Full Circle

by Shannon Hollis

  In the light from inside, Melanie Savage looked shattered. “He could, if he’d give me a chance. You don’t belong here, whoever you are. I’ve supported him for years. I deserve this, not you!”

  “You are completely crazy,” Cate informed her. She threw a glance back at Daniel. “Call security. The number is 888. Have her removed from the property.”

  Trust Cate to know not only the tide tables, but the resort emergency number, too. “Will do.” He picked up the phone, but the gesture wasn’t necessary. With a sound suspiciously like a sob, Melanie Savage fled into the night.

  DANIEL CLOSED THE DOOR and gave Cate a grin that was half teasing and half admiring. “Nice job. Who needs security when you’ve got a T-shirt–wearing goddess on hand?”

  Cate hadn’t been aware she possessed a temper like this. Her chest felt as though it were about to explode and if she didn’t find a way to get it under control, she was going to make a complete ass of herself.

  It wasn’t the unexpected visit. It wasn’t even the fact that she was one of his archaeologroupies, because she’d known about them since the day Anne Walters had brought them to her attention by tossing a newspaper on her desk with a big picture on the front page of the entertainment section.

  No, she was furious at the fact that Daniel was so well known for having affairs with every woman who threw herself at him that this girl—Melanie Savage, for Pete’s sake, if that wasn’t an alias, she didn’t know what was—could walk in here with every confidence that her offer wouldn’t be refused.

  It was probably only because Cate was in line ahead of her that she’d been refused at all. Cate clenched her teeth so the roar of rage on the back of her tongue wouldn’t get out.

  “Cate?” Daniel tilted her chin with one hand while the other went around her waist to draw her closer. “She’s gone. It’s okay. Are you all right?”

  She wrenched herself out of his grasp. “I’m fine.”

  “That’s a woman’s standard answer when everything is not fine.”

  “You would certainly know,” she snapped, then wished she hadn’t. Get a grip, Cate. Act your age.

  She wasn’t sure there was an age limit on jealousy. Because that’s what this was. She was being jealous and unreasonable and she was ashamed of both. Because what on earth was she doing if not the exact same thing as Melanie Savage? She’d turned on the charm for Daniel and made herself just as sexually available, and he’d taken her up on it just as fast as she’d expected.

  Daniel assumed she was angry with Melanie, but she wasn’t. The truth was, she’d seen herself in the other woman—and the view wasn’t pretty.

  With a heroic effort at self-control, she turned to Daniel. “Didn’t you promise me something to put on?”

  His gaze was quizzical. “I wondered if you were getting chilly in the bedroom, but I needed to figure out how crazed she was.”

  “I don’t think she was crazed at all.”

  One eyebrow went up. “You don’t?”

  “No. Her behavior was probably logical given the data she had.”

  Daniel narrowed his gaze as if he were trying to translate an ancient dialect. “What?”

  She shook her head and looked past him into the bedroom. “If you’re not going to lend me this T-shirt, maybe you could hike back down to the beach and get our stuff.”

  He tried to take her in his arms again, but she evaded him. “I was hoping we could dispense with the clothes, have a hot shower together, and go to bed.”

  “Yes, I know you were. But I don’t think so.”

  “She really spoiled the mood, huh? Next time I’m not answering the door.”

  Men. She had no idea where people got the idea that they utilized their brains more efficiently. But as an excuse, it would do.

  “Yes, you could say that. Besides, my key card was in the pocket of my skirt. Even if I did get back to my room dressed like this, I still couldn’t get in.”

  He held up both hands. “I concede to your logic. But this isn’t over, Cate.”

  Did he have to stand there, naked except for a pair of worn jeans, with the top button still undone? Did he have to have the most beautifully defined chest she’d ever had the pleasure of exploring, not to mention hips and thighs carved into leanness by his outdoor life?

  She sighed and forced herself to look away. “No,” she said at last, “I don’t imagine it is.”

  He went into the bedroom and pulled on an ancient brown T-shirt that said My Life Is on the Rocks. Two of the people in the anthropology department had brought back the same one after visiting New Mexico.

  “Make yourself at home.” He waved in the direction of an enormous gift basket filled with fruit, jars of jelly, chocolate and small bottles of liqueurs. “I haven’t even opened that yet. Feel free. I can’t take it home with me. And if I’m not back in half an hour, send out the search parties.”

  “I will.”

  Tossing an uncertain glance at her over his shoulder, he let himself out. When his footsteps faded, Cate tugged on the blue T-shirt she wore so that it fell farther down her thighs, and went to have a look at the basket.

  It was a shame to spoil its beauty, but if he didn’t plan to take it with him, someone may as well enjoy it. Besides, tucked in behind a box of biscotti was a bottle of chardonnay and two glasses. She found a bottle opener in the kitchenette and filled one.

  The first few sips didn’t do much, but three-quarters of the glass of cool, dry wine gave her attitude a chance to change.

  She pulled the drapes on all the cottage’s windows and, wine in hand, drifted slowly through its rooms. The conference certainly treated its speakers well. The dorms were comfortable, of course, but they didn’t have washed pine furniture, or terra-cotta tile floors that made a cool contrast to the deep pile of the scatter rugs. Daniel’s worktable was much bigger than hers, too. His computer was set up on one end next to his open briefcase, and the other end held a couple of the ubiquitous boxes of his books.

  Good girls didn’t look in other people’s briefcases.

  Virtuously, she turned away and walked into the bedroom to rifle his clothes. Well, maybe not rifle. She wouldn’t even touch. But it was interesting to see that the rough-and-ready persona she’d seen on The Jah-Redd Jones Show was consistent. There were no silk suits and ostentatious ties hidden in the closet. Nope. Just a duffel bag with socks and underwear spilling out of it, along with a couple of pairs of jeans and some shirts and T-shirts.

  He hadn’t even brought a suit to deliver his keynote speech in—instead, he’d presented his paper in jeans. Even Indiana Jones put on his tweed jacket and horn-rimmed spectacles when he delivered his lectures, and goodness knows the man looked yummy in a tux when the occasion called for it.

  You probably couldn’t pay Daniel Burke to climb into a tux. He’d run screaming into the night, first.

  With a smile, Cate turned back into the sitting room. As she passed the table, her elbow caught the upturned lid of the briefcase, spinning it around and sending it over the edge and onto the floor.

  “Damn!”

  Cate put her wineglass on the table and knelt to pick up the mess. Paper had sifted in every direction. She gathered it up, trying to keep typed sheets together in case he was proofing a paper. Maps, schedules, notes—well, there wasn’t much she could do about that. She would just have to apologize and explain when he came back.

  Reading glasses—the first sign that the he-man might have a flaw or two. Pens, pencils, a bottle of headache tablets, a digital camera. Good thing that had landed on the soft carpet. She would have had to replace it if it had smashed on the glossy tile.

  She put the briefcase back on the table and began to put everything into it. When she finished, she realized that some of the things must have gone into the compartments in the lid, because there was something tucked in there that she hadn’t noticed before.

  A photograph.

  She pulled it out, curious as to who would be so important to Dan
iel that he would keep it with him on his travels. His family? Or a girlfriend about whom the papers knew nothing?

  She gazed at the photo and blinked.

  It was herself.

  She even remembered the day it had been taken. They’d knocked off early because a huge thunderstorm had blown up out of the east, sending everyone at the Mexican dig scurrying for shelter like the ground squirrels running for their holes. After the storm had passed, she had taken a walk out to her favorite aerie on the cliff to watch the clouds travel to the west. The setting sun had broken through them in bars of deep golden light, and the first inkling she’d had that she was not alone had been the click of the shutter as Daniel had snapped the picture behind her.

  She’d never seen it, of course. Never seen any of the pictures he’d taken.

  Daniel had caught her in profile, with the glorious sunset lighting one side of her face. God, she looked so young. So vulnerable and clueless about the world.

  With the number of models and starlets in his life helping him stay in the spotlight, why would he want to keep a picture of an ordinary academic close to him? It clearly went everywhere with him, tucked into the lid of his briefcase where the casual onlooker wouldn’t see it behind other papers. Was it a reminder of some kind? A memento of a time before work and academia and the reality of making a living had set in?

  Or was it something deeper than that?

  Could Daniel possibly have cared much more than she’d thought? Could he still care?

  No. Impossible. The starlets shot down that line of thinking before it even got off the ground. A man who cared would have contacted her at least once in eight years, even if it were just to ask why she’d left and whether she was interested. A man who cared would not have shrugged his shoulders and gone on to his merry string of camera-ready companions.

  As she suspected, there was no analyzing the male mind. She needed to stick to plan A. A simple fling and then she would move on herself. Already she could feel the benefits of this therapeutic approach. She was loose-limbed and still glowing with the aftereffects of sex. A few more treatments at Daniel’s hands and she’d be as good as new and ready for the next real relationship that came along.

  No more uncertainty. No more fear.

  And no more waiting around. Cate frowned at the clock over the kitchenette’s sink. Daniel had been gone for half an hour and it certainly didn’t take that long to hike down to the beach and back. Probably he’d run into the lovely Stacy Mills and gotten distracted.

  Her brave mood punctured, Cate marched into the bedroom and snatched a pair of clean boxers out of Daniel’s duffel. She’d have them laundered and return them in the morning. Meantime, she’d go to security and have them let her into her room.

  Sometimes a woman just had to do things herself instead of forever waiting around for a man.

  9

  DANIEL HALF EXPECTED the beach to be destroyed as he jogged off the path and onto the sand. He moved slowly around the slices of rock that had broken off the cliff face, and kept one eye cocked upward in case there was an aftershock and something else—bushes, rocks, maybe even a tree—got jarred loose.

  He’d often heard people describe sex as making the earth move, but he’d dismissed it as an overwrought metaphor. He’d never expected to experience the real thing. But then, what could he expect when it was Cate you were talking about? The fact was, earthquakes or not, she rocked his world and always had.

  The sand was cold under his feet, the wind off the water chilly on his bare skin. He made his way around the rubble of fallen rock and tried to estimate where they had been lying when the North American and Pacific plates had decided to release their tension like a cataclysmic rubber band. He followed their footprints down the beach, and when he’d rounded a huge, freshly minted boulder, he saw the little heap of clothing lying in the sand.

  Lucky thing he had good reflexes. The boulder had come to rest on the leg of his jeans.

  He put his back into it and managed to lift the rock long enough to pull his pants out from under it, then scooped up his shirt and Cate’s skirt and blouse. A touch of the pocket told him her key card was still safe. He turned to go and remembered one last thing.

  Her shoes. God help him if he got back to the cottage and didn’t have her shoes. With a smile at his austere Cate—who chased off rabid fans wearing nothing but a T-shirt—having such a feminine weakness, he looked around the beach more carefully.

  Ah. There they were, behind another fallen rock, along with her bra. Lucky thing the moon hadn’t set yet. He’d have had his work cut out for him, scrabbling around in the sand trying to find their things in pitch darkness. As he picked up the leather sandals and scraps of lace, something else caught his eye in the moonlight.

  The cliff hadn’t had that kind of relief before. Shale was smooth. He walked closer, alert for falling pieces, to get a better look.

  Fossils. A vertebra, to be exact. And beside it, a jawbone, complete with teeth. Lots of them.

  Daniel looked up. An entire layer of shale had been sheared off the way a knife slices through cake, revealing the layer that had been waiting beneath it. Millions of years ago these layers had been flat and deep under the ocean, but now, with tectonic movement, they had been upthrust until they were standing vertically. Ancient creatures that had sunk into the mud to die were now frozen in the cliff like a giant window into the past.

  “Oh, my God.” He climbed a couple of rocks, the clothes clutched in one hand and Cate’s sandals dangling from his fingers. “It’s a whole skeleton.”

  Sure enough, he could clearly see a curved line of vertebrae and as many ribs. He had no idea what they were, but there was someone up there in the conference center who would. It wasn’t a mammoth, like the one that was currently rewriting textbooks in that riverbed in San Jose. Maybe it was just a really big fish, or an ancient kind of whale. But in any case, his duty to his fellow academics was clear.

  Paleogeology wasn’t his bailiwick. But it was the love of Andy Hoogbeck’s life.

  Daniel hopped down to the sand and took off up the path at a run. When he cleared the trees, he saw that his earlier prediction had proved to be accurate. Most of the conference attendees were milling around on the dark lawn. Someone had brought out the booze and a portable radio, and it had turned into an impromptu cocktail party, with people standing around chatting in their pajamas and sweats.

  Stacy Mills caught sight of him as he circled the crowd. “Daniel! Thank God you’re all right.” She clutched his arm, looking tousled and relatively human in her silk pj’s and no makeup. “I can’t go back in that building. I’m afraid the roof is going to come down.”

  He patted her hand and removed it gently. “Are they checking it out? Is that why everyone’s out here?”

  “Yes, the security people are doing a sweep to see if there’s been any damage. What about your cottage? Is it all right?”

  He hadn’t even thought to look. “Yes, it’s fine. Say, have you seen Dr. Hoogbeck? I need to ask him something.”

  “He’s over there.” She pointed toward the edge of the lawn. “I need a drink. I swear, I’m going to demand hazard pay for this.”

  He left her trying to coax another glass of wine out of someone and found Dr. Hoogbeck holding forth on the dynamics of earth movement to a small group of archaeologists. He interrupted the older man with a firm grip on his arm.

  “Excuse me, Dr. Hoogbeck. I need to speak with you urgently.”

  “Is it about your cottage?” The paleogeologist came without protest and his relieved audience faded in the direction of the booze. “This facility is built on stone. I don’t know what everyone is so worried about. I could have told those people—”

  “Dr. Hoogbeck, the earthquake damaged the cliff down at the beach. There’s something down there I think you should see.”

  Hoogbeck may have been a crusty old bore, but he was no fool. His bushy eyebrows rose. “Yes?”

  Daniel leaned in so n
o one could overhear. “The cliff sheared away and you can clearly see vertebrae. A skeleton of some kind, maybe forty feet long.”

  “Are you sure?” All the pomposity and windy verbosity had blown off his mien in the space of a moment, leaving behind the avid scientist. “Where?”

  Daniel glanced at the man’s feet. “You’ve got shoes on? Good. Follow me.”

  He stashed his and Cate’s clothes under a lawn chair near the trees, where they’d be easy to retrieve, and he and the professor retraced his steps down to the beach. Cate would understand. If the fossils proved to be something unusual, the fact that he hadn’t come right back would be easy to explain.

  “Careful. If we get another aftershock we need to be out of range of falling rock.” Dr. Hoogbeck followed Daniel to the freshly exposed face, and they both scrambled up on a boulder. Hoogbeck pulled a flashlight out of the pocket of his dressing gown and played it over the fossils.

  A minute of silence ticked by. Then another. The flashlight beam traveled across and back. Across and back.

  Daniel could stand it no longer. “Well?”

  “This is amazing,” Dr. Hoogbeck said in a hushed tone. “Such well-preserved specimens.”

  “What are they?”

  “Vertebrae, as you said. It—it almost looks like an Elasmosaurus platyurus. A kind of plesiosaur. If the Loch Ness Monster were real, some believe this creature might have been related to it.” The geologist glanced at him. “But of course such a thing must be confirmed with careful excavation and research. You’ll have another fabulous find to add to your résumé, Dr. Burke. This one will rewrite the textbooks, too, along with our woolly friend in San Jose.”

  Daniel jumped off the rock and held up an arm to help the older man down. “Not me. I’m no rock guy. Give me pottery any day. That’s why I came and got you. You take credit for the discovery and get all the work of excavating it, if it comes to that.”

  “You’re pulling my leg.” The older scientist stopped walking, his dressing gown blowing around his bony knees. “This could be huge. Why would you want to give it up?”