Look What the Wind Blew In (9 page)

“Mostly.”

His grip on her hand tightened. “You’re not being very comforting.”

“I’m already holding your hand, Parker. What more do you need? Your binkie?”

“How come you got to bring your smart ass comebacks along but I didn’t?”

“Because I’m in charge.”

“Hmmm. Normally I like it when a woman’s in charge.”

Did he? A flurry of pulse-racing images flew through her head until she squelched them.

They slid along in silence for a short time, the end in sight.

“Ever thought of widening this?” he asked.

“Dad isn’t confident the surrounding structure could handle that kind of activity.”

He cursed. “I appreciate your honesty while I’m sardined by this ‘surrounding structure.’”

She chuckled. When he growled in response, her chuckles grew into giggles.

“I am so going to pay you back for this, Angélica.”

The tunnel widened at the bottom and narrowed to a slit at the top. Pulling free of his grip, she dropped to her hands and knees and crawled through the remaining few feet, ordering him to follow. He obeyed, cursing again.

She took the flashlight from Quint as he scrambled out of the crevice, helping him to his feet.

Holding up the light for him to see the walls encircling them, she smiled with pride. “What do you think?” The sight before her still made her heart quicken.

“That I should never let you talk me into squeezing through cracks again.”

She patted his back. “I’ll make it up to you later.”

“Yes, you will.” He wiped the sweat from his face with the bottom of his shirt, giving her a glance at his bare stomach.

Turning away, she made a point of searching the floor with the beam of light until she was sure he’d lowered his shirt. When she looked back at him, he was studying the walls with a perplexed expression.

“What is this place?” He ran his hand over one of the hundreds of glyphs surrounding them.

“A tomb.”

He moved over to the grave-sized hole she’d excavated last week. “Are there other tombs in this temple?”

“Nope. The Temple of the Crow was not made for burial tomb purposes.” She handed the flashlight back.

He took it. “You’re contradicting yourself.”

No, she was having fun with him, adding some excitement to her show-and-tell presentation. “This isn’t the Temple of the Crow.”

He frowned. “Now you’re losing me.”

“That crack we just slid through was the outer wall to a temple built centuries before the Temple of the Crow.”

“You mean they built over the top of this one?”

“Yes.” She pulled a trowel and paintbrush out of her tool pouch and handed the paintbrush to him.

“Are there other temples inside of this one?”

“I doubt it. This temple isn’t big enough to encompass another. The Temple of the Water Witch is another story.”

He fanned the brush. “How many are under that one?”

“So far two, maybe three. But don’t even think about nosing around in there without me.”

“I won’t.”

“I mean it, Quint.” She emphasized her feelings with a pointed glare. “These temples are dangerous.”

“Isn’t that sweet?” His hazel eyes crinkled in jest. “You being so concerned about me and all.”

“Yeah, well I don’t need an injured photojournalist messing up my dig season schedule.” She shot him a quick grin to take the sting out of the truth.

“Ah, shucks. I bet you say that to all of the photojournalists who sweat their asses off with you inside of these death traps.”

“Nope. Just the ones who need their hands held while squeezing through dark tunnels.”

His laughter filled the small burial chamber. “You know what, Dr. García? I like you.”

“Splendid.” She hid the flame set alight by his words behind a shield of sarcasm. “I’ll be sure to write your name over and over in my diary tonight, dotting the
i
in ‘Quint’ with a little heart.”

His teeth looked even whiter with his beard stubble darkening his cheeks and chin. The shadows added an aspect of ruggedness to his face that made her stomach do loop-de-loops. “I had no idea you’d be so clever, Angélica.”

The way he phrased that gave her pause. “What do you mean you had no idea?”

He looked down at the brush in his hands, fiddling with it. “It’s just that from the moment I arrived you’ve been so serious. I thought maybe you were always like that. Serious, I mean.”

No, he’d meant something else, but Angélica could tell he wasn’t going to cough it up at the moment. She decided to let it go, but her guard stepped back into place, quelling their banter. “Do you have any other questions about this sub chamber?”

“Yes.” He seemed anxious to return to the past. “Why did they build over the top of the old temples?”

She dropped her tool pouch on the mound of dirt next to the shallow hole. “There are several theories around regarding the subject. Lack of space, easier than knocking down the old one, a desire not to disturb the dead buried in the older temples.” She stepped into the hole, glancing across the floor at him.

“So what exactly are you and your father trying to accomplish here?” He extracted a small digital camera from his back pocket, taking several pictures.

“That’s too broad of a question.”

He looked over at her, his eyes soft and glittering in the low light. “Okay, what are you doing here?”

Finishing what her mother started. “I work for the Mexican government.” She picked up her trowel and carefully dug in the dark soil at the bottom of the hole.

“Have you always?”

“No. I used to work for the same university as Dad a long time ago.”

He pocketed his camera and moved closer, his khakis rustling as he squatted next to the hole. “Why did you leave?”

Jared’s face popped into her head, followed by a chest burning flash of irritation as usual. “It wasn’t working out.”

“Did it have anything to do with Dr. Steel?”

She stopped and stared up at him, not liking the direction this was going. “How about we stick to the past?”

He gave her a lopsided smile. “I thought I was.”

“Your job is to ask about what we do here at the site.” She mopped the sweat from her brow with her forearm. “Not about my personal history.”

“Curiosity got the best of me. Sorry.”

“Apology accepted. Now get busy brushing off those glyphs on that wall over there. We need to make impressions of them when we’re done in the other chamber.”

Quint brushed in silence for a while as she dug.

“You know,” he said, interrupting her fantasy of telling Jared off for using her father to worm his way onto her dig site and then shipping the lying bastard out of there. “I bet readers would love to learn more about how a young woman from the States wound up running a Maya dig site.”

“I’m not that young.”

“Young-ish then.”

“Exploit someone else’s life, Parker. Mine’s off limits.”

“What about your mom?”

“Hers is, too.”

“Even off the record?”

“Definitely.” She didn’t trust a journalist ever to be truly off the record.

“Did you know Dr. Hughes?”

She blinked in surprise. That had come out of nowhere. “He was before my time.”

“Did your father know him?”

She stopped digging. “Aren’t you supposed to be taking pictures of things in here for that article?”

He shrugged. “I already took a few. The lighting isn’t the best.”

“What about notes? Don’t journalists carry around a pad of paper? Where are your notes?”

He tapped his head. “I keep them up here.”

Fine! Climbing out of the hole, she dusted off her pants. “Take this,” she grabbed his hand and slapped the trowel into his palm.

“What am I doing with it?”

“Experiencing the joy of digging firsthand. And while you dig, I’ll explain the Mexican government’s process for finding, naming, documenting, excavating, and profiting from archaeological ruins.”

“Then what?” he asked, gripping the trowel.

“Lunch.”

His gaze narrowed. “Are you going out of your way to vex me, or does it come naturally to you?”

Angélica smiled. “Dig.”

* * *

Later that afternoon, Quint leaned against the passage wall in the outer Temple of the Crow. After working in the heat and humidity all morning and then swimming through it again following lunch and a quick
siesta
, he felt like he’d been wrung out and hung up to drip—there was no way he’d dry in this sauna.

“We’re not going back in that tomb are we?” He didn’t even bother wiping away the sweat rolling down from his temple. More would follow as soon as he sopped it up.

Angélica shook her head. “It’s too hot in there now. As the day goes on, we work our way from inner chambers to outer ones.”

“Thank the Maya gods for that. I had visions of you shoe-horning me back through that damned crevice.”

“Listen, I may be bossy, but I’m not a slave driver. We’re not building Egyptian pyramids here.” She sipped from her bottle of water while frowning at him. “If you have a heat stroke where I can’t pull you out quick, we’re in trouble.”

Eyeing her up and down, he considered her words. He couldn’t see her dragging him out of anywhere, although she was no lightweight.

She packed away her water bottle. “When you’re ready, I’ll show you the main hall I told you about earlier. Esteban can catch up with us when he’s finished outside with his cigarette.”

Quint pushed away from the wall, careful not to split open his skull on the low ceiling. He trailed behind her, admiring the view of her backside. He might be hotter than hell, but he wasn’t dead. Not yet anyway.

She’d tucked the sleeves of her T-shirt under her bra straps, leaving the curves of her shoulders bare. Sweat glistened on her skin, dotting the back of her top. Not once today had she complained about the heat or even slowed down. He was starting to doubt she was human.

“Here we are,” she whispered a minute later and led him by the arm. She tiptoed into a large open chamber, pulling him along behind her, shushing him with her index finger to her lips. He nodded, pretending to zip his lips. When they stilled, she released her hold on him.

A rustling sound echoed through the room, mixed with an assortment of hoarse, grating-like rattles, clicks, and coos. So this was why it was named the Temple of the Crow.

He stepped gingerly through the bird droppings, peering up at the high ceiling. Thick shadows swallowed the light where steep vaults came together. The birds must have built their nests on the flat, square capitals that connected each of the limestone columns running the length of the room to the vaulted ceiling. Across the vast chamber, a platform rose two feet above the rest of the floor.

Slivers of light pierced through thin apertures in the walls, adding a sacred air to the room. He peered across the room in the half-light, trying to make sense of the decorative carvings covering the low wall of the platform.

A brief fluttering overhead brought his attention back to the tall columns. At the base of each, faded and chipped paintings wrapped around the limestone. He’d need his other camera to really capture the hallowed feel of the chamber, maybe enhancing the colors with a tobacco filter, sharpening with a polarizer.

In the empty spaces between each column, a three-foot statue stood guard. Some of the statues had crumbled, but the majority remained intact, complete with impressive detail work emphasized by the room’s deep shadows.

For now, he’d take some quick shots.

As he pulled his camera from his pocket, Angélica caught his hand. She pointed at the ceiling.

“I know,” he mouthed back. He already had his shutter set to silent mode on his camera.

She pulled him down so she could whisper close to his ear. “It’s a corbel-vaulted ceiling.”

Her words tickled over his skin, the heat of her breath making him sweat for an entirely different reason. He tried to focus on the task at hand, to rein in his growing attraction for Steel’s ex-wife. He did not need to think about her trailing her tongue along his outer ear.

“What’s that?” he whispered back in her ear, inhaling the sweet lemony-orange fragrance of her shampoo. The smell blended with her coconut-scented sunblock. Pour some wine and a little brandy on her skin and she’d probably taste like sangria. The thought alone made his pulse jackhammer.

“A characteristic of the Classic Maya Period,” she whispered, but he didn’t give a flying fuck about ceilings, crows, or Jared Steel at that moment.

He stared down at her face, wondering what it would feel like to kiss those lips, but then he doused the fantasy. She’d probably kill him if she knew he was even pondering touching her, and then she’d hang him from the corbel-vaulted ceiling as an example for any other males who forgot she was The Boss.

She went up on her toes again. “Ask Dad about it later,” she breathed. She must have mistaken his silent look for incomprehension. He was lucky she couldn’t read minds as well as she could Maya glyphs.

Holding up his camera, he showed her the flash button, making a point of turning it off.

She nodded.

He wanted to try a shot with the afternoon sunlight streaming in. Squatting to get a better angle, he leaned against a column to steady his shot. As he pushed the shutter release, something slammed into him from behind, knocking him into one of the crumbling statues. His camera flew out of his hands.

The ceiling exploded. Squawking and screeching, the crows whirled and darted out through the window slits.