by Unknown
“No sir, just me.”
“Where are your students?”
“They have the weekend off.”
“Oh, right.”
From the corner of his eyes, Jericho spied Zoey’s purse behind the door. Aw shit. “I’m here analyzing a find we made at the dig site. It’s fascinating. Let me show you.” He moved to stand in front of her purse, and gestured toward the table where there were two chairs pulled out indicating a pair had been sitting at the table.
Dr. Sinton didn’t seem to home in on that fact. He pulled a pair of reading glasses from the pocket of his robe and moved toward the table. “What have you got here?”
“Tomahawk.”
Dr. Sinton picked up the magnifying glass. “May I?”
“By all means.” Jericho waved, and while Sinton was investigating the tomahawk, he slowly pushed Zoey’s purse across the floor toward the desk. There was a good two feet of open floor between the purse and desk. If Sinton glanced up now, he was screwed.
“Upon cursory appraisal it appears to be around two hundred years old, give or take,” Sinton said.
“That was my guesstimate as well.”
“The Trans-Pecos was brutal territory back in the early 1800s. Didn’t really get settled until the later part of that century.”
“Uh-huh.” He kept pushing the purse. It whispered silkily across the tile, another few inches and he could kick it under the desk and out of sight.
“This is why I was so impressed when you managed to not only wrangle permission out of the August McCleary Foundation for the field school, but to get them to fund the dig. Kudos.”
“It wasn’t my doing, sir. All the credit belongs to Zoey McCleary. She made it happen with the board of directors.” One last thrust and he almost had the purse concealed.
“Family does have its privileges, doesn’t it?”
“It does.” He kicked the purse under the desk. Whew. Sweat trickled down his brow.
“You are making sure the students toe the line on the conditions the board set forth? No digging anywhere but Triangle Mount.”
“Everyone is aware of the edict,” he hedged.
Bump.
Jericho froze. Was that Zoey making noises from inside the closet? Dr. Sinton seemed oblivious, so maybe he was hearing things. Don’t look at the closet. Don’t look at the closet. He looked.
Dr. Sinton raised his head, tomahawk in one hand, and magnifying glass in the other to catch Jericho staring at the closet.
Double dammit.
“Something the matter? You seem nervous.”
“Not nervous. Just excited. I didn’t expect to find much on Triangle Mount. I was so excited, in fact, I couldn’t wait to finish excavation before bringing the tomahawk back here to examine it.”
“And I’ve interrupted you.” Dr. Sinton shook his head. “My apologies. I see there’s still another totem left to be revealed on this handle.”
“Yes sir.”
“Would you mind if I cleaned it?”
Jericho swallowed back a groan. Leave already! “Not at all.”
Dr. Sinton looked like a little kid who’d just gotten served his favorite flavor of ice cream. He sat down at the table, picked up the paintbrush. “I sure do miss fieldwork.”
Poor Zoey was stuck in that dark closet having no idea what was going on out here. His head throbbed. How in the hell had he gotten himself into this situation? Be cool, or Sinton is going to figure out something is going on.
“It’s a coyote,” Dr. Sinton sang out.
Trying to be cool, Jericho sauntered over.
“The coyote is universally a trickster.” Dr. Sinton traced a finger over the totem he’d exposed.
“It has other meanings,” Jericho said. “Depending on the tribal culture. In fact, the coyote has a wide range of symbolism.” He knew because he’d just read it when he and Zoey were going over the tomahawk. “The coyote also may symbolize intelligence, stealth, wisdom, innocence, and folly.”
“Sounds contradictory to me.”
“Aren’t most things in life?”
“You’ve got a point there. Good grief. It’s two-thirty. My wife’s going to have a fit.” Dr. Sinton got to his feet. “It’s easy to get carried away when you’re working on a find.”
Tell me about it. Jericho walked toward the door, hoping to hurry Dr. Sinton along.
All at once there was a loud sneeze from the closet.
Jericho froze.
The director looked from Jericho’s half-unbuttoned shirt to the strap of Zoey’s purse sticking out from under the desk to the closet door and back to Jericho again.
Ah shit, this was it. His career over before it ever really started. “Sir, I can explain—”
Dr. Sinton held up a silencing hand. “I was young once. I know the power of the Indiana Jones mystique when it comes to the ladies. How do you think I caught Mrs. Sinton?” He winked. “Just as long as it’s not a student in that …”
He might as well come clean. Take his medicine. He deserved whatever punishment Dr. Sinton decided to dish out. Maybe the director would take pity on him. He opened his mouth to confess.
“But you wouldn’t do that, would you?” Dr. Sinton clamped an iron hand on Jericho’s shoulder. “Because you like your job too much to do something that damn dumb. I’m going to go home now. I suggest you let your young woman out of the closet and go to bed yourself.”
“I’M SO SORRY,” Zoey said on the drive back to Cupid. “I tried my best not to sneeze, but the harder I tried not to sneeze, the worse it got. I mean you see it in the movies where people try not to sneeze so they don’t get caught but you never think that if you were actually in a situation where you needed to keep quiet that you’ll suddenly have to sneeze—”
“You’re prattling,” Jericho pointed out.
“I know, but it’s only because I’m so sorry. I came within inches of ruining your career. If Dr. Sinton hadn’t been terrified of finding a naked woman in the closet and he’d come to investigate the sneezing …” She made a choking noise and a slicing motion across her throat.
“It’s not your fault. It’s dusty in the closet. There are rocks and soil samples in there. I should have owned up to the whole thing.”
“No, no. I’m glad you didn’t and if you had, I would have told Dr. Sinton I’d already quit the dig.”
“It doesn’t matter now. We got away with it, but it brings home the fact that we have to stay away from each other, Zoey. We cannot be alone together for the next three weeks. Even this is dangerous.”
“We haven’t done anything. Nothing’s happened.”
“You call what we did nothing?”
“Okay, something happened, but we didn’t cross a line. No line was crossed.”
“I’m not sure Dr. Sinton would agree with that.” He pulled up in front of the Cupid’s Rest. All the lights were off inside.
He parked out front and walked her to the door. The town was asleep. Crickets chirped. Somewhere in the distance a dog barked. The streetlights were on, but they were hidden by shadows from the bushes flanking the sidewalk.
“One more kiss for the road?” she asked when they reached the front door.
“Don’t push your luck,” he growled, but then pulled her against his chest for a punishing kiss before turning and sprinting back to the truck, leaving Zoey standing on the porch, fingering her lips and sighing dreamily.
BACK IN HIS tent on Triangle Mount, Jericho listened to the lonely call of coyotes and thought about the events of the day, from their exciting find, to kissing Zoey, to getting caught by Dr. Sinton. He was ashamed of his behavior. He should have more self-control, and yet, no matter how much he might wish it had not happened, he couldn’t regret it.
So he’d stupidly done it again on her front porch. Kissed her fierce and brazen, a take-no-prisoners attack that had sent her backing against the door and clacked their teeth together so loudly that for one horrifying moment, he feared he’d broken her tooth.
But she’d laughed and lashed her arms around his neck and pulled his head down, extending the kiss until they were both recklessly breathless. She was so warm and soft and willing, smelling of watermelon shampoo and sand and woman.
His body throbbed painfully. It had been months since he’d been with a woman and abstinence was taking its toll, especially after what he’d done to her in the lab. He did not know how he’d kept himself from doing more. And not just any woman would do. Zoey was the one he craved and he couldn’t seem to stop himself from yearning for her no matter how hard he tried. He wanted her with a need that shook him to his very core.
This was so unlike him, the inability to delay gratification; normally he was a patient man with practiced self-control. He was proud of the fact he’d been able to keep at bay the drooling cave dweller that was hiding inside every man.
How had the change come about, this shift from best friend to longed-for lover? How did he stop this insatiable thirst? He was so afraid he would not be able to keep his hands-off promise.
A rat of a thought scurried through his brain. He could resign his job. Tell Dr. Sinton that he could not uphold the conditions of his probationary employment. If he was no longer Zoey’s instructor, he could have her, nothing to stand in the way. His greedy body turned happily stony at the prospect.
But that was short-term thinking. This was his dream job. He wanted to work in the Trans-Pecos, always had, and it wasn’t as if archaeology jobs grew on trees. It might be months or even years before he found one as appealing as this one. He could do this. He could hold on to his control.
Three weeks. Only three weeks.
Except, as sexy as Zoey was and as badly as he wanted her, Jericho was not so sure he could do it.
THE DIG RESUMED at seven o’clock on Monday morning. Jericho had brought pictures of the tomahawk back from the lab for the other students to see. Everyone tried their hand at interpreting the symbols and what they meant. They were so fired up to find more artifacts that by noon they’d troweled down the unit floor another ten-centimeter layer of strata.
Today, Zoey was on screening duty, which meant she was shifting through the excavated soil searching for smaller artifacts and ecofacts (plant and animal remains.) Even careful troweling missed tons of minuscule finds, so screening was an absolute necessity. Her arms were already exhausted from shaking the dry screen and she had to dump it between each session to get out roots and pebbles and live bugs.
She tried her best to keep from watching Jericho, and he was avoiding her as well. When their gazes did accidentally meet, they both instantly glanced away. But as the heat wore on and the shirts started coming off, she told herself she would not look, but when Jericho passed by, stripped bare to the waist, his sleek olive-skinned body dewy with sweat, Zoey’s eyes bugged right out of her head.
He was a beaut, no doubt about it. The noonday sun glistened over his broad shoulders and brawn biceps, caressed his hard angles, and highlighted the impressive definition of his obliques. Her bedazzled eyes tracked his easy, loose-limbed movements, her neck swiveling as he strode past, seemingly oblivious to her gape-mouthed stare. She gathered in the sight of his smooth expanse of tanned back gleaming like polished stone and chiseled in clean lines of rippling muscles and sharp-edged bone. He could have been a warrior chieftain, sprung from history’s earth.
Her stomach squeezed and a familiar fever pumped through her blood, strumming with yearning desire.
I want. She tasted it all so acutely—the bittersweet ache of longing.
Unable to bear her misery a second longer, she mumbled to no one in particular, “I’m taking my lunch break,” and headed off down the mountain toward the camp.
A few minutes later she made herself a sandwich and plunked down on a camp chair underneath the shade of an umbrella beside Catrina.
“Something is amiss,” Catrina observed.
“I don’t know what you mean,” Zoey said, taking a long drink of cold bottled water.
“You and Jericho were thick as thieves and now you aren’t even speaking to each other.”
“We were not thick as thieves.”
“Did you have a lovers’ quarrel?” She purred the R in lover, making the word sound smoky and suggestive.
“We are not lovers. We’ve just known each other a long time.”
“Mm-huh. I do not believe you.”
“Believe whatever you want.”
“Maybe you are not lovers yet, but you will be.”
“We won’t,” she said firmly.
“I see the way he looks at you. Like you are candle wax and he is a flame.” Catrina unfurled her long, caramel-colored legs.
“Very poetic, seriously, you should study literature instead of archaeology. It doesn’t really seem like your thing.”
“Just know that you are fooling no one.” Catrina finished off her sandwich, put the paper wrappings in the recycling bin, and strolled back toward the dig site. “Oh and by the way, I am tired of digging. I will take over your job on the dry screen.”
Zoey’s mouth went dry and her sandwich got stuck halfway. She had to gulp more water to get it down. Were she and Jericho really that obvious? In the wee hours of Saturday morning, they’d had a very close call with Dr. Sinton, but their luck was not going to hold. She really was going to have to quit the dig. There wasn’t any other way. They’d already slipped too far.
With an ache in her stomach, she followed Catrina’s swaying backside. She climbed down into the unit with a couple of the other team members, picked up the trowel that Catrina had left behind, and went to work.
After a few minutes, she got into the Zen of digging. It could be quite peaceful, this steady careful scraping of dirt, peeling back the earth in search of secrets and it calmed her in a way no other activity ever had. She liked being outdoors. Liked feeling sweat drip down her back. Liked how strong and capable her hands had become, even if her fingernails were broken and ragged. It proved she’d put in a hard day of good old-fashioned labor. Her stomach settled and her anxiety over Catrina’s goading flowed out of her.
In fact, she was so zoned out that for a second, it didn’t register when her trowel came into contact with something besides soil. The material resisted, stretched. She stopped, put down her trowel, pushed her cowgirl hat back on her head, and leaned in for a closer look. It appeared to be a corner of a tanned animal hide.
“Je—” she almost called him by his first name, but stopped herself in the nick of time. “Dr. Chance, I’ve found something.”
Immediately, everyone stopped what they were doing and came near, but left a path for Jericho to thread over to where Zoey was kneeling. He crouched beside her. So close. Instantly, her body responded.
“What have you found?”
She showed him the tiny corner of hide poking up from the dirt.
He sucked in a deep breath, crouched to examine it more closely, and then looked over at her. “It’s your find. Go ahead and excavate it.”
“I’m afraid I won’t do it right,” she admitted.
“You’re perfectly capable. I’m right here.”
Following every protocol to the letter, Zoey slowly, cautiously removed the dirt from around the hide, and as the soil fell away, she saw that her find was much larger than she originally suspected and it wasn’t flat, but rolled up like a rawhide map.
“Did Native Americans do yoga?” She giggled.
“It looks as if it could be a medicine bundle,” Jericho observed.
“What’s that?” Piper asked, and pushed her glasses up on her short nose.
“The bundle is a container to protect items they used in healing and religious ceremonies,” Jericho explained.
“Da-amn, this is the coolest dig ever,” carrot-topped Braden said. “A tomahawk and a medicine bundle. Kick ass.”
It took another hour of diligent extraction to get the find recorded, photographed and documented. Eager to see it, everyone crowded around, but the artifact
looked like nothing more than rolled up dirty animal skin.
“We bag it and tag it and take it back to the lab,” Jericho said.
“Can we do it today?” Avery asked. “We missed out on the tomahawk.”
“There might be more artifacts to be found here.” Jericho swept his hand over the area. “And it’s almost an hour drive to the lab.”
“We could set up a field lab in one of the tents,” she suggested. “Just for a place to take a look at the medicine bundle.”
“That’s a good idea.” Jericho nodded. “Why don’t you take charge of that?”
Yeah, sure, she could do that.
Taking Catrina and Piper with her, she returned to base camp to transform the tent she and Catrina shared into a field lab, temporarily removing the cots and moving in one of the folding tables they normally used to prep and serve food on. Thirty minutes later, the rest of the group joined them at camp to examine the medicine bundle.
It was four in the afternoon as the entire team of fifteen, including Jericho, ringed the table in the center of the tent. He passed out vinyl gloves to everyone.
“Before we get started, I want to make something absolutely clear,” he said.
Everyone gave him their full attention.
“No one talks about this. When the time comes, we’ll do a press release and have a town hall meeting to discuss the find. In the meantime, no one says a word to anyone about what we’ve discovered here. We don’t want looky-loos descending upon us en masse. That means nothing gets out on social media. If anyone leaks anything, you’re off the team immediately. Got it?”
“Yes,” they replied in unison.
“Now that we have that out of the way, let’s get to it.” He moved to stand at the center of the table, students parting to let him pass. Zoey thrilled to his authority. She wasn’t accustomed to seeing his commanding side. It was kinda hot.
“Medicine bundles were sacred to the Native Americans,” he said. “There were personal medicine bundles that were used for religious purposes and protection, shaman bundles primarily used for healing, and tribal bundles that were for the entire tribes. These were mostly religious in nature, although they could also be used for healing as well, especially in the case where an infection was sweeping through the tribe. Although the people who made and used this medicine bundle are long gone, we want to respect the sacredness of their cultural beliefs and handle the bundle with care and reverence.”