Not realizing she’d closed her eyes, Kit was surprised to see him standing beside her, holding out a small tin. “What’s that?”
“Salve.”
“For what?”
He glanced around as if assuring their privacy, and then leaned closer to whisper, “For the saddle sore on your rump.”
“My r—” She swallowed the rest of the word, aghast.
“Yes, your rump.” Though he looked as if he was about to burst out laughing, he didn’t. “Saddle sores are a common ailment, and nothing to be embarrassed about.” His expression turned serious. “They’re also nothing to mess with. Especially once the boil forms.”
The intense heat of mortification covered her face. “I do not have a boil,” she insisted.
“Maybe not yet, but you will by the time we get to Black Hawk if you don’t take care of it.” He took her hand and laid the tin in her palm. “Go behind the trees and rub some on.”
Right now, she was willing to try most anything. The pain had become unbearable. “Will it hurt?” she asked.
“Yes.”
She snapped her head up. The laughter was gone from his eyes. Sincerity and honesty shone there instead. A large lump formed in her throat. “Yes?”
He nodded. “At first it’s going to sting like h—really sting, but within a few minutes it’ll ease up and soon the spot will be numb. You won’t feel a thing the rest of the way to town. At which point you’ll want to have Doc look at it. He may need to lance it.”
Her insides shook. “Lance it?”
Again there was nothing but truthfulness in Clay’s gaze. That and compassion. “Go on,” he insisted, turning her about by grasping her shoulders. “Andrew and I will wait here.”
Kit wished she had an alternative. Well, she did, but the thought of a boil wasn’t much of a choice, and she honestly didn’t think she could climb back on Andrew the way her backside stung—as if she’d backed up against a cook-stove. “You won’t peek?”
Clay fought the urge to laugh. It wasn’t funny. Her backside had to be stinging as if she’d sat on a hornets’ nest. He doubted there was a person alive who hadn’t ended up with a saddle sore at one point in his or her life. Including him. But she looked so darn cute. “No,” he assured her. “Neither Andrew nor I will peek.” The flicker of annoyance dancing in her coffee-colored eyes had a grin tickling the edges of his lips. He winked. “Yell if you need help, though.”
The chuckle that her glare ensued died as Clay watched her gingerly pick a path behind the trees. She was in serious pain. He walked to Andrew, keeping his eyes focused on the scrap of snow clinging to the farthest mountain peak. “The balm will help,” he told the horse, fighting the urge to turn about and see if anything was visible between the aspens behind which Katherine Ackerman from Boston, Massachusetts, had taken refuge.
Clay tossed his head with a touch of frustration. He really had to stop calling her that. She gave him one of her little looks every time it rolled off his tongue. Maybe that’s why he did it. He certainly didn’t like her. She was as annoying as bedbugs.
A tiny screech had him spinning about. “Are you all right?” he called.
“Yes,” she answered, sounding somewhat winded with pain.
“Give it a minute,” he shouted. “It’ll ease.”
“It’d better!”
Smiling, he reached down to tighten the saddle cinch strap he’d loosened when they stopped to eat. She had grit, he had to give her that. All in all, she was quite remarkable. Katherine Ackerman from Boston, Massachusetts. Once again, he chided himself. “Katherine” just didn’t fit her. It seemed too formal for someone so youthful and charming. Maybe she went by Kathy.
Leading Andrew to the blankets, he proceeded to fold them into a neat pad for Kathy to sit on. Nope. Kathy didn’t fit her, either. He turned toward the woods, where she was tenderly stepping from between the trees. Now dry, her hair had turned straw colored and hung in spirals around her shoulders, while the ends bounced near her elbows.
It was all he could do to stop staring. Spinning around, he laid the bedroll behind the saddle. As soon as he got Miss Katherine Ackerman from Boston, Massachusetts, back to Black Hawk, he’d see she got on the next train heading east, and he’d never think about her again.
“Thank you.” She handed him the tin. “You were right. It stung like the dickens at first, but now I can’t feel a thing.” Her eyes twinkled as brightly as specks of gold in a creek bed as she leaned a bit closer and whispered, “I can’t thank you enough for that.”
His throat thickened, and for a moment Clay thought about something he hadn’t contemplated in years: kissing. Her lips seemed to have been made just for that purpose.
He managed to mumble, “You’re welcome,” as he took the tin and stuck it back in the saddlebag.
Once he’d climbed into the saddle, he held one stirrup on top of his boot for her to use as he took her hand. After she’d settled onto the blankets, he asked, “You set?”
She grasped the saddle with both hands near his hips before answering, “Yes, thank you.”
He clicked his tongue, setting Andrew moving, and held his breath at the way his skin near her hands tingled. He’d have been better off riding all the way back to Black Hawk smelling the foul kid Henry. “What was in that pouch, anyway?”
The tinkle of her soft giggle tickled his neck. “A dead fish.”
“Really?”
“Well, parts of one, anyway. I’d stuck it in there.”
“Why?”
“In case someone caught me tailing Mr. Edwards. I figured the smell would keep them at bay.”
Clay had almost forgotten that part—that she was looking for Sam. “All this just to meet a miner?”
“I’ve always wanted to meet a miner.”
I’m a miner, Clay had an unusual urge to say, but of course didn’t. He’d asked Sam yesterday if he knew a young woman from Boston, but the boy had had no idea what he was talking about. So Clay had decided there was no reason for the two of them to meet, and all the more reason for him to send her back to Boston as soon as possible.
He glanced heavenward, as if Oscar could see him. Why me? he asked. Why didn’t you leave someone else in charge of your will and your wayward grandson?
Chapter Three
Clay was still asking the same question the next evening when he sat across the fire pit from Sam outside a small cave not far from the Wanda Lou, the gold mine owned by the two of them and Oscar’s other grandchild, a young girl named Kit who lived in Chicago. It had started out simple enough. Nine years ago, he and Oscar had agreed to continue the partnership his father, Walt, and Oscar had formed years before. That joint venture had been for the Wanda Lou when she was little more than a hole in the side of Clear Creek Mountain—named for the creek that split to flow both eastward and westward off the mountaintop, and carried specks of gold all the way down on both sides.
Staring into the light of the fire, watching the flames spout sparks into the air, Clay was more than a touch reflective, given all that had happened lately. And there was a wall of frustration in his head due to the fact he couldn’t get a set of big brown eyes out of his mind.
She was in more places than his mind. That woman had gotten right under his skin. “So,” he asked, “you’ve never heard of Katherine Ackerman?”
Sam let out a sigh. “I already told you, no. And I ain’t got no