The Lies Uncovered Trilogy (Books 4, 5, and 6 of The Dancing Moon Ranch Series) (48 page)

Marc took a closer look, and said, "I think you're right." He picked up a trowel, and with the point, scraped away at the dirt surrounding something stuck in the sidewall of a layer. Prodding a little further, he uncovered what looked at first glance like a river cobble. Wedging it out of the soil he studied it closely, turning it around in his hand.

Kit traced her finger over the outer edge. "It's chipped along here," she said, "so it's some kind of chopper." She took it from him, and closing her hand around it, said to him, "It actually fits my hand, like a chopper for a woman, but it's large enough so the shock would be absorbed. This is definitely an occupational level, and I think we're inside the pit house."

Marc glanced up from where he sat on his heels, and said, "Someone's coming. I hope he's not the first in a long string of amateur archaeologists."

Kit stood and saw a tall, heavily-muscled man walking toward them. Shading her eyes and taking a closer look at the man, she said, "I can't believe it. Why would Wally show up here?"

"I don't know but I'll go sort debitage," Marc said, in a disgusted voice.

"You don't need to," Kit replied. "I'll go see what he wants." She handed the stone chopper to Marc, climbed out of the pit, and started toward Wally.

As Wally approached, he smiled, like he was glad to see her. "This arrived at the house for you and I thought you might want to read it," he said, holding out an envelope. "Your folks gave me the address of the ranch here."

Kit took the envelope from him and read the return address, noting it was from the Museum of Indian Arts in Santa Fe. "You drove 1400 miles to deliver my mail?" she said.

"Well that, and to talk to you," Wally replied. "Look, I know I have a few hang-ups that bother you, and maybe I'm not the easiest guy to live with, but I've been thinking about us."

Kit turned the envelope over. "You opened my mail."

Wally shrugged. "You never minded before."

"That's because we were a couple. We aren't now."

"It's from the museum," Wally said. "They're offering you the job as curator, a full-time permanent position with a generous benefits package. It's what you've been wanting, and I wouldn't mind moving to Santa Fe."

Ignoring Wally, Kit removed the letter, which reaffirmed what he'd just told her, while also outlining duties of the Curator of Archaeology... a professional position to carry out research leading to interpretive exhibitions... reports directly to the Museum Director... publications and educational programming... involves ongoing tribal consultations.

"I've changed since you left me," Wally said.

"I didn't leave you," Kit replied, while continuing to review the letter. "You're the one who asked me to leave. I have this problem remembering how to hang up clothes."

"It doesn't matter," Wally said. "I really have changed. I wouldn't have any trouble getting a job in Santa Fe either. I wouldn't even care if you brought the clothes home to wash. Well, that wouldn't matter now since you'd be working for the museum. We'd both have good jobs. We could buy a house and start a family like you wanted."

"There is no we," Kit replied, "so you might as well go on back to Albuquerque."

"But I'm ready to get married," Wally said. "I know I've been kind of non-committal in the past, but that's because I wanted to finish college first."

"That was two years ago," Kit said.

"Can we go somewhere and talk?"

"We just did."

"I mean some place where we can be alone," Wally said. "I took a room at a hotel in McMinnville. You could stay with me tonight and we could see how we do. I've been wearing this stretching device and it's made a big difference in just a month."

"I told you before, that didn't matter," Kit said.

"That's what you said, but if we got together again I think you'd find it did matter," Wally replied. "Can we at least give it a try?"

"Actually, I've had a better offer right here at the ranch," Kit said.

"You mean, better than the curator job?" Wally asked. "I didn't know this was a paying job."

"It isn't," Kit said. "I meant a better offer over in that tent." She pointed to Marc's tent.

"Is that where you're staying?"

"No, I'm staying in that big tent over there—" Kit pointed to her encampment "—but I'm thinking about staying in the little tent."

"Why?" Wally asked.

"Because I've got the hots for an android who's camping out there." Kit glanced back and saw Marc smiling.

"I hate it when you get like this," Wally said.

"I know," Kit replied, "but thanks for delivering the letter. Have a safe trip back."

When Kit turned to go, Wally reached out and took her arm, and said, "You can't just walk away from me. I just drove 1400 miles and since you left your stuff at my house we still have a connection."

Kit lifted her arm from Wally's grasp, and said, "I'm sorry about that but you should have called first. Just to set things straight, you can sell my stuff and pay for your trip and we'll no longer have a connection. But, so your trip isn't completely wasted, there are brochures at the lodge. Grab a handful and check out the local sights."

"I don't understand," Wally said. "I'm ready to marry you and I don't care about the laundry or if you hang the clothes wrong. What more do you want?"

Kit looked over at Marc, and said, "I want my android."

Wally looked at Marc, who was standing at the site, then shifted his gaze to Marc's tent, then looked back at Kit, and said, "Is he what you're talking about?"

Kit looked at Marc and smiled, then at Wally and replied, "He's filled in a lot of compartments in my life. Maybe you'll find the right woman to fill in all those compartments in yours and want to hang the clothes right. It's not such a farfetched idea. Now do have a safe trip back." She kissed Wally on the cheek, then turned and headed for the site.

When she got to where Marc was standing, he said, "Did you mean what you said about staying in my tent?"

"Sure," Kit replied. "It's mating season, I'm still the unattached female, and you're now alpha male among the juveniles."

"Korban, you'd better not be messing with my head right now," Marc said, "because you're talking about mating and I've been ready to mate with you since you watched me demonstrating the deet and did that thing you do with your tongue."

Kit eyed him, puzzled. "What are you talking about?"

Marc smiled. "You don't know, do you?"

Kit caught the self-satisfied expression on Marc's face, and said, "Are you messing with my head, Hansen?"

"Could be," Marc replied, while looking at her in amusement.

Kit wondered how one man could be so handsome, and sexy, and have such beautiful eyes, and a really intriguing male mouth.

Her lips parted because whenever Marc looked at her the way he was, her heart kicked into high gear, her breaths quickened, her lungs seemed starved for air, and when she studied his mouth because she wanted to kiss him, she couldn't help but lick her lips because... She didn't know why, other than she just really, really wanted to kiss him...

"Yeah, baby, that's what I'm talking about," Marc said. "The thing you're doing with your tongue. It gets me every time." He pulled her into his arms and kissed her soundly. "So, when are we going to start this mating ritual?"

"What about ranch rules?" Kit asked.

"I'm twenty-five," Marc said. "Call it a post-teen rebellion. But maybe it should be in your tent after dark."

"You said you didn't have any condoms."

"I don't, but I want to put a little daughter right here." He placed his hand across Kit's belly and held it there. "We could get her started now, and make her legal in a week."

"You mean get married that fast?" Kit said.

Marc kissed her again. "It's a tradition around here. My parents were married a week after Dad asked Mom to marry him, Sophie and Rick were married the day Adam and Emily were supposed to be married, which was less than two weeks after Rick asked Sophie to marry him, and Adam and Emily managed to tie the knot in a week."

"But after that, it's still miles between Santa Fe and Belize," Kit said.

"I admit, we have a few wrinkles to iron out."

"Like one of us turning down a job offer," Kit said. "But even if I turned down the curator job and followed you to Belize, do you want your little daughter, who'll be all wrapped in pink, with lace around her socks, to spend the first months of her life in a tent with snakes and scorpions and mosquitoes? Or... we could wait until the time's right to start a family."

"I'm already twenty-five," Marc said. "Adam's got a three-year-old and a daughter on the way, and Rick's got triplets and twins on the way."

"Is this going to be some kind of baby race?" Kit asked.

"No," Marc replied. "I just don't want to lose my position at the top of the pack. Maybe we could do the in vitro thing and start off with sextuplets."

"Are you serious?" Kit asked, not absolutely certain Marc might not be serious. He definitely had a competitive thing going with his brothers.

Marc smiled. "No, Korban, I'm not serious. I don't want some doctor on a sperm hunt fooling around with my balls."

Kit put her arms around his neck, and said, "Is it okay for the field supervisor to fool around with them? She took a class in paleontology so she's qualified to do some applied research on how certain life forms evolve and change over time." She glanced down. "And from what I can tell, there's been some recent era changing, something that could even be fossilized."

"Okay, that does it. We're quitting for the day." Marc took Kit's arm and started toward her encampment, and Kit made no move to stop him.

***

"I had no idea it was that big," Kit said, while staring pointedly.

"I told you I didn't need creams," Marc replied. "Will it be a problem?"

"I'm talking about the tattoo," Kit said. "You told me the tattoo was small. It's a couple of inches long. But that's cute the way it has a leg stretched out and a three-toed foot reaching down like it's about to play with this—" she curved her hand around the thing that was jutting up "—which is very impressive, at least ten points an inch."

Marc's grabbed her wrist. "Now, you really are messing with my head."

"I know," Kit said. "This one's much more fun than the other. Are you complaining?"

"No, but the applied research is over." Marc covered her body with his and kissed her deeply, and Kit responded by entangling her tongue with his, and running her hands up his back and down his butt, and wrapping her legs around his hips, and letting out little moans of pleasure as Marc eliminated all the preliminaries, because Kit didn't want to wait any longer than he did. But after a rush of passion and some frenzied pumping, when they'd at last come down off their climaxes, Marc said, "Can we try again and maybe go a little slower this time?"

"I don't know." Kit sat up and threaded her fingers through his unbounded locks. "It's your hair," she said. "When it's loose like this I regress way, way back to cave times, when you, my sweet, from head to feet, were gowned in your glorious hair. But I can't remember the rest."

"You also got it wrong," Marc replied. "You're supposed to be my sweet. I'm the one tusked like a cave bear."

"I can't believe it," Kit said. "You're analyzing our poem. Do you ever quit analyzing things?"

Marc sat up. "It's not a matter of analyzing it's a matter of the caveman being the one reciting the poem.
I was thewed like an Auroch bull and tusked like the great cave bear
—" he combed his fingers through her hair "—
and you, my sweet, from head to feet were gowned in your glorious hair
."

"Actually that was kind of romantic," Kit said. "You just called me your sweet."

"That's because you are. I said I could be romantic," Marc replied. "
And deep in the gloom of a fireless cave, when the night fell o'er the plain, and the moon hung red o'er the river bed, we mumbled the bones of the slain
."

"Actually we weren't mumbling bones," Kit said, while trailing a finger down his chest, "we were sharing a mastodon bone between having sex."

"Come here."

"Where?"

"Back down here with me." Marc lay back and opened his arms, and when Kit cuddled up against him, Marc kissed her lingeringly, and said, "I love you, baby, and that was easy to say."

"I love you too, sweetheart," Kit replied, "but right at this moment, billions of microscopic little sperm are swimming around inside me, searching for one tiny egg, and if they happen to connect there will be a little Hansen on the way and we still haven't figured out how we're going to make it all work. We need to talk about this."

"I know," Marc said, "and I know exactly where we need to be when we do."

"Whispering Springs?" Kit asked.

Marc nodded. "We might wait until after dark to go though, when the ranch guests and everyone else are settled for the night."

"Good idea," Kit said. "Meanwhile, I've finished nibbling on my mastodon bone and I'm ready for sex again. Are you okay with that?" She glanced down. "Umm, yes, I see you are..."