Carbon Dating (Nerds of Paradise Book 3)

by Merry Farmer

“It’s definitely a bone and not just a rock,” Laura said, talking to herself as much as to him. “Probably a femur. Look, this part here is the knee joint.” She stopped picking and brushing away the dirt around the exposed part of the bone and ran her hands along the flat, dry dirt on either side of the bone. “The rest of it could be here, just under the surface. There could be a hip bone here—” She touched a part of the ground about a yard from the exposed bone. “—and maybe a tibia, fibula, or foot bones here.” She rocked in the other direction, laying a hand reverently over the ground in the other direction. Then she settled back on her haunches, letting out a long breath. “There’s a chance the whole thing could be under there.”

  “So, you think it’s really a dinosaur fossil?” He took his hat off and ran a hand through his hair.

  “Yeah,” she answered with enthusiasm. A second later, she tempered that enthusiasm with, “Of course, this could be all there is of it. It’s far, far more common to find fragments of bones than it is to find complete skeletons. In fact, even partial skeletons are ridiculously rare.”

  “But it’s definitely a fossil.”

  She turned her head to face him at last. Her smile was so giddy it sent bolts of lightning straight to his gut. “Oh yeah.”

  “You’re kidding.” He let out a laugh and tossed his hat aside, switching from a crouch to kneeling and digging at the bone with his hands. “Let’s uncover it to see what we’ve got.”

  “Wait, wait, wait!” She reached out to stop him, grabbing his wrists and pulling his hands back. Her touch was firm and her fingers strong. And clearly, she had no idea what a touch like that did to him. “There’s a right way to dig up fossils and a wrong way.”

  “Really?” his mouth twitched to a wry grin. She was speaking to him like a teacher now. He kinda liked that too.

  “Yeah.” She shifted her weight to kneel beside him, then she bent over and brushed gently against the dirt surrounding the rock. “Since you never know what you’re about to uncover, you have to tread lightly. Or dig lightly in this case.”

  “Like this?” He reached down, positioning his hands near hers, and imitated her feather-light strokes.

  “Yeah, like that.”

  They swept at the dirt in silence for a few seconds. It wasn’t as hard as it looked. In fact, the kind of gentle touch that digging out a fossil required reminded him a heck of a lot of the way he liked to stroke a woman’s body when he was making love. He wouldn’t have minded stroking Laura like that at all.

  Heat infused him. He debated whether to do something about it, from touching Laura’s hand to outright kissing her, when she charged on with, “Of course, you don’t have to work like this all the time. Once you establish what you’re dealing with, you can be a little rougher in how you do it.”

  His dick jerked with the images of doing it a little rougher that came to his mind. He had to shift his position to keep his reaction on the down-low, and remind himself that Laura had turned him down for a date twice now. “Gotcha,” he said, voice harsher than it should have been.

  They worked in silence for another minute before Laura blew out a breath and said, “I really, really think we have something here.”

  “So do I,” Ted said before he could think better of it. He grinned at Laura, blood pumping hard.

  “Do you think—” She stopped dead as she glanced up at him. Her face pinched into a surprised expression, and she blushed. “What’s that look for?”

  “Nothing.” Nothing except the fact that he wanted to roll her to her back right there in the dirt and kiss her until she begged him for more bad bone jokes.

  She continued to stare at him for a few minutes, eyes narrowed, before shaking her head and taking a breath. “What I was going to say was, do you think it’d be okay if I came back tomorrow with my excavation kit?”

  “Yes,” Ted answered instantly, then blinked. “Wait, an excavation kit? What does that involve?”

  She pushed herself to her feet and stood. He stood with her, hoping the evidence of what she did to him wasn’t too stupidly noticeable.

  “It’s a couple of small shovels, a set of brushes, a pick or two. Oh, and my fossil books.”

  “Oh.” He laughed fitting his hat back on his head. “I thought you were talking about a backhoe or something.”

  She laughed with him. “No, no, nothing nearly that grand. Just hand tools.”

  “Then you’re absolutely welcome to come back. I can’t wait to see what you uncover.” And if she was going to be around him and the ranch for any length of time, he couldn’t wait to see if he would be able to break her down and get her to say yes to dinner.

  “This is so exciting,” she said with a squeal that almost had him squealing as well. “People wonder why I like fossils so much, but this is it. This is the reason right here. You get just a little hint, but you’ve got no idea what’s really under there. Most of the fun is making that discovery, figuring out exactly what’s under the surface.”

  “I can absolutely identify with that,” Ted agreed with a laugh. He had a feeling his summer had just taken a turn for the better. He was all about excavating Laura Kincade to find out what was underneath her surface—literally and figuratively.

  Chapter Five

  Ted had never really regretted focusing on agriculture and animal husbandry throughout his education and ignoring things like history and geology. And he still didn’t exactly regret all the things he didn’t know, but he thought it would be fun to have Laura teach him what she knew. More than fun. But at the same time, it would have been nice to have half a clue what to expect, now that the bone he’d joked about for so long had turned out to be a real scientific discovery.

  “How does she know it’s real?” Scott asked as he and Casey joined Ted and Roscoe for a family dinner that night.

  “Are you kidding?” Casey told him. “Laura’s a total dinosaur nut. In fact, I’m surprised she became an engineer instead of a paleontologist.”

  Ted’s brow inched up at his sister’s answer. At least until he remembered that, in fact, Casey had spent far more time hanging out with Laura in the last few months than he’d paid attention to.

  “She’s traveled all over the world to various fossil sites,” Ted added, wondering if Casey knew that. “She’s been a part of digs on three continents.”

  “Wow.” Scott straightened, pausing with his fork full of steak in mid-air. “I’ve worked with her for almost a year, and I didn’t know that.”

  “How did you know it?” Casey asked, sending Ted a teasing wink.

  “She told me the other day, at your engagement party.”

  “Yeah, you told me you’d talked to her. I didn’t realize you’d talked to her.” Casey’s grin widened.

  Ted wasn’t sure if he was in the mood to shut his sister’s needling down or to encourage her by admitting he was interested in Laura. That short circuit in his brain caused him to change the topic entirely. “She’s coming back tomorrow with her fossil excavating kit to dig a little deeper, literally and figuratively.”

  “It’s not going to disturb the cattle, is it?” Roscoe asked.

  “No, Dad, it’ll be fine.” At least, Ted hoped it’d be fine. “Laura said whatever is still underground could be a complete fossil, but it could also be just a few fragments.”

  “Can you imagine if there really is a whole dinosaur under there?” Casey asked, digging in her mashed potatoes as if trying to uncover something. “Hello, little dinosaur. You in there?” When she uncovered a green bean that had slipped under the potatoes, she speared it and held it up with a laugh.

  Ted chuckled along with her, the buzz in his chest hinting at just how exciting he found the whole thing. That in itself was odd. He had never gotten that excited about anything that wasn’t raising cattle, getting them to market, and managing the meager profits of the ranch. It was a shock, really. He hadn’t realized how narrow his existence had been until something came along to expand his horizons.

&n
bsp; “What happens if it is a fossil?” Roscoe asked as Ted finished the last of his steak. “I don’t want any more trouble for the ranch if this is one of those things where the government comes in and seizes what’s ours.”

  Ted shook his head. “Laura mentioned something, and then I looked it up online later, but in the U.S., if you discover a fossil on your property, that’s your fossil. Whoever owns the land owns the fossil.”

  “That’s convenient,” Casey said, standing to carry her and Scott’s empty plates over to the counter. “The last thing I want is for anything else annoying to happen to this land.” She sent Scott a teasing look as she returned to the table to take Ted and Roscoe’s plates.

  “Hey. I’m the best thing that’s happened to this ranch in ages,” Scott teased her right back. “Or don’t you like having your mortgage paid off?”

  Casey didn’t have a ready answer. Instead she hmphed, then kissed him before taking her handful of plates to the counter. She returned to the table with a platter of brownies. “I’m pretty sure the ranch is safe now,” she said, “but what I’m more interested in is the fact that my big brother has a girlfriend.”

  Roscoe’s brow inched up, and Scott leaned back in his chair with a laugh.

  Ted laughed with him, but said, “I do not have a girlfriend.” Not that he wouldn’t have been perfectly happy for Laura to claim that title.

  “Are you sure?” Casey narrowed her eyes at him. “Rumor has it that the two of you went out for ice cream after baseball practice the other day.”

  Ted sighed and turned to Scott. “Don’t you just love living in a small town? If you sneeze in Haskell, five minutes later, everyone knows you have pneumonia.”

  Scott chuckled as he reached for a brownie. “Yeah, but the two of you did look awfully cozy when you left the field.”

  Did they? Ted selected his own brownie and took a bite, kind of liking the fact that people were pairing him and Laura already.

  “The problem is,” he admitted after chewing his bite, “Laura doesn’t seem to want to put any sort of label on whatever it is between us.”

  “What do you mean?” Casey frowned, defensive.

  Ted shrugged. “I’ve asked her out twice now, and both times she said no.”

  That brought a round of surprised snorts and confusion from everyone else at the table.

  “That doesn’t seem right,” Casey muttered, picking walnuts off the top of her brownie.

  Struck by a fit of inspiration, and the fact that Scott probably knew more about Laura than he did, he asked, “Has Laura ever mentioned anything about past boyfriends at work? Or about being interested in anyone?”

  Scott furrowed his brow and took another bite of brownie. His thoughts turned to a shrug and a shake of his head. “Not that I can remember. She’s always either on task with the rocket propulsion system or going on about the latest dinosaur discoveries. Or things like TV and sports, like everyone talks about.”

  “No mention of men at all though?” Ted had a hard time deciding if he liked that or if it didn’t bode well for him.

  “None,” Scott said apologetically.

  “What about when you’re hanging out with her?” he asked Casey.

  “Not really.” Casey leaned back in her chair. “Huh. I never really thought about that. We’ve all been so busy talking about me and Scott and Melody and Will. Laura never mentions guys at all.”

  “You don’t think she, uh, plays for the other team, do you?” The thought was downright horrific to Ted, for no reason other than that Laura being a lesbian would be an incredible loss to, well, him.

  “No, she definitely likes men,” Scott said. “If she didn’t, I’m pretty sure she would have just come out with something like that the other day when we were all talking about the two of you.”

  Ted jerked straighter. “You guys were talking about us?”

  Scott sent him a sheepish smile. “Yeah, sorry about that. Natalie started it. But you’ll be happy to know just about the entire team encouraged Laura to go out with you.”

  “And she still said no?” That made Ted feel about as small as the pebbles he and Laura had swept away from the bone.

  “She thinks she’s undatable,” Scott confessed with the tone of a man who knew he was telling tales when he shouldn’t have been.

  “Bullshit.” Ted hated to swear in front of his dad, but that was the only possible reaction to a statement like that. “She’s about as datable as they come. She’s smart and funny and interesting, and she’s pretty too, and not in that fake, glamorous way that I hate.”

  “That’s what we all tried to tell her,” Scott said. “Who knows how a woman’s mind works?”

  “I’m going to assume you mean that in a good way,” Casey said in a flat voice. “Otherwise, you’d be in serious trouble.”

  Scott laughed, pink coming to his cheeks. “Sorry, babe. But don’t you think Laura is being ridiculous too?”

  It was clearly a diversionary tactic to get Scott out of a world of hurt, but it worked. “Absolutely,” she said. “Any girl in their right mind would be happy to go out with my big brother.” She made the same kind of face at Ted as she had when they were kids roughhousing.

  “So what’s the problem?” Roscoe asked. “Why won’t she go out with you?”

  “I dunno, Dad.” Ted sighed. “She kind of implied she doesn’t deal well with surprise questions, but there has to be more to it than that.”

  “You’ll figure it out.” Roscoe patted his arm across the corner of the table. “Don’t give up until you do.”

  “I won’t, Dad, I won’t.”

  He just hoped he’d be able to figure out the key to breaking Laura down sooner rather than later.

  It was an amazing relief to Laura to make it over the initial weirdness of being around Ted. It helped that she had a mission in front of her. The fossil wasn’t going to excavate and discover itself. And even though Ted had insisted on helping her, all of the wriggly, anxious, sense of impending doom that being around a guy who was way out of her league gave her was gone. Well, almost gone. She still got a little hot in key places when she looked at him in his form-fitting jeans, t-shirt, and cowboy hat. But there was more to life than ogling sexy cowboys.

  “Hold on, hold on!” She held out a hand and rushed over to where Ted was about to jam her shovel into the ground around the protruding bone.

  “What, am I doing it wrong?” He took a half step back, regarding her with a mixture of curiosity and embarrassment.

  “No, not exactly. I just want to make sure you keep at least six inches away from the fossil itself if you’re using a shovel.”

  “Yes ma’am.” Ted’s face lit up with a smile. “I’ll do whatever you tell me to do.”

  Was that flirting? That definitely felt like flirting. Then again, Ted didn’t know what he was doing, and he was looking to her to tell him. All things considered, she kind of liked that.

  “Since we don’t know what’s under there, be careful,” she said. “But not too careful or else we’ll be here all day.”

  “Okay,” Ted laughed. “Like this?” He held the shovel poised above the ground, waited for her nod, then brought the pointed end of the shovel-head down on the hard-packed earth.

  The dirt cracked and crumbled. The shovel didn’t sink very far, though.

  “Oh boy.” Laura sighed and crouched to dig away the loosened dirt with her hands. At least she’d put gloves on this time. There was a chance Ted wouldn’t think she was a total mess, like he probably had the other day. “Looks like it’s going to be super fun digging through this stuff.” She loaded her words with sarcasm.

  “It hasn’t rained in a while. Plus, the dirt is always sort of hard out here,” he said, and she was fairly certain he mumbled, “Like other things.”

  Laura’s cheeks flared hot. Innuendo. Did she like that? Yeah, she kind of liked it. When it was directed at other people. Great, now I’m going to silently make everything into a boner joke.

/>   “Well,” she said aloud. “There’s nothing for it but to get in there and hammer away until we’re satisfied.”

  Ugh. Was she flirting now too? Bad, Laura, bad.

  She peeked up at Ted to find he’d covered his mouth with one gloved hand to hide what she hoped was a grin and not a grimace of disgust. But no, his eyes were shining with mirth. Which may or may not have been a good thing.

  “I’ll start over on this side, and you keep going there.” She pushed herself to stand and stepped over to the other side of the bone. There. No innuendo in that.

  They set to work, and mercifully, Ted didn’t try to crack any more jokes or slip in any more teasing sideways looks. He stabbed the ground with his shovel while she dropped to her knees and chipped at the hard-packed dirt with her spade. They worked in silence for several minutes, breaking up the dirt around the fossil.

  It didn’t take long for Laura to clear away more of the leg bone, enough to tell that it was exceptionally well-preserved with minimal crumbling. After fifteen minutes of intense, focused digging, she came across a second rock-hard shape.

  “I think there’s another bone here,” she told Ted, perking up.

  “Where?” He left the spot where he was digging and came around to kneel next to her. The heat of his body next to hers was noticeable over and above the heat of the afternoon.

  “Right here, see?” She dug and brushed away loosened dirt and tufts of rugged grass. Ted reached into the hole she’d created and pulled away dirt too. “Can you feel it?”

  His hands bumped and brushed against hers as they worked to clear the new part of the fossil. In the back of her mind, Laura registered the intimacy of the gesture, but her excitement at what they might find was too big for her to bother with her hint of self-consciousness.

  Their hands continued to bump and twine. “I do feel it,” Ted said.

  Laura peeked sideways at him, but where she expected to find him winking at her or finding some other way to embarrass the heck out of her, he wore a genuine expression of interest in what they were doing.