Chapter 7 #2
There’s a rustle of fabric, the slide of feet inside pant legs, then a dissatisfied sound.
“There’s a mirror out here,” she tells him.
“Don’t make it worse,” he says crisply. “Let’s discuss what you’re looking for in a sponsor.”
“I want the entire amount up front. No refunds.” Ripley’s learned that from Maury.
“Sponsor has the right of first refusal on a purchase at market price, to be determined by a professional appraiser. I get unlimited rights to display reproductions at Clever Girl and elsewhere. Additional copies, one per specimen, will be loaned to museums at my discretion.”
The curtain screeches open. “What about research?”
Ripley turns around, which is a mistake.
Not everyone could pull off the long-sleeved button-down shirt in a difficult yellow-and-black plaid, but Smithson’s somehow wearing the hell out of that as well as a pair of sand-colored canvas expedition shorts.
“Um,” she says, trying to summon some smarter words.
His legs are ridiculous. Smooth olive skin, a light dusting of brown hair, and the kind of heavy, defined muscle Ripley didn’t think existed outside of the Olympic velodrome.
A long, puckered scar marks the front of his right leg above the sharp triangle of his knee, the muscle underneath smaller than its left-sided counterpart.
Jesus. Is this why he doesn’t like to try on pants—because they don’t fit over those quads?
She swallows the tug in her throat, which sends it south to her stomach, and lower.
It’s been a while for her. Too long, apparently.
For a good two years after Will, she’d thought her sex drive was extinct.
Eventually she managed a couple of perfectly nice situationships with men who, unlike her ex, didn’t sigh and pick up the pace if her normally quick orgasm didn’t happen right away.
Men who didn’t work in the fossil industry and didn’t ask questions that made her wonder what she could safely reveal.
Not so deep down, she suspected most of them didn’t understand what she did for a living.
A couple of months with any of them was enough to confirm that what she saw was what she got: fair-weather guys whose conversational skills peaked at “Is this good for you?” There was no there there.
Unlike Smithson, whom Ripley’s starting to suspect is packing a great deal of there under his ambiguous reasons for wanting to take down Will Stone and his thigh-hiding pants.
“Tell me you’ve made at least some plans for scholarly inquiry, Ripley,” he says, a curtain gripped in each fist.
“The buyer can loan their specimens to any research institution they want. Except the University of Eastern Montana, of course.” Ripley smiles, picturing a squadron of white men—her former professor, the dean of science, the president of the university, and assistant professor Will Stone—gnashing their teeth.
He closes the distance between them, cheeks flushed.
“Ripley. We must make contractual provisions for study and research. Some of the most important fossils of this century were bought by people whose identities we don’t even know!
Scientists have literally never been able to lay a hand on them.
I can’t be involved in an agreement like that.
” His muscles flex when he’s angry, which is something Ripley didn’t need to know.
“Chill, Professor. Those—”
“I cannot chill, Ripley.” He throws up his arms. “I’m British, for fuck’s sake.
I need a plan. I need details. I need frauds to be identified and wrongs to be righted and for you to tie your bloody shoelaces so I don’t spend all day imagining you falling down that bloody damn canyon!
” With a sound of agonized frustration, he drops to one knee and reaches for her boot.
“What the hell are you—”
“I am making things right,” he growls. “For science.”
Oh, Lord, she can feel his firm grip right through the leather.
His fingers jerk the tongue of her boot straight, then snug the laces over the top with a decisive yank.
No one’s done this for her since she got big enough to tie her own hockey skates.
The feeling is shocking, every precise tug sending a tremor up her leg and through her body, squeezing her lungs with some unnamed ache.
His fingers fly through the ties. Half hitch, tug. Shoelace knot, tug. Her leg feels alive, like it’s entwined in clinging vines.
When he’s satisfied, he stands, his expression thunderous.
Ripley clears her throat, then has to clear it again.
“I didn’t mean you had to overlook ethical breaches.
I meant that people who buy tyrannosaurs hide them because there’s nothing as incredibly rare yet universally recognizable as a T.
rex. It’s a huge flex to control access to one.
But with a new species, that’s different.
That buyer wants recognition. They want the specimen to be studied and named. Preferably after themselves.”
Smithson’s lips part, close, part again, like he’s going to argue some more. Instead, he breathes, “Bloody hell, Ripley. You found your bird, didn’t you?”
Shit, shit, shit. Ripley squeezes her eyes shut for a moment. She wasn’t planning to tell him about Beauty yet.
A solid hand lands on her shoulder. “All right there?” When she opens her eyes, Smithson’s staring down at her, brow furrowed with concern.
His fingers are as steady as she remembers.
For a second, she lets herself imagine leaving them there.
Leaning into someone and feeling like she’s not the last line of defense for herself, her dig, her dad, her future.
But he’s a mistake. One she could trip over without even trying, like a shoelace that loosens so slyly, you understand the danger only when it’s too late.
She pulls back. “We’ll work it out at the dig. Bring your things to the cash register. At least four shirts and two pairs of pants or you’ll never make it to laundry day.”
Maybe she’s imagining the slump in those square shoulders as she turns away.
A few minutes later, he lays an armful of items on the counter. Shirts, pants. Two hats. No shorts. He blocks her credit card with an outstretched hand.
“I absolutely cannot be a drain on your finances before I secure your funding,” he tells her firmly. While Andre rings up his clothes, he browses through a display of small goods—carabiners, whistles, reflective tape. “And this, please,” he says, plucking a brown box from the rack.
He pays in cash, drops the change in a metal container labeled with the name of a local children’s charity, then reaches into the paper bag and hands Ripley a box holding a set of clips that look like industrial-strength barrettes.
She must still be a little scattered after that shoelace tie, because she forgets not to let her fingers touch his as she takes the box.
It’s barely a brush of skin against skin, but the surge of awareness brings her eyes up to his equally startled ones.
Her fingers feel tangled with his even though the contact was over almost before it started.
Ripley recovers first, tugging the package from his grip. Keep Shoes Tied! the top of the box shouts in a loopy, seventies-style font.
“What are these for?”
He exhales crisply, seeming to reclaim his body. “I’m keeping you alive, Ripley Adams,” he replies calmly, picking up the bag and heading for the exit. “For science.”