Birthright (26 page)

“You beat it to a pulp with a towel rod.”

“Which I ripped from the wall with my bare hands. Same thing.”

She could still see him, gloriously naked, not a little wild-eyed, with the limp snake draped over the towel bar.

Those were the days.

“We had a good time, anyway. We had some good times.”

“Plenty of them.” He laid a hand on the base of her neck. “Why don't you let it out, Callie? Why do you have such a hard time letting anything out but your mad?”

“I don't know. She fell apart, Jake. She just went to pieces up there in Lana's office. She was holding on to me so tight I could barely breathe. I don't know what I felt, what I feel. I can't identify it. But I started thinking, what would they be like, what would my parents be like, what would I be like if none of this had happened? If she hadn't turned away for that few seconds, and I'd grown up . . . here.”

When she started to move away, Jake tightened his grip, held her in place. “Just keep talking. Pretend I'm not here.”

“That minor in psych's showing,” she told him. “I just
wondered, that's all. What if I'd grown up Jessica? Jessica Lynn Cullen would have a keen fashion sense. She'd drive a minivan. Probably working on her second kid by now. Maybe a fine arts degree, which she uses to decorate her house, tastefully. She thinks she'll go back to work when the kids are older, but for now she's president of the PTA and that's enough for her. Or maybe she's Jessie. Maybe Jessie stuck. That'd be different.”

“How?”

“Jessie, she'd have been a cheerleader. Bound to be. Captain of the squad. Probably had a crush on the captain of the football team, and they were a pretty hot item through high school, but it didn't last. Jessie, she'd've married her college sweetheart, picking him out of the several guys who liked to sniff around her because she was so exuberant and fun. Jessie keeps scrapbooks and works part-time, retail, to help supplement the income. She's got a kid, too, and enough energy to handle all the balls she has to juggle.”

“Is she happy?”

“Sure. Why not? But neither of those women would spend hours digging, or know how to identify a six-thousand-year-old tibia. They wouldn't have a scar on their left shoulder where they fell on a rock in Wyoming when they were twenty. They sure as hell wouldn't have married you—points for them.”

She glanced back over her shoulder. “You'd have scared the shit out of them. And for all those reasons, including having the bad judgment to marry you, I'm glad I didn't turn out to be either one of them. I could think that even when Suzanne was sobbing in my arms. I'm glad I'm who I am.”

“That makes two of us.”

“Yeah, but we're not very nice people. Suzanne wants one of those two women—her Jessica, her Jessie. More, she wants the child back. I'm using that to push her to help me get the answers I need.”

“She needs them, too.”

“I hope she understands that when we get them.”

C
allie worked like a demon, logging ten-hour days in the sweltering heat, probing, brushing, detailing. She dug in the muck churned up by a vicious thunderstorm and stewed in the summer soup August poured into Maryland.

At night she composed reports, outlined hypotheses, studied and sketched sealed artifacts before they were shipped to the Baltimore lab. She had a room of her own, with a sleeping bag tossed on the floor, a desk she'd picked up at a flea market, a Superman lamp she'd snagged from a yard sale, her laptop, her mountain of notes and her cello.

She had everything she needed.

She didn't spend much time downstairs in what they called the common area. It was, she'd decided, just a little too cozy. As most of the team spent evenings in town or at the site, Rosie tended to make herself scarce—obviously and regularly—leaving Callie alone with Jake.

It was just a bit too much like playing house, just a bit too much the way it had once been when they'd burrowed in together in a rental or a motel during a dig.

Her feelings for him were much closer to the surface than she'd wanted to admit. And managed to be dug deeper
as well. The fact was, she realized, she'd never gotten over Jacob Graystone.

He was, unfortunately, the love of her life.

The son of a bitch.

She'd known they'd be tossed together again on a dig. It was inevitable. But she'd thought she'd have more time to resolve her emotions where he was concerned, and she'd been so sure she could handle those emotions. Handle Jake.

But he'd stirred up everything again, then added the unexpected to the mix. He was offering friendship.

His own brand of friendship, she mused as she doodled on a pad. You could never be sure if he'd pick on you, kiss you or pat your head as if you were a child. But it was a different path from the one they'd traveled before.

Maybe it was because of all that had happened to her since coming here, but she wondered where she and Jake might have ended up if they'd tried a couple of other paths the first time around. If they'd taken time to be friends, to talk about who they were instead of assuming they knew.

A single moment could change a life. She knew that firsthand now. What if instead of that last blowup where they'd accused each other of everything from stupidity to unfaithfulness, where they'd slapped the word
divorce
in each other's faces before he'd stormed off, they'd stuck it out?

If they'd passed through that one moment together, would they have fought for their marriage, or stepped back from it?

No way to know for sure, but she could speculate, just as she speculated about the tribe who'd built their settlement along the creek. As she speculated about what turns her life might have taken if she'd grown up with the Cullens.

If she and Jake had gotten through that moment intact, if they'd continued to scrape at the surface, digging down, they might have found something worth keeping.

Marriage, family, partnership and yes, even the friendship he seemed determined to forge this time around.

She hadn't trusted him, she admitted now. Not where
other women were concerned. He'd had a reputation with women. She'd heard of “Jake the Rake” before she met him.

It wasn't something she'd held against him until she'd fallen for him. Then, she admitted, it had become something lodged in her mind, something she hadn't been able to pry out and discard.

She hadn't believed he loved her, not as much as she loved him. And that had made her crazy.

Because, she thought with a sigh, if she loved him more, it gave him more control. It gave him the power. So she'd pushed, determined to make him
prove
he loved her. And every time he'd come up short, she'd pushed harder.

But who could blame her? The close-mouthed son of a bitch had never told her. Not straight out, not plain and simple. He'd never once said the words.

Thank God the whole thing had been his fault.

Since the conclusion made her feel better, she worked another thirty minutes before her stomach announced the can of Hormel's chili she'd nuked for dinner had worn off.

She glanced at her watch and slipped downstairs to see what she could grab for her habitual midnight snack.

She didn't switch on any lights. There was enough of a moon to guide her and she'd always had good instincts where food was concerned.

She padded barefoot into the kitchen on a direct line with the fridge. As she reached for the handle, the lights flashed on.

Her heart leaped up to her throat and popped out of her mouth in a thin scream. She managed to turn it into a curse.

“Goddamn it, Graystone,” she said as she whirled on him. “What's the matter with you? Why'd you do that?”

“Why are you skulking around in the dark?”

“I'm not skulking. I'm moving quietly in consideration of others as I seek food.”

“Yeah.” He glanced at his watch. “Twelve-ten. You're a creature of habit, Dunbrook.”

“So what?” Spotting a bag of Suzanne's Kitchen
chunky-chip cookies on the counter, she bypassed the fridge and snatched them up.

“Hey, I bought those.”

“Bill me,” she mumbled with her mouth full.

She pulled open the fridge, took out a jug of orange juice. He waited while she poured a glass, washed down the first cookie.

“You know, that's a revolting combination. Why don't you drink milk?”

“I don't like it.”

“You should learn. Give me the cookies.”

She wrapped her arms around the bag possessively. “I'll buy the next bag.”

“Give me a damn cookie.” He pulled the bag away, dug in.

With one clamped between his teeth, he got out the milk, poured a short glass.

He was wearing nothing but black boxers. She wasn't going to mention it or complain. Even an ex-wife was entitled to enjoy the view. He had some build on him, she thought. Lanky and tough at the same time, with a few interesting scars to keep it from being too pretty.

And she knew he was that same dusky gold color all over.

There'd been a time when she wouldn't have resisted—couldn't have resisted—jumping him at a moment like this and sinking her teeth into whatever spot was the handiest.

Then they'd have made love on the kitchen table, or the floor, or if they'd been feeling a little more civilized, they'd have dragged each other into bed.

Now she grabbed the bag back, ate another cookie and congratulated herself on her stupendous personal control.

“Come take a look at this,” he told her and started out of the kitchen. “Bring the cookies.”

She didn't want to go with him, to be around him at midnight when he was all but naked and the smell of him had her system quivering. But banking on that stupendous personal control, she followed him into his makeshift office.

He hadn't gone for a desk, but had jury-rigged a long work space out of a sheet of plywood and a couple of
sawhorses. He'd set up a large display board and pinned various photographs, sketches and maps to it.

Even with a cursory glance she could see his thought process, his organization of data. When it came to the work, at least, she knew his mind as well as her own.

But it was the drawing on his worktable, one he'd anchored with an empty beer bottle and a chunk of quartz, that grabbed her attention.

He'd taken their grid, their site survey, their map and had created the settlement with paper and colored pencils.

There was no road now, no old farmhouse across it. The field was wider, the trees ranging along the creek, spreading shadows and shade.

Around the projected borders of the cemetery he'd drawn a low wall of rock. There were huts, grouped together to the west. More rocks and stone tools collected in the knapping area. Beyond, the field was green with what might have been early summer grain.

But it was the people who made the sketch live. Men, women, children going about their daily lives. A small hunting party walking into the trees, an old man sitting outside a hut, and a young girl who offered him a shallow bowl. A woman with a baby nursing at her breast, the men in the knapping area making tools and weapons.

There was a group of children sitting on the ground playing a game with pebbles and sticks. One, a young boy who looked to be about eight, had his head thrown back and was laughing up at the sky.

There was a sense of order and community. Of tribe, Callie noticed. And most of all, of the humanity Jake was able to see in a broken spear point or a shattered clay pot.

“It's not bad.”

When he said nothing, just reached in the bag for another cookie, she gave in. “Okay, it's terrific. It's the kind of thing that reminds us why we do it, and will help Leo make points when he shows this along with the gathered data to the money people.”

“What does it say to you?”

“We lived. We grew and hunted our food. We bore our
young and tended the old. We buried our dead, and we didn't forget them. Don't forget us.”

He trailed a finger down her arm. “That's why you're better at lecturing than I am.”

“I wish I could draw like this.”

“You're not too bad.”

“No, but compared to you, I suck.” She glanced up. “I hate that.”

When he touched her hair, she shifted away, then opened the screen on the sliding doors and stepped out on his deck.

The trees were silvered from the moon, and she could hear the gurgle of the creek, the chorus of cicadas. The air was warm and soft and still.

She heard him step out behind her and laid her hands on the rail. “Do you ever . . . When you stand on a site, especially if you've focused in so it's like you're alone there. You know?”

“Yes, I know.”

“Do you ever feel the people we're digging down to? Do you ever hear them?”

“Of course.”

She laughed, shook back her hair. “Of course. I always feel so privileged when I do, then after, when it passes, I just feel dopey. Hating the dopey stage, I've never said anything about it.”

“You always had a hard time being foolish.”

“There's a lot to live up to. My parents, my teachers, the field. No matter how much lip service is paid, if you're a woman in this, you're always going to be outnumbered. A woman acts foolish in the field, starts talking about hearing the whispers of the dead, guys are going to dismiss her.”

“I don't think so.” He touched her hair again. “One thing I never did was dismiss you.”

“No, but you wanted me in the sack.”

“I did.” He brushed his lips over the back of her neck. “Do. But I was nearly as aroused by your mind. I always respected your work, Cal. Everyone does.”

Still, it warmed her to hear it when he'd never said it to
her before. “Maybe, but why take the chance? It's better to be smart and practical and dependable.”

“Safer.”

“Whatever. You were the only foolish thing I ever did. Look how that worked out.”

“It's not finished working out yet.” He ran his hands down her arms in one long, possessive stroke. Pressed his face into her hair.

She heard his breath draw in. Draw her in.

Her body poised for more, for the flash and grab. Struggled to resist it. It would be a mistake, she knew it would be yet another mistake.

“I love your hair, especially when you let it fall all over the place like this. I love the way it feels in my hands, the way it smells when I bury my face in it.”

“We're not going to have a repeat of the other night.” Her hands white-knuckled on the deck rail. “I initiated that, and I take responsibility for it. But it's not going to happen again.”

“No, it's not.” He scooped her hair to the side and rubbed his lips at the nape of her neck, nibbled his way to her ear. “This time it's going to be different.”

A hot tongue of lust licked along her skin until she dug her fingers into wood to keep them from reaching back and grabbing him. Her knees were going shaky, and the long, liquid pull in her belly nearly made her moan. “Whatever the approach, Tab B still fits into Slot A.”

His chuckle was warm against her throat. “It's all the getting there, Cal. Did you ever think the sex was always the easy part for us? We just fell into it, into each other. Fast, hard, hot. But you know what we never did?”

She stared straight ahead, fighting to keep the moan trapped. She told herself to turn and push him away. To walk away. But then he wouldn't be touching her like this. She wouldn't feel like this.

God, she'd missed feeling like this.

“I don't think we skipped anything.”

“Yeah, we did.” His arms came around her waist. She waited for his hands to stroke up to her breasts. She
wouldn't have stopped him. She ached for that first rough grip of possession, that one instant of shock before she knew she would take, and be taken.

Instead he only drew her back against him, nuzzling. “We never romanced each other.”