The pranks were childish all right, but children weren’t responsible. He wished like hell they were.
“How did you find out?”
Some of the color had come back to her cheeks, and her voice was stronger. “I went to the site a few hours ago to give you some news of my own. When I got there, I remembered you weren’t due back until the middle of the week. I saw the mess and called the local police. They said you’d asked them to keep an eye on the site during the night.”
She nodded for him to continue.
“The police figured it probably happened sometime during the early daylight hours after they’d left. The location is secluded, easy for someone to do a little mischief and get away unseen.” He paused for a breath. “When the police couldn’t reach you, they called the State Archaeologist’s Office. After an hour, when no one could get through, I offered to ride out and tell you myself.” He took the seat she’d offered him earlier, braced his palms on his knees, and looked up. “Are you having trouble with your phone, or did you just decide not to answer it?”
She gave a surprised gasp and stood so quickly the sash around her waist slipped free, and the robe opened, exposing her flesh from neck to waist.
He caught a flash of bare breasts and white lace panties that barely fell in the category of clothing.
Blushing, she gathered the robe around her. “The phone in the kitchen is unplugged. I haven’t been feeling very well. Right now is a bad time of year for me.” She hurried across the room, turned back at the door, both hands clutching the robe at her waist. “Would you mind plugging in the phone while I dress?” She nodded to the left. “The kitchen’s that way.”
Of course, he wouldn’t mind turning on the phone. What he did mind was her leaving to get dressed. He’d much rather she didn’t. But, what the hell? He’d driven two hours to be a Good Samaritan—not to seduce her. He still had the rest of the month to accomplish that feat. He went to the kitchen and plugged in the phone then went back to the den to wait. He used the time while he waited to survey his surroundings.
Her apartment was really a condo he’d bet she owned. Even though he’d only seen the kitchen and the den—with his trained eye, a carryover from the days when he built houses, instead of shopping centers—he could easily come up with an approximation of square footage that rivaled a modest-sized house. And considering this was an upscale neighborhood, he was sure she’d paid a pretty penny for her property.
Besides being spacious, he noted the two rooms he’d seen so far were tastefully, though not extravagantly, furnished. Which meant she had big bucks to spend, and she knew how to spend them without being pretentious. The kitchen was equipped with top-of-the-line appliances. They, too, cost big bucks, but like the rest of the furnishings they were not the most expensive on the market.
He’d also noticed, in the short time he’d spent in the kitchen, that the walls were decorated with pictures of fruits and vegetables. The bay window over the sink was lined with bright colored pots containing plants that looked like herbs.
In keeping with the rest of the furnishings, an impressive array of quality, name brand small appliances adorned the generous granite counter tops. He’d bet his shrinking bank account that she liked to cook and was a damn good one.
The den was definitely feminine but without frills. The room was passionate, if a room could be characterized as such. The furniture was covered in an abstract design of bold blues, greens, yellows, and deep reds. A combination of fire and ice. Just as he imagined she was.
He walked around the room and stopped whenever an unusual object or piece of art on the wall caught his eye. Her taste was eclectic. Another reflection of point and counterpoint, as he had already figured her to be.
On her desk, an oversized one of excellent highly polished oak, sat a glass paperweight. He eyed the object with interest for a few seconds before he picked it up and set it down again. A pen caught his attention, and he grasped it between thumb and forefinger, spun it, put a finger to it, and when it stopped spinning, passed his thumb along a sheaf of papers sitting in the middle of the desk. Something caught his interest, and he leaned forward.
“A theory I’m working on in connection with the archaeological dig,” Alex said from just inside the doorway.
Caught off guard, he turned to face her. He hadn’t heard her come into the room.
She walked toward him and stopped a couple of feet in front of the desk.
He did a quick appraisal of her appearance. She looked better. Not a whole hell of a lot better, but certainly healthier than she had when she’d first opened the front door. Her cheeks had a little color now, the dark skin beneath her eyes had lightened, and her lips were a very kissable pale pink. Even her eyes appeared brighter than they had just a few minutes earlier. All in all, as unsexy as she still looked, she excited him like no other woman ever had. What the hell was wrong with him?
Embarrassed that Alex thought he was prying into her business, he came up with what he hoped was a believable lie. “I was deliberating whether or not to squash a big, fat mosquito that had made itself at home in the middle of your work.”
Alex covered her mouth with her hand. “Oh, I’m so sorry, I thought, I mean I didn’t…”
He smiled. “Yes, you did. You thought I was reading whatever this report is.” He lifted a few of the pages and paused a second before he set them down again. “Can’t say I blame you. It sure must have looked that way.”
She stepped a little closer to the desk.
A little closer to him. He came a little closer to rounding the desk, grabbing her, and kissing her. Fortunately, he still had enough good sense to keep himself in check.
“Some research I dug up this afternoon.” Alex indicated the papers he put back on the desk. “Something’s been in the back of my mind, nagging me relentlessly ever since those bones were first discovered. And I know I won’t rest until I find out whether my idea is valid or not.”
Her voice trailed off, and she looked down at the papers, leaned forward and gave them a half-turn, stopping suddenly. She looked up at Beck. “I have an idea—it’s only a theory right now—that those bones may have belonged to a young Choctaw Indian couple who broke from their tribe while they were being relocated to Oklahoma during the Trail of Tears. I think they may have been on their way to the home of their ancestors when they met their unlucky fate. Many of the earliest Choctaws settled in Mississippi and Louisiana along the Pearl River.”
“Interesting.” He moved from behind the desk, all the while thinking nothing was as interesting as the woman standing so close the hairs on his arms stood on end. Later, he could not recall what prompted him to take her in his arms and press his lips to hers.
She pushed against him with a force he wouldn’t have attributed to one whose frame was no match for his. Then, as his lips moved over hers, her resistance slackened and the kiss grew more demanding. He felt her body yield, not a lot at first, but gradually, so gradually he thought he might have imagined it.
But he didn’t imagine the tightness in his body or the sudden, dizzying rush of blood to his head that made him want to experience this high forever.
Her body froze. “Please, stop.”
His euphoria ended. No anger rang in the request, but her voice held an edge of panic. The last thing he wanted to do was stop, but he uncoiled his arms, and while he watched her fight for control, he waited patiently until her composure returned. How about his?
Then he watched, and spent a few more seconds waiting while she straightened her back, lifted her chin, and eyed him with such deliberate calmness he thought his mind might be playing tricks. Wondered if he’d really kissed her at all. Except his heated blood was all too real. He had felt in her what he feared. Fire.
Alex’s glance didn’t waver. “Didn’t you say you went to the site to tell me some news of your own?” she asked.
Ice. She certainly dashed any hope he had of another kiss, so he may as well take whatever means h
e could to hang around a little longer. Against his better judgment, of course. He pulled in a deep breath. Yeah, like he really had any judgment at all right now.
With what raged inside, he could never match her cool delivery so he didn’t even try. He could only hope his voice didn’t crack from his bottled-up tension and cause him to sound like a groveling hound-dog ready to stay around and sniff as long as he could. “I spoke with a friend of mine today.” No sense name-dropping and getting her dander up because he’d tried to pull some political strings. “A friend who’s in a position to put me in touch with someone who might help me salvage most of my business venture.”
She smiled for the first time since he’d stepped inside her door. Suddenly, he didn’t mind at all if she thought of him as an old hound dog.
“I hope so, Beck. You have no idea how upset I’ve been thinking what I’m doing, important as it is, is having such disastrous consequences on other people’s lives.”
He felt an undeniable thrill. She had called him by name and with a trace of tenderness. She had also smiled, wan though the smile had been. And Jesus, now she was touching him. The touch to his arm was light, but he felt it in every nerve in his body.
Good sense deserted him then, and he drew her to him faster and tighter than before, quickly lowered his mouth on hers and slid his tongue deftly between lips she hadn’t had time to close.
She responded quickly this time, parting her lips, teasing his tongue with hers, sliding her arms up, up, around his back. Suddenly, she begged. “Beck, stop. Please stop.”
He was so drawn into the kiss her voice sounded a million miles away. He had never heard his name invoked with such tremulous pleading, and he wanted to do what she begged, but he also wanted to hold on to her, to crush her even closer.
Would he have released her then? Would he have fought every primitive urge to possess her? Would he have given in to her soft sobs? Would he, had the urgent ringing of the telephone not come between them?
Alex pushed against him so forcefully at the very moment he released her, he had to put out his hand to steady her. But before he let her go again, he allowed himself one more second to look at her and watch the fever flush spread across her cheeks. He felt a thrill when the swollen, bruised flesh of her lips locked with his. But the thrill was short-lived when she broke free.
She ran to the phone, lifted it, listened wide-eyed, and looked at him.
He saw a flash of pain in her eyes too awful to watch.
She uttered an indistinct word and hung up the phone. She swayed.
Beck rushed to her side, slid an arm around her waist, and hunched down so she could rest her head against his shoulder.
Damn. This protective, tender wash of emotion that crowded out the lust of just moments before was not supposed to happen. He wanted the lust back. Lust was safer.
Alex pulled away and steadied herself with a hand on the table where the phone sat. “One of my students committed suicide this morning.”
****
Beck gave himself a strong mental lashing as he headed home. He shouldn’t have left Alex, no matter how much she insisted. Not when the shock of the telephone call had set her back to the state she was in when she first opened the door.
He could still feel the clamminess of her skin when he’d touched his cheek lightly to hers in a comforting gesture. Had she been as surprised by that nonsexual overture as she’d been by the erotic kiss? Hell, his platonic action had surprised him just as much. More, maybe.
Tender feelings for a woman didn’t come naturally to him, except with JoAnn and GrammaU. He had never mistreated any woman, though. He’d been downright good to many of the women in his life. He’d helped them when they needed money or some other favor. But he’d never let any of their problems get under his skin. He’d never cared deeply for a woman. Until now.
He skidded the truck to a stop and U-turned on the deserted two-lane highway. The ten miles he’d already traveled seemed like a hundred by the time he found himself back on the street where Alex lived. He was maybe fifty feet or so from her condo when he saw the skinny little fucker who always seemed to be in her shadow standing outside her front door.
Son of a bitch. No way was he stopping now. He gunned the engine and drove away like the devil was after him, praying a cop would stop him so he could slam his fist into something softer than the dashboard.
Damn police were never around when you needed them. Stupid ass. No matter how angry he was, he’d never hit a cop. He took out his frustration on the gas pedal and accelerated to a speed way beyond acceptable, even for him.
He steered toward the exit to Ned’s house on two wheels and almost fell out of the truck when it stopped. The driveway was empty. After pounding on the door and jabbing the doorbell mercilessly for five minutes, he was forced to give up. But he wasn’t admitting defeat, not yet.
The Outpost was only a few miles away, and he arrived there in two minutes instead of three. As soon as he arrived, he spotted Ned’s black SUV. Rocks flew in every direction when his truck screeched to a stop at the edge of the crowded parking lot. And when he barged through the door into the already crowded room, the early Monday evening regulars scattered, leaving him a wide berth to the bar…and to Ned.
****
The mess at the site wasn’t cleaned, and the stakes and flags repositioned, until late Tuesday afternoon. The temperature climbed to ninety degrees by midmorning and felt ten degrees higher now. Alex’s stomach took an uncomfortable lurch. She’d barely forced down a slice of toast and a little juice this morning. Last night, sleep had arrived too late to do any good. Yesterday’s turmoil had taken a heavy toll.
Initially, Beck had resisted her pleas for him to leave the evening before, but finally he had given in and left. However, not long after he was gone, her initial relief at being alone turned into a keen sense of longing for his presence again.
Yet, even as she admitted to herself that she had really wanted Beck to stay, having him here would be contrary to what was best. Nothing good could come of a relationship with him.
She had no sooner half-heartedly accepted her own conclusions when the doorbell rang. Her heart leaped and fell half a dozen times before she made her way back downstairs to the front door again.
But Beck hadn’t been on the other side of the door. Rather, Kent was there, bringing her news of Cindy’s death. Old news, she’d told him.
Kent had hung around for a few minutes, consoling her, telling her giving Cindy a failing grade wasn’t her fault. The truth was, she figured he’d come by more for his own sake than hers. He’d been close to Cindy. She was one of the few people, aside from herself, who paid him more than a civilized nod.
Any other time, she would have spent as long as needed to make Kent feel better. But, at the moment, she didn’t have the strength to help anyone but herself. And much as she’d hated to, she’d practically thrown him out. Then she’d dragged herself upstairs once again to lick her wounds. The old as well as the new.
Dawn was about to break when she finally drifted off to sleep, only to awaken what seemed like moments later to the faint cries of a baby. But she wasn’t really awake. Not yet. She was still in the last throes of a nightmare that had her lungs pumping and the blood rushing through her veins like an angry tide. Once again, this cruel reality to which the nightmare always led was too much to bear. No baby cried. Her heart remembered a pain that wouldn’t die, not even in sleep.
A shower sloughed away some of the painful memories, but not all. Never all. Still, she’d shown up here this morning and began the day’s work. And now she was tired, hot, and hungry. And very, very thirsty. She reached for the canteen propped against the tree trunk, unscrewed the cap, and tilted back her head, letting the now-tepid water run down her parched throat. She greedily took another swallow when something to the east drew her attention.
As he crossed the field this Tuesday morning, Beck’s stride was as determined as the first day she’d seen him. Th
e flutter that ran up her chest and lodged in her throat taunted her with what she’d kept denying throughout the day. She’d been waiting for him.
She clutched the canteen to her breast like a shield. Idle hands were the devil’s workshop, and if hers were free, she might be tempted to reach out and touch him when he got close. As Beck drew nearer, she could see a frown. The flutter at her throat knotted and stuck there. He probably hadn’t found a way to recoup any of his losses, after all.
That he and his associates might suffer because the dig ruined their business plans made her feel bad. Also, he might blame her for his trouble, even though she was only doing her job. Even more, she questioned why the fact he might hold her at fault bothered her so much.
When Beck finally stood in front of her, he pulled in a deep, ragged breath.
After a few moments, he looked at her with such a pained expression she wanted to put her arms around him and hold him close for comfort.
“This statement will be damn hard to say. So, I’ll get on with it straight away.”
She pulled in a calming breath and waited for whatever he needed to tell her.
Beck held her gaze while he spoke. “Kids weren’t responsible for those stunts out here. The instigator of these pranks is my best friend. The only consolation I can take away now is that you no longer need to worry about your safety. No one is out to harm you or this site.”
Alex didn’t know whether to laugh, cry, or curse. No doubt if the shoe were on the other foot, by now he’d have let out a stream of profanity so long and loud it would have been heard all the way in Baton Rouge. She loosened her grip on the canteen and tossed it back under the tree. “This friend of yours. Is he one of your group?”
Beck nodded and kicked the grass with the heel of his work boot. “He’ll be hit hard financially even if I can pull something else together. But that’s no excuse, no fucking excuse, for what he did. I made damn sure it won’t happen again.” He passed a thumb over his bruised knuckles.
Unearthed Page 5