Rainbow Fire Page 21

  Kelsey glared. "It's the only game in town."

  "No one ever said this would be fun."

  Kelsey shoved her hat back on her head and forced herself to count to ten. None of what was bothering her was Dillon's fault, although most of it had to do with him.

  "I'm sorry," she said, her voice as taut as her nerves. "It must be a hundred and twenty degrees out here, the flies are as thick as the dust, and the only opal I've seen in four days of hard work is hanging around your neck. Maybe I wasn't cut out for opal mining."

  "No, you're a sane, intelligent woman."

  "I'm not quitting, though." Kelsey's chin jutted at an angle that was all too familiar to Dillon. "So don't even ask."

  "I wasn't going to ask." He looked at the dust- and sweat-covered creature before him and felt his admiration grow. Soon there would be no more room for admiration or any of the other emotions she stirred. He was dangerously close to exploding. He hoisted himself over the side of the shaft and unhooked the harness that had slung him from the winch. "When was the last time you got something to drink?"

  Kelsey wiped her watch against her shirt and peered at it. "Too long."

  "Let's take a break."

  "I can keep going."

  "I can't." Dillon was careful not to brush Kelsey as he passed her. He headed for the small screen tent that he had set up beside the space where he parked his ute. The tent was the talk of the pub and had almost usurped Serge's deceit as a conversation topic. The general consensus was that Dillon was in love. Why else would he be wasting his time making Kelsey comfortable when there was opal to be found? Dillon suspected that only rarely in Coober Pedy's history had so many of its citizens been in agreement.

  Kelsey trailed behind him. She eyed the small tent with gratitude. Inside its mesh walls was freedom from flies and the worst of the sun. She watched Dillon stop beside the door. They had established a ritual. Before he entered he brushed away any flies on his shirt and pants; then he did the same for her.

  For the last four days it had been the only time each day they touched each other.

  Kelsey stopped closer to Dillon and methodically dusted his shoulders, chest and back with her hands, trying not to think about what she was doing. He did the same for her, brushing his hands lightly across her shoulders and breasts before she turned so he could swipe her back. Then he unzipped the tent flap and stepped inside, quickly making room for her to do the same. Kelsey zipped the screen behind her. "Did we get them all?" she asked, trying not to act as if his touch had affected her.

  He muttered something without looking at her.

  Kelsey shrugged, then turned to continue the ritual by running some water from the big plastic cooler into a metal basin.

  She washed her hands, emptied the water into a pail, then washed her face and neck. She could feel her skin grow cooler by several degrees, although the water was almost as hot as the air. She emptied the basin again and filled it for Dillon.

  As he washed, she filled two glasses from the second cooler. This one was colder, because she had packed it with ice that morning at the dugout. When Dillon was finished washing she handed him a glass and gratefully took her seat on one of the two deck chairs.

  In the last four days Kelsey had worked side by side with Dillon, following his orders. She had hauled and bent and scooped as Dillon drilled the new shaft on the edge of the Rainbow Fire closest to Serge’s mine. Although she and Dillon had worked side by side, they might as well have been hemispheres apart. He conscientiously taught her what she needed to know, but what conversations they had centered on mining alone. They were careful to steer clear of anything more intimate, and they worked such long hours that there wasn’t time for anything more intimate, anyway.

  Which was just as well, Kelsey reminded herself one hundred times a day.

  Now, between sips of water, she searched for a carefully neutral topic other than mining. “Do you think we’re close to opal?” she asked finally, defeated.

  Dillon pulled his chair out several inches so he could stretch his legs in front of him without running into Kelsey. “I’ve no way of knowing.”

  “I’m beginning to think an engineering degree isn’t much help out here.”

  “You’re beginning to think like an opal miner.” Dillon twirled his glass in his hands. “Do you know how your father and I picked this spot in the first place?”

  “Surveyed it?”

  “Two years ago Jake went looking for a place to start a new mine. About sundown he got a flat tire, just where our main shaft is sunk. His spare was flat, too, so he spent the night out under the stars and dreamed he found opal. I found him the next morning, and he already had the place pegged out.”

  Kelsey finished her water in silence. Her father and Dillon were crazy, but, worse yet, the story had given her goose bumps.

  Dillon hadn’t expected a response. What could anyone say about two men who had built their lives around a dream? “What did the doctor say about Jake this morning?”

  “The same.” Kelsey set her glass down and closed her eyes. “He’s holding his own, communicating more each day. They’ve asked him about the accident, but he says he doesn’t remember. They haven’t told him about me, yet, but they’re going to soon.” She grimaced unconsciously, giving Dillon all the information he needed about her feelings. “But they’ve been saying that for the last four days.”

  “And you’re tired of waiting.”

  Kelsey knew she was too confused to answer that honestly. She was glad her father was better. She wanted to see Jake— after all, that was why she had come to Australia. But when she left Coober Pedy, she knew she would never see Dillon again. And despite the stiffness and formality of their relationship now, she wasn’t ready for that. “I can wait,” she said carefully. “Especially now that no one has shot at me for a while.”

  “Little things mean a lot.” Dillon stood, stretching. His restraint had its limits, and sitting across from Kelsey tested them sorely. “I’m going back down.”

  Sighing, she opened her eyes. “I’ll get back to work, too.”

  Kelsey knew that Dillon was probably right. After four long days of drilling and examining every bucket of mullock that was brought to the surface, they had finally bottomed on an opal level—which Kelsey had learned meant nothing more than the type of dirt—opal dirt, or kopi, as some called it—where opal was usually found. They hadn’t been lucky. There had been no opal chips or even slices of potch to guide them, only a narrow flint-hard band, then a peculiar pinkish clay stone, a product of the gradual drying up of the inland sea that had once separated Australia from north to south.

  The opal dirt was so unspectacular that Kelsey would have dismissed it immediately. Dillon had known better, although he had been disappointed that the opal dirt showed no signs of the gem itself. There was always the hope that a random shaft would bottom on a seam of opal and take away the necessity of searching. Now he was left with the task of deciding where to start his first drive.

  “Then you’re going to go back down and decide for sure where to tunnel?”

  “I’ll drive in the direction of Serge’s mine. I’m just not certain what angle to take. Missing it by an inch is as bad as missing it by a mile.”

  Kelsey wished that they had been able to come to terms with Serge’s mining partner. The young man had agreed to let them come into the Rainbow Fire from Serge’s drive, but he had demanded a huge percentage of whatever they found. Instead Dillon had decided to sink his own shaft. They hadn’t seen the young man since.

  “We’re doing a lot of work on the basis of what one wretched representative of the human race told you under physical threat.”

  “I’ve heard of stranger reasons for a hit.”

  “Like flat tires and opal dreams?”

  He hunched his shoulders, dismissing her question. “I’m going to go down and pick at the face for a while. I’ll decide where to start tunneling when we come back next week.”

  Kel
sey had avoided looking at him. Most of their conversations for the last four days had been held without their eyes meeting. Now hers flashed to his. “What do you mean, next week?”

  “It’s almost Christmas, Sunset.”

  She was as surprised at the nickname as she was at the sentiment behind his words. He hadn’t used his pet name for her since the morning when they’d awakened in bed together. “So?”

  His eyes didn’t flicker. “We’re taking a holiday.”

  “I don’t want to take a holiday.”

  “No?”

  “Christmas doesn’t mean anything to me.”

  “It means something to me. It means we don’t work.”

  “Fine. Don’t work. I’ll come out here by myself.”

  “And do what?”

  “Shovel the damn tunnel alone if I have to.”

  “No you won’t.”

  Kelsey knew it was childish to pretend otherwise. “Why are you doing this? There might be thousands of dollars worth of opals down there just waiting for you to dig them out tomorrow.”

  “If they’re there, they’ve been there millions of years. They can wait another day or two. Christmas doesn’t wait.”

  “How long do you intend to stop mining, then?”

  “Tomorrow’s Christmas Eve. I usually take a week or two.” He went on when he saw the disbelief on her face. “But we’ll come back the day after Christmas, since it obviously means so much to you not to spend the holiday with me.”

  “This doesn’t have anything to do with—“

  He waved off her protest. “Anna and Gero always have a Christmas Eve party at their dugout. Father Christmas comes for the children. We’re both invited.”

  Kelsey knew about the party. Anna had mentioned it the last time she had seen her. “I told her we’d be working up until dark tomorrow.”

  “And I told her we’d be at the party. We will be.”

  Kelsey watched him unzip the door and step outside. As if they’d known he was about to leave, a dozen flies swooped in.

  Christmas Eve. Christmas with heat and flies and dust instead of snow and holly. Christmas in a strange country as far from home as she could possibly be and still be on the same planet.

  Christmas with Dillon.

  Kelsey washed their glasses, then emptied the pail of wash water. Despite the fact it was summer here, she had known Christmas was coming. The inevitable signs had been there. The decorations in the stores in town, Christmas carols on Anna’s tape recorder, the jingle bells that decorated Melanie’s red taffeta petticoat when she tended bar at the pub. There had been a certain Christmas spirit in evidence, too. Extra-wide smiles, an influx of backslaps, handshakes and party invitations.

  Christmas with Dillon.

  Christmas had never been a good time for Kelsey. It was a time for family love and shared memories. As a child she had watched Christmas from her place outside that warm circle and wondered why people who didn’t really want her felt so obligated to pretend they did on this one day of the year. She had always received the regulation doll, the new dress, the orange and the chocolate Santa in her Christmas stocking, but she never received the love that went with them.

  As an adult she had never tried to find that love for herself. Christmas was an inconvenience, a time when the dojo was closed, her students were on vacation, and she had twenty-four hours to kill.

  Christmas with Dillon. As Kelsey listened to the power winch drop him back down the shaft she tried not to dwell on the ways this Christmas might be different. She would get through it, one hour at a time, just as she had gotten through all the others. Perhaps, if she were lucky, Dillon would do the same.

  But then she had learned one thing in four straight back-breaking days of opal mining. Luck was a very relative thing.

  * * *

  SHE AWOKE ON Christmas Eve morning with the sensation that something was wrong. The sensation was one she had learned to trust. So many things had gone wrong in Coober Pedy that her survival instincts were now honed to perfection. It was true that in the days since Serge had been aggressively escorted out of town there had been no more gunshots, no death adders, no explosions. Life had settled down to the rhythm of mining and avoiding intimacy with Dillon.

  Now something felt strangely different. Her bed vibrated.

  "Jumbuck." Kelsey sat up and sleepily stretched out her arms. Jumbuck climbed onto her lap, purring nonstop as he did. "To what do I owe this honor?"

  "He missed you." Dillon stood in the doorway and forced himself not to add more. He had missed Kelsey, too. He'd been awake for hours, and he couldn't remember a time in his life when he had felt lonelier.

  Kelsey pushed her hair off her face. "He's turning into an indoor cat. Next thing you know he'll start sleeping on your bed."

  "I could adjust."

  "What time is it?"

  "Ten."

  She couldn't believe she had slept so late. "You should have gotten me up sooner."

  "Why? You've got the day off."

  She yawned and stretched, trying to clear her head and re-erect her defenses. "Then you still intend to ignore the fact that we're almost on opal?"

  "Don't be optimistic, Sunset. Even if Serge were telling the truth, the opal could have stopped at his boundary. We may find no more than a chip or two."

  Kelsey could see that Dillon's mind was made up. "Then what are we supposed to do today if we're not going to work?"

  None of the things he really wanted to do, that was for certain. Kelsey wanted none of the intimacy that Dillon craved, and he couldn't blame her. Not for the first time, he wished he could be a different man for her, one who could offer her the roots, the stability, the life, that she needed. He could only offer the love. And love wouldn't be enough.

  "Would you like to spend the day with me?" he asked, continuing before she could refuse. "I know what you're afraid of, Sunset. But we were friends before we almost became lovers. Can't we be friends again?"

  How could she refuse without giving away her deepest fear? She didn't know if she had the control to remain friends. She was perilously close to asking him for more. No, she was perilously close to begging him for more. She was fast sinking into the state Melanie had warned her about.

  She swallowed and cursed her sleep-numbed brain. If there was an answer other than yes, she couldn't think of it without at least one cup of coffee and a shower. She did the best she could. "We're already friends. I don't know what you mean." She buried her face in Jumbuck's fur, muffling the last words.

  In a moment she felt a tentative hand on her hair. She met Dillon's eyes. "We've both been working until we dropped. We're avoiding the truth. We're afraid to be close, to even have a real conversation, because we're afraid it's going to lead to more. Can we put that behind us today? Can we give each other a real Christmas?"

  Everything inside Kelsey seemed to melt and run together. Four days of ignoring her feelings, four days of trying to ignore him, seemed to disappear. Her fingers were linked in his before she even knew she had moved. "You'll have to show me how."

  Dillon had watched the change in her. For that moment she was as vulnerable, as open to him, as she had ever been. He blessed her slow-to-gear-up metabolism and lifted her hand to his lips before he reluctantly dropped it. "I'll have breakfast ready by the time you're done with your shower. Then I have some last-minute shopping to do. Would you like to come?"

  Kelsey nodded and knew her feelings were in her dreamy, sleep-filled eyes.

  Breakfast was steak and eggs and crumpets; Kelsey realized she would never want cold cereal again. She and Dillon talked without the barriers that had been between them, with Dillon telling tales of childhood holidays in Melbourne, and Kelsey telling about the year she had eaten hot dogs for Christmas dinner because she had secretly helped the Christmas goose escape his pen in her uncle's backyard.

  They cleaned up together, still careful not to touch, but no longer careful not to laugh together. The drive into town seemed
shorter than usual, because Dillon told her stories about each landmark they passed. Coober Pedy itself had taken on a festival air, with decorated artificial trees in newly washed shop and restaurant windows, and Christmas carols blaring from cassette players.

  Surprisingly, Dillon's shopping was all for local children. Kelsey found that he had a regular route he traveled on Christmas day to the homes of friends with sons and daughters who waited anxiously for him to appear. He bought candy and small toys to add to a sizeable stash he admitted to already having collected, and he bought paper and bright-colored ribbon to wrap them all.

  They lunched on Greek food and exchanged greetings with everyone who came through the door. Kelsey had known Dillon was well-liked, but the smiles and hearty Christmas cheer directed toward her were a gratifying surprise. People still inquired politely about Jake's progress, but there was even more interest in what she was doing.

  "You've become a local heroine," Dillon told her after one old man congratulated her on cleaning up the town.

  "But I didn't do a thing. You're the one who got rid of Serge."

  He leaned back in his chair and grinned. "They know that, but the consensus is that Serge left because he couldn't fight both of us."

  She smiled, but his joking had triggered a question that had been bothering her. Now that they were talking easily again, she knew the time was right to ask it. "Do you really think the trouble is over?"

  "Nothing else has happened."

  Kelsey knew Dillon lied poorly but was good at evading questions. Almost anyone would think he'd just answered her. She knew he hadn't.

  "I've noticed you don't let me out of your sight." She picked up her iced coffee and swirled it to mix the cream.

  "What man would?"

  "Nice try, but I'm not blind. I've seen the way you scout for trouble, the way you check the equipment and the mine for sabotage."

  "Old habits die hard."

  "You think he's coming back, don't you?"

  "No." Dillon was glad to have a question he could answer easily. He was equally as glad that she hadn't asked again if he thought the trouble was over.