Discover Time For Love

by Louise Clark

  “Sounds like the guy’s brought an army,” Zac muttered.

  Liz glanced over at him. He looked a little worried. As well he might, since he was checking out the hind end of the creature, strictly on Mike’s side of the permit line. If Edmonds caught Zac at it, he’d be annoyed, if not worse.

  The engines died as trucks parked. Men and women swarmed out of cabs and started to pull gear out of the backs. Liz decided to climb up to the edge on Mike’s side of the rift. Not only would she be able to find out why he had brought such a big crew, but she’d be able to leave Zac Doyle behind. No small blessing, that.

  She picked out Mike immediately. It wasn’t just that he was tall—there were other tall men in his crew—or that his broad shoulders and slim hips stood out from the others. It was the way the mob of people reacted to him that identified him. They looked to him for direction, which he gave with good humor and attention to detail, no matter how small the query was. His crew was clearly used to him taking command and they were comfortable letting him have it.

  She watched as he sent a large group away from the rim. The direction puzzled her, until she saw them placing stakes and realized that they were setting up a campground. A smaller group was wrestling with what looked like high tech equipment. That was even more puzzling. Liz couldn’t find an answer. Mike and a skinny, quite young, male fell into a discussion. The male pointed in the direction of the skeleton and Mike turned.

  Liz knew the moment his gaze fell upon her, because her whole body tingled. She swallowed hard. She was being ridiculous. His eyes were shaded by sunglasses and he was busy with whatever he was doing. He wasn’t actually looking at her, but at the find. That was all. She was imagining that he was staring at her, that there was a mutual punch of awareness between them. Wishful thinking.

  No, not wishful. Indulgent. She had a career to make. She didn’t have time to fall into a relationship. With this man, or any other.

  She walked toward him, setting a deliberate pace. Now that he had seen her it wouldn’t do to linger at the edges of whatever he was up to. She was Scarr’s representative on the dig. She’d needed to make her presence known and her position clear.

  As she neared he nodded to the skinny kid and turned away from him, to watch her approach. A smile, slow, lazy, sensual, curled his lips. “Dr. Hamilton, I thought I’d find you here.”

  She nodded, wary of the promise in that smile. “You have a pretty big crew with you.” A statement, but also a question. Why?

  The smile lingered as he looked down at her. She wished she could see his eyes. He nodded toward the skinny kid. “I’m setting up a dino cam to cover the dig. It will live stream from Discovering Dinos’ website once we are underway. Anyone who wants to tune in and watch us in action, can.”

  She frowned and looked down into the rife where the kid was pacing about framing angles with his hands. Zac had abandoned the hindquarters and was watching him warily. “Like the camera that documented the birth of some eagles in Florida a couple of years ago?”

  Mike nodded. The sensual curve of his lips quirked up into amusement. “Josh—that’s the kid I was talking to—is a computer whiz. He’ll do all the technical set up. My video director will actually arrange the camera angles.”

  “Your video director?”

  That lazy smile returned as he turned his attention back to her. “Hmmm. I’ve also brought the head of my paleo team. His name is Will Lavery. You’ll meet him later. He’s going to explore the rift to see if there are any more remains that might be interesting.”

  Will Lavery. The name struck a bell, but at the moment Liz couldn’t place the reference. She decided not to worry about it. “A good plan. I was going to do something similar down at my end.”

  “I thought you might,” Mike said. There was a bit of mockery in his tone, but there was also approval. He did a half turn so he could point to the busy individuals setting up the camp area. “I like to keep my crew close to the dig. Saves time and makes it easier for everyone involved.”

  “Makes sense,” she said. She thought about long hours in one of Scarr’s trucks, driving back and forth with Zac Doyle. The mental image wasn’t appealing.

  “I’ve got an extra tent for you, if you want.”

  She pulled her gaze away from the builders, to look back up into his face. “What did you say?”

  His mouth quirked. “You heard me.”

  She couldn’t tell what he was thinking with those sunglasses shielding the expression in his eyes. “Take your glasses off.”

  After a moment, he slowly did as she asked.

  “You offered me a tent. Why?”

  “You are suspicious, aren’t you?” There was amusement in his voice, but it was also there in his eyes, along with a warmth that was almost a caress.

  The expression affected her in ways she couldn’t allow. She swallowed hard, tamping down a stupid softening that had no place at this career-making dig. “We’re enemies, Mr. Edmonds. You don’t usually invite the enemy into your camp. It’s dangerous.”

  “It could be,” he murmured. “But I don’t see us as enemies. Adversaries, perhaps, but not enemies.”

  She waved that away impatiently. “Semantics. Dr. Scarr does not see this as a cooperative venture.”

  “How do you see it, Dr. Hamilton?” His voice was silky, the amusement still there in his eyes. He was enjoying this.

  How did she see it? How did she see him? She looked into those warm hazel eyes and thought about the night in his truck. He’d been protective, but respectful; commanding, but not overbearing. If she let him know where she stood now, she thought, he’d honor her position for the rest of the dig.

  “Equals, but not partners.” She watched his eyes, caught the arrested look there. “Not yet, at least.”

  “Well, well, well,” he murmured. “An interesting answer. Not one I’d expected. The tent is still yours, Dr. Hamilton. If you want it.”

  That last statement sounded like a challenge and had something wild taking flight inside her. She went with her gut and nodded. “Thank you, I’ll take you up on your offer.”

  He flashed her a grin that set that wild creature fluttering. “Good. We’ll probably be able to move in the day after tomorrow. Bring your gear.”

  She swallowed hard and scrambled for someway to break the spell he’d put on her with a few words and a killer smile. “What about Zac?”

  The smile hardened, then disappeared. “Not invited.” He turned away, leaving her to wonder if sleeping with the enemy really was such a good idea.

  Chapter 12

  “Where’s your associate?”

  The voice shot a tingle of awareness down Liz’s spine, but it didn’t surprise her. That tingle had been there even before Mike Edmonds spoke.

  She straightened and stretched, glad of the opportunity to do something other than peer at the ground looking for evidence that the creature’s skull was still in the vicinity of its body. She took off her broad brimmed straw hat and ran her fingers through her short, blonde hair before she answered.

  She resisted the urge to sigh. As he had yesterday, Zac drove in with her in this morning, but then he disappeared, leaving her to process the find on her own. He thought she didn’t notice, but she did. She found his actions annoying. She’d intended to call him on it, but she’d discovered that he was very good at making himself scarce.

  She slid a look at Mike Edmonds, who was quietly waiting for her reply. “He’s somewhere down the rift.” He opened his mouth to speak and she held up her hand. “On our side of the line. He’s searching for new bone beds.”

  “If they’re there, they are not on the surface,” Mike said.

  He was watching her face with a particular intensity that Liz found unsettling. The look was making her skin tingle and her throat dry. Her reaction was pure sexual awareness and she tromped it down. It had no place on this dig, between her and this man.

  His statement gave her the opening she needed. “You’ve been
looking on our side of the line yourself.”

  He grinned at her. “Did I say that?”

  She snorted. “You didn’t have to.” He raised a brow and she relented. “Even if you’d done a little exploring when Zac or I weren’t here, you wouldn’t try to poach, no matter what Scarr thinks.”

  “Thanks for the vote of confidence.”

  Shrugging, she said, “It’s more an observation.” She cocked her head as she looked up at him. “You’re a smart man, Mike Edmonds. You know that if Scarr believed you were taking bones from his side of the line, he’d have lawyers, and maybe the police, involved so quickly you wouldn’t have time to hide them, let alone sell them.”

  “Pragmatic.” He made the word sound like a caress.

  Or maybe to her it felt like a caress. They were having a perfectly normal business conversation, not one filled with underlying sexual tension. Weren’t they?

  She felt his eyes following her as she went over to fetch the bottle of water she’d stashed in the shadow of the opposite wall of the rift. She uncapped the bottle and lifted it to her lips. The water felt good on her dry throat until she realized that Mike was watching her as she swallowed. Suddenly her skin was hot, too tight for her body, prickling with an awareness she couldn’t ignore, no matter how much she wanted to.

  She lowered the bottle. Mike leaned against a large bolder that the raging water had dumped in the middle of the rift. He appeared to be watching her, but it was hard to tell, because the brim of his hat and his sunglasses covered his eyes and masked his expression.

  “I heard from Harvey Earnshaw this morning,” he said.

  This sexual fantasizing really must be all on one side. Her side. “Who is Harvey Earnshaw?”

  “My lawyer.” He stood up. Headed her way. “Harvey made contact with the university’s legal team yesterday afternoon. He thinks the negotiations will be straightforward. He figures he’ll have the clauses hammered out in a couple of weeks and the contracts signed within the month.”

  She stayed where she was, idly turning the bottle of warm water in her hand as she watched him approach. “Fast work.”

  “The university lawyers seem to be happy to cast Scarr to the wolves. Or in this case, to one wolf.” He smiled.

  Liz thought the expression singularly suited to the way he described himself. “You.”

  “Me. Harvey stressed that the find was being shared by the two people who discovered it. That Dr. Scarr would get a mention in the final dig report, but that the dig permit belonged to the university, and you work for it just as much as Scarr does.”

  She sucked in a breath. “You instructed your lawyer to cut Scarr out.”

  “Exactly what he planned to do to you,” Mike said. He shrugged. “They don’t want a lawsuit they won’t win. Or one that would show them in a bad light. And not supporting a certified member of their own dig team would definitely put them in a bad light.”

  She laughed. “Scarr wouldn’t agree.”

  He shrugged again. “The camp is ready. We’re moving in tomorrow. You can set up any time you’re ready.”

  She’d been thinking about how Scarr would direct his anger when he discovered that the lawyers were abandoning him. Now she felt nothing but relief. “Great. I’ll bring my stuff with me when I come tomorrow.”

  He stared at her for a moment more, then he nodded and backed away. She drank some more water as she watched him move down the gully, deeper into his side of the line. He moved with determination and a lithe speed that appealed to her. She shook herself mentally, then put down the water bottle.

  She needed to stop this now. Sure, the man had a great body. Sure, he was ridiculously attractive. Sure, he had that sexy way of talking to her as if she was the only person in existence who mattered to him. But—and it was a big but—he was, for now, her partner. A working associate who might not be as scrupulous as he should be. A colleague she would have to keep her eye on.

  She sighed and got back to work.

  By the end of the day she was tired. Zac complained about the lack of visible bones in the parts of the rift he’d explored, and told her again that the bones they had were from a commonly found species. Liz tried to tune him out, but he had a nasal way of speaking that rubbed against her nerves and made her skin crawl. She looked forward to changing her accommodation from Scarr’s camp to Mike’s.

  Packing up her tent wouldn’t take much time, so she’d wait until after dinner to put everything into her suitcase. First, she’d have to tell Scarr that she was shifting camps, though. If she put it off he’d be miffed. He liked to think he was the one in charge, making the decisions, even when he wasn’t.

  Perhaps she handled her explanation poorly. Or perhaps Scarr simply didn’t like the idea of anyone making plans, but him. But a half an hour after she’d reached the camp she was staring at her boss and saying incredulously, “Again? You’re firing me again?”

  He stared back at her, his eyes hard. “You need to decide where your loyalties lie.”

  It was as if she was watching her career being washed away a second time. That was a shock when she thought she’d have charge of an important new dig. She scrambled to stem the flow and stop the damage. “I’m part of your team, Dr. Scarr. When I write my part of the dig report I will be citing you as the dig supervisor.”

  Wrong answer. Scarr puffed up like a fighting cock ready to do battle. “I will be writing the dig report. I will be citing you as the one to make the find and as an active member of the team that gathered the remains.” He sounded absolutely furious. “It will be my lab that processes the bones found.”

  She eyed him warily. She wasn’t sure how much he’d heard from the university, or if he knew how Mike Edmonds seemed to be manipulating the situation through his lawyer. At this moment it seemed prudent to keep her peace and agree with whatever he had in mind. “Okay. I don’t know what the dig report has to do with my relocating to Mike Edmonds’ camp. Or why you see it as a betrayal.”

  “You’ll be working with him, discussing the status of the dig with him. In short, you’ll be throwing in your lot with his.”

  “That couldn’t be further from the truth!” At least, the throwing in with him was. The other? Talking about the dig, about the creature, speculating on its era, the cause of death, what the area had been like when it was alive? Yeah, she expected to talk to Mike about it. She couldn’t see why Scarr would mind, though, since he never sought input like that from her in the past. “I thought you would appreciate my being on site. That way I can make sure he doesn’t try to rip off our part of the dino.”

  “I don’t want my name associated with his!”

  Liz wasn’t sure who was more shocked, her or Scarr himself. The outburst said a lot, but to Liz it didn’t make sense. Mike Edmonds was involved, whether Scarr liked it or not. She was sure she looked quite astounded and wasn’t surprised when Scarr spoke again.

  “Having one of my team members living in Edmonds’ camp will be misunderstood.” He couldn’t quite meet her eyes. “The community will think that I accept him as a colleague.”

  Understanding dawned. Scarr feared the tightknit academic world would evaluate him and find him wanting. It was a good point, one she would be well to consider, because that community would be analyzing her as well.

  Shifting her domicile would be fraught with more dangers than she expected. Could she do it? Was she up to the challenges that would ensue?

  Hell, yes. “Dr. Scarr, I’m moving over to Edmonds’ camp. It will save me more than an hour travel time each day, so I’ll be able to get more done, more quickly. I am not throwing in my lot with him. Nor am I abandoning academic methods. My goal is to retrieve the skeleton, as intact as possible. I think having a positive working relationship with Mike Edmonds will make that easier, not more difficult.” She hesitated, then added, “I think you are quite capable of making sure the academic community knows where you stand on the subject of Mike Edmonds and amateur paleontologists generally.”
She was throwing Edmonds under the bus and that felt wrong, but at the moment she was desperately trying to save herself.

  Scarr thought about her comment, then he nodded thoughtfully. “I’ll do a series of posts on the many ways amateurs hinder the gathering of knowledge.” He pursed his lips, his expression satisfied. “Yeah. It’s a beginning.” He nodded decisively, then turned his attention back to her. “Zac or I will be at the rift site every day. I’ll expect a regular report.”

  If that was what it took to keep her job, she’d do it. She nodded. “Of course.” She wondered if she should warn him about the dino cam, but decided that could wait for another day. She hoped it would never come.

  “Which tent is mine?”

  Though Liz Hamilton smiled, there was a tightness in that smile that had Mike frowning. She had a backpack slung over her shoulders and a suitcase on rollers that she’d wrestled down into the rift and across it to the path up to his side.

  He knew, because he’d watched her. And wondered why that idiot, Zac Doyle, hadn’t driven the pickup along the detour to Discovering Dinos’ side of Highway 25, then dropped her at the camp.

  He had to force himself not to rush down into the rift, pluck the suitcase from her grasp, and haul it up to the camp himself. He didn’t, because he couldn’t. If he offered her extra help he’d acknowledge to her—worse, to himself—that he was interested in her as more than a colleague.

  He gestured to a tent nestled in the middle of the half a dozen tents that made up the camp. “That one. The small one beside the admin tent.” When he’d chosen the location, he’d told himself he was putting her there so he could keep an eye on her. His tent was the one on the other side of hers after all, and with her lodged between him and the admin tent, there was no way she could do anything that might jeopardize his dig. The reality was that he wanted her close and he wanted her safe.

  “Thanks,” she said. “I’ll just stow my bags, then I’ll go down to the rift.”