He looked up at her to find her hugging herself sweetly, almost like a little girl. “I was wondering ... did you always know what you wanted to be?”
Her voice was soft and sweet and her mood had shifted one hundred eighty degrees.
No longer was she the vixen ready to do battle. She suddenly was looking at him like an expectant child, ready for her bedtime story.
The image should have cooled his ardor, but only managed to confuse him.
Here she stood before him, alone in his room, prim in her nightgown, her eyes full of curiosity ... but for something far more innocent than what he wanted to show her.
She was an incredible contradiction—bold enough to share his room without asking permission and pure enough to stand before him in her nightgown, staring up at him with an expression that looked suddenly and very dangerously like... admiration.
Was she truly interested?
Or was she trying to soften him up?
In any case, he thought about her question a moment, because it took that long to register. “I think so,” he answered, clearing his throat.
Her honey-colored eyes glimmered with intelligence.
He could see so much in them... passion, excitement, joy. Despite the state of their personal affairs, she seemed intoxicated with life in the way he usually was when he was on the brink of some new discovery.
Was she always so ebullient?
Or was she simply looking forward to seeing her lover as she’d claimed? That thought soured his mood.
Damned Penn.
Why was it the bastard always ended up with the things Jack most wanted? At the instant, he was feeling bitter in a way he’d never let himself give in to—not even on receiving the news that Penn had been awarded yet another grant. His grant. He’d warrant Penn had no idea why he was even out there... beyond the arguments he had stolen from Jack. He was probably wandering around in a daze, tripping over the very evidence Jack was hungry to uncover.
Which led him to wonder ... what did Sophia know about her fiancé’s affairs? If she was spying for him, it had to mean she knew something, at least. And if she did... well, then maybe he could pick her brain ...
“Do you enjoy anthropology, Sophia?”
For an instant, Sophie started at his question.
She didn’t ever remember Harlan once asking her, though she’d been greedy for the conversation.
“Actually...” She blinked away her surprise and nodded enthusiastically. “Yes.”
“I suppose you would have to share a passing interest, at least?” he suggested.
Sophie thought he must be referring to Harlan, and chafed at the reminder of Harlan’s letter—his ready dismissal of her curiosity. “I never pretend an interest in anything,” she assured him, and hesitated, unsure why it seemed suddenly inappropriate to address him so formally. “... Mr. MacAuley.”
Perhaps it was simply because she was standing before him dressed only in her nightgown, a tattered one at that. Honestly, she ought to be more abashed by the fact, but she considered herself a practical woman, and her manner of dress simply couldn’t be helped at the moment. She was fortunate, indeed, that she was wearing what she was, and had decided not to dwell upon her lack of choice. What good would it do her anyhow? She couldn’t exactly complain when it was her own fault that she was minus a few gowns.
“I wasn’t implying you were pretending at all,” he countered. “Only that you are no stranger to the field.” He sat back in his chair and cocked his head at her. “I imagine your fiancé spoke often of his ... second love.”
Her heart squeezed at his question.
“His second love?” For an instant, the allusion flew past her entirely. Foremost in her mind was Harlan’s dalliances. And then she realized what he was implying. “Oh, yes! Well, no, actually,” she confessed. “Harlan rarely spoke of his activities to me at all.”
She sighed, realizing just how little time they had actually spent together as adults. “In fact,” she confessed a little sadly, “I rarely saw him after our engagement.”
His brows lifted and he stared at her, scrutinizing her much too closely. “Really?”
Sophie looked away, uncomfortable with his regard. She didn’t want him to know anything.
It wasn’t any of his affair.
“Really,” she replied, and changed the subject at once. “However,” she told him with a smile, “When we were children, he often shared his aspirations with me.”
“Did he?”
Was he truly interested or was he merely humoring her?
It didn’t matter. Sophie was hungry for the opportunity to expound upon this subject. She pulled herself up on the desk, eager for his conversation. “In fact, when I was a little girl,” she began wistfully, “we went on an expedition into the wilderness. It was the most fun I ever had!”
His brows lifted. “Expedition?”
Sophie laughed, embarrassed though she hadn’t a reason to be. It was a very long time ago, and she’d been merely a child. “At our summer home ... my mother used to have these picnics where she would invite her closest friends. Because none of them had little girls my age, I usually played alone. But one day the boys asked me to join them on their expedition, and I was absolutely beside myself with joy at my first discovery! A shark’s tooth!”
She laughed softly at the memory. “Actually, I’m not sure if, in fact, it was a shark’s tooth, but it certainly looked like one. Some part of me couldn’t begin to fathom fierce fish had once swam through my yard. But the boys swore it was a shark’s tooth, and somewhere deep down I wanted to believe it.”
Jack blinked away the image of her as a child running through the parklands of her home. “Sometimes you have to forget everything you know and see the world with new eyes.”
“Yes! I think so, too,” Sophie agreed. “Sometimes everything you know is just plain wrong.” She was talking about Harlan now, her life in general, but he needn’t know it. “Sometimes everyone around you is telling you something is one way, and you try so hard to believe it, and it just doesn’t feel right.” She chewed her bottom lip, contemplating that truth. “Do you know what I mean?”
His eyes twinkled a bit. “I do.”
“Sometimes,” Sophie continued, encouraged by his rapt attention, “nothing feels right until you forget everything you know ... and follow your heart.”
He shook his head. “Your heart will get you in trouble,” Jack proposed. “Follow your gut instead. It never lies.”
“I suppose that’s true.” Her gut said she was doing the right thing.
“So what did you do with your shark’s tooth?” he asked, and smiled. “Did you save it?”
Sophie bit her lip and told him a bit sheepishly, “My mother found it, actually, and was quite horrified by it. She tossed it in the garden, and told me never to get my hands dirty again. But I went back later and found it, took it inside, and hid it in my pillow.” She refrained from adding that she would pull it out each night and sleep with it tucked in the palm of her hand, certain he would think that was silly.
“I used to imagine it was my good luck charm, to scare away the ghoulies.”
He laughed, the sound of it rich and warm.
It made Sophie feel completely at ease.
“I think that’s every budding anthropologist’s first discovery ... the infamous shark’s tooth.”
Sophie grinned at him. “Was it yours?” She lifted her knees up and hugged herself, lying her cheek atop them, feeling perfectly at ease when only minutes before she had felt awkward.
“Actually, no.”
“What was yours?”
“A canine tibia.”
Sophie scrunched her nose. “A dog’s leg?” She laughed. “Yuck!”
He grinned. “Yep. Told my friends it was an ancient breed of horse that belonged to pygmies who migrated from Africa.”
Sophie giggled. “You told them that?”
He nodded, looking quite pleased with himself,
and Sophie suddenly imagined him as a child, his golden hair white from the sun and his skin deeply bronzed, his teeth flashing in a mischievous grin that was inherently all boy. “Wherever did you come up with a theory like that?”
“Vivid imagination, mostly,” he admitted. “But my father was an anthropologist,” he told her, “and I picked up bits and pieces from him.”
Sophie’s brows lifted in surprise. “Was he truly?”
“One of the best,” Jack said, and Sophie could see the pride in his face. His eyes filled with admiration and his smile was genuine.
“He must be so proud!” Sophie exclaimed.
He blinked then, and looked away, then back, shuttering emotions from her. “He’s dead now, Sophie.”
She’d known that, actually.
“Oh.” Sophie flinched at her own carelessness. How could she have forgotten? She sat up, her heart twisting a little. “I’m sorry,” she offered, and wanted to hug him suddenly.
“Don’t be,” he said, and smiled too. “He lived a full life.”
She wanted to ask more, but didn’t dare.
Their gazes held.
Her heart began to beat a little faster, and she swallowed a knot that rose in her throat.
“I guess I should go to bed now,” she said after a moment, taking a deep breath and sliding her feet to the floor.
She was feeling strange suddenly, wanting things she shouldn’t dare even think of.
He didn’t speak, merely continued to stare, and Sophie’s stomach fluttered without cause.
“Well... g’night,” she whispered and rose, leaving him to his work.
“G’night, Sophia,” he whispered back.
Her body shivered at the sound of her name on his lips and she quickly closed the curtain between them. Without another word, she put out the lanterns on her side of the room. She had no idea what had just happened between them, but her head was spinning as she climbed into her hammock.
As she lay there, she tried not to think of him sitting on the other side of the curtain, but was far too aware of every shuffle of his papers ... every sound that came from his half of the room.
Her heart didn’t stop pounding until long after his lantern clicked off and the room lay completely still.
The storm that had been threatening earlier never materialized and the sound of the waves slapping outside the cabin lulled her to sleep.
Chapter 16
It was late afternoon when Sophie finished her self-appointed chores.
She was weary as she made her way back to the cabin for a moment’s respite, but filled with satisfaction over the day’s accomplishments.
In the last few days, she’d managed somehow to stay out of trouble, and had even made strides toward making amends with Jack. He seemed different toward her today—not that he’d spoken to her much at all, but it seemed to Sophie that every time she’d chanced to look up, he was there, watching her.
She couldn’t tell if it was because he didn’t trust her, or if he still expected her to find her way into trouble... or if it was something more... but something about the way he looked at her sent her pulse skittering.
Maybe he had felt what she’d felt that first night in his cabin? She tried not to think of that, pushed it aside.
Her life was complicated enough, and she was determined now to uncomplicate it at all costs. Jack MacAuley was a distraction she could do without. She didn’t need a man in her life.
At any rate, there were other things to concern herself with this moment. Thanks to Kell, the stove was no longer a complete enigma, and she’d managed to concoct a few edible meals. She thought perhaps she was improving, though it wasn’t as yet evident in the expressions on the crew’s faces. She’d work on her seasoning now, and maybe before long she would see them smile at the prospect of eating the fruit of her labors.
She found the captain’s cabin empty and slipped within, closing the door behind her. She had one dress left and contemplated changing into it, soiled as this one was becoming, but she didn’t dare. For the first time in her life, she couldn’t just buy another. Nor was she certain how to wash them without ruining the material. No, she’d have to make do.
Untying her makeshift apron, she tossed it over the rope that separated their rooms, and dared to go and sit at Jack’s desk. She really should wash up first, she thought, but she was far too tired to actually do it. She sank back in his chair and set her feet up as she’d seen him do while reading his papers, and smiled to herself at the picture she must present.
She imagined the look he’d wear if he walked in just now, and bit her lip to keep from laughing.
All she needed was a cigar and a brandy and a pair of pants and she’d be just one of the crew. Which made her wonder. What would it be like to be Jack? To simply be able to come and go when he pleased? To be in love with his work? To live life by his own rules?
Her gaze was caught by the portrait of Harlan. She removed her feet from the desk and leaned over to snatch it into her hands.
How could she ever have thought herself in love with this puny man? Somehow, he paled in comparison to Jack. Everything about Jack MacAuley bespoke vitality. He was passion incarnate and Sophie couldn’t see him doing anything halfway.
She admired him, she realized.
She set the portrait of Harlan down and scrunched her nose in disgust at it. His looks were deceiving. He seemed far too angelic when he should be wearing devil’s horns and an evil goatee.
On a whim, she picked up Jack’s quill and dipped it in his inkwell, then drew tiny little horns on Harlan’s head. She smiled, satisfied with the impression. Next she drew a small goatee, pointy at the end—almost like another horn—and went on to doodle a mustache as well. Funny, she had never noticed how weak a chin Harlan had before now. The goatee only seemed to accentuate it. She giggled as she drew, imagining the expression on his face were he to see her disfiguring his picture. Next, she drew little money symbols in his pupils ... so tiny one could almost mistake them for a simple gleam in his eye, and then she smiled at the finished product, her mood improved a hundredfold.
It was strange actually... She was no less determined to face Harlan and seize back her honor, but somehow... the edge had softened from her anger. She no longer felt such bitter fury when she thought of Harlan with other women. It no longer stung so much that he had no wish to see her.
In fact, it no longer even seemed to matter that he’d been so willing to leave her on a shelf until he was good and ready to encumbrance himself with the burden of matrimony.
The one thing that did bother her was that he had used her and her father ... and he continued to use her without compunction.
She set the portrait down again on the desk so that it faced her side of the room, thinking that there was nothing to stop her now from going to Paris to study art.
Or perhaps she would go to Italy ...
Or maybe she would go dust off some heretofore undiscovered pharaoh’s tomb in the great land of Egypt and give Harlan a better example to follow. She leaned forward and flicked her finger at the picture, knocking it on its face, smirking at it. It was really bad of her to feel so vengeful, but she couldn’t quite keep herself from it. She truly hoped it didn’t make her a terrible person.
Her thoughts returned to Egypt. Wouldn’t it be fun to explore new cultures and to piece together the puzzle of their existence through their artifacts? She envied Jack fiercely. She wanted to know the things he knew.
She glanced down at the small silver key that protruded from the drawer lock. It was too tempting. Her curiosity beckoned her to open the desk drawer.
She couldn’t resist.
His papers were all neatly stacked within and she pulled out a handful of them.
The documents were all titled, with myriad notes scribbled into the margins. Some caught her attention more than others...
“The Phoenician Connection” ... “Hieroglyphics at Closer Inspection” ... “The Maya Code.” Skimm
ing the material, she noted that the last appeared to be an in-depth interpretation of the Mayan system of record keeping. She leafed through a few more, and paused at one that bore interesting sketches in the margins. It was titled “The Supernatural Association.”
One sketch appeared to be the body of an infantile human with the spots of a jaguar and a rather grotesque face. The figure was lying on its back and appeared to be having a tantrum of sorts. Under that particular drawing was scribbled “Baby Jaguar, Early Classic Tikal and Caracol.” The passage beside it was about the Bearded Jaguar God of the underworld, and Sophie surmised they were one in the same—a Mayan version of the devil perhaps?
The next paragraph spoke of a god who sat on his throne in judgment and destroyed an early creation by flood ... How strangely coincidental.
Or perhaps not so much at all...
She flipped a few more pages and found another drawing entitled “The Body and Its Accoutrements.” It was a gruesome picture of the skeletal remains of a Mayan man, with labeled artifacts outside the boundary of the drawing, and markings showing the position in which they were found.
Fascinating.
There were, after that, pages upon pages of crudely drawn maps, depicting what Sophie assumed were tombs. Had he drawn these maps himself? Had he actually, with his own two eyes, beheld the bodies at rest? How must it feel to unearth something that had not been seen by human eyes since the day of its interment?
She read on, devouring information like a hungry beggar, losing track of time. It wasn’t until the sun began to set and she was forced to light the lantern on the desk that she realized just how late the hour had grown. Still she couldn’t put down the manuscripts. They held her enthralled. Here in these papers were a man’s life’s work, evidence of the time and heart he had invested in his profession.
Sophie read until her eyes grew weary, until she had to squint to see the letters because the room had grown too dim to make them out. Greedy for knowledge, she turned the lantern light higher, the better to read by, and removed it from its brace, drawing it near. As she huddled over its flickering flame, heat caressed her lips and cheeks, seducing her into a sweet languor...
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