Full Circle

by Shannon Hollis

  Oh, Cate, tell yourself the truth. You’ve been in love with Daniel Burke for eight years and this is the first chance you’ve had to express it…or even really to experience it.

  On an unfamiliar cliff, her natural tendency was to examine a handhold from all sides, tap it and make sure it was solid before she trusted herself to it. But could she do that with love? She’d been perfectly willing to throw herself into a fling without a safety net. What about when the future wasn’t so cut and dried? When it couldn’t be planned out and analyzed in advance? What then?

  When not one, not two, but three men did a double take and turned to look at her as she walked past them on her way to the newspaper kiosk in the center of the square. Despite her pensive thoughts, she grinned to herself. As Daniel would say, that was repeatable data.

  She had definitely changed, both inside and out. And from the looks of it, her outside was looking the way her insides felt—happy and sated and beautiful. Maybe she should just go with it for once and see where it took her. Maybe take a leaf from Daniel’s book and stop organizing everything to death.

  Maybe one of the wonderful things about love was that you couldn’t plan it. You could only enjoy it.

  When Daniel stopped to speak to a guy in a three-piece suit who was feeding the pigeons, she glanced at the papers and ragmags festooned all over the kiosk. Dr. Hoogbeck’s fossils might have garnered a headline or two. If so, she’d keep the article. She wasn’t about to turn into a scrapbooker or anything, but it would be a souvenir of the conference where her life had been changed as irrevocably as had that cliff below the conference center.

  Thieves Lift Star Amulet from New York Auction House.

  Bay Area Wetlands Endangered by Airport Development.

  Real Indiana Jones: Secret Love Nest.

  Flash Mob Turns into Riot: Aliens Responsible?

  Wait a minute. What was that? Cate snatched the glossy tabloid out of its metal rack and feverishly turned to the article inside—which turned out to be the centerfold.

  Pop archaeologist Daniel Burke (photo, left) has long been known for his dazzling discoveries and appeal for the ladies. But has the real-life adventurer finally decided to forego the Hollywood lovelies and settle down with a homegrown honey? And just who is the mysterious, leggy beauty whom Burke spirited off to a well-known honeymoon hideaway?

  See our exclusive photo story on these pages and judge for yourself: Is this the woman who will finally capture the real Indiana Jones?

  Cate’s entire body seemed to be freezing over with cold horror, one piece at a time. The sunny, noisy square faded into silence as she gaped at the pictures in the spread.

  The Camaro, parked on the side of the highway with only Daniel’s knees visible as he knelt on the ground. All the reader could see of Cate was one leg flung over the back of the seat and a hand gripping it. From this angle, it was easy to speculate what was going on, though.

  The next photo showed the two of them in a long-distance shot in the bird sanctuary, wrapped around each other in a kiss. This time it was Daniel who was obscured, but Cate’s entire back view filled the frame, including her foot wrapped around his knee.

  Lovely. Could the fact that she couldn’t wait to get back to the hotel to jump him be any more graphic?

  Apparently, it could. The final shot had to have been taken by someone standing on the roof of the bed-and-breakfast hotel, right outside their window. It showed her and Daniel, naked—though pertinent body parts had been blurred out by the newspaper’s editors—and she was craning up while—oh, God—Daniel very suggestively fed her a banana. Her face was clearly visible.

  Instantly recognizable.

  Was that why those three men had turned to look at her? One of them had spun so fast he’d lost his hat—and he’d been carrying a paper. Had it been this one? Did everyone in Jack London Square know she was Daniel’s “homegrown honey”? Were they all speculating about the way she’d deep-throated that banana?

  Scalding blood cascaded into her cheeks, her neck, her chest—it felt as if her whole body were blushing, or had been dipped into the hot acid of humiliation. How could this have happened? Who could possibly have done such a thing to them? Just how much malice was it possible to contain and still masquerade as a human being?

  Because of course it had to have been their rose-dropping, perfume-wielding burglar.

  Cate clutched the paper closer and scanned the type for a byline. It had been written by some scum-peddling hack named Jason Castro, but where was the photo credit? Where, where, wh—

  Photos by D. N. Cavanaugh.

  The rush of shame faded, to be replaced by the cool clarity of confirmation. “The ones I really like don’t get into the papers,” Daniel said in her memory, probably within hours of that fatal banana photograph. Cate lowered the paper slowly.

  What had she ever done to Dulcie Cavanaugh? If she had something against Daniel, why was she attacking Cate?

  “Lady, you mess that paper up any more you’re going to have to buy it.” The news agent leaned out of his kiosk window and gave her the hairy eyeball.

  She pulled a dollar out of her bag and handed it to him, then turned without another word and headed blindly across the square. Some vague instinct directed her to go back to her hotel room, to pull the covers over her head and hide until it was time to go home and—

  Oh, my God.

  Home. The university. The newsstand on the corner where half the faculty furtively bought the paper on their way into class in the morning. The students. The department chair.

  Cate imagined the laughter and the derision once it got out, as it surely would. Nobody admitted to reading the tabloids but everyone seemed completely on top of what was in them.

  She looked with horror at the paper in her hands. Her career at Vandenberg was over.

  Her cell phone rang and she jumped as though she’d been caught in the act of doing something illegal. She dug it out of her bag and answered it in a tone halfway between a whisper and a squeak.

  “Cate?” Anne Walters said. “Cate, is that you?”

  “Yes.”

  “Are you in a library or something? Do you want to call me back?”

  Cate spared a moment of fond regret for a life when her biggest excitement was going to the opening of the New York Library’s latest exhibition.

  “No, it’s okay. I’m in Oakland. Outside. What’s up?”

  “I thought you’d like to know about your messages.”

  Why? Her life had just imploded. Who cared what was on Anne’s neatly written yellow slips? “I’ll be back in the office Thursday. I don’t think—”

  “No, Cate. You don’t get it. You really need to hear about these.”

  Something in Anne’s tone sent up a warning flag. “All right. I’m listening.”

  “First of all, there’s a reminder of the staff meeting Thursday afternoon at three. Morgan Shaw has called twice since you’ve been gone—please call her ASAP about the photographs of the box.”

  The photos. The ones that had precipitated her visit out here. She’d forgotten all about them.

  “Your mom and dad are going to be in town at the end of the month and your mom wants to know if you can get tickets to Spamalot.”

  “Is she kidding?” Cate asked blankly.

  “I know. I told her. Dennis Dileone wants to know if you can proctor his Greek history exam next week, and Darlene Goldberg in the bookstore says the textbooks you wanted for the fall semester have gone out of print and what’s plan B.”

  “Anne, tell me again why these couldn’t have waited until I got home?” I need to go find a cave to hide in for the rest of my life and you’re holding me up.

  “That was just the warm-up.” Anne took a deep breath. “Have you seen Entertainment News this week?”

  Cate looked down at the paper in her hands. “I have it right here.”

  “Look on page twenty-four.”

  “I already did. What’s the damage?” When Ann
e was silent, Cate swallowed. “Come on, Anne. You need to tell me before I walk in there on Thursday and get eaten alive.”

  Anne made a squeaking noise.

  “Anne? Are you there?”

  “I’m here. Bad choice of words, considering this picture. How old is that car?”

  Cate’s knees gave out. “It’s not what you think.” Liar.

  “I might believe you, but Dr. Trowbridge doesn’t. He’s calling you up for a disciplinary review, Cate. Says you’re—” her voice dropped an octave “—bringing this institution into disrepute.” Her voice returned to normal. “I called Saks to see if they had anything in Kevlar, but they don’t.”

  “Disciplinary review?”

  She was going to be fired. No one had been called in for a review in all the time she’d been at Vandenberg. Personnel problems were solved within the department, at most with a transfer or reassignment to one of the satellite colleges. But when the department head took it to the dean of humanities, it meant trouble.

  The kind of trouble that canceled all hope of tenure and ended careers.

  “Is there anything I can do?” Anne’s sense of humor had deserted her and she sounded close to tears.

  Cate shook her head, then remembered Anne couldn’t see her. “Just scoop up any copies of that paper that are lying around and put them through the shredder.”

  “How did it happen?”

  “Hell hath no fury. How else?”

  Anne drew a breath. “An old girlfriend out for revenge?”

  “Who happens to be a professional photographer. I have a feeling she won’t be putting this job on her résumé, though.”

  As she said goodbye and turned off the phone, Cate reflected that she was going to have a problem or two in that department as well.

  As in, explaining to her next employer exactly why she’d been fired.

  DANIEL SAID GOODBYE TO THE GUY feeding the pigeons—interesting fellow, as much of a bird geek as Cate—and turned to find her in the busy kaleidoscope of activity in the square. He spotted her on the waterfront side, holding a paper, and jogged over.

  “Anything good in—” He stopped himself.

  She looked as though someone had just told her the date of her death—and it was tomorrow.

  “Cate? Are you all right?” Then he saw the cell phone in her hand. “Did you get bad news from home?” As far as he knew, her folks were alive and well in San Diego, but that didn’t mean anything. These days, disaster struck without regard for health or preparation or merit. A person could get hit by a bus, or have their apartment broken into or have their car stolen. About the only things you could trust were love and history—and sometimes not even that.

  “Yes,” she said in a hollow voice.

  “Your family? A friend?”

  She held out the paper to him. “Page twenty-four.”

  What…? He flipped until he found the centerfold. His eyes widened as he took it in, and by the end of the photo essay, where he saw the credit, his jaw was hanging loose in shock.

  “Dulcie did this?” was all he could think of to say. “But she shoots for National Geographic. She wouldn’t waste her time on—” he checked the name of the rag “—Entertainment News. She’d be laughed off the freelance roster.”

  Cate’s jaw tightened and suddenly the angry woman of a week ago was back. “I’m glad to see your first thought is for her career.”

  He stared at her. “I didn’t—”

  “Because thanks to your fondness for the spotlight, I’ve just been informed by the university that I’m up for a disciplinary review.”

  “Why?” This wasn’t computing. What did Vandenberg have to do with photos in a trashy paper? Why weren’t the two of them laughing about this and ordering mimosas? Granted, the banana was a little extreme, and he could see a woman being upset about it, but it was nothing worse than the things he’d had to put up with.

  She rolled her eyes. “Use your imagination, Daniel. The dean of humanities thinks I’m lowering the tone of the department. That my moral rectitude is in question. In short, I’m very likely going to be fired.”

  “Because of this?” He held the paper out and she snatched it away. “What business is it of theirs what you do? You’re not representing the university here. You’re on vacation. And we won’t even go into the invasion of privacy and how many lawsuits I’m going to file. What you do with bananas in your own bedroom is your business.”

  “Apparently that’s irrelevant. What is relevant is that it’s now public. Let’s deal with reality, not with how things should be.” With jerky movements, she snapped the paper and folded it into sections. “I didn’t realize that this is the price of getting involved with you. I knew I would have to make some compromises, but I never dreamed it would mean losing my career.”

  Now who wasn’t dealing with reality? “Cate, you won’t lose your career. Hell, I’m in the tabs all the time and mine just keeps getting better.”

  “Yes, well, fortunately you don’t have to labor under the double standard. Women in academia can’t behave the way men do, and that’s that. The very first time I’m exposed to it, I lose everything. And isn’t that nice and fair?”

  “There must be something you can do.”

  “Of course. I’ll go to the review, state my case, and watch them hand me my termination papers. Then I’ll go home, have a glass of wine, and figure out whether I’d be happier making lattes at the coffee bar, or selling dresses at my favorite department store.”

  Her voice was shaking, but her shoulders were stiff, and when he reached for her, she turned to put the paper in her handbag and his fingers didn’t make contact.

  “Cate. Please.”

  “I’m sorry, Daniel.” When she looked up, her eyes were full of tears. “I thought I could do this, but now I see I can’t. I can’t spend the rest of my life looking over my shoulder to see when the consequences of your actions are going to sneak up and bite me. I can’t watch you in the spotlight while I stand in the dark, wondering what happened to the work I loved.”

  “You won’t,” he protested. What was happening here? This sounded like a breakup speech. “You won’t lose your work. So what if a bunch of humorless prudes run you off? You have a terrific reputation as a scholar, Cate. You could get a job at any university in the country.”

  “Reputation. That’s what it boils down to, doesn’t it? Because of you I’ve just traded my reputation as a scholar for a reputation as an exhibitionistic tramp. Who likes bananas.”

  “Now you sound like a prude.”

  Wrong thing to say. Those dangerous slashes of color flared on her cheekbones. “Don’t you attack me. I’ve had all I’m going to take. Thank you for the nice parts of this week. The sex was great. But I’m catching the first flight I can get back to New York and I don’t want to see you ever again.”

  “Cate, you’re overreacting. We can work this out together. Support each other. Cate, wait!”

  But she didn’t hear him. She was already halfway across the square, and the mocking cries of the gulls drowned out his voice.

  18

  IN A STROKE OF LUCK that seemed almost a miracle, Cate was able to get a standby seat on a nonstop flight to LaGuardia. By the time she and Daniel would have been getting around to dinner in California, she was flagging down a cab and speeding home to refuge in Queens.

  She’d half expected a flock of catcalling reporters to be clustered around the door of her apartment building, but there was nothing but a few brown sparrows and the relative quiet of the evening. She let herself in, dropped her bag on the hardwood floor, and leaned against the door just breathing in the scent of furniture polish and books and the faint floral of the perfume she’d left at home.

  Home.

  She pushed herself away from the door and went into her bedroom, where she changed into pajamas, fell into bed and slept for twelve hours. When she woke the next day, there didn’t seem to be a compelling reason to get up, and since she wasn’t
due into the office until tomorrow, she pulled the covers over her head.

  In the late afternoon, her back was beginning to ache from being horizontal so much. She stumbled out into the kitchen and put on a pot of coffee. The mail hadn’t piled up much, since she’d only been gone a few days, and there was nothing very interesting in it anyway except the new issue of the American Journal of Archaeology.

  Maybe there’d be something interesting on TV. Something to take her mind out of this little maze of dread in which her brain was running this way and that like a trapped mouse. Because it was more than what faced her tomorrow during the staff meeting and the disciplinary review. It was more than meeting the eyes of her male colleagues and knowing they were thinking about that banana and what had been blurred out in the pictures.

  Those things would fade, given enough time. What wasn’t going to fade was this ache in her heart and this unquenchable need deep inside. Because her body didn’t seem to realize she was never going to see Daniel again. It was ready for him now—and had been ever since she’d gotten on the plane. Every time a random image of him popped into her brain—leaning over her on the sand that first night, pulling her clothes off, feeding her bits of his steak—she again felt that tug of desire, that spurt of longing that she had experienced when he’d done those things. It was like her whole being was set on instant replay, and the constant ache of unfulfilled desire was driving her crazy.

  Curling up in the corner of the couch with a pillow, she aimed the remote at the TV. Maybe she could find an action film with lots of explosions. Or even the news. Plenty of explosions there.

  Gaaahh. You’re starting to sound just like Daniel.Making jokes about everything—especially when it’s not appropriate.

  Good. She’d latch on to all the bad things he did and maybe it would take her mind off what his hands could do to her, or the expression in his fathomless dark eyes when he looked at her, or—