“Are you an artist or a therapist?”
“I am all things to all people,” Denise said. “You’re stronger than you think, Lilah. If you’re falling in love with Ross Bradford, go for it. See what happens.” She wagged an emphatic finger, adding, “Because if you don’t, then you’ll always wonder what could have happened if you’d been just a little braver. Personally, that’s not the way I’d want to look back over my life.”
Lilah sighed. “You’re right.”
“Eventually,” Denise said, “you’ll figure out that I’m always right. But you can start by listening to me now.”
The water from the night’s rain had collected into one continuous puddle at the base of the canyon, and the slopes were dark and muddy. Rain runoff had swept mud over some of the excavated areas, and Lilah resigned herself to spending the morning cleaning off her previous day’s work.
She had just settled down when her eye caught something new.
Three feet up the slope from where she sat, she could see a dull gray stone tool sitting half-out of the mud, only visible now that the rain had washed away the soil covering it.
As she reached for it, Lilah realized with a shock of excitement that it was not the only tool there.
“Elliot!” she yelled, scrambling up the slope on her hands and knees. There had to be a hundred of the hand-hewn blades scattered on the slope above her. “Ted! Come look at this.”
Everyone within hearing distance caught the urgency in her voice. Elliot and Ted were both there in a moment.
“Look at what the rain uncovered,” she said excitedly, gesturing over the stones. “Cross your fingers. I think we may have something here.”
By the time the late afternoon shadows began to lengthen, Lilah had blisters on her hands and a sunburn on the back of her neck. They had moved an enormous amount of earth out of the side of the canyon in order to expose more of the promising soil level as it stretched back into the hillside. What they found as the day wore on was more than enough to keep them working.
Stone tools, bones and more of the scattered flakes appeared in the giant screens they used to sieve the soil removed from the test trench.
Lilah was elated. It was just what she’d been praying to find, and now she might just have a chance at getting that federal excavation permit.
The mood at camp that evening over dinner was jubilant, and Elliot ceremoniously popped the cork on a bottle of champagne he had secretly brought along for just such an occasion.
After dinner, they all crowded into the lab tent, where Lilah found herself giving an impromptu lecture on fossil bone analysis to a small but very eager audience.
“And here,” she said, turning the end of one bone under the bright light of the battery-powered halogen lamp, “you can see a few very light cut marks right along the edge. See? This is what you get when you use a sharp stone tool to slice the meat away from the bone.”
She picked up several fragments of an antelope femur and laid them out in their original positions. “And look at this. See these broken edges? This bone was probably intentionally split....”
There was a soft rustle of canvas in front of her, and Lilah’s heart skipped a beat as she looked up to see an acutely familiar figure step into the tent and stand, with his arms folded against his chest, behind the group of students.
Ross’s eyes met hers, and he gave her a cool half smile.
Lilah gulped, sheer force of will keeping her from blushing a horrible shade of rose as she fingered the bones. Everyone else in the tent, noticing her sudden awkwardness, turned to see who was there.
“Hi, Ross,” Elliot said easily. “Welcome. Lilah was just giving us a brushup on Bones 101.”
“Sounds interesting. Don’t let me interrupt,” he said, and Lilah knew that he was absolutely aware that his sudden appearance had rattled her.
She swallowed again and continued automatically. “I was saying that this bone was probably broken to get the marrow. It takes work to hunt down a big animal, so you have to be efficient about using everything you can.”
After she finished, Lilah intentionally took her time getting the graduate students started on labeling and bagging the newly recovered artifacts, all the while acutely aware that Ross waited outside the tent. Denise’s pep talk had made it sound so noble and right to live dangerously and follow her heart, but suddenly the idea of launching herself into an affair with Ross felt something like getting behind the wheel of a Ferrari with no brakes.
Ross and Elliot were standing outside the tent, deep in conversation, and Lilah attempted to casually sidle past them and out the door into the late evening light. She didn’t get far.
Ross’s hand whipped out and caught her firmly by the upper arm as she passed by.
“Going somewhere?” he asked pleasantly.
“I... need some water,” she said, trying unsuccessfully to twist out of his grip without calling attention to the fact that she was doing it.
“Water,” Ross said skeptically.
He still had her by the arm, and Elliot, sensing tension, excused himself to go check on the students.
“Right, water,” she said. “Too much talking. Makes my throat dry.” She manufactured a cough. “See?”
“I see. I think I’ll come get some water, too. I want to talk to you.”
If Lilah had had any conscious control over her heartbeat, she would have told it to slow down and shut up, because it was pounding too loudly as she and Ross walked over to the row of water storage jugs near the campfire circle.
She wasn’t actually thirsty, but she filled her mug anyway, took a sip and looked at him. He was wearing casual clothes and work boots, and the faded blue of his shirt picked up glints of the same color hiding in his eyes.
Lilah took a deep breath. “So,” she said. “Did you hear that we had good luck today? We dug up a hunting site about halfway down the ravine slope, and I’m guessing that it’s more than four hundred thousand years old. On Monday morning I’m going into Nairobi to send samples back to the States. We should have a date for it in a few days.”
Ross was gazing at her with an inscrutable face. “Sounds like just what you wanted,” he said.
“It is. It seems to be mostly undisturbed, which is really rare,” she said a little too fast. “We found a lot of stone flakes, some tools—what?”
Ross’s mouth had quirked into a smile, and he was looking at something over her shoulder.
She turned around, and looked across camp to the open flap of the lab tent to see Elliot and Denise peeking out at them. They looked surprised and embarrassed when they realized that they had been spotted, and their heads disappeared quickly back into the tent.
Lilah sighed and looked up at the sun, which was getting low on the savanna horizon. “Why don’t I just show you the site,” she said. “Come on.”
Chapter 10
The canyon seemed to glow with an inner fire as the rocks and sand reflected the deep, molten-gold light of the sinking sun. Ross followed Lilah down the slope, checking back over his shoulder to see if any of her unusually curious friends had decided to follow them.
It looked as if they had been warned off by the glare she had given them, so he was alone with her. Again. Wasn’t this how they had gotten into trouble before?
Ross had worked all day, trying to forget about Lilah, but thoughts of her kept creeping into the corners of his mind. Eventually he had gotten tired of the struggle for concentration, and decided to come confront her.
But here she was, acting as if he were some tourist arriving to see the sights. Was she so deeply regretting what had happened between them that she could hardly face him? Well, too bad. She was going to have to.
He stopped walking, and she turned, looking uncertainly up at him.
“The area we excavated is just down there,” she said, pointing.
“Lilah,” he said, folding his arms, “you and I both know that I didn’t come down for an archaeology lesson.”
It didn’t help to notice how lovely she was. Her dark blond hair caught the light of the setting sun and turned into warm honey tumbling down to her shoulders in a way that reminded him of how she had looked last night, hot and disheveled with passion. But the worried look in her eyes and the smudge of dirt on her cheek made her seem oddly vulnerable.
“Oh,” she said.
Ross had a fleeting urge to shake her. “You took off in a rush this morning,” he said coolly.
“I had to get back to work, so I—”
“Otieno told me that you were outside, looking for a ride at the crack of dawn. Sounds like you were anxious to escape.”
“No,” she protested. “I woke up early, so I thought I should leave.”
“I think you did more than leave. I think you ran away, just like you did last night. What are you so afraid of?”
Lilah bit her lip, looking trapped, and her silence was enough to convince him that he was right.
“Tell me,” he said.
She hesitated a moment longer, then took a deep breath. “Okay,” she said. “Last night you asked me what I want, and I didn’t know. I had to figure it out. That’s why I ran away.”
“And did you figure it out?”
She looked up to meet his eyes, and there was a sudden resoluteness on her face, like a person about to take that first dive from the high board.
“Yes.”
“What do you want, Lilah?”
She shook her head. “First you tell me what you want.”
He frowned. Was she playing with him? If so, her game made no sense. He had no hesitation about repeating what he’d told her last night.
“I don’t believe in wasting time,” he said. “We have five more weeks together, and I think we should enjoy them. I want you to come back to the house tonight, and I want to wake up tomorrow morning with you next to me.”
“I see,” Lilah said, giving him a small, resigned smile that left him highly dissatisfied. What was the matter with her? He couldn’t remember the last time he had said something like that to a woman, and he would have appreciated a slightly warmer reception.
“I just wanted to clarify that,” she added.
“And you want...?”
“I want the same thing.”
Her green-flecked eyes met his squarely, but something in their expression hinted that she had more on her mind than she was telling.
But Ross didn’t bother to probe any further.
“No more running away, then?” he asked, reaching out to take her hand, then raising it to his lips. He turned it over, and pressed a kiss into her palm.
“No more running away,” she agreed in a low voice, as he slid his lips down to the delicate skin of her inner wrist. Her fingers curved around his jaw for just a moment, then stopped, tensing, as if she had intentionally cut off her reaction to him.
Ross knew a challenge when he saw one. He had no intention of letting the momentary awkwardness of defining their relationship interfere with the reason it existed in the first place. Lilah might not be moving, but he could feel the throb of her pulse under her skin, against his lips. He slipped the tip of her forefinger into his mouth, catching it gently between his teeth.
Her eyes flicked up to meet his, startled, and just as quickly looked away again. Ross took her motionless hand and slid it down, holding it in place against his chest, feeling the heat of her skin burning into him. He felt a tremor pass through her, and immediately returned her hand to his lips.
“I think I was right,” he observed in a murmur against her palm, trying to provoke her. “I think this does scare you. You want me as much as I want you, but you’re afraid to admit it.”
“That’s not true,” she said unsteadily. “I’m not afraid of you.”
“No? Prove it.”
Lilah looked at him for a long moment, not speaking, and then to Ross’s surprise, she smiled. It wasn’t a casual smile. Her lips curved upward into an expression that seemed almost feline, and Ross felt a sudden and unexpected flicker of alarm.
She moved toward him, stopping when they were chest-to-chest. He could feel her breasts brushing against him as she breathed, and only intense self-control and curiosity about what she was doing kept him from reaching out for her. He could feel himself getting aroused, and if she moved any closer, she would feel it, too.
She did. Moving so that her hips were pressed teasingly up against him, she slid her hands up his chest to his shoulders, then began to deliberately glide her fingers over the sensitive skin at the nape of his neck.
Ross clenched his teeth, refusing to move in spite of the fact that her hands and body were sending small electric shocks up and down his spine. God, that she could do this to him with just her presence, with just the tiniest touch. It was everything he could do not to grab her and tear off her shirt, push down her pants and take her right there on the rocky ground.
Lilah’s hands moved down to undo the first two buttons of his shirt. She raised herself up on her toes, and Ross felt his hands clench into two iron fists at his sides as she began to kiss him on the flesh she had just exposed, her soft mouth and warm breath searing his skin.
She opened another button and paused, looking up into his face. “You know what I think?” she murmured, and he just waited, unable to speak.
“I think you’re the one who’s afraid,” she said.
“What?” he said with some effort, his voice hoarse. “That’s crazy. Why would I be afraid of this?”
“Not of this,” she said softly, as her fingers continued their work. “Of everything else.”
Ross could barely think right now, much less consider what she could possibly mean by her cryptic remark. All he was aware of were her hands and mouth, and the fingers which, on opening the last button, had managed to slip even lower, brushing against him for the briefest second, making him inhale sharply.
She pushed the shirt off his shoulders. He felt the cool air of the evening against his back, and the heat of Lilah against his front. Her hands were playing with his skin, stroking silkily up his back and around his sides, sensitizing his entire body.
It was with this new, buzzing skin that he could feel her breasts through her thin shirt, their nipples hard against his chest, and he knew, in some dim, far-off way, that he was about to lose this showdown.
It was too much. His resolve was crumbling fast, and he was so far gone that he hardly cared. His hands reached for her as if they had a life of their own, and he moved quickly, linking one leg behind hers to knock her off balance. Before she knew what he was doing, he had her on the ground.
“Enough,” he growled, pinning her arms at her sides.
Lilah’s mouth was curved into a satisfied grin, and he kissed it off her, roughly, thoroughly, with an urgent hunger for the taste of her.
Her arms linked around him as she responded, her silky mouth and warm body welcoming him. Her own ardor, the feel of her undisguised hunger for him, was amazingly erotic, as if her own passion fueled his desire for her to an almost insatiable level.
It took every bit of willpower in his body to lift his head from hers. “We’re not in the best place to continue this.”
Lilah smiled up at him. “You don’t want to walk back into camp with twigs in your hair and dirt all over you? I guess that would be a little obvious.”
“Come back to the house with me,” he said. He wanted her badly, but on his own terms. She had caught him off-guard too many times, and he planned to start all over, his way.
“To continue this in a more suitable place?”
“Yes. Do you want to?”
Her hazel eyes were wide and vulnerable in the fading evening light, and they shimmered with a longing that astonished him.
“Yes,” she whispered. “I do.”
It was dark by the time they arrived at the house, and the one lamp burning in the living room cast a pale glow out over the savanna. Everything was dim and indistinct in the low light, and as Lilah waited for R
oss to unlock the front door, she felt as if she were in a dream, drifting on a warm current of desire through a place where anything was possible.
He held the door open for her, and she stepped into the house, a shiver of nervous anticipation coursing through her.
What now? Were they supposed to talk, to relax and work their way up to whatever happened? Lilah hesitated in the middle of the room as Ross closed the door behind her.
It had never seemed so awkward before. Her heart was beating so hard that she could feel it pounding against her chest, and she bit her lips, trying to find something to say.
But Ross made it all unnecessary. Before she knew what he was doing, he stepped behind her, linking his arms around her waist, and Lilah automatically leaned back, feeling the rise and fall of his breath against her back.
“Lilah,” he said, taking her shoulders in his strong hands and turning her slowly around to face him. “Look at me.”
She could feel a stain of color in her cheeks as she met his eyes. His gaze traveled over her face, searching it, then slid boldly down to move over her body.
A shock of excitement rippled through her as Ross’s eyes consumed her. He seemed to be barely restraining himself from doing anything more than holding her silently by the shoulders, and there was a feeling of energy held in check, of action frozen for a moment like a camera still.
“I’ve told you what I want,” he said, his voice low and intense. “Now, before this goes any further, you tell me. Exactly.”
Lilah leaned forward to brush her lips against his chest and felt him shiver. He groaned, then pushed her away, holding her away from him.
“No. Say it. I need to hear you say it.”
“I want you,” she said, urgency tearing the words out of her. “I want you to make love to me, Ross, please...”
It was as if her words had released him. His arms curved around her, pulling her against him, and his mouth met hers hungrily, kissing her until she was gasping for breath.
He lifted his head, and she sagged slightly against him.
A Hard-Hearted Man Page 11
