“Okay, okay. You remember I was raised out west too, right?”
“Yup. Just don’t freak me out.”
She gently extricated herself from him, but there was no mistaking how her palms lingered for a moment on his pecs. And there was no mistaking the flutter it gave to his heart. “You want to see something cool?”
He nodded, breathing heavier than he’d realized. “Sure.”
“Here. Check this out.”
She took him by the hand, a comfortable gesture that made his skin tingle like a damned freshman on his first date. Leading him to a section of excavation, left unfinished from the previous season, she squatted down.
“Do you see these layers here?”
She pointed to a cross-section of exposed bedding mats that the ancient inhabitants had woven. “On this mat fragment, you can see the weaving pattern these folks used. And take a look at that…”
She pointed to a speck of orange pigment, and he also squatted down.
“Is that paint?” he asked.
She nodded, a reverent light shining in her eyes. “It’s forty-five hundred years old. In these dry conditions, Mother Nature kept it perfectly preserved. It’s as if these people just up and left, and here we are. Do you know there was a clay vessel reportedly here years ago? Perfectly intact. One of my professors showed me a black-and-white photo from the time he was allowed to come here for a survey back in the nineties. I wish I could have seen it before it disappeared.”
Toby paused, shifting from his squat down to his knees splayed around her. He knew the pot she talked about. And he knew the survey she talked about, too. His mom had pulled his dad’s teeth to get a survey crew into panther shaman years ago. And UT had permission to excavate here now, thanks to his mom’s deal with the university upon his dad’s death three years ago. But they hadn’t been allowed to survey anywhere else. The pot had sat here undisturbed ever since he could remember.
“Yeah, it was over there when I was a kid.”
He pointed to an as-of-yet unexcavated section, and her face dropped. “Over there?”
“Yeah, in the back, upside down. It had some seeds or something heaped beneath the mouth, like they’d spilled out when it was overturned. There’s still some back there.”
“What happened to it? You saw it?”
Damn, she was giddy. He may as well have given her a brand-new sports car. “Yup. My dad brought in some sheep about ten years back, and those suckers can climb just about anywhere. He worried that if they got up here, they’d break it, so he had it removed. My momma had several other artifacts removed, too, once Pops passed on, spearheads and such. I keep them in climate-controlled storage.”
“You have it? You have the pot?” She grabbed his arm, clenching it. “Oh my God, can I see it?”
He chuckled. “Yeah, I suppose. Just you, though. I keep all those artifacts under lock and key. Got an old sandal that looks to be made out of yucca leaves, too, and some other stuff. Don’t see the harm in you studying them.”
“Wow…” She raked her hand into her hair, fraying some of the ends from her knot. “Wow. Yes. Oh my God, yes.”
He smiled. This was the most satisfying yes he’d ever put in a woman’s mouth. She threw her arms around his neck and squeezed, making him topple onto his rear end in the dirt.
Dang. Rose Morales. He’d made her day, and it felt damn good to give her something no one else was able to give her.
“This is, like, the best gift anyone has ever given me. I can’t wait to document it all!”
That faint, bewitching smell of tea tree teased his nose. He wanted to bury his face in her hair and breathe in. Hard. He slipped his arms carefully around her to reciprocate the affection. But he was out of his element.
Had he ever given a woman a gift, aside from his mother and grandmothers, who had kept every clay school project in a line along their kitchen windows over the sink? Now that his mother was gone, he’d collected all his childhood gifts to her and kept them on his dresser, as if keeping the memories tucked away would keep them from hurting.
“Well then,” he said beside her ear, holding on by a blasted thread to keep from nipping at the baby-soft flesh, studded with tiny earrings. He felt her shiver as his voice rumbled against her, felt a reactionary squeeze of her arms. “What time you quittin’ tomorrow? I’m tied up today, helping my foreman and his boys finish up some fencing on the new pasture, but I’m around all day tomorrow.”
She pulled back almost as quickly as she’d pounced upon him, and he let his hands slip away again. She pushed onto her knees, laughing, as her cheeks flushed. “Sorry. Didn’t mean to knock a cowboy on his ass.”
Girl, you have no idea. He chuckled and pushed to standing, slapping his rear and thighs to dust the dirt off. He’d worn plenty of dirt in his day, but his self-consciousness was burning up, knowing she was watching him.
“We’ll be out of here by one o’clock. It’ll be too hot to be out any later until evening time.”
She stuffed her glasses and clipboard back into her backpack and chugged another swallow of water before loading everything onto her back again.