Full Circle

by Shannon Hollis

  “Because it’s not my field, and because I know you’ll treat it with the respect it deserves. It’s as simple as that.”

  “Total credit,” the scientist repeated in disbelief.

  “Mum’s the word.” Daniel could only imagine what the media would do with this if it got out that he had made the find. Adventurer Says Nessie Is Real! He could see the tabloids now. And wouldn’t that be a nice side note—make that sideshow—to otherwise stellar research.

  Side by side, they climbed the path up to the conference center. “In fact, I’ll just go about my business once we get to the lawn, and you can announce the find tonight, before any early morning health fanatics find it tomorrow.”

  “I haven’t had a major announcement in fifteen years,” Dr. Hoogbeck said a little breathlessly as they reached the lawn. “I owe you for this, Burke. If there’s anything I can ever do for you, you just name it.”

  “I’ll keep that in mind, sir. Good luck.”

  He watched Hoogbeck hustle into the middle of the crowd, and turned away. He scooped up the little pile of clothes from under the lawn chair and jogged across the grounds to his cottage. A warm, low light shone from the windows in an understated welcome. Cate, of course. She’d even turned on the light beside the door.

  It had been a long time since there had been anyone around to do such a thing for him. He was so used to coming home to a dark condo, whether staggering off a transatlantic flight or returning home from a local lecture, that he’d forgotten there were such things as home lights.

  Not that this was home, but still.

  If Cate is there, does that make it home?

  He brushed off the thought with a smile and opened the door. “Hey, I’m back. You won’t believe what I found when I got to the beach.”

  Silence echoed in the cottage. The bathroom and bedroom were both empty. Just to be sure, he looked behind the couch. “Cate? Are you here?”

  But she wasn’t.

  Daniel flopped onto the couch, tossing their clothes and her shoes into the corner of it. That’s when he saw the note on the coffee table, under an empty wineglass.

  Not sure where you are so went back to my room. Enjoy the rest of the conference.

  Daniel crumpled the note until he could no longer see the measured, tidy handwriting.

  If that wasn’t a brush-off, he didn’t know what was.

  Despite the fact that it was nearly three in the morning and he’d had two orgasms in the last three hours, Daniel couldn’t relax enough to go to bed. He wanted to march over to the dorm and demand to know what Cate thought she was doing when it was clear they were supposed to have spent the night together in sleepy comfort.

  But on the other hand, if she couldn’t wait for half an hour or stick around to hear why he’d been delayed, why should he bother? He’d just go to sleep like the rational guy he was and let her make the next move…because he had no idea what was going on in her head.

  IN THE MORNING CATE COULD hardly make her way to the coffee station in the cafeteria for the knots of people clogging the way, all talking about something that had happened last night after the earthquake. Lack of sleep had made her fuzzy-headed and she downed half a cup of excellent coffee before the excited conversation next to her at the table made any sense.

  “Yes, he went down to the beach after the first temblor—at some risk, you understand, because of the falling rock,” the blond historian across the table said to her companion. “And he found the bones then.”

  Had there been a murder? Cate tapped her on the shoulder. “Who found bones? And whose were they?”

  The woman said, “Andy Hoogbeck. This will bring his career back to life for sure. He found the bones of a nearly complete plesiosaur in the cliff last night. A whole section of rock had sheared away and there they were.”

  Andy Hoogbeck had been on the beach last night? Good heavens, what had he seen?

  Cate subsided into her own chair with a murmur of thanks and stared sightlessly at her raspberries and yogurt. She and Daniel had been on the beach, as naked as Adam and Eve, and doing what Adam and Eve had done best with their instructions to populate the earth. Granted, Dr. Hoogbeck was old, and it had been dark, and there was the earthquake…but…

  Get a grip, Cate. Under those circumstances people think about saving their skins, not about voyeurism. Dr. Hoogbeck is not going to gossip about you doing the wild thing with Daniel Burke in a public place. It’s not goingto get back to the department chair and you’re not going to be fired because of it. Calm down and eat your yogurt.

  Maybe she’d ask him. Just to be sure. She couldn’t go up and say, “Dr. H., did you see me having wild monkey sex on the beach last night?” She’d be more subtle than that. A lot more subtle.

  She got her opportunity a few minutes later at the coffee station, when she got her second refill. Dr. Hoogbeck was drowning a teabag in a mug of hot water with the back of a spoon. There was no one within earshot.

  “Good morning,” she greeted him. “I hear great news about you this morning. Everyone is talking about it.”

  “Yes.” He beamed at her in a grandfatherly sort of way. “I’m consulting with two of my colleagues in the field in a few minutes, as a matter of fact. The conference center will be hosting a press conference via satellite this afternoon at four o’clock. The main conference will be over by then, of course, so it won’t disturb the proceedings.”

  “How exciting,” Cate said. And it was, if you were a geologist. To her, bones were mildly interesting but not nearly a discovery on the scale of, say, a bit of stonework bearing a goddess figure.

  “So what took you down to the beach in the middle of an earthquake?” she asked casually. If he was meeting colleagues in a few minutes, she didn’t have the luxury of working up to it slowly. “Did you have a hunch?”

  The older man nodded. “You never know with this coastline. It’s as unpredictable as a beautiful woman.” He smiled at her, and Cate gathered she was to take this as a compliment, though unpredictable was not a word anyone might apply to her. “Though Dr. Burke might disagree with me.”

  “Dr. Burke?” Cate repeated as a dart of apprehension shot through her.

  “Yes, I saw him on the beach.” He twinkled at her and Cate felt the bottom drop out of her stomach. “But you might know more about that than I. I noticed the two of you together when I was out for my walk the other morning.”

  “Dr. Hoogbeck, I must ask you not to—”

  “Ah.” He put his mug of cooling tea on the table and waved at two men in field gear at the door. “There are my colleagues. Please excuse me, Dr. Wells.”

  “But I—”

  Too late. He was off across the dining hall, still carrying the teaspoon he’d been using on the teabag. Oh, dear. He’d seen Daniel and had been too polite to say aloud that he’d seen her, too, in all her naked glory. Was it too much to hope that he was shortsighted or something? Or that he knew how to hold his tongue?

  Having a fling was one thing. Having a fling and finding out everyone in the academic world was talking about it was quite another. She couldn’t risk even a whisper getting back to the dean at Vandenberg, who was one of the stuffiest people she’d ever met. She hadn’t spent years laying the groundwork for early tenure just to lose it over something like this. Because it was an unhappy fact that everything Daniel Burke did got people whispering and talking.

  Maybe she’d better find Daniel. There were two of them in this debacle, and chances were good he’d had more practice at damage control. It could certainly not be said that her life previous to this had anything in it worth gossiping about.

  The last of the colloquia began at ten, and she checked every conference room without success. Daniel must be in his cottage, and if he wasn’t there she’d just have to leave a message on his voice mail saying she needed to speak to him urgently.

  In the face of this new disaster, the fact that he’d failed to come back last night faded into insignificance. She’d
put aside speculation and petty jealousy, and focus on the important thing—gagging Dr. Hoogbeck.

  But at her urgent knock, the cottage door swung open and there Daniel was. Without missing a beat, he looked at her empty hands curiously. “Did you bring the coffee?”

  “Of course not. I have to talk to you.”

  “If it’s about last night, I’m sorry I didn’t get back here right away. It was pretty exciting, what with the—”

  “Spare me the details of your conquests. I spoke with Dr. Hoogbeck just now and he saw us on the beach.” She pushed past him and his eyebrows rose, but he said nothing as he closed the door behind her. “We have to figure out a way to keep him quiet.”

  “About what he found on the beach? I doubt even duct tape and a lip clamp would keep him quiet.”

  Cate held back a screech of frustration with her last reserves of self control. Of course he didn’t care about her reputation. This kind of thing simply polished a man’s. It was different for a woman, especially one like herself, with a lot more to lose.

  “I know you couldn’t care less about being seen with yet another woman, but I care deeply. One word in the wrong ear and Dr. Hoogbeck could ruin me at Vandenberg. They have very strong feelings about the…what’s that phrase…moral rectitude of their faculty.”

  Daniel waved his hands in the air as if flagging down a runaway horse. “Whoa, wait just a minute, Cate. What are you talking about?”

  She threw her hands in the air. “I just told you! Dr. Hoogbeck saw us on the beach and you just said it would take more than duct tape to keep him quiet! Oooh, there’s nothing worse than a man who doesn’t even listen to his own conversations.”

  “That’s because we’re talking about two different things. I’m talking about the fossils. You’re talking about us making love. Dr. Hoogbeck couldn’t have seen that. I found him up on the lawn in his dressing gown, lecturing a group of people on tectonic movement.”

  “But then why did he say he’d seen us?”

  “He saw me. Because I took him down there.”

  “He wanted to show you the fossils?”

  “No, I wanted to show him. I found them when I went to get our clothes. The cliff had sheared away and he was the first person I thought to tell.”

  She stared at him. “You discovered them? Then why is Dr. Hoogbeck having the press conference and not you?”

  Impossible. The Daniel Burke with whom she was having this fling would never give up a chance to get the media swarming all over him. He would never give credit for a major discovery to someone else and walk off into the night without making sure there was something in it for him.

  Could she have been misjudging him all this time?

  Did she want to have her fling with Daniel Burke the media creation? Or with Daniel Burke the man?

  10

  DANIEL TOOK CATE’S ARM and led her to the couch, where he pushed her into it gently then went to raid the gift basket. He snagged a bottle of amaretto, twisted off the top and handed it to her.

  One hit off the little bottle had her coughing and choking, but it warmed her all the way down.

  “Because,” he answered her at last, “I told him to take the credit. Fossils are not my thing. They’re the love of his life. And I kind of like the old codger. He has a good heart, if you give him a chance. This will keep him happy for months to come.” He took the bottle from her and had some himself. “Besides, I’m sick to death of press conferences. If I had to do another one before the ones I have in San Francisco later in the week, I’d probably do something stupid, like moon the reporters or stagger into the room drunk. Not the best reflection on our fair discipline.”

  She took the bottle back and had another sip, with a little more control this time. Her mind was racing with questions—about herself, about him and about her own motives. “That’s why you didn’t come back here. You were down at the beach with him, showing him the fossils.”

  “And by the time I got back, you were gone.”

  She glanced at him, ashamed of herself. “I assumed you’d been waylaid by a blonde and forgotten…my shoes.”

  “Nope. And as for…your shoes, they’re over there, on the chair with your things.” He waved in the direction of the table. Sure enough, her Ferragamo sandals were sitting on one of the chairs, her skirt and blouse neatly folded on top of them.

  Was his decision to sidestep the spotlight for once some kind of ploy—some kind of backward way of impressing her? Along the lines of I’m so famous, I don’t need any more attention? Or was it as simple as he made it out to be? Fossils weren’t his thing, so he turned the whole discovery over to someone who would appreciate them more. Game over. Move on.

  “Daniel, just how much of the press about you is true?” And how many of her assumptions about him were true?

  He got up and brought back the entire basket. Digging through it, he replied, “Some of it is true. Newsweek got the facts right, for instance. And everything I said to Jah-Redd was true. But the ragmags go for sales, not facts, so you have to take what they say with a grain of salt.” He handed her a small package wrapped in gold foil. “Godiva?”

  “Thank you. Are you going to take that whole basket apart?”

  “It’s meant to be eaten, isn’t it? I figure we can hole up here for the rest of the day and not even have to go to the cafeteria. Look—fresh grapes.”

  He held one up and she opened her mouth. He slid it between her lips and she bit down on it. Sweet juice exploded on her tongue. “Cabernet,” she said around it. “Yum.”

  “You can tell what kind of grape it is by one taste?” He ate one himself and shrugged. “It tastes like a grape.”

  “You obviously didn’t do the extra-credit work during your exchange semester.”

  “My loss.” He fed her another. “You didn’t learn about grapes in Mexico, I’ll bet.”

  “No, we did a field excursion on prehistoric art in the south of France. And there was this Wine-making 101 type of class and I had a couple of weeks to play with at the end of the art class, so I took it.”

  “Cate, most normal people with a couple of weeks to spend in the south of France would go sunbathe naked on a beach, not take another class.”

  “I’m not most people.” She leaned against his shoulder and peered into the basket. “What else have you got in there?”

  “I have some cassis and some Kahlúa, and what seems to be a couple of fingers of Glenlivet.”

  “Yuck.” She hated hard liquor and had ever since her freshman year in college, when she’d spent the morning after the night before in the dorm bathroom. Cate shuddered at the memory. “Let’s break open the cassis.”

  “You are such a lush. Most people would be civilized and have it over ice or something.”

  “Unless you have a better idea, shut up and hand over the bottle.”

  He sat back and raised one eyebrow. “As it happens, I do have a better idea.”

  “If it involves anything but consuming what’s in this basket, forget it.”

  Instead of answering, he opened the little bottle and tilted it against his finger. Then, gently, he brushed his finger against her lower lip, coating it with the sweet liqueur. Cate’s first instinct was to lick it off, but curiosity held her still.

  Her patience was rewarded when Daniel leaned in and ran his tongue along her lower lip, then kissed her with slow thoroughness. The taste of black currants and the flavor that was uniquely him mingled in a heady brew that went straight to Cate’s head.

  With Daniel, she never knew what was going to happen. Even something as simple as eating became illuminated with sensual possibility. The fact was that he was more experienced than her, so that in the world of sex, she became the adventurer, the one who explored and discovered. And oddly, that seemed to be just fine with him.

  Content to let the moment take them where it would, Cate bit a chocolate in half and put the other half between Daniel’s lips. A tiny trickle of caramel escaped and before h
e could lick it off, she reached up and touched her tongue to the wisp of sweetness at the corner of his mouth.

  “Hey now, don’t be stealing my caramel.”

  He selected a Bosc pear, the bronze color of an ancient statue, and sectioned it with the penknife in his pocket.

  She’d forgotten he always carried a little knife with him. “That’s such a guy thing.”

  “What? Slicing up fruit?”

  “No, having a knife in your pocket all the time. Do you get separation anxiety at airports when you can’t have it on the plane?”

  He handed her a slice of pear and wiped the juice off the blade. “No. And it’s not a guy thing. It’s just practical. I can trim my nails, pick a lock, slice a pear, open a package or whittle something, whenever I want.”

  “Except for opening a package, I’ve never been tempted to do any of those things with a knife. So I’m right. It is a guy thing.”

  “You’d think differently if you’d been in the green room on Jah-Redd. One of the techs tie-wrapped a bunch of cable together and then found out they needed it in a couple of minutes for some more lights. You can’t undo tie-wraps once they’re in place, so they had to cut them.”

  “I get it,” Cate said. “There you were with your trusty pocket knife.”

  “I have a rep to keep up.” He handed her another slice of pear with such serene complacency that Cate began to have second thoughts about her second thoughts.

  “I know how important that is to you.”

  “Do you?” He raised one eyebrow.

  “Well, it must be or you wouldn’t find so many ways to keep yourself in the spotlight.”

  “Maybe we should clarify just what kind of rep I meant.” His tone had become almost bland, which Cate had the uncomfortable feeling meant she had offended him somehow. And she didn’t want to offend him. Not when he was feeding her pears and chocolate in the middle of the morning.

  “Maybe we should,” she agreed. “You have to admit you are in the public eye a lot. More than your average academic.”