Chapter 26
J.D. bursts through the front entrance a little after seven a.m., red-eyed and panicky.
“I commute from Calgary, Ripley. Do you know how many heart attacks you can have in an hour? Because I do! I’ve had no shower, no coffee, and I’m wearing yesterday’s underwear. I want you to know this is not okay.”
“I’m so sorry. I’ll cover lunch today. Wherever you want,” Ripley offers. “Paris. Rome.”
“It was my fault, not Ripley’s. I’ll pay.” She startles a little when James’s hand lands on her shoulder. He hasn’t done that before—touched her in a way that replaces words.
J.D.’s forehead creases, his eyes fixed on Ripley’s shoulder. James’s fingers clench, then disappear.
J.D. doesn’t know she’s not James’s student, but explaining would make it worse. Saying He’s not my supervisor is as good as shouting Hey, we’re doing it! Recounting how they ended up working together could lead uncomfortably close to Will or Beauty or both.
“We’ll figure it out later,” Ripley says. “Either way, you’re not paying.”
James fiddles with his newly crooked glasses as they pull out of the museum’s parking lot. If he hadn’t cupped her jaw and kissed the corner of her mouth when J.D.’s all-caps scream-fest of a text got them up at a quarter to six, she’d be a lot more worried about last night.
The real world kind of blows. It’s where James is leaning against his headrest, eyes closed like he’d rather not talk. It’s where she has to pretend she doesn’t want to talk about last night either.
“Well,” Ripley says. “We have four hours to kill until lunch. You want to walk around Drumheller?”
The town leans hard into the dinosaur thing.
There are any number of cheerfully bloodthirsty statues scattered around town.
Life-size pteranodons perch on low roofs like snipers.
Cute, cartoonish polka-dot beasts occupy the park benches, their heads canted toward whoever’s snapping the selfie.
There are dinosaur stores, dinosaur murals, even dinosaur street names.
James doesn’t open his eyes. “Would it be awful if I said I’d rather nap at the rental place until checkout time?”
“No, that’s fair.” It wasn’t easy to sleep last night.
She’d only had enough cash for one of the blankets printed with cartoon fossils and the words Bone Bed, so they’d curled up together, her back to James’s chest, both of them tugging at the edges of the fleece.
This morning, he’d tenderly folded it like it was an heirloom instead of a crappy souvenir that would pill after one trip through the washer.
Ripley enters the address of the Airbnb in her navigation app. “Do you mind if I call Cara on the way?”
He waves his hand like Be my guest.
“Don’t worry about staying an extra day,” Cara says soothingly after Ripley explains what’s going on. “Everything’s fine here, Ripley. It’s still too wet to go into the canyon anyway, but from up top, it doesn’t look too bad. I’m hoping we got some new fossils exposed.”
“So, no damage?”
“Not exactly,” Cara says, drawing out the words. “My cabin took a tree to one corner. It needs some new boards.”
“Those are easy to get.”
“And new joint hardware.”
“Oh.”
“Exactly,” Cara says. “Hopefully the manufacturer can put a rush on the order.”
Ripley frowns. “Have you been dealing with this all alone? You could have called me, Cara.”
“I’m not alone.”
“Oh, really,” Ripley says. “I’m guessing Griff left a nice dry vacation in Bozeman for a cold, wet dig site?”
“Shut up, Rip.”
“Make sure you document his overtime. I assume you moved into the spare bed in my cabin, but he can carry the rest of your furniture over so the mice don’t get into it.”
“Already sorted.”
“Good. Oh, and I was thinking of picking up some things on the way through Calgary. Like nail polish or whatever. Stuff that hasn’t been sitting on the shelf for a million years.” Cara doesn’t love the gummy, pre-aged polish in Hercules.
“Um, okay?” Cara says, like she’s not quite following.
“You and I could have a girls’ night. Since you’re staying in my cabin and all. Not manicures; those would chip off in one second. But pedicures, maybe? It could be…” Joyful. “Fun.”
From the other end of the line, there’s silence.
“Cara?”
“Yeah, I’m here.”
Ripley’s pretty sure her cautious tone means No, thanks. “You know what, don’t worry about it.”
“No, I want to. It sounds fun. But I’m, um, not in your cabin.”
“Cara! You’re not staying in the broken one, are you?”
“I’m in the—”
“Seriously, the mice will get in—”
“I’m not in the broken—”
“And then the snakes will slither in there to catch them, and—”
“I’m staying at Griffin’s!” Cara shouts.
“Oh. Wow. Changed your mind about getting serious, huh?”
“I will accept zero I-told-you-so energy from you, Rip. None.”
“And you two are…”
“We’re good,” Cara says, her voice all soft, like she’s thinking about flowers and bunnies and keeping a large, burly man awake all night.
The map app chimes, and Ripley parks the Charger in front of a modest bungalow. “I should go. But I’m glad for you two. And, Cara? Please be gentle with our best excavator.”
Cara laughs and ends the call without promising a damn thing.
Ripley shakes James awake. “We’re here.”
He blinks a few times, confused. “I fell asleep? In the car?”
“You did,” she says briskly. “And with any luck, we’ll both be asleep again soon.”
The place is airy and whimsical, with Scandinavian-style white walls and lots of natural wood. White-painted branches serve as the legs for all the furniture. They can’t find the sheets to make up the sofa bed.
“Let it go, Ripley,” James says, tugging her out of the closet. “The bed’s big enough.”
They slide between the smooth white sheets, then lie on their separate pillows, facing each other, not sleeping.
James reaches out to tuck a stray curl into Ripley’s braid. “Your hair,” he says in a way that clearly means I have been wanting to touch this.
“Your lip,” she answers, fitting her thumb to the divot.
“Your chin.” He tilts it up and forward as if she’s stubbornly raised it at him.
“Your neck. Right here, at the back.” She loves how he shivers at the light scrape of her thumbnail.
“Your collarbones,” he says. “If you were a bird, these would help lift your wings.” He traces the double curve, left to right and back again, eyes closed like he’s making a wish.
“I’m not a bird, James,” she says, her heart not quite steady.
“You are, though. You’re a phoenix, Ripley.” He pulls her close, buries his nose in her hair, and falls asleep.
Sometime later, so does she.
Ripley wakes up sprawled halfway across James’s body. The room is cool and shade-dappled, the breeze from the open window carrying a dry, dusty scent she associates with dinosaurs.
A change in his breathing tells her he’s awake too, and she’s delighted by a rising firmness against her thigh.
“Hey there.” She wiggles closer. They could steal one more hour.
“Ignore it,” he says, the words tight with desire and chagrin. After a brief, regretful press, he rolls out of bed to rummage in his overnight bag.
“What if I didn’t?”
He’s got his pants fastened and a fresh shirt shrugged over his shoulders almost before she’s finished the question. It’s amazing how fast he can put clothes on, given how methodically he takes them off.
“Ripley.”
A disappointed ache settles in her chest. “Right. The real world.”
“I’m sorry.” He shakes out his crumpled suit jacket, then gives up on it with an irked sound. “There’s too much at stake. Reputation, livelihood, professional connections. Especially for you.”
“We’re not your parents, James. I’m not your student. If anything, I’m your boss.”
“That you are,” he says with a small smile and a quick adjustment of his pants that Ripley doesn’t miss.
“But you saw how J.D. reacted to a simple touch this morning. Others won’t read the fine print before coming to judgment.
” He fumbles a button on his shirt, undoes it, tries again.
Very Sally Gunderson of him. “I don’t mind if you’d rather skip lunch today.
It’s not too late to change your mind about anything, actually, if you’re having second thoughts. ”
“I don’t regret last night, if that’s what you mean.”
He stills for a moment, head bowed, then takes two quick strides over to the bed and presses a hard kiss on her mouth. “Neither do I. But we need to put a full stop on this now, before there are deeper feelings involved.”
“Right,” she says slowly. Last night in the research collections, she told him that she had feelings for him. He’s never said he considers her anything more than a friend he wants to get mostly naked with. So if he’s suggesting that one of them should be careful not to fall in love, he means her.
After the way she kept Cara at a distance, Ripley guesses she deserves to know what it’s like to be on the business end of a ten-foot pole. It feels a little like her internal organs might be dissolving in acid.
“Okay,” she says, throwing off the covers. “Let’s go to lunch.”
“You were quiet at the restaurant,” James comments as J.D.’s waving figure recedes in the rearview mirror. He touches his pocket, though it’s less the frenetic tap Ripley knows than a brief stroke.
“I was thinking.” Ripley points the Charger away from the picturesque downtown and toward the more industrial outskirts that lead to the highway. “Maybe I should step back from the investigation. From the front-facing side, at least.”
James turns his whole body toward her, his leather seat creaking. “Why?”
Out of respect for his anxiety, she waits until they’re at a red light to send him a look that says, Come on, buddy. “Because fifteen people introduced themselves to you at the café.”
“Only eleven,” he says, all precision and modesty.
“Oh, only eleven. And you introduced me to all of them.”
He snorts. “I wasn’t brought up in a barn, Ripley.”
The light turns green. She looks away. “Paleontology is a small world. Sooner or later, somebody’s going to recognize my name and mention us to Will.”