Chapter Sixteen
Meeting day with her boss was upon them, and she felt the need to dress up. Which Jax simply couldn’t let slide by without commentary. She was wearing a plaid skirt and a little white blouse. And he liked it quite a bit. He was obsessed with the little buttons. He wanted to undo them.
“You have to behave yourself,” she said as they pulled into the employee parking lot at the museum. He didn’t know what he had expected, but the museum was so much more impressive in person than any images online had managed to make it. He hadn’t been able to imagine the scale.
When they walked into the front room, a massive skeleton of a Tyrannosaurus rex greeted them.
“That’s Davey,” she said. “He was discovered in Arizona. I was on the team that found him.”
“Incredible.”
“Yes, he’s very nice.”
“He’s nice?”
She shrugged. “I don’t know. I just feel like Davey has a very nice energy to him.”
They continued on through the entry, and he felt a sense of pride being in the place where Ernestine had done so much.
She was part of this. She had helped to build it, from everything he had read.
And it was packed full of history, something that he had never been particularly interested in, but she made him interested in it.
She was part of a rare team of people who brought more information into the world.
They didn’t just do searches on the internet to try to gather something people already knew; they actually added knowledge to humanity.
It was awe-inspiring, really. He made his money punching other men in the face.
It was nothing compared to what she did.
“This place is amazing.”
“Thank you. I missed it, being away. The cafeteria’s over there, and it’s actually really good. I eat there every day when I am working. I actually usually come in six days a week.”
“Do you?”
“Well, yeah. All my friends are here, and half my friends are dead,” she said, gesturing back at Davey. “So, it makes sense for me to be here.”
What she did wasn’t just a job. It was a passion. And in a weird way, he related to her. Because he and Rowdy and Dakota had chosen their land all those years ago. Because they had chosen to work it and make a dream out of it. It wasn’t as lofty as what she did. But it was pretty good.
“Okay. You can go through the displays after we’re through with our meeting.” She wrinkled her nose. “I’m not dismissing you like you’re a kid.”
“I didn’t take it that way.”
He followed her up a suspension staircase and down the hall, where there were indeed some lovely glass offices.
When they arrived at the door, a woman sitting behind the desk smiled at them and gestured for them to come in.
“Hi, Candy,” Ernestine said. “Thank you for taking the meeting. I thought we would begin with Jax Noble, and our mutual pitch regarding the museum in Clear Lake.”
“Of course, Ernestine. How is your dig progressing?”
“That will be part of the meeting,” Ernestine said.
Candy looked amused, not annoyed. It was clear that Ernestine was going to be Ernestine, no matter who she was interacting with. She had a plan, and nobody was going to disrupt that plan.
“That’s actually conjoined with this pitch about the museum. What Ernestine has discovered is significant.”
“True,” she said. “I think that we’ve discovered the first evidence that the mastodon went this far west. I wonder what else I might find if I keep digging there. It has the potential to be significant. It was a hotbed of migration.”
“You’re telling me that you’ve made new migration pattern discoveries?”
“Yes. And what that’s going to teach us about the time period is invaluable. I’m seeing things that we’ve never seen. And the possibilities for an actual facility there… I think it would be great. Of course we would send displays here as well.”
His portion of the meeting was based around explaining the town, and the difficulty of it all. But he didn’t think that her boss seemed closed off. Still, when Ernestine was done with that part of the pitch, she sent him away quickly.
He smiled as he walked out of the room. And he intended to honor her request to actually look at the displays.
It let him see the finished product of what she did. The way that she used it for public education. So many of the write-ups were written by her. So many of the displays were contributed to by her. She was incredible in so many ways.
The importance of her work had never been more pronounced.
The meeting lasted hours. He was actually shocked. He had time to see most of the museum, and have a seat in the atrium with some ice cream from the cafeteria. He was beginning to get restless, when Ernestine walked in.
“How did you know where to find me?”
“Well, it’s about the time you like to eat.”
That made him smile. “You would be a very good detective.”
“I’m a bone detective.”
“True.”
She seemed like she was fizzing with barely suppressed excitement, and he wanted to hear all about it.
“Good news,” she said. “Candy is so, so pleased with the discovery. She also loves the suggestion of the work program, because there’s nothing I could do wrong right now.
Having the museum attached to this, and giving them a chance to have a satellite location near the dig site, is big news.
She’s offering me a huge promotion. Basically a codirector at the museum.
The way that this will help with my research. With…everything.”
“And you’ll have your office.”
“I will. I… I will.” She seemed a little bit dented on that last one.
“What’s the matter?”
“Oh, it’s just… I think it’s going to change the timeline of some things. And I don’t want to mess with the opening of your resort.”
“What timeline?”
“Well, she wants me to stay here for a little bit and assemble a team. I mean, I’m going to have to go back with you obviously to get my car and all of that.
But she wants me to return with more resources.
More people. The museum is now putting funding behind this dig.
And my budget has increased significantly.
That means I can offer more money to you. ”
“Are you going to be staying in a room?”
“We’ll probably make a camp. In the same general area that we’ve been in.”
“You don’t need to pay for that. If we’re getting a museum out of the deal, and we’re going to be getting revenue from you all leasing the land, then we don’t need you to pay to continue to dig and make that more of a possibility.”
He was trying to wrap his head around all the logistics. But a lot was happening all at once.
“Yeah. Of course. That’s very generous of you. It’s very, very generous.”
“No wonder Haley wanted on that land. She really did know you were onto something.”
“She did. I was. I am. It’s incredible. It’s far beyond my wildest dreams. I thought I was just…
ticking a box, really. I thought I would find some fossils and they would be good…
I thought that I would find some new things, but I didn’t know that it would be this.
It’s the part of science that is kind of magic.
Because you can know so much, and there’s still that alchemy that happens at the moment of discovery.
I am aware that that’s a poor metaphor to use. ”
“I think this is all incredible. You’re incredible.”
“Well, because of you. Teamwork makes the dream work.” Her face turned scarlet. “Oh, please don’t hold it against me that I said that.”
“I’ll try not to. But that was pretty cringe.”
“Well, I guess I’m a little bit cringe.”
“You definitely are. Affectionately.”
“But I would like to take you out to dinner to celebrate.”
He took her to a fancy place filled with local offerings near the Pearl District, and held her hand while they walked through the brightly lit streets.
She seemed comfortable here. And it was a wonderful thing to be in her world.
To see where she lived, to see where she worked, to get a picture of her life, and he would be forever grateful that he had it.
Because he would always have this image in his mind.
Of Ernestine in her lovely life, that beautiful museum, that special office that she had wanted so badly. That she deserved.
The drive back to her town house was quick and he was relieved, because he just needed her. This was coming to an end. It was coming to an end sooner than either of them had wanted, because she was going to go home and pack all of her things up—
No. She wasn’t going home. She was going back to the glass cabin, which she did not live in, to pack up her things and come back home. To come back to this place that had room for Ernestine, that was entirely hers.
It was her habitat.
As soon as they entered the town house, he kissed her.
With total reckless abandon. He kissed her hard and deep, until he had her pressed against the one spot on the wall that didn’t have pictures or boxes of rocks hanging on it.
Kissed her until neither of them could breathe.
Until they couldn’t think. He moved his hands over her body, and everything felt just so much more desperate than it ever had.
He protected them both, then pushed her skirt up over her hips and swept her underwear to the side as he thrust inside her, taking her hard against the wall.
He lost himself. In this, in her, in them. In everything.
If it was ending, then it would go out with a bang. If it was ending, then he would make it count. Would make his lessons thorough, would make it so she didn’t forget. Not ever.
Then he carried her up the stairs, and laid her down in bed, lay down beside her. “I want you to tell me everything about your discovery. Everything. All the minute details that you think nobody cares about, I want you to tell me.”
She smiled, her expression still kind of dazed from the sex. “Why?”
“Because I’m celebrating you. Because I care.
” Because he wanted to know all these things.
So that he could explain to people that he knew this incredible woman who had discovered all of this.
This amazing creature who brought new things to light in a world full of darkness, of people who made the world around them dumber, and not… this. Yeah, he wanted that.
“That is the kindest thing anyone has ever asked me to do.”
“I want everything,” he said, looking at her intensely. “Every, little, detail.”
They did stay up all night. Mainly talking about different paleontological discoveries she’d made, or was interested in.
But there was also sex. It was the strangest, most wonderful night of his life.
And the morning came too soon. He was tanked up on coffee to drive them back to Clear Lake.
And he didn’t want to think about how soon they would be separated.