by Unknown
He reached out again and drew her into his arms. “I know it hurts right now, but in the big scheme of things it’s probably for the best.”
“Because I couldn’t possibly take care of a cat. I know, I know, you and my family have made that abundantly clear.”
“No,” he said softly, and brushed a strand of hair from her forehead. “Because you’ve got a four-week commitment to field school coming up and you simply don’t have the time for a new kitten.”
A single tear slid down her cheek.
“Ah, damn, sweetheart, it’s gonna be okay.” He held her close, felt the steady beating of her heart against his chest.
“I don’t know why I’m crying.” She sniffled. “I’m not the least bit sentimental.”
He smiled, but didn’t contradict her.
“I mean it’s just a kitten, right?”
“Right.”
She buried her face in his shirt. “Oh Jericho, I got so attached to Eggy. When that kitten looked me in the eyes it was like he knew exactly what I was thinking, and his fur was so soft and his sweet little purr both put me to sleep at night and woke me up in the morning.”
He rubbed a circle over her back with his palm. “It will be all right. You’ll get another cat at a more convenient time.”
“I honestly didn’t expect losing him would hurt this much. I only had him for a few days.”
“Love can change your life in an instant,” he murmured.
She pulled back slightly and looked up into his face. Tears dusted her lashes and she looked so darn sad, her eyes yanked at his heartstrings. He gave her a wry smile, cupped her cheek with his palm.
He never intended on kissing her, but in that moment it seemed as inevitable as breathing. His hand moved from her cheek to her chin and he tipped her head back even farther without even considering that he was about to make a big mistake. He simply lowered his head and claimed her mouth.
A soft little sigh escaped her lips while she simultaneously slipped her arms around his waist.
He had kissed his fair share of women over the years. Some of those kisses had been pleasant, some sweet, some romantic, some thrilling, some wild, some breath-stealingly passionate, but none of them had ever been like this one—pleasant, sweet, romantic, thrilling, wild, and breath-stealingly passionate, all rolled into one. For years he’d dreamed about kissing her like this and the reality far exceeded his expectations. This kiss reached down, took hold of something deep within Jericho, and squeezed all resistance out of him.
She tasted of summer, camaraderie, and childhood memories—homemade vanilla ice cream, campfire s’mores, ice-cold watermelon. She smelled of moon glow, whispers, and midnight shadows—fresh, familiar, yet strangely exotic. She made him think of secret trysts, heartfelt hopes, creaky back-porch swings, quilted pallets in the dewy grass, and a sky full of falling stars.
Finally, reluctantly, the need for air forced him to break the kiss. Transported. He’d been exuberantly transported into another time and place. An incredible place that combined past, present, and future into one big tangle of perfect. He peered down into those big eyes staring up at him so full of life, drew in a deep breath, and felt his soul—yes, he was just going to say it no matter how unscientific the term—snap back into his body with an edgy click.
Home.
He was home. It didn’t matter that he hadn’t gotten the job. This was where he wanted to be.
A sublime expression crossed her face, topped by an enigmatic smile. She laughed, low and gentle, and stepped from the circle of his embrace, but she stopped there. Didn’t turn and flee. Twin pink splotches colored the apples of her cheeks and her eyes darkened, going from briny olive to a richer, mossy green.
Jericho’s fingers itched to pull her back into his arms, kiss her again, harder, longer, fiercer. C’mon, who the hell was he trying to kid? He wanted to do a whole lot more than kiss her, but the rational part of his brain that had come temporarily unhinged regained a tiny foothold. Don’t. Just don’t.
Her breathing matched his own—hot, short, and quick. Her pupils dilated. Her nostrils quivered.
“Don’t you dare tell me that was the least bit brotherly.”
“No.” She gasped. “Not brotherly, not cousinly, not even best-friendly. That kiss was … whew.” She fanned herself. “An inventive way to comfort a friend in need. For a minute there I forgot all about Eggy.”
“Me too,” he rasped, because he didn’t know what else to say.
“Thanks for cheering me up.”
Was that all she thought it was? His gut lurched. Jericho speared his hand through his hair. Why had he crossed that line? He knew better. What had happened to his self-control? “Zoey, I …”
“Uh-huh.”
“I’m sorry. That was inexcusable.”
“I don’t know about that.” She fingered her lips. “I found it pretty impressive.”
“Not the kiss,” he clarified. “The kiss was a chart-topper. I’m talking about my behavior.”
“Hey.” She shrugged casually, but he could see tension tighten the muscles in her neck. “Don’t worry about it. We all get carried away sometimes.”
Not me. That’s what he found so disturbing—his loss of control. He stared at her and it was all he could do not to yank her back into his arms and do it all over again.
She put a hand to her mouth. “What?”
“I’m just wondering where do we go from here?”
“Nowhere,” she said firmly, but lowered her head and cast him a sideways glance. Brown-sugar curls escaped from the clip at the back of her head, falling in carefree, silky waves that had him thinking about caramel swirls. God, she was beautiful, magnetic. All he wanted was to taste those lips a second time.
He gulped. Easy. Easy. You’ve got to stop thinking like this.
Zoey started walking backward toward the door, toe to heel.
“Don’t go,” he said, although it sounded like someone else spoke the words.
She stopped halfway to the door, hovered with one foot off the ground like a fawn too scared to move in the face of danger.
“We’re not going to let a little kiss get in the way of our friendship, are we?” he asked, giving voice to his greatest fear.
“No.” She laughed too loudly. “Of course not.”
“Then don’t run off.”
She put her foot on the ground but still looked as if she could turn and sprint away at any second. She reached up to take the clip from her hair, sending her pert breasts rising higher with the motion, and the remainder of the soft strands fell to her shoulders in voluminous waves.
The kiss had caused his body to harden in the obvious places. Thing was, he was still hard; add to that surging breasts and tumbling hair and he was in serious trouble. He moved over to a lawn chair, sat down hard, and crossed his legs, unable to do much thinking against the hot rush of blood pounding through him, and prayed she hadn’t noticed the very obvious signs of his arousal.
He motioned to the lawn chair. “Have a seat.”
Awkwardly, she came to perch on the edge of the chair, rested her palms on the seat either side of her legs, ready to quickly propel herself up from the chair if circumstances demanded it.
A hesitant smile plucked at the corners of her mouth. “We’re good, honestly. We don’t need to talk about it. What’s one little kiss among friends? We’ve kissed before. It was no big deal.” She shrugged again.
The motion drew his attention to those smooth shoulders barely covered by the spaghetti straps of her candy cane tank top. He ached to trace his tongue over one of those shoulders, and track hungry kisses to the hollow of her throat to feel the throbbing of that fluttering blue pulse. Barely aware that he was doing it, Jericho gripped the lawn chair’s armrests. He had to get himself in hand. Now.
She ran the tip of her tongue over her lips.
Did she have any notion what she was doing to him? Yeah, she probably did. The woman knew how to flirt, no doubt about it,
but there was much more to her than met the eye. Yes, she knew how to have a good time, but there was substance to her that she’d never had to dig deep to unearth. Was it bat-shit crazy of him to want to help her find herself?
The prospect both enticed and scared the hell out of him. Never once in his professional life had he felt this off balance. Not even when he punched the dean that Mallory was sleeping with. But he sure felt off balance now, his equilibrium shot. Not because he didn’t know what he wanted, but precisely because he did.
Warning! Dangerous territory.
He wished he hadn’t kissed her. Now he knew exactly what he’d been missing. If kissing her was that phenomenal, what on God’s green earth would making love to her feel like?
Chapter 6
Area of Potential Effects: The geographic area within which an undertaking may cause changes in the character or use of historic properties.
THEY sat staring at each other for what seemed like half a century. Zoey’s pulse was pounding so loudly she couldn’t hear her own thoughts. She pushed up off the lawn chair, tried to sound as casual as she could. “That it?”
A trickle of sweat slid down the side of his face. He stood too. “Yeah.”
Jericho had kissed her, completely and thoroughly. The way she’d always dreamed he would kiss her. When his lips met hers, she closed her eyes, melted against him, heard the lid to the music box of her daydreams pop open and the playlist of her secret fantasies spill out like the soundtrack from My Best Friend’s Wedding—“Wishing and Hoping,” “The Way You Look Tonight,” “I Say a Little Prayer.” She’d wanted to do cartwheels and somersaults and back flips and she definitely wanted to kiss him again and again and again.
So why did she have a desperate, clawing need to flee? Why? Because she ached to get off by herself and assess what had just happened. Everything between them had irrevocably shifted and she couldn’t fully process that fallout. Not when he was standing and staring at her as if he’d never seen her before.
Self-consciously, she put a hand to her cheek.
Jericho’s cell phone rang.
They both jumped.
Without taking his eyes off her, Jericho peeled the phone from his back pocket, and placed it to his ear. “Hello.”
Perfect time to bow out before her heart beat right out of her chest. Zoey pivoted and was on her way out the gate when he said, “Yes sir, Dr. Sinton.”
She stopped, turned back. Had he gotten the job?
His face gave nothing away. “I understand.”
She crossed her fingers. Please let him get it. If he didn’t get the job, he’d leave Cupid.
“Yes sir. Thank you. I appreciate it.” He hung up.
“Well?” She breathed, her hands clasped.
At last, he grinned. “I got the job.”
“That’s wonderful!” She moved to hug him, but he put up a palm.
“But I’m on probation and there’s a big stipulation.”
“What’s that?” she asked.
“Under no circumstances am I to get romantically involved with a student. If I do, it’s my job.”
“Oh,” she said, just as it fully dawned on her. Jericho was now her instructor and for the foreseeable future, an intimate relationship between them was strictly forbidden. “So, hey, Teach. Look at you.”
“This means we can’t … that what just occurred between us cannot be repeated.”
“Yeah.” She nodded. “I got that.”
“We should talk about this.”
“It’s okay.” She shrugged and tried to appear unaffected. “We’re cool.”
“You might be,” he said tightly, “but I’m not. I just kissed my best friend and the thoughts I’m having about her are anything but friendly.” His words, the way his hot eyes were gobbling her up, sent a sweet, dark shiver through her.
“Jericho, I—”
“Don’t pretend you’re not having the same reaction.” His gaze shifted from her face to her breasts where her traitorous nipples were beaded up so hard and tight they were poking through her bra and straining against the material of her snug-fitting, Lycra-blend tank top.
Briefly, she closed her eyes, willed her saucy nipples to settle down and cooperate. “Hands off. I get it. I can hang.”
“Are you sure?” He took a step toward her as if testing her resolve and it was all she could do not to back up.
“Positive,” she affirmed.
“We’ll be in close proximity on this dig. Living in tents onsite for four weeks.”
She put a finger in the air. “But with weekends off.”
“Still, that’s a lot of time together.”
“With a whole dig team of people around,” she reminded him.
“That’s a damn good thing.”
Her eyes met his. “Why is that?”
“Because I’m not sure I could keep my hands off you if we were alone.”
“Oh, Jericho.” She gulped. “What are you saying?”
His eyes darkened and his upper lip pulled back. “I want you so badly I can taste it.”
She gulped. Her knees were shaking. “Me too.”
“But we cannot act on this.”
“No,” she whispered.
“I have a job to do and you have a course to complete.”
“Yes.”
“Can you handle it?”
She notched her chin up. “I can if you can. It’s only four weeks. We can resist anything for four weeks, right?”
“Right,” he said, but he didn’t sound the least bit convinced.
“So.” She was ready to stop talking about it. “Dr. Jericho Chance, project archaeologist for the Center for Big Bend Studies. Fancy.”
“Hasn’t fully sunk in yet.”
“I knew you would get it.”
“Yes, but the position has got strings attached. Considering how I’m feeling about you, maybe I should turn the job down.”
“Don’t you dare! I’ll only be your student for the length of the dig school. After that, since Sul Ross doesn’t offer an undergraduate degree in archaeology, I’ll transfer to another college.”
“Yes, but that’s assuming we can control ourselves.”
She dropped his gaze. Did they have to keep belaboring the point? She understood. He’d given her a boot-knocking, breath-stealing, mind-blowing, best-friends-make-the-best-kind-of-lovers kiss, and now they couldn’t do anything about it. Duly noted, cataloged and filed under “Oh My Sleepless Nights.”
Trying for light and casual, but making sure to keep her arms folded over her recalcitrant breasts, she changed the subject. “So, project director, where is our field school dig going to be held?”
Jericho ran a hand through his hair. “During my interview, Dr. Sinton told me it’s a toss-up between Gilliland Canyon in Big Bend, Nature Conservancy’s Independence Creek Preserve in Terrell County, or Triangle Mount in Jeff Davis.”
“Triangle Mount? We’re talking home sweet home! Are we hoping to put to rest the rumors that Triangle Mount is really a North American pyramid?”
Triangle Mount was on private land owned by the August McCleary Foundation.
On the heels of rather unscientific claims that some flatiron mountains in Bosnia were actually ancient pyramids, there had been much speculation that Triangle Mount was a pyramid as well. Truly, the tetrahedron-shaped mountain did resemble what an Egyptian pyramid would look like covered with West Texas soil and scrub brush. Lately, various conspiracy theorists, UFO aficionados, fans of the Marfa Lights mystery, adventure seekers, and bored teens had taken to trespassing on McCleary Foundation land to confirm the crackpot theory. The foundation board members, increasingly frustrated by the invasion, had discussed hiring security to keep trespassers off the land.
“It’s bollocks, of course,” Jericho said. “The theory is something that serious archaeologists dismiss out of hand and because of limited funding won’t even waste time on debunking, but all scholars must guard against both complacency and a
sense of superiority. There’s always that rare exception to explore. Besides, it would make a great field school project. There are a lot of Native American artifacts in these mountains and no one has ever excavated that particular area before, and if we lay to rest the myth, we can stop the problem they’re having with trespassers.”
“You gotta admit that it is a perfect triangle. Easy to see where the rumors come from and why people are fascinated by the notion of pyramids in West Texas.”
“Don’t get too worked up. Triangle Mount is the dark horse. Director Sinton is leaning toward Gilliland Canyon.”
“What determines which dig site we’ll choose?”
“Funding, for one thing. For another, we need permission. It’s easier to gain access to government land. In the past, the McCleary Foundation has been resistant to granting admittance. The center has asked, and been refused, several times.”
She cocked her head. “You know, I might be able to twist arms where the center has failed. The chairman of the board, Marcus Winz-Smith, is a distant McCleary cousin, and timely enough, the semiannual board meeting is next week, I can go see him in person.”
Jericho scratched his chin, his blunt-cut nails rasped appealingly against his stubble. Not five minutes ago that stubble was nicely abrading her face. “You do have a talent for twisting arms, but honestly, I don’t know if Triangle Mount is the best project for us.”
“Hey, I’ve got nothing to lose. In fact, I’ll even ask if the foundation will consider chipping in to help fund the dig.”
“Let’s not push our luck.”
“Why not? All they can say is no and we won’t be any worse off than we were before.”
“It’s up to you.” He shrugged.
“Consider it done.” She snapped her fingers. “Triangle Mount, here we come.”
“Why does excavating Triangle Mount mean so much to you?” he asked.
Her chin notched up. “For one thing, it’s part of my family history. For another thing, I’ve always had a feeling that there was something special under that mountain. I know it doesn’t make any sense from a logical, scientific point of view, but no one ever accused me of being logical.” She laughed. “The flatiron has captured my imagination and won’t leave me alone.”