Jack eyed the tent, then turned to Marc and said, "It's good to see you, son," and offered his hand. Which seemed odd to Kit. She would have expected the man to open his arms to a prodigal son who'd been completely out of his life for over four years. It bothered her that maybe Marc was right. Maybe Jack Hansen had favored Marc's twin who wasn't a twin but was the real son, which complicated the mix.
Marc clasped his father's hand, and said in a tight voice. "You look well."
Jack didn't answer right away, because it was obvious, from the look of disapproval on his face, that he'd spotted the ponytail. Then adjusting his gaze to Marc's face, he said in a reserved voice, "Your mother said you're an archaeologist now."
Marc nodded. "I have my masters and I'll be working on my PhD."
"That's good," Jack replied. "I'm proud of you."
It was only a moment of pride though, before the man's face became stern again. And Kit felt like screaming, the air was so tense, and the looks passing between the men so filled with accusation. She could almost hear the words shooting silently back and forth on both sides.
Why did you go away for four years and say nothing?
Why didn't you give a shit about me when I was here?
You could have at least contacted your mother.
She has your six real kids to take up the slack.
"Mr. Hansen," Kit said, to break the silence, "I want you to know there's nothing going on between Marc and me, even though Marc was in my tent when you arrived. We're colleagues, field archaeologists, nothing more." As soon as she said the words we're field archaeologists, Kit realized it was a big mistake, especially with Marc's tent perched beside the Indian mound.
Jack looked in the distance and eyed the tent with misgiving and said nothing, but there was no question, from the look on his face, that he'd put the pieces of the puzzle together. His prodigal son came back for one reason only, to dig up a mound that was off limits to everyone.
Returning his gaze to Kit, Jack said, "Marc knows the rules about unmarried couples staying here and we'll leave it at that."
Kit could tell, from the look on the man's face that he was far from leaving it at that. He couldn't seem to take his eyes off the two pairs of boots and the double-wide tent and two-chair eating area, and surroundings that looked comfortably set up for a couple who intended to sneak into the tent after dark for a night of heavy breathing. Nor could the man dismiss Marc's ponytail. Just as Marc couldn't stop glaring at his father. Negative vibes were bouncing in both directions.
In an attempt to neutralize things, Kit said, "Marc mentioned you had an Indian mound on the property and I was curious, but I probably won't be here all that long, maybe a day or two."
Immediately Marc's glare shifted from his father to Kit. And Jack's dark gaze shifted from Marc to the comfortable quarters Kit setup, which looked as if staked there for substantially more than a couple of days. More like the duration of the summer.
Marc looked at his father again, and said, "Actually, Kit wants to stay a while. I told her about the ranch, and she just drove over 1400 miles from Albuquerque, and you can see she's self-sufficient. Would that be a problem?"
Kit saw plainly that Marc had just issued a challenge. He wouldn't see it that way of course, and he'd argue with her if she pointed it out, but Jack Hansen saw it clearly. "You don't need to rush off," Jack said, in a tone that matched Marc's, although she knew he hadn't intended it to be a challenge, just couldn't hide the fact.
"I'm thinking we should both leave," Marc said, abruptly. "I don't feel very welcome."
He turned and started to walk off, when Jack grabbed his arm, and said, "We need to talk."
Marc looked down at Jack's hand on his arm, and Jack removed it.
"You're both welcome here," Jack said, "but you have to understand that your mother's not well."
Marc looked at Jack in alarm, the hostility of moments before replaced by worry. "What do you mean?" he asked, in a tone that said it all. Whatever issues he was having with the family, he loved the woman who'd raised him. "Is she sick, like with something, terminal?"
"She's depressed," Jack said. "She's on medication, which helps, but you need to be a little considerate of her. The boys and Maddy understand and they do what they can."
"Depressed over what?" Marc asked. "Did something happen around here?"
"Yes. You walked out one day and never came back."
Marc stared at his father, but the dynamics had changed. The hostility was still there, but now Marc carried the added burden of guilt. "I'll try not to make things worse," he said in a conciliatory voice. "What do I need to do?"
"I don't know," Jack said. "It depends on why you came back. Your mother didn't seem to think it had anything to do with her. She's upset and crying and thinking she ruined your life."
"Oh shit," Marc replied. "I'll go talk to her."
Again Jack grabbed Marc's arm. "You'd better change that attitude before you do." Then his eyes sharpened, and he said, "Why, exactly, did you come back?"
Marc glanced toward the Indian mound, and for a moment Kit thought he was going to tell his father the real reason. Then his face became thoughtful, and he said, "Kit convinced me it was time to come home. I'll go talk to Mom."
Jack released his arm and said, as Marc was walking off, "Welcome back, son. We've all missed you."
Marc glanced around at his father, gave a little shrug of indifference, and said, "Maybe. I'll go talk to Mom."
For an instant, when Jack stood looking at the encampment, Kit thought he intended to stay and pump her full of questions that would demand answers, but after a stretch of silence, he said, "We'll expect you at the house for dinner."
Kit gave him a feigned smile, and replied, "I'm fine here. My cooler's full of food and I'm set up to cook on the camp stove."
"That's not necessary. My wife serves dinner at seven," Jack said, and left.
Kit realized she'd just been given an ultimatum by a man she had no intention of challenging. But she did have clearer insight into the relationship between Marc and his father. Although they might be miles apart in understanding each other, there was a strong bond of love between them. She also knew it would take an act of God to get the two of them together if Marc didn't began to lighten up some.
***
Marc found his mother in her bedroom sitting on the bed, staring out the window. His brothers still hadn't returned from the rodeo, so he'd have time alone with her to try to straighten things out some, or at least begin to undo the damage he'd caused. While he was away, he had no idea his being gone would matter. He'd never felt he was one of them, but apparently his mother felt otherwise. "Mom?" he said from the doorway.
Grace glanced around and her eyes were red-rimmed, and very sad. She blinked several times, and said, "Come in honey, I was just sitting here trying to decide what to fix for dinner."
Marc saw right through that. "Maybe what you usually fix on Friday," he said. "Catfish."
"It's Friday already?" Grace mused. "I guess I'd lost track of the days."
Marc sat on the bed beside her and put his arm around her shoulders and was surprised at how much weight she really had lost. She'd always carried a few extra pounds, and because she was large-breasted she gave the appearance of being heavy, but he felt a boney protrusion on her shoulder that hadn't been there before he left. "It's good to be back," he said, and hoped he sounded sincere, when the fact was, the confrontation with his father left him feeling drained.
Grace reached out and patted his leg, and said, without looking at him, because her eyes were red from crying he assumed, "You have no idea how relieved I am you're here, honey, and that you're alright. We didn't know. You never called or wrote."
"I know, Mom. I'm sorry. I guess the time just slipped away. I won't do it anymore."
"Then you're here to stay?" she asked, turning to look at him, her eyes hopeful.
"For a little while," Marc said.
"And if Dad doesn
't want you digging up the mound? Will you leave then?"
"I'm here for a while no matter what," Marc replied. "I am an archaeologist though, so I'll eventually have to hook up with a dig somewhere." He took her hand and tugged on it, and said, "Come on, you need to move around some. Come see how Kit fixed up her place. It's a good long way from my tent, which is her way of telling me to keep my distance, but she's made a nice little home in the woods near the hot spring."
"Maybe not now, honey," Grace said. "I need to start thinking about dinner."
"It's only two o'clock," Marc said. "There's plenty of time."
"I suppose." She stood and walked with Marc out of the house. As they crossed the grounds between the house and the Indian mound, she said, "Is Kit someone special to you?"
"If you mean a romantic interest—" Marc let out a short guffaw "—she calls me Hansen and I call her Korban. We're colleagues, nothing more." He also knew that was a bald-faced lie.
Every time Kit threw him a curve it smacked him upside the head. But instead of knocking him senseless, it was the reverse. Making a commitment was still out, but he came to the startling realization, about the time Kit approached him about digging up the Indian mound, that he wasn't ready to go off on another dig without her. Coming to the ranch got around it for now, and he hadn't wanted to think beyond that. But if he got the job supervising the team at the Cahal Pechto project, that's where he'd go, which was the last place Kit wanted to be. Her cushy encampment just ahead was like putting a period on things.
"Then you met her in college?" Grace asked.
"No," Marc replied. "I was field director at a dig in Central America and she was a member of my team. The dig was sponsored through the University of Texas, where I graduated and got my masters. I'm working on my PhD there now."
Grace smiled and said, "I'm proud of you, honey. You always did like digging in the Indian mound." Then her face sobered, and she said, "How did you end up going to college in Texas?"
Marc said nothing for a few moments while he deliberated over just how much to tell, considering his mother's depression and her current state of mind. Announcing that he'd been living with the parents of the man she'd once been married to, the same people she'd withheld information from about their unknown grandson, wasn't likely to lift her depression. It also sent a little shot of bitterness through him that he quickly shoved away. She'd done what she had out of love, but that wasn't the way Grandma and Grandpa Templeton viewed it.
Grace stopped walking and turned to him. A slow awareness began to creep into her eyes as she said, "Isn't the University of Texas in Austin?"
Marc nodded, vaguely.
"Is that why you ended up there?" Grace asked, and Marc knew there was no point in continuing a pretense of half-truths.
"My grandfather's a physics professor there," Marc replied. "He's the one who encouraged me to attend the university, and he also got me interested in a special project he's involved in down in Belize. I'll tell you about it later."
For a few moments they walked in silence, and Marc deliberated whether to change the subject, but before he'd come to a conclusion, Grace said, "I suppose they hate me."
"They're not happy," Marc said. "They couldn't understand why they weren't told. They have no other grandchildren." He immediately regretted dumping that bit of information on his mother. Regardless of what she'd done, she was suffering for it, more than she deserved. More than anyone deserved for doing something out of love.
"Do you still hate me, Marc?" she asked.
Marc curved his arm around her again, getting a little more used to the feel of a boney shoulder, and said, "I could never hate you, Mom. Things are okay. They've adjusted, and they've been very supportive of my choice of major. They were there at graduation."
Shit! He felt his mother's shoulders shaking and knew she was crying again. Turning her, he put his arms around her and said, "It's really okay, Mom."
Tucking her face into his chest, she said, "No, honey, it isn't okay. It will never be okay. We were always proud of you and would have been there if we knew." She swiped a finger beneath each eye and dabbed her nose with her cuff.
"Then I'll expect you and Dad and the rest of the family to make a trip to Texas when I get my PhD, okay?" He tucked his finger beneath her chin and lifted, so she'd have to look at him.
She smiled, like maybe it was a little okay, and said, "We'll all be there. Yes, we'll plan a family trip." Then the frown came back, and he knew she was thinking about the ramification of that—seeing the parents of her dead husband, knowing what she'd hidden from them.
Marc gave her shoulders a little squeeze, and said, "We'll work it all out. They know I'm here and they're okay with it."
He looked ahead and saw Kit with her back partially to him. She had no idea they were approaching, and as they neared, she pressed her hands to the small of her back and closed her eyes and raised her face and stretched, reminding him of the makeshift jungle shower again. The more time that went by between those few moments when he'd watched her standing beneath the spray and now, the clearer the image became, which was incongruous, as memory should begin to fade, not sharpen with time.
"She's really very pretty," Grace said.
"Yeah, I guess she's kind of pretty," Marc replied, and tried not to sound too enthusiastic.
Grace looked askance at him. It was the words, kind of pretty, that gave him away, and he knew his mother picked up on it. Kind of pretty didn't begin to describe Kit. But if he'd expected to fool his mother he should have said something more like, 'Yeah, all the guys on the dig including me think so, but she's had her fill of guys staring at her.' and that would have been the kind of answer the mother of six sons would dismiss as males and testosterone.
Still unaware that they were approaching, Kit put on a straw hat with a wide brim and glanced in a mirror hanging by a cord from a tree. Peering at her reflection, she tipped the hat at a sharp angle and smiled at herself, then tipped it another way, and it came to him, as he watched her, that she'd look pretty good in a dress and high heels, maybe walking through a mall. He'd never thought of her that way. He'd only seen her in field boots and work clothes, and usually well covered because of the insects and the heat, except for the vee at her cleavage.
"Archaeology seems an odd field for her to be in," Grace said. "She's very feminine."
When Marc didn't respond, she looked askance at him, and her lips tipped slightly, as if he hadn't fooled her, which he knew he hadn't. "Look, I like her, okay," he blurted out. A little light came into his mother's eyes, like he remembered from the past when she caught one of her teenage sons acting exactly the way he was. Giving a little shrug, he said, "I know that look, Mom, but nothing's going to come of it. Kit already set down the rules, which don't include me in her tent at night. Ever."
"But you'd like to be," Grace said.
"Sure I would," Marc replied. "I'm a guy, and guys like having girls in their tents at night."
"Is that the way it is when you're working at a site?" Grace asked.
"For some," Marc replied. "I choose to..." stay in my tent and play with myself, came to mind, but he didn't think his mother would appreciate the humor. "I stay to myself on digs. It makes life less complicated. Kit's the same way."
But on this particular dig, the last thing he wanted was to stay to himself. He could use some female companionship in his tent about now, and not just for the obvious reason. He glanced over at his single tent standing alone at the side of the Indian mound and imagined himself inside, stretched on his back, staring at the ceiling. And then he imagined Kit in her big tent with the double mattress. But Oregon nights were chilly, so he wouldn't be burdened with images of her sleeping in the raw like it was in Belize. Unless that's why she had the big quilt to crawl under. Kit took off the hat and set it down, then went inside the tent.
"I'm glad she set some standards," Grace said, as they approached the encampment.
Marc sensed his mother was givi
ng her approval, which would be good if he were in the running, which he wasn't. But if he was, his mother would be disillusioned to know that Kit had lived with a guy with small balls for three years.
He snickered as soon as he had that thought, because small balls had nothing to do with why Kit lived with the guy, and Marc Hansen having big balls wouldn't change things.
Kit ducked out of the tent and looked surprised to see them. "I didn't hear you coming," she said, then looking at Grace, added, "Mrs. Hansen, I just put a pot of water on the stove. Will you stay for tea? I also have cookies."
Grace glanced around the area, just as Marc did, and spotted, sitting on a propane burner, a dark green enamel teapot shaped like a duck, with a yellow bill that had steam curling from its nostrils. Kit's table was set with a dark green place mat and a dark green dish with little yellow ducks around the rim, like maybe she'd bought a set. A tin of Scandinavian cookies was placed to one side.
"You're getting pretty upscale, Korban," Marc said. "Do you plan to drag all this stuff to the next dig?"
"Of course," Kit replied. "It beats a one-person tent with no room to move around."
"You'd have a lot more room if you had a single mattress," Marc said, "so why drag along a double one?"
"Not for any reason you might construe," Kit replied, "so don't try to make anything of it."
Marc eyed his mother, who was smiling again. It had been a long time since he'd seen her smile and he realized he'd missed it, and the looks she gave him when she caught him in a little white lie like he did about Kit a few minutes before. And the slightly empathetic look she was giving him now because she knew he liked Kit, and Kit had just laid down her rules. Again.
Bittersweet Return (Dancing Moon Ranch Book 6) Page 7