by Unknown
Concern knit Jericho’s brow. Was it because she’d called him by his grandfather’s name again? But he didn’t correct her.
She rested a frail hand on Zoey’s shoulder. “So the friends-turned-lovebirds were separated again.”
Zoey couldn’t resist sliding another glance Jericho’s way, and his dark eyes burned hers. What was going on inside his head?
A knock sounded on the open door and a nurse came into the room. “You’ve got visitors, Helen. How nice.”
“This is my son Joe and his new wife Junie Mae,” Granny Helen said.
The nurse smiled and shook a white medicine cup that rattled with pills. “Time for your afternoon meds.”
“What happened with Little Wolf and Clarissa?” Zoey asked, anxious to hear the rest of the story.
Granny Helen blinked at her. “Who?”
“You were telling us the romance of Little Wolf and Clarissa.”
The elderly woman looked over at Jericho. “Who is she, Joe? And what’s she talking about?”
“It’s all right.” Jericho leaned down to kiss her cheek. “Don’t worry about it.”
“You know.” Granny Helen sighed. “Maybe I will go back to bed.”
“I’ll help her back,” the nurse said.
“We’ll let you rest now, Granny.” Jericho patted her hand.
The tender care he took with his great-grandmother touched Zoey’s heart. He was a good man. She’d always known it, but now? She couldn’t explain these tangled emotions surging inside her, but nothing had ever felt so right.
“Wow.” Zoey blew out her breath as they walked out of the nursing home. “That must have been hard for you when she mistook you for your grandfather.”
“Breaks my heart,” he said, “but she’s been like that ever since I’ve known her. I don’t know how much of what she says is truth or fiction.”
“She seemed pretty clear when she was telling about Little Wolf and Clarissa.”
“Probably because it’s a love story. She used to be a matchmaker, you know. When she was young.”
“Really?”
“Yep.”
“Does she have Alzheimer’s?”
“No. It’s some other form of senility.”
“We didn’t even get to ask her if she knew anything about a settlement. I got her sidetracked with that story.”
“I’m glad you did. I hated having to tell her Grandpa Joe was dead and I feel guilty for not coming home to see her these past three years. Junie Mae looks in on her, but I should have come home.”
Zoey linked her arm through his, rested her head on his shoulder. “Stop beating yourself up. You had to finish your degree, and you were so good with her.”
“So were you.”
“Do you know the rest of the Little Wolf and Clarissa story?”
“Not really.” he said. “Although I think I recall that it ends tragically.”
“Oh no. I was afraid of that.”
“Makes me wish I’d listened to her stories more closely when I was little. She had so many of them and she’d just ramble on. A little boy’s attention span can only take so much of that.”
“Too bad your grandfather is gone too. He might have been able to shed some light on her stories.”
“Taking oral histories is often fascinating, but it can also be emotionally wrenching,” he said. “Like today.”
“What do you make of that medallion she gave you?”
“For all I know she bought it at a craft fair years ago.” He walked around to the passenger side of his pickup with her, paused to unlock the door.
“We’ve got to let this thing about the settlement go, don’t we?”
He nodded. “Looks like it.”
“Too bad.”
Jericho was standing so close to her she could smell the peppery scent of his cologne. His lips were so near that if she went up on tiptoes and leaned forward just a little bit, they would be kissing.
A shiver ran through her. All this time she believed in the Cupid legend that falling in love would be like a lightning strike. That just one look and you would instantly know. The ingrained belief had kept her searching for a stranger, for that split-second knowledge of he’s the one. She’d never once considered that love could sneak up on you in devious increments.
Before she could fully process that realization, Jericho’s phone rang. He opened the door with one hand and nodded for her to slide on in, while taking his cell from his pocket with the other hand.
“Hello?” He listened for a moment, his face breaking into a grin. “Leave it right where you found it. We’re on our way.”
“What is?” she asked as he severed the call.
“We’ve got to get back to the dig. They’ve found something.”
JERICHO KNELT OVER the excavated unit floor dug in ten-centimeter levels to a depth of sixty centimeters. The unit floor was a light-colored natural stratum underneath a cultural stratum packed with white shells and darker soil. Avery had made sure to segregate the soils of the different strata and he’d left the artifact in situ as the team had found it. In the time it had taken Jericho and Zoey to get back, Avery had also measured, drawn, photographed, and laboriously recorded everything exactly as it lay.
He praised Avery for his control and called the rest of the students over to start troweling away the rest of the stratum around the artifact, leaving it on a pedestal of dirt. Zoey bagged the fresh soil for later processing. Once everything had been properly processed and recorded, Jericho was ready to unearth the artifact.
“What is it?” Avery breathed.
Jericho carefully extracted it, and that familiar old magic swept over him. God, he loved this job.
The artifact had a head made of sharp-edged stone lashed to a wooden handle through a hole burned into the center. Leather thongs had been looped through the hole and used to secure the stone to the handle. On the shaft of the wood there appeared to be carvings encrusted with soil. He wouldn’t be able to make out what the carvings were until he cleaned up the artifacts. His heartbeat quickened.
“Looks to be a tomahawk,” he said. “Probably around two hundred years old.”
“So it’s not anything from an ancient pyramid builder.” Avery sounded disappointed.
“No, but it’s a grand find. Great job, team.” He glanced over to see Zoey staring at the artifact, her face enrapt.
They were crouching side by side and he couldn’t believe he was sharing this with her, and his heart suddenly seemed too big to fit in his chest.
A lock of hair had fallen across her face and he didn’t even stop to think, just reached out his big tanned hand and tucked it behind her soft, delicate ear so she could get a better look at the artifact.
She sucked in her breath, but did not move a muscle.
Aware that every eye in the dig site was latched on to them and there were whispers going on behind palms, Jericho steeped her in archaeological terminology. In the hushed tones of foreplay, he described Native American rituals, customs, traditions, and cultural beliefs. Although he’d never been exceptionally adept at seduction, without provocation his voice lowered and his tone deepened, with the intention of drawing her—and only her—into his narrative. All the while, he was slowly sliding his hand down her arm.
She never uttered a sound, only glanced from his hand to his face with a stiff expression on her lips. Was she horrified? Hell, he certainly was. What had come over him? They were not alone. He was feeding the flames of their attraction faster than if he’d chunked balsa wood on to a campfire.
He should move his hand away, but couldn’t seem to make himself do it. So to keep up appearances, he maintained a blank expression, kept talking about artifacts and history and details of their discovery, but inwardly he was alarmingly aware of his thundering pulse. He remembered how she’d been his first archaeology assistant back there in his grandfather’s backyard. How she’d looked at him then as she was looking at him now. Like he was crazy, but dammit, s
he wanted in on the adventure anyway. Now, as she had then, she made him feel as if it were just the two of them, wrapped in a conspiratorial cocoon, against the world.
Heat swamped his body and he was getting short of breath and he felt as if he’d just done wind sprints up the Sul Ross bleachers, and still he could not stop touching her. To cover his tracks, he took the artifact and placed it in her palm, making it seem as if that’s what he’d been intending all along.
Her eyes met his and a huge grin lit up her face. “That is the most awesome thing I’ve ever seen.”
“And we’re just getting started,” he said, but he was not talking about the tomahawk.
“You didn’t think we’d find anything, did you?” she asked.
“Not really,” he admitted, still breathless and wondering if she’d seen through him. “This is beyond my wildest expectations.”
He stood, his joints aching from crouching so long, and he was startled to see the sun was kissing the horizon. They’d been at this for hours. He was about to suggest they bring in the battery-powered lamps and keep digging when he remembered that it was Friday evening and the students had the weekend free.
“Let’s put away the tools and then you’re excused for the weekend,” he said. “Go out, let off some steam, and come back at seven A.M. on Monday morning relaxed and ready to get back to work.”
Hyped up, and chattering at warp speed, students began gathering up the gear and stowing everything appropriately.
Zoey came up to him as he bagged the tomahawk. “You’re going to take the tomahawk back to the archaeology lab at Sul Ross tonight so you can clean it and take a closer look, aren’t you?”
He grinned. “You know me too well. I can’t resist.”
“Well, I intend on being with you when you do it.”
He was dopily pleased to hear her say that. He wanted her with him. They covered the dig site with plastic, and on their way out, they closed and padlocked the entrance gate.
And Jericho couldn’t help thinking this was the best day he’d had in a very long time.
Chapter 11
Magnetic dating: A method of dating that compares the magnetism in an object with changes in the earth’s magnetic field over time.
THEY stopped for fast food at a drive-through and ate in the pickup on the way to Alpine. “We’ll eat healthier tomorrow,” he promised.
To most people, drive-through fast food wouldn’t have been romantic, but to Zoey, consumed by the thrill of success and the fire in Jericho’s voice as he talked about their find and how excited he was that she’d been there to discover it with him, this was better than a fancy dinner at a five-star restaurant. This was passion.
And so were the feelings pushing hotly through her veins.
They arrived at the lab and Jericho turned on the overhead fluorescent light to review a room of long wide tables, high-intensity lamps, plenty of shelving, a big sink with a sand trap, cleaning tools, various containers, and other supplies. A radio rested on a tall metal file cabinet, and Jericho went over to turn it on.
“Music helps you concentrate,” she declared.
“You know me too well.”
“I remember you blasting Stone Temple Pilots when you studied.”
He examined the tomahawk thoroughly under a magnifying glass. “Look.” He breathed. “There’s what appears to be a strand of dark hair wedged against a small crack in the wood. Hand me an evidence bag, will you?”
She passed him a bag and he put the collected strand in the baggie and carefully wrote on the label where he’d found it. Then he took the tomahawk to the cleaning sink and filled a plastic tub with water. Zoey came to stand beside him to observe the process.
“Don’t wash finds directly in the sink,” he cautioned. “Mud can instantly clog the drain. Hand me one of those toothbrushes, please.” He nodded at a cup full of soft-bristled toothbrushes beside the sink.
She got the toothbrush for him and he gently scrubbed the stone hatchet part of the tomahawk under the water so that he didn’t splash mud everywhere, while at the same time taking care to keep the wooden handle out of the water.
“Wood is perishable, so we don’t want to submerse it,” he said. “I’ll dry brush it with a fine paintbrush. You have to be very careful when cleaning or you can end up losing information or damaging the artifacts.”
“We learned that in class,” she said, “but until you’re hands-on it doesn’t fully register.”
He put the tomahawk on a drying rack, went to the computer, and started inputting information about the artifact. When the tomahawk was dry, he took it over to a table, spread butcher paper down underneath a high-intensity lamp, and sat down to clean the handle with a fine paintbrush.
“What can I do to help?” she asked.
“Get the e-reader out of my pack and open up the book on Native American cultures of the Southwest. There’s a chapter in there on symbolism.”
“Will do.” She retrieved the e-reader, found the book and chapter, and sat in the chair beside him, fascinated as he painstakingly whisked away the dirt to reveal the first carving on the handle.
It was amazing how gentle his big hands were, how carefully he held the fragile artifact. She liked that his clothes were dusty and his collar was askew and his hair was mussed. She admired his intensity, his dedication to detail, and his devotion to his craft. It turned her on. She crossed her legs and willed the feeling away, but, alas, it did not work.
Sitting there beside him, Zoey was pulled like warm taffy in two directions. Part of her wanted to run before she did something irrevocably reckless, another part of her—the essential Zoey part of her—longed to fling herself into his arms, tell him she was quitting the field school, and beg him to make love to her. Instant gratification over long-term gain. Wasn’t that always her modus operandi?
All she had to do was hold out three more weeks. Why did it feel so impossible?
He had most of the dirt worked off the first etching. “Could you pass me the magnifying glass so I can see it more clearly?”
She passed the magnifying glass to him like a scrub nurse seamlessly feeding a scalpel to a surgeon. “What is it an etching of?”
“A Native American brave.” Jericho gave the magnifying glass back to her so she could have a look for herself.
She put the glass to her eyes. “He looks very young, practically a boy. After hearing your granny’s story today, it makes me think of Little Wolf. Could this tomahawk have belonged to the young brave whose likeness is etched here? You know, sort of like signing it with his likeness?”
“Possibly. It could also be telling a story. It wasn’t uncommon for Native Americans to depict their myths and legends through carvings. Although the nomadic tribes in the Southwest were less likely to do so.”
“Fascinating.”
“Would you like to clean off the next carving?” he asked, and handed her the paintbrush.
“You trust me not to screw it up?”
“Zoe-Eyes, there’s not a person on this earth I trust more than you.”
Her pulse skipped. Don’t get mushy. “Which might not be saying a lot since you’re kinda suspicious by nature,” she teased.
“Actually, it says everything.”
Their gazes met. Her heart chugged like a sumo wrestler climbing Mount Everest. Okay, not a sexy image, but that’s exactly what she needed, something unattractive to chase off these crazy, uncontrollable romantic thoughts.
“Here,” he said, and scooted her chair closer to his. “Get directly under the light.”
“If I get any closer I’m going to have to start taking off clothes. It’s hot in here,” she quipped, and immediately regretted it when his eyelids lowered and he gave her a look that was pure sensual heat.
“Archaeologists have to acclimate themselves to all kinds of changes in temperature,” he murmured.
She gulped. “I’m beginning to realize that.”
He picked up the magnifying glass, held
it above the tomahawk handle for her to look through as she worked.
Get to work. Right.
She forced herself to glance away from him and focus on the artifact. Carefully, mostly because he trusted her and she feared letting him down, Zoey brushed away the dirt from the second etching, small piles of soil accumulating on the butcher paper as she worked.
Jericho was leaning over her shoulder, his head almost touching hers, his breath feathering the fine hairs at her temple. If she swiveled her neck, their lips would be touching.
Concentrate.
The radio played softly in the background and she focused on the sound, testing out Jericho’s theory. He was right. Music helped sweep you into the work.
It took patience, something she normally did not possess a big supply of, but to her surprise she quickly became enthralled with the delicacy of the unveiling. A curve here, an angle there; it was fun to watch the etching appear. When she reached a stubborn chunk of dirt that refused to yield, Jericho passed her a sharpened bamboo skewer.
“Use this to pick off the stubborn dirt,” he said.
She put down the paintbrush and picked up the bamboo skewer to do as he directed. “I never realized it before, but archaeologists are destruction artists. Reverse sculptors. We take away to reveal what once was, with new information about the past being our art.”
“Which is why we must take supreme care to preserve what we can,” he said. “It’s a delicate balance, undermining the old in order to serve the new, without disturbing what was precious about the old in the first place.”
“That’s quite poetic and insightful.”
“We are telling the story of human history, after all.”
“Archaeology is such a noble profession. I can’t figure out why it took me so long to find it.” On the radio, Linkin Park was singing, “Somewhere I Belong.” She shivered against the snarl of emotions pushing against her chest.
“Cold?”
“Uh-huh.” She wasn’t about to admit she was feeling oddly melancholy.
“I thought you were hot,” he said.
“Guess I acclimated.” She finished digging out the clod of dirt, put down the skewer, picked up the paintbrush and went back to whisking. The engraving emerged and she could finally make out what it was. “It’s a young woman. This is getting romantic. Boy meets girl. I wonder how many other designs are etched into the handle?”
