Cordina's Crown Jewel

  It was, he admitted, a nice summary for a layman. There was a brain inside the classy package. “That’s close enough.”

  “Perhaps the women cooked soup over an open fire.”

  The glint of humor caught him, had him nearly smiling back. “Women have been copping kitchen duty since the start. You’ve got to figure there’s a reason for that.”

  “Oh, I do. Men are more inclined to beat their chests and pick fights than see to the more basic, and less heroic tasks.”

  “There you go.” He rose. Despite the coffee, he was dragging. It was the main reason he skipped the pain pills as often as possible. “I’m going up. Spare bed’s in the first room, left of the stairs.”

  Without a thank-you, a good-night or even one of his occasional grunts, he left Camilla alone in front of the fire.

  Chapter 3

  I don’t know what to make of my host, Camilla wrote. It was late now, and she’d opted to huddle on the miserable sofa in front of the fire as the spare room upstairs had been chilly and damp—and dark.

  She hadn’t heard a sound out of Del, and though she’d tried both the lights and the phone, she’d gotten nothing out of them, either.

  I’ve decided to attribute his lack of social skills to the fact that his line of work puts him more in company with the long dead than the living. And to season this with some sympathy over his injuries. But I suspect he’s every bit as brusque and unpardonably rude when in full, robust health.

  In any case, he’s interesting—and spending time with people who will treat me as they treat anyone is part of this experiment.

  As a lovely side benefit of his, apparently, hermit lifestyle, there is no television in the cabin. Imagine that, an American home without a single television set. I saw no current newspapers or magazines, either. Though some may very well be buried in the refuse heap he lives in.

  The chances of such a man recognizing me, even under these oddly intimate conditions, are slim to none. It’s very reassuring.

  Despite his odd choice of living arrangements when not actively working on a dig, he’s obviously intelligent. When he spoke of his work—however briefly—there was a spark there. A sense of curiosity, of seeking answers, that appeals to me very much. Perhaps because I’m seeking something myself. Within myself.

  Though I know it was not entirely appropriate behavior, I read through more of his papers when I was certain he was in his room upstairs. It’s the most fascinating work! As I understand from the scribbles, he’s part of a team which has discovered a site in south-central Florida. Deep in the black peat that was being dug for a pond in a development, the bones from an ancient people—tests show seven thousand years ancient—were unearthed.

  His notes and papers are so disordered, I’m unable to follow the exact procedure, but The Bardville Research Project began from this discovery, and Delaney has worked on it for three years.

  Their discoveries are amazing to me. A toddler buried with her toys, artifacts of bone, antler and wood, some of them inscribed with patterns. A strong sense of ritual and appreciation of beauty. There are sketches—I wonder if he did them himself. Quite intricate and well-done sketches.

  There are so many notes and papers and pieces. Honestly, they’re spread willy-nilly over the cabin. I would love to organize them all and read about the entire project from its inception through to the present. But it’s impossible given the state of things, not to mention my departure in the morning.

  For myself, I’m progressing. I’m sleeping better, night by night. My appetite’s returned, and I’ve indulged it perhaps a little more than I should. Today, after a long drive, and a minor accident, I spent a considerable amount of time on elemental domestic chores. Fairly physical. Less than two weeks ago the most mundane task seemed to sap all my energy—physically, emotionally, mentally. Yet after this day, I feel strong, almost energized.

  This time, this freedom to simply be, was exactly the remedy I needed.

  I’m taking more, a few weeks more, before Camilla MacGee blends back into Camilla de Cordina again.

  * * *

  In the morning, the bright, bold sunlight slanted directly across Del’s eyes. He shifted, seeking the dark and the rather amazing dream involving a lanky redhead with a sexy voice and gilded eyes. And rolled on his bad side.

  He woke cursing.

  When his mind cleared, he remembered the lanky redhead was real. The fact that she was real, and sleeping under the same roof, made him a little uneasy about the dream. He also remembered the reason the classy dish was in the spare bed was that her car was in a ditch, and the power and phones were out.

  That meant, rather than a hot shower, he was going to take a dip in a cold pond. He gathered what he needed, and started downstairs. He stopped when he heard her singing.

  The pretty voice with its faintly exotic accent seemed out of place in his cabin. But he couldn’t fault the aroma of fresh coffee.

  The coffee was heating on the fire, and she was in the kitchen, rooting around in the pantry.

  He saw that the floor had been washed. He had no idea it had any shine left in it, but she’d managed to draw it out. There were wildflowers stuck in a tumbler on the kitchen table.

  She had opened the kitchen window, the door to the mudroom and the door beyond that so the fresh and balmy air circled through.

  She stepped back, a small can of mushrooms in her hand—and muffled a short scream when she saw him behind her.

  He hadn’t clomped this time. He was barefoot and bare-chested, clad only in a ragged pair of sweatpants and his sling.

  His shoulders were broad, and his skin—apparently all of it—was tanned a dusky gold. The sweatpants hung loose over narrow hips, revealing a hard, defined abdomen. There were fascinating ropy muscles on his uninjured arm.

  She felt the instinctive female approval purr through her an instant before she saw the sunburst of bruises over his right rib cage.

  “My God.” She wanted to touch, to soothe, and barely stopped herself. “That must be very painful.”

  “It’s not so bad. What’re you doing?”

  “Planning breakfast. I’ve been up a couple of hours, so I’m ready for it.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I’m hungry.”

  “No.” He turned away to find a mug. If he didn’t have caffeine immediately, he was going to disintegrate. “Why have you been up a couple of hours?”

  “Habit.”

  She knew most people’s fantasies of a princess, and the reality of the life were dramatically different. In official mode, it was rare for her to sleep beyond 6:00 a.m. Not that Delaney Caine knew she had an official mode.

  “Bad habit,” he muttered and strode back to the coffeepot.

  She got her own mug and went back with him. “I took a walk earlier,” she began. “It’s a gorgeous day and a beautiful spot. The forest is lovely, simply lovely. And there’s a pond. I saw deer watering, and there’s foxglove and wild columbine in bloom. It answered the question for me why anyone would live here. Now I wonder how you can bear to leave it.”

  “It’s still here whenever I get back.” He drank the first mug of coffee the way a man wandering in the desert drank water. Then closing his eyes, he breathed again. “Thank you, God.”

  “The power’s still out. We have three eggs—which we’ll have scrambled with cheese and mushrooms.”

  “Whatever. I’ve got to wash up.” He picked up his travel kit again, then just stopped and stared at her.

  “What is it?”

  Del shook his head. “You’ve got some looks, sister. Some looks,” he repeated with a mutter and strode out.

  It hadn’t sounded like a compliment, she thought. Regardless her stomach fluttered, and kept fluttering when she went back to the kitchen to mix the eggs.

  * * *

  He ate the eggs with a single-mindedness that made her wonder why she’d worried about flavor.

  The fact was, he was in serious heaven eating som
ething he hadn’t thrown together himself. Something that actually tasted like food. Happy enough that he didn’t mention he’d noticed that his papers in the living room had been shuffled into tidy piles.

  She earned extra points by not chattering at him. He hated having someone yammering away before he’d gotten started on the day.

  If her looks hadn’t been such a distraction he might have offered her a temporary job cleaning the cabin, cooking a few meals. But when a woman looked like that—and managed to sneak into your dreams only hours after you’d laid eyes on her—she was trouble.

  The sooner she was out and gone, the better all around.

  As if she’d read his mind, she got to her feet and began to clear the table. She spoke for the first time since they’d sat down.

  “I know I’ve been an inconvenience, and I appreciate your help and hospitality, but I’ll need to ask another favor, I’m afraid. Could you possibly drive me to the nearest phone, or town or garage? Whichever is simpler for you.”

  He glanced up. Camilla, whatever the rest of her real name was, had class as well as looks. He didn’t like the fact that her easy grace made him feel nasty for wanting to boot her along.

  “Sure. No problem.” Even as he spoke, he heard the sound of a car bumping down his lane. Rising, he went out to see who the hell else was going to bother him.

  Camilla walked to the window. The instant she saw the car marked Sheriff, she backed up again. Police, she thought uneasily, were trained observers. She preferred avoiding direct contact.

  Del caught her quick move out of the corner of his eye, frowned over it, then stepped outside.

  “Hey there, Del.” Sheriff Larry Risener was middle-aged, athletic and soft-spoken. Del had known him since he’d been a boy.

  “Sheriff.”

  “Just doing a check. Whopping storm last night. Power and phones are out for most of the county.”

  “Including here. Any word when we’ll have it back?”

  “Well.” Risener smiled, scratched his cheek. “You know.”

  “Yeah. I know.”

  “Saw a compact sedan in a ditch a few miles down the road here. Rental car. Looks like somebody had some trouble in the storm.”

  “That’s right.” Del leaned on the doorjamb of the mudroom. “I came along just after it happened. Couldn’t call for a tow. Driver bunked here last night. I was about to drive down to Carl’s, see what he can do about it.”

  “All right then. Didn’t want to think some tourist was wandering around in the woods somewhere. I can radio Carl’s place, give him the location. Save you a trip that way, and he can swing by and let you know what’s what.”

  “I’d appreciate that.”

  “Okay then. How’re you doing? The shoulder and all.”

  “It’s better. Only hurts like a bitch about half the time now.”

  “Bet. You hear from your folks?”

  “Not in about a week.”

  “You give them my regards when you do,” Risener said as he strolled back to his cruiser. “My youngest still prizes those fossils your mother gave him.”

  “I’ll do that.” Del waited until the cruiser eased down the lane and out of sight. Then he simply turned, aware Camilla had stepped into the mudroom behind him. “Are you in trouble with the law?”

  “No.” Surprise at the question had her voice jumping, just a little. “No, of course not,” she added firmly.

  When he turned those green eyes were sharp, fully focused on her face. “Don’t string me along.”

  She folded her hands, calmed herself. “I haven’t broken any laws. I’m not in trouble with or wanted by any authorities. I’m simply traveling, that’s all, and prefer not to explain to the police that I don’t have any particular destination.”

  Her voice was steady now, and her gaze clear and level. If she was a liar, Del thought, she was a champ. At the moment it was easier to take her word.

  “All right. It’ll take Carl a good hour to get to your car and swing by here. Find something to do. I’ve got work.”

  “Delaney.” She knew she should thank him for taking her word, but part of her was still insulted he’d questioned it. Still, she owed him for what he’d done—and she always paid her debts. “I imagine it’s difficult for you to compile your notes and papers one-handed. I have two, and I’d be happy to lend them out for an hour.”

  He didn’t want her underfoot. That was number one. But the fact was, he wasn’t getting a hell of a lot done on his own. And if he had his eye on her, she couldn’t go around tidying up his papers behind his back. “Can you use a keyboard?”

  “Yes.”

  He frowned at her hands. Soft, he thought. The kind that were accustomed to weekly manicures. He doubted they’d do him much good, but it was frustrating to try to transcribe with only five working fingers.

  “All right, just … sit down or something. And don’t touch anything,” he added as he walked out of the room.

  He came back with a laptop computer. “Battery’s good for a couple of hours. I’ve got backups, but we won’t need them.” He set it down, started to fight to open it.

  “I can do it.” She brushed him away.

  “Don’t do anything else,” he ordered and walked out again. He came back struggling a bit with a box. He simply snarled when she popped up to take it from him. “I’ve got it. Damn it.”

  She inclined her head—regally, he thought. “It’s frustrating, I’m sure, to be physically hampered. But stop snapping at me.”

  When she sat again, folding her hands coolly, he dug into the box and muttered. “You’re just going to type, that’s it. I don’t need any comments, questions or lectures.” He dumped a pile of loose papers, clippings, photos and notebooks on the table, pawed through them briefly. “Need to open the document.”

  She simply sat there, hands folded, mouth firmly shut.

  “I thought you could use a keyboard.”

  “I can. But as you’ve just ordered me not to ask questions, I’m unable to ask which document you might like me to open, out of which program.”

  He snarled again, then leaned over her and started hitting keys himself. His nose ended up nearly buried in her hair—which annoyed him. It was soft, shiny, fragrant. Female enough to have the juices churning instinctively. He beetled his eyebrows and concentrated on bringing up the document he wanted.

  Without thinking, she turned her head. Her mouth all but brushed his, shocking them both into jerking back. He shot her a fulminating, frustrated glare and stuck his good hand into his pocket.

  “That’s the one. There.”

  “Oh.” She had to swallow, hard, and fight the urge to clear her throat. She took quiet, calming breaths instead. His eyes were so green, she thought.

  “You have to page down to the end.” He’d nearly stepped forward again to do it himself before he remembered he’d be on top of her again. “I need to pick it up there.”

  She did so with a casual efficiency that satisfied him. Cautious now, he circled around her for his reading glasses, then plucked from the disordered pile the precise notes he needed.

  His eyes, she thought, looked even more green, even more intense, when he wore those horn-rims.

  “Interred with the remains are plant materials,” he began, then scowled at her. “Are you going to sit there or hit the damn keys?”

  She bit back an angry remark—she would not sink to his level, and started to type.

  “It’s probable the plants, such as the intact prickly pear pad which was retrieved, were food offerings buried with the dead. A number of seeds were found in the stomach areas of articulated skeletons.”

  She typed quickly, falling into the rhythm of his voice. A very nice voice, she thought, when it wasn’t snarling and snapping. Almost melodious. He spoke of gourds recovered in another burial, theorizing that the plant specimen may have been grown locally from seeds brought from Central or South America.

  He made her see it, she realized. That was
his gift. She began to form a picture in her mind of these people who had traveled to the riverbank and made a home. Tended their children, cared for their sick and buried their dead with respect and ceremony in the rich peaty soil.

  “Chestnut trees?” She stopped, turned to him, breaking his rhythm with her enthusiasm. “You can tell from pollen samples that there were chestnut trees there nine thousand years ago? But how can you—”

  “Look, I’m not teaching a class here.” He saw the spark in her eyes wink out, turning them cool and blank. And felt like a total jerk. “Jeez. Okay, there’s a good twelve feet of peat, it took eleven thousand years since the last ice age to build up to that point.”

  He dug through his papers again and came up with photos and sketches. “You take samples—different depths, different samples, and you run tests. It shows the types of plants in the area. Changes in climate.”

  “How does it show changes in climate?”

  “By the types of plants. Cold, warm, cold, warm.” He tapped the sketches. “We’re talking eons here, so we’re talking a lot of climatic variations. Leaves, seeds, pollen fall into the pond, the peat preserves them—it creates an anaerobic atmosphere—shuts out the oxygen,” he explained. “No oxygen, no bacterial or fungi growth, slows decay.”

  “Why would they have buried their dead in a pond?”

  “Could’ve been a religious thing. There’s swamp gas, and it’d cause the pond to glow at night. Methane bubbles up, it gives the illusion—if you’re into that stuff—that the water breathes. Death stops breath.”

  Poetic, she thought. “So they might have chosen it to bring breath back to their dead. That’s lovely.”

  “Yeah, or it could’ve been because without shovels for digging, it was easier to plug a hole in the muck.”

  “I like the first explanation better.” And she smiled at him, beautifully.

  “Yeah, well.” Since her smile tended to make his throat go dry, he turned away to pour coffee. And was momentarily baffled not to see the pot.

  “It’s in the other room,” she said, reading his expression perfectly. “Would you like me to put on a fresh pot?”

  “Yeah, great, fine.” He looked down at his watch, then remembered he wasn’t wearing one. “What’s the time?”

  “It’s just after eleven.”

  Alone, he paced the kitchen, then stopped to glance over what had been transcribed. He was forced to admit it was more—a great deal more—than he’d have managed on his own with his injuries.

  A couple of weeks at this pace and he could have the articles done—the most irritating of his tasks—while still giving an adequate amount of attention to organizing lab reports and cataloging.

  A couple of weeks, he thought, giving his shoulder a testing roll. The doctors had said it would take a couple more weeks for him to have his mobility back. The fact was, they’d said it would be more like four weeks before he’d be able to really pull his own weight again. But in his opinion doctors were always pessimistic.

  He should hire a temp typist or something. Probably should. But jeez, he hated having some stranger in his hair. Better to invest in a voice-activated computer. He wondered how long it would take him to get one, set it up and get used to it.

  “Coffee’ll take a few minutes.” Camilla sat back down, placed her fingers over the keys. “Where were we?”

  Staring out the kitchen window, he picked up precisely where he left off. Within minutes, he’d forgotten she was there. The quiet click of the keys barely registered as he talked of cabbage palms and cattail roots.

  He’d segued into fish and game when the sound of tires interrupted. Puzzled, he pulled off his glasses and frowned at the red tow truck that drove up his lane.

  What the hell was Carl doing here?

  “Is that the garage?”

  He blinked, turned. His mind shifted back, and with it a vague irritation. “Right. Yeah.”

  Carl was fat as a hippo and wheezed as he levered himself out of the cab of the wrecker. He took off his cap, scratched his widening bald spot, nodded as Del came outside.