Whisper In The Dark (The McKinnon Legends-- The American Men Book One) (31 page)

It was his turn to feel the fires inside burn, and as he squeezed her arms Kate knew she was dancing around his boundaries. He narrowed his eyes at her, gritting his teeth. She could see him working the pronounced muscles of his chiseled jaw line. He reminded Kate of a tiger pulling its lips back over deadly white fangs.

“Or so you thought. Turns out you had plenty of help, now didn’t you, Kate? Maybe you would not have managed as well if it had not been for me bailing your ass out through the years,” he tossed out sarcastically.

Now, she was mad.

She knocked his hands away.

“Yeah, Robert, you are right as usual. I might be sitting in Sing-Sing right now had you not so unselfishly donated to the
Poor Pathetic Kate Legal Fund
. I believe I have already said thank you for that, but I will live to fight another day. Sometimes one has to run away to be able to fight in the long run. So, I’ve chosen to pick my battles. And do you know why?”

“Enlighten me, Katherine,” he said with a dramatic bow.

“Don’t be an ass, Robert.” She took a cleansing breath and let her anger go. It served no purpose except to use up what little energy she had left. “I have to pick my fights because I have no other choice. I’ve only so much energy and even fewer resources. If your intent was to make me angry, sorry, I’m past that point. I have little remaining to fight with and not much more to fight for with what I do have left.”

He instantly felt like the ass she was accusing him to be.

He was wondering if she was about to walk away. He felt she could without so much as a backward glance, leaving everything behind, including him. He saw the airplane tickets. Would she feel she would be better off wiping the slate clean and starting completely over? He knew a clean start would not be in Texas. Would he be willing to let her walk away, or could he walk away from his life here and follow her?

He followed as she turned again back to the camp. “How can you say there is nothing worth fighting for here? There is still plenty to fight for. What about us? We have only just begun to do battle, as you put it.”

Stopping half way to the fire she turned.

“Now who is delusional? Is this stupid treasure so important you would place your life on hold for it?”

Katherine could not believe a man like Robert would continue to search with as many dead ends as they had encountered. It was futile and a gross waste of his time which definitely was more valuable than hers would ever be.

“Haven’t I done that already?” he asked frustrated, spreading his arms wide looking around indicating he was in the middle of nowhere, in the middle of the night, when he could have been and probably should have been elsewhere.

“Robert, you have a thriving business to run and clients to take care of, and I have bills to pay. I don’t have the monetary resources to fall back on for an indefinite search like you do. I have to face reality here, and the reality is I do not have the luxury of chasing some cockamamie bedtime story in some grossly misguided hope of finding a way to bail myself out of the mess my life has become.”

They stood there on the fringes of the firelight. He thought for a moment. Perhaps another tactic was the way to handle this deadlock with her.

“If money wasn’t an object, would you still walk?” If she said no, then he had a fighting chance.

“Yes, I would, Robert,” she answered without hesitation.

His heart sank.

“My daddy didn’t raise a fool, Robert, neither did yours. That being the case, will you please tell me what your reasons are to continue waging battle in a war so obviously lost?”

Surely, somewhere there has to be some code a warrior lives by telling him when to fish and when it's time to cut bait, she thought.

He took the two steps forward that separated them and towered over her. He was thinking. Kate could see it in his face even though it had been a rhetorical question not really requiring an answer.

Could he really honestly be searching his heart and mind for the real reason he was in this mess? He had been forced to marry her to save his interests in the ranch. That she could understand. Still, it had to hurt for a professed bachelor to find himself tied to a wife he really did not love or need. It especially had to be tough being saddled with a wife when he had a girlfriend with whom he obviously cared for enough to share a child. He did not need her any longer to continue the search. She had exhausted all her knowledge of the code book, and wife or not, she had conceded the loss. Even if she had not relinquished control, the thirty days were up. The contract was legally binding to them both, leaving the Golden Circle to him regardless of the prenuptial agreement. She had lost it fair and square, gambling and losing.

“Why do I continue and what is driving me forward?”

He acknowledged he had asked himself those same questions several times over the last few days.

“I think I can safely say it has not been my shining personality,” she tossed in for good measure.

He laughed at the irony.

“No, under normal circumstance having a woman threaten to drive a nail into my skull would not endear me to her cause.”

“No, I would imagine not. So, may I ask what is the conclusion you have come to?” she asked never taking her eyes off him.

She felt the shift between them.

She may be a coward in some ways, but she would not back away from this fight. Inwardly, she sensed the spoils of this struggle between them would be worth any wounds she sustained. If she was walking away, then why not walk away with a small piece of a different kind of booty?

She watched as his eyes settled on her mouth and then back to her eyes. “You may find the truth hard to believe, love.”

“And what truth would that be exactly?” she asked circling him again one last time.

He deliberately reached out pulling her hard against him. Locking her into an unbreakable hold, he noticed she was not trying to break free this round.

Time suspended as they faced off.

His look should have alarmed her. It only served to disarm her defenses further.

“This hunt is important to you,” he stated flatly.

“Yes, it is,” she acknowledged. “You, better than anyone, know what I stand to gain and what I have already lost.”

He, too, stood to lose something valuable. It was not land or money, but her. He knew he was in love with this woman. His heart and mind were in harmony in his decision to marry her. Yet, she had never once let him close enough to know her true heart. Maybe it was time he followed Chase’s advice of grabbing that bridle and hanging on for the ride.

“That was not a question, Kate. It is an observation. This hunt is important to you, and what is important to you is important to me,” he said brushing the hair away from her face. It was a gesture she desperately wanted to lean into, to melt into him for safe keeping like a battered and wounded ship limps into a safe harbor.

He went in for a kiss as she turned her face away.

“Robert, don’t, please. It will only make it harder to leave when the time comes.”

Even as the words came out, she knew she did not mean them. It was already going to be hard. He represented comfort and safety, friendship and family, the things she needed but had not had for many years.

“Don’t look away, Kate. Look at me.” He waited for her to face him again. “We are a team. So that one thing alone, baby, is reason enough not to give up the good fight. However, there are two even more compelling reasons.”

“Such as?” Did she really want to know?

“First, you are my wife, Kate. You are flesh of my flesh and blood of my blood. You are a McKinnon now. I admit it started out as a necessity, but now…”

“That was one, Robert. You said two.”

He paused, debating, knowing the next words out of his mouth would change his world forever.

“I’m in love with you.”

He waited for her reaction to his admission.

She blinked in surprise, speechless from his confession. Did she feel the same? Maybe. She had not dared to let her heart go because Robert was out of reach and there were so many things standing between them. Candice and a baby were just two. Yet, he was sincere. She felt it and sensed it at a rudimentary level. Maybe he did love her.

“What about Candice?” she asked knowing she was a topic of epic proportions standing between them.

“What about her?” he shrugged. He would take care of his child. The mother was on her own.

“I will not share you, cowboy.”

“Katherine, I do not love her, not like I love you and never have. And I’m not convinced she is even actually pregnant or the child is even mine.”

“And if she is pregnant and the baby is yours? What then?”

“Then we face it together. Just like we will face everything else.”

He waited. He could see her weighing her options.

“Come on, what do you say, Kate. Do we fold, sign the annulment papers, and call it quits? Or do we play this hand together to the bloody end, whatever that bloody ending might be?”

His heart pounded rapidly, wildly, knowing he might actually have to let her go. It would be the hardest thing he would ever have to do, but he would not hold her. He wanted a wife who was willing and chose to stay, not a wife who stayed because she had no other alternative. The treasure was her alternative, it would give her choices. If they found what they were looking for and she stayed, then she would stay forever. If they found it and she left? Well, that was an ending he would not entertain unless faced with that terrible truth.

She wondered what the next move should be. Her good sense was telling her to fold and walk away. If Candice were carrying Robert’s child, there would be a tie to her for years to come, and she was not sure she was up to that challenge. Having to deal with Candi wielding such heavy leverage over Robert was a daunting proposition.

However, as much as she felt she might be able to love him for the rest of her life, she was not sure he was worth the trauma of dealing with Candice. Leaving now would hurt, but she would survive. If she stayed her heart would be lost, yet Robert was right on one major point: Brandenburgs usually fought to the bloody end. And she was a Brandenburg to her core.

“What’s it going to be, play and continue the hunt or fold and walk away?” he asked again softly, his heart beseeching hers, willing her to answer the way he wanted.

“Play. Now, shut up and kiss me.”

He breathed a sigh of relief and did way more than kiss her.

“Something about the cache we found bothers me,” she said, turning in his arms to face him and propping herself up on her elbow.

It was nearing dawn and they had slept together for the first time since Tahoe. Not exactly a romantic setting, but neither seemed to mind.

“Don’t you ever sleep?” he asked through the fog of waking.

“Not much, no. Get used to it,” she said as he pulled her in for a good morning kiss. “I know the mother lode Thaddeus buried is out here somewhere. I can almost taste it,” she said as she got up and began making coffee while he dressed. “Do you think the things we found yesterday have anything to do with the James boys when they came in the spring of 1878?”

“I doubt it. The records were sketchy, but whatever they came in with that spring was a lot more than what this small box would hold,” he said holding up the box giving it a small shake.

“What do you think was actually in there? There has to be more than just this one stash. Maybe this was to throw whoever was looking for the mother lode off the scent,” she asked as he closed the small strongbox.

He would take it back to the ranch and dissect it more thoroughly. He wanted to be sure he was not overlooking something. The markings on the oil skin wrapping were somehow familiar. He just could not put his finger on them, at least not before he had one cup of coffee to get his brain defogged. Flipping it over front and back, he was amazed at its condition. After a hundred and thirty years it was still useable which was suspect in his mind. Even wrapped in the oilskin this part of Texas was not arid, so there should have been more deterioration. It had been freshly placed, sometime very recently, he guessed. The sod over it was freshly turned and the growth very newly formed. He was sure she had not noticed that clue of the freshly disturbed soil. When he had pushed the spade into the ground, her attention had been on the horses.

“But why bother to rebury it once it was cleaned out? Let’s face it. Whoever stashed this would never have bothered in the first place if all that was originally here was this junk,” she said picking up one of the few ragtag items that had been found inside the box. “Maybe it was a kid who put it here? You know what I mean, sacred mementos, a treasure to only the person hiding them. Perhaps Kyle buried it as a kid?”

Or maybe not as a kid? It was the same question he had rolling through his mind.

Maybe this was the clue and not the stash, he thought as he looked at the brand embossed on the front the skin.

Then Robert realized what it meant. “I’ve got it, Kate! I know what we are looking for now.”

“Good,” the voice startled them both. Robert and Kate both turned at the sound of the familiar voice. “You can take me to it.”

What choice did Robert have looking down the barrel of a gun?

“Lyles?” Robert could not believe he was standing there with a gun pointed at them.

“You bastard, you killed my brother,” Kate was going after him with talons flared. It did not seem to matter or register with her he was holding a gun on them. Robert grabbed her, pulling her back.

“Let me go, Robert! Let me go!” She fought still screaming and kicking out at Mr. Lyles.

Fighting hard to restrain her, he swung her around, and away from the man she believed was responsible for Kyle’s death. In Robert’s mind it did not add up that Mr. Lyles was Kyle’s killer.

“No! Let me go, Robert! I’ll kill you! You bastard! You killed my brother!” she screamed, fighting Robert to no advantage.

“No, Katherine. I did not have a hand in Kyle’s death,” Mr. Lyles reassured her to no avail. She was still fighting.