Forbidden Ground (Cold Creek #2)(60)

Kate’s mind raced. Kaitlyn even had a similar first name and echoed Kate’s primary goal. She took the box from her, put it on the entry-hall table and opened the lid carefully. The Beastmaster mask she’d made so long ago glared up at her despite its empty eye sockets. Its stag antlers she’d worked so hard to find were intact. The mica-chip skin glittered despite the dimness of the hall. As glad as she was to have it back, the thing unsettled her, and she put the lid back on quickly.

“I know you’re busy,” Kaitlyn said, “but I was just wondering if I could see the Adena mound that Professor Cantrell said is on this property, maybe just the entrance to it, even.”

Right, Kate thought. Carson must have told her to say that. Or did he? When she was Kaitlyn’s age, she was so eager to make discoveries, to prove things, to take steps to make a name for herself in the well-trodden field of archaeology—just like now.

“You can see it really well from this picture window back here, but I can’t take you out closer. When I get the chance to excavate it, I’ll remember to ask for you on the dig crew, if you’re available,” Kate said as they stared in silence, almost a mutual reverence, at the mound.

Kaitlyn sighed and gazed through the glass. Even if this woman had been sent here as Carson’s spy—or if she was a new-tread replacement for the eager ingenue Kate had once been—she understood this girl’s aspirations and ambitions.

They spoke awhile longer. Kate offered her a glass of iced tea, which she turned down, and then she showed her out. And when Kate returned to the living room with the box in her arms, she gasped to see Grant, leaning in the hallway, arms crossed over his chest, frowning at her. Somehow, instantly, she knew he’d been there for a long time, had seen and heard her with Kaitlyn.

“She looks like—acts like—your clone, doesn’t she?” he asked, his voice hard.

“You should have said something. I would have introduced you.” She felt like a kid who had been caught with someone else’s property in her hands.

“I’ll leave her to Professor Carson Cantrell, who obviously likes auburn-haired, green-eyed beauties as his assistants. Since you told her you’ll have her back on a dig crew and that’s not likely to happen, I’ll probably never get to meet her. But it’s interesting to hear you have plans for a dig here.”

“I didn’t mean it that way. I wanted to encourage her. She just brought back the Beastmaster mask I made. Carson had her copy mine so he’d have hers to show his classes.”

If it was possible, Grant looked even angrier. His square jaw set hard. The furrow between his brows deepened.

“Would you like to see the mask?” she asked.

“The drawing you had was bad enough. That nightmare I had, remember? If you have to keep it around here, hide it from me—I mean, just keep it in your room. I don’t see why you needed it here.”

He strode past her and went into the kitchen, where she heard him slam a cupboard, then pull back his chair and sit down hard. She went into her bedroom and put the box under her bed, then went into the kitchen and started to ladle out the three-cheese macaroni she’d made from scratch because he’d mentioned that he’d loved it as a kid. She put his plate down next to the tossed salad and the zucchini bread, put her own plate down a bit too hard.

“I’m sorry if I upset you,” she said, grabbing her fork in her right hand, ready to stab it into the salad.

How many meals had she seen in her childhood that had started like this between her parents before Dad left them? Hostile silence at the meal, unspoken bad feelings, banging tableware, stomping out. But her father hadn’t loved her mother then, she was sure of that, or he would have broken the dreadful silence, reached out to her.

Tears sprang to her eyes as Grant reached across the table, loosened her fingers from her fork. He held her hand, silent for a while. Even if their meal was getting cold, she knew something important was coming. He was probably going to ask her to leave. To go back to Tess’s house, get far away from his mound and stay away. He was going to desert her.

“Sorry, sweetheart,” he said, his deep voice catching. “It’s just so much has happened lately that I’m a mess, and I don’t mean to take it out on you. The meal looks great. Comfort food—and your company—is exactly what I need to keep myself sane going through all this.”

Passion and trust and messed-up parents and danger aside, that was, Kate knew, the exact moment when she realized that Grant really did care for her. And that she loved him.





19

After dinner, Kate and Grant drove to Columbus to visit Todd and Amber at the hospital. They’d thought about taking Jason, but Amber said Todd looked pretty bad, and they’d better wait on that.

They drove along the Olentangy River, which ran through the sprawling Ohio State campus near the cluster of large hospital buildings. “This area must be really familiar to you after the years you spent here,” Grant said. “I thought about going to OSU, but opted for the smaller Ohio U.”

“A lot of good times here, a lot of hard work, dreams and hopes,” she said as her gaze drifted from the distant, huge football stadium to the tall main library building.

“Was Carson Cantrell your favorite prof?”

“I must admit he was. Still is, I guess.”