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“Your degree would be in law, right?”
He nodded.
“Did your family come to your graduation?” she asked curiously.
He didn’t answer her. It was a deliberate snub, and it should have made her uncomfortable, but she never held back with him.
“Another case of instant foot-in-mouth disease,” she said immediately. “And I thought I was cured!”
He chuckled reluctantly. “You’re as incorrigible as I remember you.”
“I’m amazed that you did remember me, or that you took the trouble to find out when and where I was graduating so that you could be here,” she said. “I couldn’t send you an invitation,” she added sheepishly, “because I didn’t have your address. I didn’t really expect you, either. We only spent an hour or two together last year.”
“They were memorable ones. I don’t like women very much,” he said as they reached the unobtrusive rental car, a gray American-made car of recent vintage. He turned and looked down at her solemnly. “In fact,” he added evenly, “I don’t like being in public display very much.”
She lifted both eyebrows. “Then why are you here?”
He stuck his hands deep into his pockets. “Because I like you,” he said. His dark eyes narrowed. “And I don’t want to.”
“Thanks a lot!” she said, exasperated.
He stared at her. “I like honesty in a relationship.”
“Are we having one?” she asked innocently. “I didn’t notice.”
His mouth pulled down at one corner. “If we were, you’d know,” he said softly. “But I came because I promised that I would. And the offer of the job opportunity is genuine. Although,” he added, “it’s rather an unorthodox one.”
“I’m not being asked to take over the archives at the Smithsonian, then? What a disappointment!”
Laughter bubbled out of his throat. “Funny girl.” He opened the passenger door with exaggerated patience.
“I really irritate you, don’t I?” she asked as she got inside the car.
“Most people are savvy enough not to remind me of my heritage too often,” he replied pointedly after he was inside with the door closed.
“Why?” she asked. “You’re fortunate enough to live in an age where ethnicity is appreciated and not stereotyped.”
“Ha!”
She lifted her hands. “Okay, okay, that isn’t quite true, but you have to admit that it’s a better society now than it was ninety years ago.”
He started the engine and pulled away from the curb.
He drove as he seemed to do everything else, effortlessly. His hand went inside his jacket pocket and he grimaced.
“Looking for something?” she asked.
“Cigarettes,” he said heavily. “I forgot. I’ve quit again.”
“Your lungs and mine appreciate the sacrifice.”
“My lungs don’t talk.”
“Mine do,” she said smugly. “They say ‘don’t smoke, don’t smoke…’”
He smiled faintly. “You bubble, don’t you?” he remarked. “I’ve never known anyone so animated.”
“Yes, well, that’s because you’re suffering from sensory deprivation resulting from too much time spent with your long nose stuck in law books. Dull, dry, boring things.”
“The law is not boring,” he returned.
“It depends which side you’re sitting on.” She frowned. “This job you’re telling me about wouldn’t have to do with anything legal, would it? Because I only had one course in government and a few hours of history, but…”
“I don’t need a law clerk,” he returned.
“Then what do you need?”
“You wouldn’t be working for me,” he corrected. “I have ties to a group that fights for sovereignty for the Native American tribes. They have a staff of attorneys. I thought you might fit in very well, with your background in anthropology. I’ve pulled some strings to get you an interview.”
She didn’t speak for a minute. Her eyes were on her hands. “I think you’re forgetting something. My major is anthropology. Most of it is forensic anthropology. Bones.”
He glanced at her. “You wouldn’t be doing that for them.”
She stared out the window. “What would I be doing?”
“It’s a desk job,” he admitted. “But a good one.”
“I appreciate your thinking of me,” she said carefully. “But I can’t give up fieldwork. That’s why I’ve applied at the Smithsonian for a position with the anthropology section.”
He was quiet for a long moment. “Do you know how indigenous people feel about archaeology? We don’t like having people dig up our sacred sites and our relatives, however old they are.”
“I just graduated,” she reminded him. “Of course I do. But there’s a lot more to archaeology than digging up skeletons!”
He stopped for a traffic light and turned toward her. His eyes were cold. “And it doesn’t stop you from wanting to get a job doing something that resembles grave-digging?”
She gasped. “It is not grave-digging! For heaven’s sake…”
He held up a hand. “We can agree to disagree, Phoebe,” he told her. “You won’t change my mind any more than I’ll change yours. I’m sorry about the job, though. You’d have been an asset to them.”
She unbent a little. “Thanks for recommending me, but I don’t want a desk job. Besides, I may go on to graduate school after I’ve had a few months to get over the past four years. They’ve been pretty hectic.”
“Yes, I remember.”
“Why did you recommend me for that job? There must be a line of people who’d love to have it—people better qualified than I am.”
He turned his head and looked directly into her eyes. There was something that he wasn’t telling her, something deep inside him.
“Maybe I’m lonely,” he said shortly. “There aren’t many people who aren’t afraid to come close to me these days.”
“Does that matter? You don’t like people close,” she said.
She searched his arrogant profile. There were new lines in that lean face, lines she hadn’t seen last year, despite the solemnity of the time they’d spent together. “Something’s upset you,” she said out of the blue. “Or you’re worried about something.”
Both dark eyebrows went up. “I beg your pardon?” he asked curtly.
The hauteur went right over her head. “Not something to do with work, either,” she continued, reasoning aloud. “It’s something very personal…”
“Stop right there,” he said shortly. “I invited you out to talk about a job, not about my private life.”
“Ah. A closed door. Intriguing.” She stared at him. “Not a woman?”
“You’re the only woman in my life.”
She laughed unexpectedly. “That’s a good one.”
“I’m not kidding. I don’t have affairs or relationships.” He glanced at her as he merged into traffic again and turned at the next corner. “I might make an exception for you, but don’t get your hopes up. A man has his reputation to consider.”
She grinned. “I’ll remember that you said that.”
He pulled the car into the parking lot of a well-known hotel restaurant and cut off the engine. “I hope you’re hungry. I missed breakfast.”
“So did I. Nerves,” she added.
He escorted her into the sparsely occupied restaurant and they were seated near the window. When they finished looking at the menu and gave their orders, he leaned back in his chair and studied her across the width of the table with quiet interest.
“Is my nose upside down?” she asked after a minute.
He chuckled. “No. I was just thinking how young you are.”
“In this day and age, nobody is that young,” she corrected. She leaned forward with her chin on her elbows and watched him. “Don’t fight it,” she chided. “You might never run into anyone else who’d make you so uncomfortable.”
“That’s a selling point?” he asked, surprised.
“Of course it is. You live deep inside yourself. You won’t let yourself feel anything, because it’s a form of weakness to you. Something must have hurt you very badly when you were younger.”
“Don’t pry,” he said gently, but the words warned.
“If I hang around with you very much, I’m going to pry a lot more than this,” she informed him.
He considered that. He had cold feet where Phoebe was concerned. She wasn’t the sort of person who’d settle for a shallow relationship. She’d want to go right to the bone, and she’d never let go. He was like that, too, but he’d been burned badly once, by a woman who liked him because he was a curiosity
“I’ve been collected already,” he said quietly. “Do you understand?”
She saw the brief flash of pain in his eyes and nodded slowly. “I see. Did she want to show off her indigenous aborigine to all her friends?”
His jaw tautened and something dangerous flashed in his eyes.
“I thought so,” she murmured, watching the faintest of expressions in his face. “Did she care at all?”
“I doubt it very much.”
“And you found out in a very public way, no doubt.”
His head inclined.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “Life teaches painful lessons.”
“Have you had any yet?” he returned bluntly.
“Not that sort,” she admitted, toying with her fork. “I’m rather shy with men, as a rule. And boys I went to school with either saw me as one of them or somebody’s sister. Digging isn’t very glamorous.”
“I thought you looked cute in mud-caked boots and a jacket three times your size.”
She glared at him. “Don’t start.”
His dark eyes slid over her dress. It wasn’t in the least revealing. It had a high lace collar and long sleeves gathered tight at the wrists. It cascaded down in folds to her ankles and under it she was wearing very stylish granny shoes. Her platinum hair was in a neat braid down her back. She wore a minimum of makeup and there was a tiny line of freckles right over her nose.
“I know I’m not pretty,” she said, made uncomfortable by the close scrutiny, “and I’m built like a boy.”
He smiled. “Are you still naive enough to think that looks matter?”
“It doesn’t take much intelligence to see that pretty girls get all the attention in class.”
“At first,” he agreed.
She sighed. “There are so few boys who like to spend an evening listening to exciting discoveries like a broken bowl of charred acorns and half a soapstone pipe.”
“Mississippian,” he recalled, from their discussion about the find last year.
She beamed. “Yes! You remembered!”
He smiled at her enthusiasm. “I did a few courses in cultural anthropology,” he confessed. “Not physical anthropology,” he emphasized. “And so help me, if you say anthropology should be right up my alley…!”
“You didn’t tell me that in Charleston,” she said.
“I didn’t expect to see you again,” he replied. He hadn’t even planned to come to her graduation. He wasn’t sure if he regretted being here or not. His dark eyes searched her pale ones. “Life is full of surprises.”
She looked into his eyes and felt a stirring deep in her heart. She looked at him and felt closer than she’d ever been to anyone.
The waitress brought salads, followed by steak and vegetables, and they ate in silence until apple pie and coffee were consumed.
“You’re completely unafraid, aren’t you?” he asked as he finished his second cup of coffee. “You’ve never really been hurt.”
“I had a crush on a really cute boy in my introductory anthropology class,” she said. “He ended up with a really cute boy in Western Civ.”
He chuckled. “Poor Phoebe.”
“It’s the sort of thing that usually happens to me,” she confessed. “I’m not terribly good at being womanly. I like to kick around in blue jeans and sweatshirts and dig up old things.”
