Full Circle

by Shannon Hollis

  19

  DANIEL WHEELED THE CAMARO into the driveway of his modest house in Long Beach. A touch on the remote control on the visor sent the garage door up, and he parked it next to his Jeep. On autopilot, he yanked his bag out of the back seat, riffled through the mail, found one lonely beer in the fridge and wandered into his postage-stamp-sized backyard.

  This was intolerable.

  All six hours of the drive down from Oakland had been filled with the memory of Cate. She might as well have been sitting in the passenger seat, for all the good it did him trying to forget about her. The truth was that it was impossible.

  The part he didn’t get was why the stupid article was such a problem. He couldn’t imagine any university in the country getting its knickers in a knot over such a thing when it was obvious the two of them were the victims in the whole affair. For Pete’s sake, who cared what the Entertainment News printed? They were the scum on the bottom of the journalistic pond, as anyone in a grocery checkout line could tell you.

  Daniel took a long pull on his beer and regarded his juniper hedge sourly. There had to be more to it than just the pictures. What was it she really objected to?

  There was only one answer he could see. A relationship with him. Somewhere between eating steak in bed and picking up that paper, she’d got cold feet and changed her mind. The photos only made a nice, neat excuse to hide behind.

  Maybe without them, he’d have had a few more hours with Cate. Maybe not. What spectacular timing you have, Dulcie, as always.

  Dulcie.

  He pulled his cell phone from the clip on his belt and dialed a number that had become familiar. It only rang twice.

  “Cavanaugh.”

  “Is this the D. N. Cavanaugh who shoots for Entertainment News?”

  There was a long pause. “Danny?” she said with gratifying caution. What, did she think he was busy rigging her Venice apartment with a pipe bomb?

  “Dulcie. Darling. I hope they’re paying you what you deserve.”

  “There’s no need to be cranky.”

  “Oh, I’m not cranky. Just curious. After all, if you’re going to ruin someone’s life you might as well be paid handsomely for it.”

  She snorted. In the background, he heard some kind of machinery and a long blast of a horn. Was she at a shipyard? Not that he cared. In fact, a slow boat to China would be a great place for her, as far as he was concerned.

  “Don’t give me that,” she said. “You’re so used to being front-page news that a little item in a two-bit tabloid isn’t even going to show up on your radar.”

  “You’re right, it isn’t,” he agreed. “But I’m curious about two things. One, why you did it, and two, how you got up on the roof of that hotel.”

  “Oh, that was easy. I just rented the room across the hall from you and went out the window.”

  “And the rose and the perfume?”

  “I don’t know anything about a rose. But the perfume was mine. Did you think of me when you had her in bed?”

  So Cate had been right.

  “No, but she thought of you when you went after her clothes. She says thank you for not tearing them to pieces. Everything was repaired the same day.”

  “Is she still with you?” Dulcie’s tone was sharp.

  “Was that your plan? To scare her off?”

  “You don’t need a skinny little no-name like her, Danny. We had something fabulous. Once in a lifetime.”

  “Which I seem to remember you walked away from. You just up and left and the next thing I know, you’re on assignment in Antarctica. Nothing very fabulous going on from my end.”

  She laughed, that magical laugh that had captivated him for months. Now it just sounded tired and overused. “I didn’t know you were so high-maintenance, sweetie. I’m not the kind to write love notes and hide them in your lunchbox, you know? I have a career. And I didn’t go to Antarctica. I just let you think so.”

  “Think the Geographic will be interested in your stuff when they know you’ve been invading people’s privacy for the tabs?”

  “Like they’d know,” she scoffed. “Besides, you’re a public figure. And I knew you wouldn’t mind helping me out. Things have been a little tight.”

  “I might be a public figure but my companion wasn’t. Your lens in our bedroom was out of line, Dulcie. I’m thinking about suing you and the paper.”

  Silence. “You wouldn’t.”

  “Sure I would.”

  “You couldn’t care less about that stuff. Someone points a camera at you and your first instinct is to ask for a comb.”

  “Maybe, but hers isn’t.”

  “Oh, come on. Don’t tell me you’re going all Sir Galahad on me. I did it for you. You’re always telling me how much publicity helps your career. For a fringe benefit, I thought I’d help you lose the chick and remember how good we were together. And voilà, you did.”

  “The only thing I remember is how amazingly self-centered you are, Dulcie. The only pleasure I got in bed with you was from jerking off after you’d fallen asleep. We are not getting back together. And you will be hearing from my attorneys.”

  “How dare you! I—”

  How fitting that the last word he heard out of her mouth before he killed the connection should be I. Daniel rammed the phone into its holster at his belt and finished off the beer. There were no more questions in his mind about their long, strange trip up the coast, except for the question of who had put the rose on their pillows. It had probably been Galina or Ana, who had been too shy to admit it. At least a rose wasn’t malicious, the way Dulcie had been malicious. Cate had been right all along.

  So if she’s right about that, maybe she’s right about what the article will do to her career. Maybe you’re just a little too secure, a little too complacent to see things from her point of view. You told Dulcie she was self-centered, but haven’t you been behaving as if this were all about you?

  And it had cost him Cate, just as it had eight years ago. Then, she had run because he overwhelmed her sexually. Well, she’d definitely grown out of that problem—he’d been hard-pressed to keep up with her curiosity and eagerness to learn all there was to know about seduction.

  But he had overwhelmed her with his life this time. His fame had caught up with her and wiped out her needs and expectations for her own life and career as surely as an earthquake could take out a seemingly solid cliff. He hadn’t explained to her what it was like, hadn’t made any effort to prepare her…and when she was reeling from the shock, what had he done? Told her to shrug it off, as though the damage to her position at Vandenberg were nothing to him.

  Was that the behavior of a man who loved a woman? Had he been just as shallow and self-absorbed as Dulcie? Could he blame Cate for catching the first plane away from him?

  No.

  Well, there was only one thing to do. He glanced at his watch. Nearly six o’clock in New York. Chances were slim she’d still be in the office, but he had to try.

  He got Vandenberg’s number from Information, and was put through by a helpful automated computer directory.

  “Department of Archaeology and Anthropology,” said a female voice with a Boston accent. Definitely not a computer.

  “This is Dr. Burke calling for Dr. Wells, please.”

  After a moment of silence during which he wondered if he should repeat himself, the woman said slowly, “Dr. Wells has gone for the day. This is Anne Walters, her assistant. Can I help you?”

  Anne, for whom Cate had bought a necklace of glass beads. For whom he had not bothered to sign a book, though Cate had asked him to more than once.

  He winced at yet more evidence of his own self-centered behavior. “Did you like your necklace?” he found himself saying instead of “No, thanks,” and hanging up.

  “Yes, I did, very much.” Anne’s tone lost none of its caution. Or maybe it was diffidence. “Thank you.”

  “Oh, I had nothing to do with it. We were at this little art fair on the waterfront and
she was dithering between that and a painting of the Golden Gate Bridge. If she got you the necklace, she could enjoy it, too, when you wore it. It’s hard to wear a painting unless you’re doing performance art.”

  “Good advice.” Her tone warmed a degree or two.

  “So has she really gone home or are you covering for her?”

  “Oh, no, she left after the—”

  Anne stopped, and he remembered that Cate was to have gone before a bunch of stuffed shirts who had the gall to think they could discipline her for something that wasn’t her fault.

  “The disciplinary review was today, wasn’t it?”

  Her sigh was audible, even long distance. “Yes.”

  “What happened?”

  “Dr. Burke, you must know that’s confidential.”

  “Dr. Burke does. But I’m not Dr. Burke at the moment. I’m just Daniel, who has faced some unpleasant truths about himself lately. And who has finally realized what a mistake it was to let her get on that plane. That’s the guy who’s asking, not that ass Dr. Burke with his face plastered all over the TV and the tabloids with only one thought in his mind—getting the next grant.”

  He shook his head in disgust at himself and sank onto his couch.

  “Well, in that case,” the woman said, “I’m not Mrs. Walters, dignified departmental assistant in a brown tweed skirt and sensible shoes. I’m Cate’s friend wearing a spun-sugar necklace, and between you and me and the lamppost, the review board denied her tenure this afternoon.”

  Daniel felt his body sag as the consequences of his effect on Cate’s life came home to him with a vengeance.

  “The nasty part is, they got her over here from Columbia with a promise of early tenure so she could continue her work on the goddess cults. Now I guess that’s going to come to a screeching halt.”

  “What’s she going to do?” A hundred options presented themselves to him, none of them good.

  Anne hesitated. “I’m not sure. I don’t think she was serious about selling dresses at Bloomie’s, though.”

  “You don’t think she’s going to give up teaching?”

  “I honestly don’t know, Dr. Burke.”

  “Daniel.”

  “Daniel. But this is all over the campus and people are blogging about it already. I heard her on the phone with Columbia, but it didn’t sound promising. I think she’s backed into a corner, and you know what happens when people feel that way.”

  He did indeed. “Anne, we have to do something.”

  “Well, I should think—” She stopped herself.

  A very circumspect lady, this Anne Walters. The perfect assistant. Daniel wondered if she’d like a job in Long Beach.

  “Sorry,” she said instead.

  “Oh, no, you don’t. Spill. What were you going to say?”

  “She’ll kill me.”

  “So will I, only I’m much more inventive. After all, I dig up gravesites for a living.”

  “She’s devastated right now, Dr.—Daniel. It’s killing her that she gave you up and lost her career anyway. She—she loves you.”

  Daniel had heard the expression my heart leaped and had always rolled his eyes at the hyperbole. Except that his own heart had just—well, if it wasn’t a leap, then it was at least a kick. As if it had just got a big shot of adrenaline, enough to galvanize him into fight-or-flight mode.

  What’s it going to be? Are you going to fight for her? Or flee?

  “Did she tell you that?” He could hardly believe it. She hadn’t even told him. And God knew he’d given her plenty of opportunity.

  “It kind of slipped out.”

  “In that case, it’s even more important that I do something. What do you suggest?”

  “How soon can you get here?” Anne asked.

  “There’s a red-eye out of LAX.”

  “Good. By the time you land, I’ll have thought of what to do. She’s not planning to come in tomorrow, but she has to be back Monday to proctor her exams as well as Dr. Dileone’s. So you’ll have three days.”

  “I’m going to owe you, Anne. Big time.”

  “I know,” she said. “I want an autographed copy of your book.”

  “If, between you and me, we can convince Cate that I love her, I’ll dedicate the next one to you.”

  “That’ll do for a start,” she said.

  20

  HANDS ON HIPS, CATE TIPPED her head back and regarded the solid familiarity of her therapy cliff in upstate New York. Her car was parked half a mile away, at the trailhead, and there was no sound but her breathing, the calls of crows and sparrows, and the sighing of the wind in the trees. It was cloudy and there would probably be some rain later, but she figured there was enough time to climb to the ledge about sixty feet up, where the diffused light would probably have warmed the stone, and have a good long cry.

  Anne had had to work late last night so she hadn’t had the relief of being able to talk it out over curry and strong tea. And this morning, she should have gone in to meet with Dennis Dileone, give him her condolences on his wife’s loss of her father, and prepare to proctor his exams as well as her own while he was out on bereavement leave.

  But instead, she was taking a little informal bereavement leave for herself. A person should acknowledge the loss of a career and a relationship all in the same week. So if she wanted to climb a cliff and sit up there and cry, who was going to stop her?

  The first ten feet were easy and didn’t even require equipment. For the rest, she tightened her safety harness and set her cams in familiar cracks with swift efficiency, and within a few minutes of her personal record. She settled onto the ledge, pulled off her helmet, and let the pure sound of unobstructed wind blow through her. Below, the tops of the trees, fully leafed out now in early summer, made a fluffy, waving carpet, screening her from the worries and concerns of the world below.

  Except that her own worries and concerns had packed themselves up here with her, locked in her head and in her heart.

  Daniel.

  Something inside her broke and tears pooled in her eyes, then flowed over. The wind felt cool on her face as it dried the tears and more came to replace them. She leaned back against the ancient granite and cried—for love, for loss and for discoveries she’d made about herself that she’d now be able to share with no one.

  The digitized notes of the opening bars of the William Tell overture shrilled suddenly in the windy silence, and for a couple of seconds, as she snuffled and wiped the moisture from her cheeks, Cate could not place the sound.

  Her cell phone.

  She’d brought it in case of emergency, but not many people had this number. Her folks. Anne, Julia Covington and Dr. Trowbridge. All told, she wasn’t in the best shape to talk to any of the above.

  On the other hand, what if it was an emergency? Or what if Dr. Trowbridge had convinced the tenure committee to overturn their decision?

  “Catherine Wells.”

  “Dr. Wells, I’m so glad I was able to reach you. This is Andrew Hoogbeck.”

  She sat on the ledge, her feet swinging in the air, and tried to get her mouth working.

  “Dr. Hoogbeck, what—what a surprise.”

  “I hope I’m not interrupting your work.”

  “No, I’m, er, a bit up in the air at the moment. How are you?”

  “I’m very well, thank you. I’ve been at the fossil site practically twenty-four hours a day since the plesiosaur was discovered. It’s been very exciting.”

  “I’m glad, but Dr. Hoogbeck, I’m afraid I’m at a loss. First, I’m curious as to how you got this number, and second, I’m wondering how I can possibly help you.”

  “Both very legitimate questions, and happily both easy to answer. Forgive me for not explaining first. My mind has been so consumed with securing the site and making arrangements that I’m losing touch with my social graces. Dr. Burke gave me your number.”

  Dr. Burke did not have her number. She’d never gotten around to giving it to him. He would not hav
e called her parents, so he must have called the school. She was going to throttle Anne Walters with her pink candy necklace.

  “As for the second question,” Dr. Hoogbeck went on, “it’s not what you can do for me, but what I am in a position to do for you.”

  “For me?” Cate looked down between her feet and for the first time wished she were on the ground. She felt a sudden need to pace and throw things.

  “Dr. Burke informs me that your position at Vandenberg University is, shall we say, not what you were led to believe when you took the job there.”

  “With all due respect, sir, Dr. Burke had no right to tell you any such thing.” Cate snatched a rock the size of her fist off the ledge and lobbed it straight out into space. As it crashed into the canopy, a flock of startled birds leaped into the air, screeching.

  If she could have screeched, too, she would have.

  “I understand your feelings, Dr. Wells. But I have a proposition for you.”

  Oh, surely not. The dignified and verbose Dr. Hoogbeck could not possibly have read the Entertainment News. If he said one word about bananas, this phone was going to follow the rock into the treetops, and she’d apologize to the birds later.

  He seemed to take her outraged silence as an invitation to continue. “The processing of the plesiosaur is going to take years, Dr. Wells, including its transportation from Big Sur to the Museum of Natural History in Santa Fe, New Mexico, where I have just been offered a position.”

  “Congratulations, sir.” What on earth did this have to do with her? What had Daniel told him that would make him think she cared two hoots about fossils?

  “Thank you. I’m very pleased about it, myself. But it brings me to the problem of the position I will leave empty at UNM Los Brazos.”

  Mystery solved. He was calling her for a recommendation. But why? “Dr. Hoogbeck, I’m afraid I don’t know any paleogeologists’ work well enough to recommend anyone to you. It’s a couple of million years out of my bailiwick.”

  He laughed comfortably. “You misunderstand me, my friend. Are you familiar with the position I currently hold?”