit, though, and rudeness even less so. Besides, prying into his private life implied an intimacy she didn’t wish to encourage. They were already living together, for goodness sakes.
In deference to her convoluted logic, she said nothing and added a large supply of toothpaste to their haul. She would simply hand the mystery of Kit Carson over to Jenny to solve. The man’s past didn’t stand a chance against her assistant’s zeal for extra credit. As an added bonus, she’d give points for expediency. The sooner she found out more about him, the better for her peace of mind.
Kit noted the smile forming on Kristine’s mouth and the light of curiosity burning like the flame of Muktinath in her eyes. He grinned to himself. It took no special effort on his part to deduce the cause for either. Everything she thought was mirrored on her face. He’d relied on her intelligence, played on her ambitions, and counted on her daring to get him this far. She understood the stakes if not the repercussions of the game she’d fallen into, and he was willing to let her set her own rules—until they clashed with his.
They had their third and final conflict in the checkout lane.
“No,” she whispered sharply.
“Help me, please,” he said starting to count bracelets. “How many?”
“None. Zero.”
The jangling of bracelets as he started to remove them snapped her head around, and she grabbed his arm before she thought. She snatched her hand back, her fingers burning from the heat of his skin. Due to the unreliability of her emotional responses, she had made a firm vow not to instigate any physical encounters.
“This man will not take your bracelets in payment,” she said, enunciating every word, “so keep them on your arm, please.” The man had money, she knew, all kinds of money, none of which was legal tender in the States. When he’d dumped it out of his chamois bag and into a pile on her kitchen table, she’d spent all of two seconds wondering how he’d gotten it into the country. Then she’d realized the stupidity of the question. The man had gotten more than yuan, three kinds of rupees, and baht into the country. Lord, she hoped she could pull off her Chatren-Ma coup without getting incriminated by the man’s “other talents,” as Dean Chambers so delicately put it.
She finished writing out her check and handed it to the clerk.
“He’ll take paper before gold?” Kit asked perfectly clearly.
“It’s a check, a promise from my bank to pay his,” she explained in an undertone designed for subtleness, but his responsive burst of laughter made the attempt fruitless. Heads turned in three lanes, until once more the man with the braid and massive gold bracelets was the absolute center of attention. Kristine smiled weakly at the clerk, wondering if Kit Carson had ever heard the word discretion, let alone figured out how to incorporate it into his life.
* * *
Okay, Kristine thought several hours later, so far so good. He had his neat, collated piles over there, and she had her not-so-neat piles over here—and suppertime was only a heartbeat away. Thank heaven.
How a man could be relaxed enough to wear a braid down to his whatever and more gold than King Tut, and still be such a stickler for organization was beyond her. He looked so loose and free, from his quick, easy smiles down to the hoops on his boots. But those smiles, she’d discovered, had more edges than curves, and she was sure he was in imminent danger of wearing out his patient edge.
“I need to cross-reference the February and March daily journals into the Lamaist Shrine catalogue,” he said. He walked over to her
side of the office and dropped down on his haunches next to where she’d set up shop on the floor.
“Check, and check.” She dug the two bound volumes out of her untidy stacks and handed them to him, breathing a silent sigh of relief. More than once she’d had to scramble to find his requests.
“Thank you, Kreestine.” His most patient smile played at the corners of his mouth, mesmerizing her. “Do you also have the shrine catalogue?”
“Yes, it’s right . . .” She tore her gaze away from him and searched the piles of folios and folders. He was too close, his shoulder almost brushing hers, his thigh definitely touching her arm. How was she supposed to concentrate when he was practically breathing on her? “I had finished filling in the April data and was going onto May, but I couldn’t find May, so I set the catalogue aside.”
He shifted his body an inch closer, leaning across her to pick up the catalogue. “Thank you, Kreestine, and do not concern yourself with May. There are no daily journals for May.”
He slowly rose to his feet and moved back to his side of the office, becoming instantly engrossed in the catalogue and leaving her to wonder what it was about him that so fascinated her.
She knew a lot of men, all kinds of men. She worked with them, taught them, and on occasion flunked them without batting an eyelash. But she’d never met or seen one like Kit Carson. The mystery of him went beyond his past. It was more than skin-deep. It was more than his kiss, though that alone made him unique in her experience. No one had ever turned her into jelly with just a kiss, or anything else for that matter.
With a little hummph, she turned her attention back to her work, spending a few minutes tidying up her area and sipping her cold coffee. She decided to warm it up and walked over to the pot she kept in the office. While she was there she sharpened her pencils, opened an envelope from the morning’s mail, and filed the bill in the URGENT bin on her multilayered desk baskets.
Now what had she been doing before he’d interrupted her? she wondered. May, that was right. She’d been looking for the May journals—which he’d told her didn’t exist.