Chapter 11 #2
"Just to have dinner with a friend," Linda answered, suddenly feeling like she was sneaking around with Emma’s great-uncle. Which realistically she was, as she hadn’t told anyone but Maggie about the date.
"What friend?" Sophia pressed.
"A grown-up friend," Linda replied. "You don't know them."
"So it's a date?" Jake asked.
"I..." Linda didn't quite know what to say. "It's..."
"A dinner with a friend," Maggie answered, stressing the word friend.
"Is your friend a movie star?" Sophia pressed.
"No..." Linda started to answer.
"Is it Dr. Messing?" Lily asked. "I know he likes you. He always rushes to say hi or hold the door open for you when we bump into him in town."
"Why would it be Dr. Messing?" Sophia asked. "My gran doesn't need plastic surgery." She glanced at her gran, her eyes widening. "Gran, are you getting plastic surgery? Is that why you're going on a date with Dr. Messing?"
"Why would she go on a date if she's meeting Dr. Messing about having plastic surgery?" Jake asked his sister.
"Your gran didn't say it was a date," Emma reasoned. "She said dinner with a friend." She looked at Jake. "So, she's meeting with Dr. Messing as a friend to discuss surgery."
"Hey!" Maggie put her fingers to her mouth and gave a hailing-a-taxi-cab whistle that blasted through Linda's eardrums. "All of you. Good grief."
"I'm not having dinner with Dr. Messing," Linda said, not knowing if she should feel honored, as their resident celebrity plastic surgeon was really good looking and one of Sanibel's most eligible bachelors.
Or insulted that they thought she was having plastic surgery.
She gave herself a mental shake. "And I'm not having plastic surgery. "
"Phew, that's good, Gran," Jake said. "Because you're beautiful as you are and don't need it."
The rest of the kids agreed.
"Thank you for that," Linda said, shaking her head. "Now I have to go..."
"Who is fetching you, Gran?" Sophia pressed again.
"Stop interrogating your grandmother, all of you," Maggie ordered. "She's going to dinner with a friend and that's all you need to know."
"Well, that's not fair," Jake reasoned. "Whenever we want to go anywhere we have to basically give Gran a list of who, where, when, why..."
"That's because you're nine," Maggie pointed out. "Your grandmother is a grown-up and is responsible for herself."
"But what if this friend kidnaps Gran?" Jake challenged. "How will we know what to do or tell the police if we don't know who it is?"
"I'll know," Maggie told him, and Linda hid her smile at her grandson's reasoning.
She stepped in to save Maggie. "Okay, that's enough," Linda told them, then blew kisses. "I will see you all later. Be good for Maggie."
She left to a chorus of byes and have-a-lovely-nights. Jake added, "Don't get kidnapped, Gran, and remember your self-defense lessons."
"Jake," Maggie admonished.
"What?" she heard Jake comment as Linda stepped into the night.
"I hope Gran has her pepper spray in her purse," Sophia said as Maggie stepped out behind her.
"Good grief," Maggie said, shaking her head. "They are more protective than Michael was of you. I'm so glad he wasn't here."
Linda nodded in agreement with a nervous laugh as she realized a few more steps would take her to the parking lot of Hearts Hotel where she'd agreed to meet Darius, and the butterflies awoke in her stomach.
"Hey," Maggie said, realizing Linda was getting pre-date nerves. "You're looking gorgeous. So relax and think of this as dinner with a friend like you told those little detectives inside."
Linda nodded and smiled. She cleared her throat. "Are you sure you're going to be alright with the Scooby mob in there?"
"I can handle them," Maggie assured her with a smile. "Now go, you're going to be late."
Linda took a breath and walked towards the Hearts Hotel parking lot.
The warm evening air carried the scent of sea salt and jasmine from the trellis along the side path, and Linda let it settle her as her gold heels found their rhythm on the paving stones.
Darius was already waiting in the parking lot. He was leaning against the car with his back to her, staring out across the bay. As he heard her walking toward him, he turned, and his eyes widened as he took in the sight of her.
"Hi," Darius greeted her, his voice soft and deep.
"Hi," Linda greeted back, not able to stop the smile that spread across her lips or keep her eyes from locking with his.
"You look beautiful," Darius complimented her.
Linda felt the small steady flush along her cheekbones. They stood like that for a few moments before Darius cleared his throat and walked around the car to the passenger door that he pulled open for her.
Linda slid in and buckled up as he closed the door with a soft click, making her realize this was real and happening.
She was going on a date. She squashed the sudden panic that tried to claw its way through her nervous system.
No. I'm fifty-nine, not sixteen. Good grief, Linda.
You've been to dinner with a man before.
She took a quick heavy breath to steady and calm herself before Darius slid in the car.
The drive to the restaurant was filled with general conversation about how her uncle was doing. How Isabel and Emma were enjoying Sweet Blossom Bay. Conversation that lulled the nervous edge from Linda, so by the time they reached their destination she felt a lot more relaxed.
The restaurant Darius had chosen was a small place along the waterfront on the far side of the bay, with a wooden deck out over the water and lanterns strung between the posts.
The host led them to a corner table where the bay opened up beyond the railing, the lights of Sweet Blossom Bay scattering across the dark water in a long, warm line.
Darius held Linda's chair for her, and she settled into it. Between conversation about the restaurant and its perfect location, they had ordered something to drink and their food.
They sipped wine as Darius changed the direction of the conversation.
"I know you're from Miami," Darius said. "What did you do there?"
"I was an archaeologist," Linda answered. "I worked for the Miami Museum for many years before I took early retirement a few years ago ."
"What did you do there?" Darius asked, and Linda could see he was genuinely interested to know.
"I was head of collections," Linda answered. "I started as an assistant curator straight out of graduate school and ended up running the whole back-of-house. Acquisitions, cataloging, the loans program, and even doing some field expeditions in the early years."
"Field expeditions," Darius repeated.
"Digs," Linda clarified, and felt the small old pleasure at mentioning those times.
"I worked mostly at Florida sites in the beginning.
Then I went on to the Caribbean. The museum had a long-running partnership with two universities for research on the Calusa and Taino eras.
I went out with them every summer for the first ten years of my career. "
"You were a field archaeologist," Darius said, and there was real interest in his voice now. "Wow. That must've been exciting." He grinned. "So were you like Indiana Jones?"
Linda laughed and shook her head. "If I had a dollar for every time someone asked that."
"Sorry." Darius sat back, cradling his glass of wine. "I guess when non-archaeologists think of digs, we instantly think of those movies."
"Well, the digs I went on were exciting," Linda answered truthfully. "But nothing like Indiana Jones exciting." She smiled and leaned forward. "To us, exciting was finding an artifact and realizing you were on a site where an entire generation that was before us lived."
“So, you got to go on exciting digs,” Darius said, watching her.
"There weren’t that many," Linda admitted.
"But the ones I did go on, I loved.” She gave a soft laugh.
“Although admittedly, I was not built for the long hauls in the heat.
I came back to the museum after my son was born and stayed indoors after that.
But the early years were the best years of my professional life. "
"How did you get into it?" Darius asked. "Archaeology, I mean. I can’t remember any young person I know from my youth waking up and deciding to become an archaeologist."
Linda smiled.
"I had an early mentor," Linda answered. "When I was very small, my uncle was married to a woman named Anna. Dr. Anna Caldwell. She was an archaeologist. They met when she came to Sweet Blossom Bay to find out if there was an undocumented Calusa settlement on the hotel grounds."
"On Hearts Hotel grounds?" Darius asked, looking momentarily panicked before he composed himself.
Linda looked at him curiously for a moment wondering why he’d have such a reaction to that information. A picture of him staring at the wetland between his house and the hotel the evening before suddenly flashed into her mind but she shook it off.
"Yes," Linda confirmed, missing the small carefulness in his voice.
"My uncle and Anna married a year later.
" She took a sip of wine before continuing.
“Anna was wonderful and so interesting. She used to take me out to the hotel grounds with a notebook and have me draw what I saw.
Stones. Shells. Patterns in the sand. She told me archaeology was just careful looking, and that any child who could draw a shell properly was already halfway there. "
Darius listened the way a man listened when he was actually listening.
“She sounds like the perfect Aunt,” Darius stated.
“She was,” Linda nodded in agreement with a nostalgic smile on her face. “I loved spending hours with her digging in the dirt and learning about archaeology. After that I read everything I could and history suddenly became a whole lot more interesting to me.”
"That’s a great story," Darius said quietly, his eyes never leaving her face.
"What about you?" Linda suddenly realized she knew very little about Darius.