Follow the Sun (45 page)

H
E WALKED ON
calmly, as if he hadn’t just announced that her great-grandfather was a killer.

“He did
what?
” Kat asked, stunned.

“Holt Gallatin ambushed my great-great-grandfather outside a saloon and shot him in the back. Gallatin went into hiding and never came back. It was decades before my great-grandfather caught up with him, and then they killed each other in a gunfight.”

Kat clung to Nathan’s neck, feeling dazed. He chuckled grimly. “You’re digging your claws into me, Kitty Kat.”

“Sorry. I’m just in shock. Are you sure that my great-grandpa went around blasting people?”

Nathan nodded. His arms tightened under her as he hopped gingerly from one foot to the other. “Ouch. Dammit.”

Kat realized with a pang of guilt that he hadn’t bothered to get his shoes before carrying her through the forest. “Let me down. I can walk.”

“Nope.”

“I don’t think you like me anymore. I don’t want to be a lot of trouble.”

He rolled his eyes at her accusation and kept going. “You weren’t responsible for our families’ feud.”

“It was a feud? Over what?”

“An old grudge that started during the Civil War. My great-great-grandpa Nathaniel was a Union officer; your great-great-grandpa Justis was Confederate. Mine caught yours, yours escaped, and mine got demoted because of it. He was disgraced. He resigned from a career in the army because of the scandal.”

“But that didn’t have anything to do with Holt Gallatin. That escape was his father’s doing. Besides, why would the Gallatins want revenge on the Chathams if Justis Gallatin
got away?
”

“We never figured that out. Holt was just the type to pick fights without much reason, according to historical accounts.”

“You mean somebody wrote this story down?”

He nodded. “One of my great-uncles researched it for a book. It was published about twenty years ago by the University of Oklahoma Press.”

“What’s it called? Can I get a copy?”

“Sure. The title’s
Blue Fox, Cherokee Renegade.
”

Kat drew back and looked at him askance. “That doesn’t sound very fair-minded, especially if a Chatham wrote it. Who’s Blue Fox?”

“That was the Cherokee name Holt Gallatin took during the Civil War. He was just a kid, but he killed a Union soldier so that his father—Justis—could escape from my great-great-grandfather.”

“Now wait a minute. There was a war goin’ on. Justis was supposed to escape if he got a chance. Holt was only doing what everybody else was doing-protecting his family. You can’t blame my relatives for disgracing ol’Nath—you’re named after him?”

“Yeah.”

“Hmmm. This is a real personal thing with you, then, right?”

“I’m not a fanatic about it. I’m just a history buff.”

“Uh-huh,” she answered in a dubious tone.

They reached a small clearing about a dozen yards from the stream. Kat gaped at the large majestic structure that sat there. “A teepee!”

“Let me guess. You saw one once on television.”

“Don’t lecture me,” she said, raising her chin. “I know that the Cherokees lived in little huts. Later on they learned to build cabins and houses.”

“Why, you’ve been reading up a frenzy. You might even learn something.”

She glared mildly at him. Smiling a little, he set her down on a folded blanket beside the circle of rock that held the dead embers from his campfire. Kat was too distracted to pay much attention to anything around her; while he went inside his teepee she stared at the charred wood and mulled over everything he’d told her.

Was she really the great-granddaughter of a murderer? The thought depressed her; she’d been so excited when she finally started studying her Cherokee legacy, and now, to find out that Holt Gallatin had been some awful character who went around calling himself Blue Fox and shooting Chathams, well, it made her remember ugly things her husband had said, things about her being low-class.

“Here. The last of the ice from my cooler.”

Nathan had traded the towel for his khaki hiking shorts, Kat noted thankfully. Lean and bronzed and too sexy for her to feel at ease, he sat down by her feet, holding ice wrapped in something white. The gold stud gleamed at the top of his ear. Wait a minute. It was no ordinary stud, it was a tiny rough nugget, sort of a miniature of the nugget he wore on the chain.

He pushed a hand through his dark brown hair to guide the drying strands into a vague imitation of obedience, then gently pressed the ice pack to her ankle. Kat watched his face in profile, studying the handsome, crooked nose, the provocative mouth, the thick mustache.

What in the world was she doing anywhere
near
this man? One second he made her want to hold him like a long-lost lover; the next he told her that her family was no-good from way back. Considering what he thought of her work and her lack of sophistication, he must figure that she was worthless.

“I wish you could meet my cousins,” she said coolly. “Tess is a diamond broker. She lives on a sailboat. She graduated from college and she has an English accent. Her mother was an Olympic skier from Sweden.”

Nathan looked at her with one brow arched, as if she’d lost a few marbles. “That’s nice.”

“And my cousin Erica owns her own construction company up in Washington. She was born in
Boston.
”

“Uh-huh.” He turned his attention back to her ankle, patting the ice bag more firmly into place and then cupping his hands around it.

Kat frowned at his lack of response. “So why’d Tri-State send you here if you don’t like us Gallatins?”

“Because I’m their best gunslinger. Who said I don’t like Gallatins? I just take a lot of pride in my family and I wanted to meet Holt Gallatin’s descendants.”

“Now wait a minute. Erica’s great-granddaddy was Ross Gallatin: Tess’s was Silas Gallatin. Ol’ Justis and Katherine had three sons. I’m the only one related directly to Holt.”

He sighed dramatically. “You’ve got my sympathy.”

Kat jerked her foot away. The ice pack fell off and unrolled before he could catch it. She gazed at it in consternation. It was made from a pair of white briefs.
His underwear
.

“I don’t let many woman wear my underwear on their feet,” he quipped. “Don’t pass up the thrill of a lifetime.”

“Look, sweetcakes, you and me don’t do so well together. I’m going back to my own camp.”

“Nope. You can’t walk.” He deftly grabbed her big toe. “Stretch that leg out again.”

“Let go of my toe!”

“Did anyone ever tell you that you’re moody?”

“I don’t know what kind of revenge you want to take on us Gallatins, but you can’t bully me.”

He looked at her through half-shut, guarded eyes. “Revenge? What makes you think I’m not simply doing my job for Tri-State?”

“Oh, sure, you hate my family, so you just happen to wrangle an assignment to do tests on our land.” She shook a finger at him. “You’ll go to your boss and tell him that there’s no gold here. Well, me and my cousins think there is, okay? Lots of it. We’ve got medallions that were probably made from gold that came from here. I showed mine to somebody who makes jewelry and he said it was the highest-quality gold he’d ever seen.”

Nathan stroked his mustache and smiled at her patiently. “I thought you weren’t interested in leasing the land to be mined.”

“Well, we probably won’t. But don’t you lie about what you find!”

His smile hardened. “I wouldn’t do that. We already suspect that there’s industrial-grade gold here. If there’s something better, I’ll find it and write an honest report.”

“Good!”

This didn’t make any sense, which was an indication of how much Nathan Chatham rattled her mind. She didn’t want to see this land torn up by a mining company, but she was hotly accusing him of intending to ruin a mining deal.

“Let go of my toe,” she ordered.

“Nope.” He curved his fingers toward her instep. “Ticklish?”

When he smiled wider, she knew he’d read the answer on her face. “I don’t know whether you’re a devil or a saint, you pierced-ear white savage,” she said lethally. “But don’t you mess with me.”

“You sit still, you wild-eyed Kat Woman, and let this ice do some good on your ankle. You may not like
my company, but you don’t want to risk making your ankle any worse. Right?”

She gritted her teeth. “Right.”

“Good. Now I’ll make breakfast, and you behave.”

Smiling benignly, he released her toe and began stirring the embers of his campfire. Suddenly he reached over and smeared a handful of cold ashes on her scratched shins.

She yelped. “What are you doing?”

“Savage medicine,” Nathan said solemnly. He scooped up more ashes and held them out to her. “Want to do your thighs without my help?”

Kat sighed with defeat and put her hands out for the ashes. “My thighs don’t need your help.”

“Think of me as a doctor.”

“A witch doctor.”

He poured the ashes into her cupped palms. “We’re doing a good job of carrying on the Chatham-Gallatin feud. It ought to make you feel proud.”

“You bet.” Kat’s determination flared, and she suddenly felt protective of her family history, no matter how many lawless Blue Foxes it contained.
No Chatham was going to have the last victory
.

S
HE WOKE UP
to the feel of a hand stroking her hair. It dawned on her slowly that the hand belonged to Nathan, but she didn’t open her eyes or rebuke him. Instead she curled cozily on her side and pretended to snooze for another second.

Kat refused to consider that she’d fallen asleep as soon as she lay down on the air mattress he’d put beside his campfire for her, or that she’d smiled groggily when he’d covered her in one of his blankets as protection against the cool morning. She was injured, scratched, and emotionally exhausted; she was also wonderfully stuffed from breakfast. She deserved to be helpless for a little while.

But if this was the way he intended to fight the feud, she’d already lost.

He kept stroking her hair, cupping his hand over the top of her forehead and drawing it slowly downward. Kat felt him lift her hair and knew that he was smoothing it out behind her. Then he returned to caressing it.

She was glad he didn’t know that he was petting a woman who relaxed like a boneless chicken whenever anyone fiddled with her hair.

Kat supposed that the weight of it made her scalp more sensitive than most people’s, more receptive to touch. At any rate, the few times she’d had her hair done in salons she’d dozed blissfully through the wash, trim, and blow-dry, much to the amusement of the stylists.

“Wake up, Kat Woman,” he said softly.

Kat sighed and yawned. “I can’t. I was drugged with fried trout and biscuits covered in gravy.”

“I think you ought to go put your foot in the stream. Cold running water would do it good.”

“I can’t think of anything I’d like better than to stick my foot in ice water. Go away.”

“Kat, it’s for your own good.”

Suddenly she had no blanket. Suddenly two brawny hands were under her arms, helping her sit up. Her hair fell across her face and got sucked into her mouth when she inhaled. She sputtered and pawed at it.

Nathan Chatham’s low chuckle only added to her problems. If he combined that rumbling sound with a scalp massage, she’d probably just dissolve into his arms like melted butter.

“Here. Let me.” He pushed her hair aside and cupped her face between his hands.

The feel of his calloused fingers and palms made her eyes open wide, banishing sleep. He gazed down at her with quiet, intense scrutiny. “Where’d you get those green eyes?”

“I guess from my great-great-grandpa. He was the only white man in my branch of the family. I’ve heard that my father had green eyes.”

“Didn’t you know your father?”

“Nope. He and my mother were killed in a train wreck during a circus tour. I was only four. I was adopted by the Flying Campanellis.”

“The what?”

“The Flying Campanellis. Italian trapeze artists.”

He groaned. “No wonder you don’t know anything about your Cherokee background. You’re Italian.”

She grinned. “
Si. Capisce?
”

Nathan looked at her sadly. “I apologize for making fun of your cultural ignorance.”

“Thank you,” she murmured softly.

“
Wado
,” he answered.

“Hmmm? Wad what?”

“It means ‘thank you’ in Cherokee. Say it.”

“
Wado.
”

“Now say this.” He reeled off a short, musical sentence.

She echoed it carefully. “What did I say?”

He smiled. “Something on a par with ‘You’re the best-looking man I’ve ever seen.’ ”

Kat’s lips parted in a soft sigh, and his gaze dropped to them. She couldn’t think straight yet, and he was taking advantage. “I was duped. I meant to say, ‘Which way to the stream?’ ”

He helped her to her feet, then scooped her into his arms again. Kat was very aware of his forearm nestling under her bare thighs. Her T-shirt had ridden up on her stomach to show her pelvis covered in a clingy black swimsuit cut high on the sides.

At the risk of revealing her dismay, she tugged the bottom of her T-shirt down as far as it would go.

He pursed his lips coyly. “An attack of modesty. Princess Talana?”

“You were looking at my thighs like Colonel Sanders eyeing a chicken dinner.”

“Make that a Cajun dinner. You’re covered in so much soot that you look like a blackened redfish.” He paused. “A blackened redskin, I mean.”

She chortled and covered her lips, disgusted with
his easy control over her humor. “You carry squaw to water,” she ordered.

Nathan headed toward the stream a few yards away. “Don’t use words like that. ‘Squaw’ is insulting. Back in the old days Cherokee women were a powerful force in the tribe. They had complete control over the children and the households. They had a say on the councils. A Beloved Woman could free prisoners taken in battle. All she had to do was step forward and touch them with a swan feather.”

“What’s a Beloved Woman?”

“Someone special, someone the tribe respected. A wise counselor.”