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You were sound asleep before I put away your dinner tray. I took the liberty of leaving the alarm off in the belief that sleep is in your best interests. Please take some time off—let those injuries heal. I’ll tell James you won’t be at the quarry for a while.
Alex Blake
Susannah let the paper drop onto the bed. She would have to disappoint him. Taking time off was out of the question. She wanted to check on Matt, and she had a quarry to run. More importantly, she had to behave noticeably like a grown-up in Blake’s presence.
It was nearly noon by the time she was able to get to the museum. When she stepped off the elevator on the second floor, she heard animated voices coming from Diane’s office. Grasping her crutch, she made her way toward the sound.
“How about Coprolites Incorporated?” she heard Diane suggest. “It has an almost poetic ring.”
“Nah, nobody’ll know what we’re about. We need something catchy and to the point, like We Do Dinosaur Doo-Doo.”
“That’s awful, James. I want something with a little dignity.”
“Who needs dignity? We’re going to make our fortunes here.” James broke off, looking toward the door. “Sue!” He reached her side in one giant step. “What are you doing out of bed? Look at you!”
“I’d rather you didn’t. Not today.”
“You look better wearing bruises and bandages than most women look wearing silk,” James assured her. He kicked a basket of toys out of the way and guided her to a chair. “How’d you get here without your car? Don’t tell me you hopped.”
“Taxi. The driver acted like it was an international trip—all the way from town to my place, then here. I’ll have to make the payments in installments. A year should do it.”
Diane scooped a pile of textbooks from an extra chair and eased Susannah’s foot onto it. “Shouldn’t your ankle be bandaged?”
“Could you help me with it, Di? I couldn’t get the tensor back on after I showered, if you can call it showering. I stood there with my hands outside the curtain like a zombie, hoping the force of the water would be enough to get the grit out of my hair. What’s all this about coprolites?”
Diane took the bandage and started a couple of turns around the instep of Susannah’s foot. “Sophisticated collectors are paying big bucks for the stuff.”
“Really? What do people want them for? Bookends?”
“Or paperweights, maybe. Organic decor is in.” The tensor, just wound, was already coming undone. Diane sighed and started over.
“So we’ve decided the amateur bone hunters have the right idea,” James said earnestly. “Why spend all those years in university so we can make a living working with fossils when we can do better selling dung?”
“Can I join? I’d love to get rid of the last of my student loans.”
“You know I’d do anything for you, Sue, but this is my pet project and my loans come first.” James looked at his watch and jumped up. “Gotta go. I have a meeting with Alex.”
“Is it about Matt? Wait, I’ll come with you.”
“Thanks, Sue, but he asked for me. If I’m not back in half an hour, come looking for me.” James hurried out the door.
Susannah looked after him worriedly. “Poor James. It’s not the way you hope to start out with a new boss…in the middle of your biggest screwup.”
“Sounds like the voice of experience.” Finally Diane fastened the end of the tensor. “There!” She sat back to admire her handiwork. “Don’t ever take it off, Sue. I worked too hard to see it thrown away, as if it were nothing but a disgusting bandage.”
“Agreed. It feels great.” Susannah looked at Diane more closely. “You still look tired. What’s up?”
“I just didn’t get enough sleep last night. There’s too much going on around here.”
“I guess I didn’t help, dragging you out to the quarry.”
“You didn’t drag me.”
Cradling her arm, Susannah said, “I can’t believe I stalked off like that. Blake must think I’m a complete idiot.”
Diane shook her head. “He wasn’t even annoyed when he found out you’d gone to the quarry instead of the meeting. He just accepted that you were busy. Maybe you don’t have anything to worry about with him, after all.” She hesitated, then added, “Actually, I thought he was a sweetheart yesterday.”
“I wouldn’t go that far. He seems to have mellowed, though. So I’m going to apologize, and thank him, and be my usual professional self. The next thing you know we’ll be working together just like any two sensible people.”
SUSANNAH KNOCKED on Alex’s office door. After a moment it swung open, and he stood before her, only inches away.
“Dr. Robb,” he said lightly. “You’re never where I expect you to be.”
Her good intentions evaporated. She forgot she’d ever had any. “Don’t you mean I’m never where you’ve told me to be?”
He looked surprised, then cautious. “I suppose you could put it like that.”
“Wouldn’t it make your life easier if you just stopped telling me?”
“You might be right.” His voice had cooled. “In any case, I’m glad you’re feeling well enough to come to work. Would you like to sit down? It’s just a suggestion. You’re free to do whatever you like. I have a guest who’s been worried about you.”
Susannah craned her neck to look past him. Sitting on a hard chair in front of Alex’s desk was Matt, happily examining a plastic triceratops model. He didn’t look like someone who’d been called on the carpet, but Susannah’s protective instincts flooded through her anyway. “You have a list of people to deal with today, I see. I know James was here earlier. Flexing your authoritarian muscle?”
“I was going to leave you until you were feeling better.”
He was close enough that Susannah could feel his breath on her ear when he spoke. Eager to put some distance between them, she made her way to his desk and sank thankfully into a chair near Matt’s.
“Have you seen this, Dr. Robb?” Matt held up the triceratops model.
“Not that particular model, but in my office I have a wooden hadrosaur skeleton that I made myself.”
He nodded without much interest. “Look at this one. It’s really cool. You can take the skin off to see the bones. And Dr. Blake’s got a sand table where you can see how dead dinosaurs got covered up, and you can practice digging them up. Dr. Blake says the current in the river washes them downstream, and then they get caught where the river turns a corner, so that’s a good place to dig.”
Dr. Blake says…? She and James had said the same thing on the first day of science camp. She looked from the sand table to Alex, lounging against his desk. Her eyes followed the long line of his body, from the sandy hair and broad shoulders to the firm stomach and casually crossed legs. Strong, tanned arms were folded across his chest, seeming to cuddle a bloodthirsty tyrannosaur that glared out of a silk-screened subtropical forest. The shirt was more appropriate for a kid like Matt than a man in his late thirties. It suited him, though.
Alex’s attention was on the boy. “Where were we?”
Matt shifted uncomfortably. “You were talking about a…contract.” He clearly didn’t like the word. “For me to remember the rules.”
“How far did we get?”
“I’m supposed to stay off the hills and stay with the other kids.”
“Two things to remember,” Alex agreed. “Tough things, but I think you can do it. Now, my part of the contract is the consequences.”
His expression mutinous, Matt stared at the floor.
“Here’s the hard part. If you break the rules, I’ll send you home.” Alex waited for that to sink in. “But the flip side is that if you follow the rules, you can earn a reward. Would you be interested in spending an afternoon in the prep lab putting together a dinosaur skeleton?”
Matt looked up. “A real one?”
“As real as it usually gets. The technicians have been working on a triceratops—just like that model. They’ve made fiberglass replicas of the fossil bones. Would you like to help put them together?”
Face glowing, Matt nodded.
“Then it’s a deal. We both sign the contract, and we shake on it.” Together, they walked to the door. “Amy’s just down the hall. She’ll take you back to camp. Good luck, Matt.”
Alex closed the door and turned to face Susannah.
“A contract?” she said. “Isn’t that a bit cold?”
He didn’t answer until he returned to his desk and sat down. “I suppose it could sound cold. My sister’s a teacher and she swears by contracts. She says they help kids stay focused and grown-ups stay consistent. The stakes are too high at the quarry. Matt won’t be safe there unless he remembers the rules.”
Susannah nodded, thinking of the rocks on the sinkhole floor. “I’m concerned about your offer to take him into the lab.”
“Oh?”
“We’ve all learned what he’s like. There are tools and chemicals he could get into, and specimens he could break.”
“I’ll keep an eye on him.”
Alex’s attitude was frustrating but not unexpected. “Despite that disagreement, I appreciate the way you handled Matt. It’s easy to get mad at him. Your approach gives him a chance to learn.”
“I know the type—from experience.”
“Do you have kids?” She hadn’t noticed any family pictures around the office, but that didn’t mean there wasn’t a family.
He shook his head. “I was a lot like Matt—full of energy and enthusiasm. Rules were mere speed bumps. They just slowed me down a little as I ran over them.”
Susannah didn’t have any trouble believing that. “You probably climbed a few hoodoos in your time, too.”
“I couldn’t find any in North Vancouver, or I would have. There were other things to do, though, like jump into rivers from canyon walls.”
She stared at him. “Lynn Canyon, you mean? But people die doing that.”
He nodded. “That’s what my parents kept saying.”
“But it’s illegal, isn’t it?”
“They said that, too.”
She tried not to smile. “You’re telling me you were bad.”
“I was never bad. I just liked having fun.”
The conversation had strayed far from the direction Susannah had intended to take it. “I came here to apologize—”
“For the meeting? You already have. And I’ve accepted.”
“All right.” He was making it too easy. “I wanted to thank you again for helping me yesterday. Taking me to the hospital and home, fixing dinner. The pills, too, and leaving the bottle open…” She paused, then continued with a trace of embarrassment. “And I saw this morning that you cleaned up after me…the sand, and the clothes. I’m really very grateful.”
“But?”
“But…I’d prefer a more professional relationship. I’d like you to stop deciding what I need when I haven’t asked for help. I didn’t want to sleep in today, and I don’t need to take time off.”
Alex gave a brisk nod. “You’re right. We met in a strange way. I guess the sense of emergency blurred the usual boundaries.”
“The situation with Matt…”
“Yes?”
“Nothing like that has ever happened before. I take full responsibility.”
“So did James.”
“I knew what Matt was like. I should have arranged to have him partnered with an adult.”
“That’s a good idea. You don’t have to rake yourself over the coals about this, Dr. Robb. Accidents happen. James will step up supervision at the quarry, and the contract should help.”
“Good. That’s settled, then.” She smiled uneasily. It was hard to reestablish control when he was so reasonable.
“There’s one other thing,” Alex said. “The next time you go out to the quarry—I understand it’ll be a while before you’re up to the rigors of that kind of day—I want to go along. Since you weren’t able to meet with me yesterday, and I don’t have your report, I’m not familiar with your project. You can walk me through it.”
Susannah’s neck stiffened. It was a reasonable request from the head of dinosaur research, but she’d seen his sense of ownership in Australia. “Do you plan to visit all the current projects?”
“Eventually.”
“You want to put your stamp on all the work?”
Alex looked puzzled, then a little angry. “That’s an odd thing to say. Is there something more going on here than you told me last night? You’re not just miffed about the job. Is it something about me in particular you distrust, or are you just paranoid?”
Paranoid? How many judgments did he intend on throwing around? “It’s something about you, Dr. Blake.”
“I see. I put your hostility yesterday down to shock. Is that still the problem?” When Susannah didn’t reply, he continued, “I can take a certain amount of unpleasantness, but you’re part of a team. This kind of behavior could sabotage the museum’s work if it goes on too long. Care to have it out?”
That would be some conversation—make that some outburst. “There’s nothing to have out.”
“Then I suggest you hold your bitterness toward me in check. I wouldn’t want it to be a barrier to the museum’s functioning.”
It was a threat. How on earth had she gone from being Bruce’s anointed successor to being seen as an expendable liability?
She stood up, as straight as she could. “I’m not confident that you have this museum’s best interests at heart, Dr. Blake. If you don’t, you can expect a lot more than a few hostile words from me. It’s really up to you how well the museum functions.” She wished she could stalk out of his office, but lopsided hopping was the best she could do.
More than anything Susannah wanted to go home, but she was determined not to leave before closing. Or later. She was up to the rigors of her job, whether it was lying in the sand with a chisel or sitting at a desk with a keyboard.
Slowly and painfully, she made her way to the preparation lab. She detoured around a crowd of visitors pressed shoulder to shoulder at the observation window. Another group was inside the lab, being shepherded around by a public education staffer. Charlie wouldn’t be happy. He didn’t like sight-seers taking up elbow room, getting perilously close to the fossils under his care.
As she searched the long rows of metal shelves for specimens from the quarry, she couldn’t help overhearing a snippet of conversation between Marie and Carol, lab technicians who had been at the museum nearly as long as Susannah.
