A Midsummer Night's Romp (9 page)

He had the balls to look surprised and, more obnoxiously, pleased. “Me? Murmur? My dear, how you wound me! How can any woman compete with the vision of loveliness that is you?”

I bit back a reply about believing him when pigs flew, realizing that he thought I was jealous. Me! I'd have disabused him of that idea except that might just be the tack I needed to worm myself into his graces. Instead, I simpered and murmured something about being grateful for any help he could give me.

“I can do more than just answer questions,” he said with an oily smile. “Angelica, our resident photographer, has decided to extend her maternity leave by two months, and her replacement cannot stay the additional time. A position of dig photographer is available for two months beginning in October, and if you'd like it, I would be delighted to recommend you to the board.”

“Me?” I asked, surprised. Was the man really so deranged that he'd offer a job to someone he just met? “But . . . we just met. You don't know me at all. And you haven't seen any of my stuff. Er . . . photos.”

“I watched you photograph the field walk yesterday, and you seemed quite competent. I have every confidence that you are fully qualified, since Roger only hires the best people.”

My lips tightened involuntarily. Man alive, I was horrible at deception. Even now, I had the worst desire to correct the false impression that Paul had about my so-called employment.

“It's for that reason that I don't need to see your portfolio, and as for the other . . . I pride myself on my ability to assess people quickly, and it's quite clear to me that you are intelligent, perceptive, and imaginative. In other words, just the person for the job. In addition, I anticipate that working side by side for two months, as we surely would be, your career would grow in a way that would bring satisfaction to all parties. In short, you would be a great addition to the team.”

“That's . . .” I paused, unsure of what I wanted to say. I had to keep on his sweet side, but at the same time, I didn't want to hold up the hiring of someone who was truly qualified for the job. “That's very nice of you, Paul. But if you don't mind, I'd like to think about it, if for no other reason than I had plans for the next couple of months.”

“Naturally, you may think about the offer, although don't take too long making up your mind.” He gave me a smile that showed all of his blindingly white teeth. “There are other candidates who would kill for such a chance as soon as they hear about the opening, and the board will be asking me for my recommendations within the week.”

He waxed rhapsodic for a few minutes, painting a gloriously Technicolor image of life with the two of us working together. But my thoughts were of a more mundane nature, mostly focused on how long it would take
me to get the proof I needed before I could get the hell out of Dodge.

Paul continued his self-aggrandizing speech for a few more minutes before I made a show of exclaiming at my watch, and tossed a quick apology over my shoulder as I ran off. “Sorry, Roger asked me to make myself agreeable to Gunner Ainslie.”

“My dear, you couldn't be anything but agreeable, although I fear your attentions are wasted on him. Dare I hope you'll be able to spare me a little time later tonight? Say, after dinner? Journalists always have a million questions, and I'd be delighted to let you have the benefit of my expertise.”

I wanted to let the double entendre go without comment, but I had to keep him thinking I was madly interested in him, so I batted my eyelashes, and murmured something about that being just what I'd like most. I escaped at a fast trot.

It occurred to me as I passed Tabby and Matthew, who constituted one of the three film crews, that I had no idea where to find Gunner Ainslie. Not that I was anxious to see him, I told the knowing little voice in my head that noted how eager I appeared.

“OK,” I told myself as I walked up and down the paths running through the gardens, “so he's not as bad as you first thought. Despite his handsome face, and obvious tomcat ways, he appears to be a loving, supportive father.” I took a deep breath, acknowledging that part of me envied Cressy her father, while another part wanted to know Gunner more, despite the fact that he could expose the truth about my lack of photographic experience.

“Stupid conflicting emotions,” I growled to myself when I slowed, frowning in thought. Gunner couldn't walk much with a broken leg, which limited him to one
of the graveled paths. But after a half hour of searching with no sign of him, I returned to the tent area in defeat.

“Will you be participating in today's field walking?” Daria asked as she passed by. “Or taking photos again? You might want to try doing some of the field walking yourself, you know. It might not be wildly interesting, but it's an important part of the archaeological dig process.”

“I'll try to do both, assuming I get done with Gunner soon enough. You haven't seen him, have you?”

One of her eyebrows rose as she pursed her lips. “You're looking for Mr. Sex-on-a-Stick?”

“Not for the reason that your jaded look is implying,” I said quickly. Too quickly.

She burst into laughter, her expression returning to normal. “More fool you, say I. No, I haven't seen him, but Roger did say I should get you a standard kit, so Gunner can explain things to you on camera. One moment, I have one. . . . No, that's the first-aid kit. Ah, here we go. This is the sample that Sue was planning on demonstrating to the camera, but it'll be much better having Mr. Sexy explain the tools to you. Just remember not to peek inside it ahead of time—we wouldn't want you knowing what everything is.”

“Because nothing is so flattering as looking like a complete idiot in front of millions of people,” I said drily as I took a beat-up leather satchel roughly the size and shape of a shoe box. It reminded me of nothing so much as an old doctor's bag.

“Are you kidding? I'd be happy to look like the village idiot if it meant I had Gunner whispering sweet nothings in my ear.” Daria sighed dreamily.

“Sweet nothings? Why sweet nothings? Is it some sort of thing to titillate viewers? Because I don't want him whispering sweet nothings to me. I don't want him whispering anything to me, no matter how much the
audience would get their jollies from seeing his face, and his chest, and probably those really nice hands touching my hair, or my shoulder, or even, god help us all, my neck.” I shivered in delicious awareness, ignoring the fact that I had repeatedly told myself that I wasn't interested in him. “Not even if Roger threatened to rescind permission to be here would I allow that.”

I realized that Daria was staring at me openmouthed.

“What?” I asked, confused.

She blinked a couple of times before shaking her head. “Nothing. Just remember to look ignorant when Gunner explains to you what the tools are used for. When he's done touching your hair and neck, that is. Oh, and the last time I saw him, he was heading to the castle.”

I shivered again, and rubbed the goose bumps on my arms. I couldn't help thinking how much nicer it would be if my plan called for me to seduce Gunner instead of Paul. “Thanks.”

She looked like she wanted to say more, but kept silent while I took the bag and headed off toward the castle lawn. Perhaps Gunner was outside having tea or something British like that. With visions of
Downton Abbey
firmly in my head, I skirted a couple of disused outbuildings, and tromped my way back to the castle.

I really did not want to see him. If he saw through my lies, he'd probably blab to everyone that I wasn't a real photographer, and then where would I be? No, I did not want to see him, not at all. The less I was around him, the happier I'd be.

Which did nothing to explain why I broke into a run on the way to the castle.

“I
cannot imagine living with this,” I said aloud as I picked my way through what was obviously a small kitchen garden. I emerged into a larger formal garden, one side dominated by lovely shades of blues and purples, the other a blaze of red and orange. Verbena and sweet William tumbled out of stone vases, while snapdragons, lupine, and irises swayed gently in the breeze. The scent of roses and sweet rocket was heavy on the air, leaving me with the desire for a chaise lounge, a tall glass of lemonade, and a country house mystery novel.

Unfortunately, what I got was a number of tourists listlessly wandering around the garden with me, pausing occasionally to smell a flower, or take a picture. I smiled when I encountered a group, and tried not to look smug over the fact that I was staying on the grounds that they had just paid to see. Then I noticed a small hole that had been dug at the end of a bed of asters.

I looked at the hole.

I looked across the garden to the side of the castle that was facing me.

I thought about being filmed while Gunner explained things to me, thought about looking like an idiot on the camera, and started scooping dirt out of the hole, careful to dump it on the mound of soil that had already been excavated. The sun beat down mercilessly as I dug down, wishing I had a small shovel to help me, but not wishing to go in search of a gardener's shed.

Sweat was trickling down my back by the time I heard a familiar electric hum.

I looked up, flushed with heat but at the same time almost chilled, and wiped a hand across my sweaty forehead, saying quickly, “Oh, hello. I didn't make this trench—it was here when I walked by, but I thought so long as it was here, I might try my hand at a little archaeology. But I didn't put it here to begin with. The trench, that is. I wouldn't do anything to hurt your nice garden.”

He raised an eyebrow. “You are not hurting the garden, and I'd be happy to have you excavate whenever and wherever you like, but that's not a trench. It's likely a hole dug by our gardener to plant more of the azaleas that my sister-in-law loves.”

“Sorry. I should have known better than to mess up your nice garden.” I started to scoop the dirt back into the hole. “I should have thought to ask permission—”

“The problem, my dear Lorina, is not the fact that you want to dig, but how you are going about it.”

“Really?” I looked down at the messy hole that had been gouged into the dirt. “I'm not sure that I understand what I'm doing wrong. Archaeologists dig, don't they?”

“Yes, but in a very specific manner.” He gestured toward the hole, plucking a triangular-shaped tool out of
the leather satchel. “A properly dug trench is not at all the same thing as a hole dug for a rosebush. Yes, a hole is a hole, but your methodology is at fault. For one thing, your trowel is a garden tool, not an archaeological one. We use bricklayers' trowels. See the difference?”

I eyed the trowel he held out. “Ah. Yes, it's pointier.”

“And another thing, we don't just dig at random. A trench has vertical sides that are perfectly straight, not chopped in at whatever angle we feel like. That way you can see the stratification.”

“You're doing that on purpose,” I accused.

“Doing what? Educating you? I believe that's what I'm supposed to do.”

“No, not that. You're using big words at me in an attempt to intimidate me with your knowledge. Well, it won't work. I'm not confused by stratification. I know all about it. I'm an educated woman, one who has no problem asking questions and finding answers. I'm all over stratification.”

He cocked his head to the side, the laugh lines around his eyes deepening.

“Fine,” I said with an annoyed sigh. “I can see you're dying to explain it to poor little me. We might as well practice for today's stint in front of the camera. Tell me, Gunner, just what is stratification in the archaeological world?”

“Layers of context.”

I felt my nostrils flare of their own accord, and with no ceremony took the trowel and pointed it at his chest. “If I stabbed you with this, no one would know.”

He laughed, took the trowel from me, and proceeded to dump the bag of other items out onto the lawn.

“These are trench reports. They're a pain in the ass to fill out, but a vital part of digging,” he said, laying a handful of papers on the ground. “Now, let's see. . . . Mind if I borrow your foot?”

“Huh?”

Little frissons of fire seemed to tingle along the top of my foot when he lifted it and gently placed it on top of the paper. I was desperately grateful that I had on a pair of sandals rather than the boots most people wore when digging. His fingers seemed to linger for a second on my ankle before he scooted over next to me, and crossed his unbroken foot over mine.

“Is my leg too heavy for you?” he asked politely.

The leg of his jeans had slid up slightly, allowing the flesh of his calf to rest on my bare foot. I'd never thought of a foot as having an erogenous zone before, but holy moly, was I aware of that skin-to-skin contact. “Hrm? Oh, no, it's fine.”

“Good. Finally . . .” He glanced around, his eyes narrowing a little as he took my hand and tugged me forward enough so that it could lie on top of his leg. He kept his hand on mine, his fingers not exactly curling around my hand, but as with my foot, I was very much aware of the weight and warmth of it. “Here begins the lesson of context. Imagine your foot is a piece of archaeology. Say, a potsherd. When you dig, you uncover layers that represent different times. So my hand on top is the most recent time—the present, if you will.”

He wiggled his fingers against mine, and I swear my breath caught in my throat. “My hand is context one. If I remove it, the second layer—your hand—is revealed. That's context two.”

I regretted the loss of his hand the instant he took it off mine, and then chastised myself for being so silly as to get turned on by a little hand-and-foot touching. “Context two. Gotcha.”

“Because your hand—context two—is beneath my hand, your hand is going to be older than mine. Likewise—”

He twisted his foot back and forth.

I sternly ordered myself to stop wanting to rub my leg against his, and focused. “Your foot is context three, and it's older than both our hands.”

“Correct. And this?” He removed his leg, and lifted my foot off the ground about a foot, his thumb gently stroking the pulse point on the inside of my ankle.

“Context four. Below it would be the oldest stuff.”

“Exactly.”

“How do you know that there's nothing underneath the paper that isn't older than it?”

“That's a very good question. Until we remove a layer, we don't know what's beneath it.”

I frowned down at the paper, my mind struggling to keep its thoughts on archaeology and not on the fact that Gunner was stroking my ankle in a very distracting manner. “So you just keep digging until . . . what? There's nothing more to see?”

“In a manner of speaking. We call the undisturbed layer ‘the natural.' It means that beneath that point, we won't find anything else, so there's no reason to keep digging. But you have to understand that archaeology is a destructive process, which is why we take such pains to record every context before we remove it to dig deeper. Oh, I suppose I should explain that, shouldn't I?”

“Context? You just did. You should probably give me my foot back, though.”

“I suppose I should, although it's a very pretty foot,” he said with a smile that I seemed to feel down to the tips of the foot he set down. “You'll notice I didn't comment on your legs.”

“I'm wearing pants,” I pointed out. “You can't see my legs.”

“There are few secrets to be hidden by skinny jeans,” he said with a hint of a roguish glint in his eyes. “Now, we were up to recording information, weren't we?
Archaeologists use forms to record all the details about each context. And then make drawings of anything of interest, and also photograph the entire thing. Roger said you were a journalist and a photographer, so you should be familiar with documenting and photographing. What publications have you worked for?”

The lovely warm thoughts that the lascivious side of my brain had been enjoying for the last few minutes froze solid, a sudden spurt of fear leaving me speechless for a few seconds. “Uh . . .”

“I have to admit,” he said with a smile that I'm sure was friendly to everyone but those of us with hideously guilty consciences, “that you don't strike me at all like the journalists I know, but I will admit that they are an odd lot who tend to hang around war zones and countries with internal conflict, swilling whiskey and trading stories of how they were almost shot or blown to pieces. I gather you're not that sort of journalist?”

“Well . . .” I coughed a couple of times in order to give myself some time to think.

Gunner continued on, apparently unaware of my dumbstruck state. “What sort of camera do you prefer? I use a Nikon, myself.”

“Er . . .” I tried desperately to remember what the name was on the camera back in my tent. I think it started with an
N
.

“What subject matters do you prefer? I tend to do a lot of urban with my job, but I will admit to taking the opportunity to doing as much landscape as I can fit in around jobs. Or are you a portrait person?”

“Well . . .”

“I seldom do portraits,” he mused, flipping over the sheet of paper he still held. “I just don't seem to have the patience for people.”

My breath whooshed out all of a sudden. “Portraits!
That's what I love most. Can't get enough of them, as a matter of fact.”

“Really?” He tipped his head on the side again, an act that I realized was more of a habit than not, and one I found oddly appealing. “What sort of lens do you use? High f-stop, or low?”

I blinked a couple of times, crossed my fingers in silent prayer that I picked the right choice, and said, “Oh, high. Like way high.”

“F/4? F/5?” he inquired.

“Between those,” I said, waving a vague hand. “About the archaeology stuff . . .”

“F/4.8? I imagine you must use a fish-eye lens with that.”

“Of course,” I said, desperately aware that I could be walking into a verbal trap, but unable to find any other way around the subject. “Doesn't everyone?”

“I myself prefer a 300mm f/2.8 lens with a close-up filter. It gives such nice soft lines and edges.”

“I try to stick with my eyeball lens,” I said with a little shrug.

“Fish-eye.”

“That, too. So. These dig reports. They look like a lot of trouble for some broken pottery. It sounds sacrilegious to say, but they look downright boring.”

“They can be,” he said with a little grimace, making me sigh with relief. At least I had distracted him from the horrible conversation about photography. “It's one reason why I went into photography instead of staying with archaeology. Recording everything is a necessary evil, however. Without it, you lose all context. Imagine if someone handed you a Roman coin. All that tells you is that it's a Roman coin. But what if you found that same coin while excavating a spring, and it was accompanied by various other coins of differing eras? That would tell
you much more about how the spring was used, by whom, and for how long. There's a lot more data to be extrapolated if you have the context around the finds.”

“I feel like I'm sitting in an archaeology class,” I couldn't help saying, and dumped the dirt back into the hole. “And now I'm ashamed of my hole. Oh hell. I didn't just say that!”

“You did, but it was so bad, I'm not even going to touch it. . . . Lord, now I'm doing it.”

I couldn't help but laugh when he grinned. “It's so nice to know I'm not alone in having the mind of a ten-year-old boy. Lesson learned, Professor. I won't try digging on my own again.”

“There's no reason to feel that way—you're welcome to dig wherever you like, so far as I'm concerned. But do it properly, so we can record anything you find. And my apologies on lecturing you. I didn't intend to do that. In the future, I'll try to keep the pontificating down to a bare minimum.”

“I don't mind if you go into full professor mode.” I put the tools back in the bag, suddenly feeling shy. I wished again that Paul weren't around, because I had greatly enjoyed the few minutes Gunner had spent teaching me about archaeology. He was so patient, and seemed as interested in explaining things as I was in hearing what he had to say. I had a strong suspicion that, subjects like photography aside, I'd very much like to get to know him better. In all meanings of the phrase. But, of course, I couldn't. He was dangerous, not just because he could expose me, but because he was proving to be much too distracting on a personal level.

I'm not looking for a man,
I sternly told the part of me that very much wanted to continue spending time with Gunner.
I don't need a man to have a happy life. I am complete on my own. Just because he's sexy as sin, and
smells nice, and dear god, his hands make me want to swoon and rub myself all over him, doesn't mean anything other than I might want to investigate getting a new battery-operated boyfriend.

The part of me that Dr. Anderson said provided an inner balance to life responded with what I imagined was a raised eyebrow.
Didn't you learn anything in all that therapy? There's no reason you can't enjoy a perfectly healthy, happy relationship with a man. Being strong doesn't mean you can't trust a man . . . or love him.

Love,
I scoffed.
I have ample proof of what happens when you fall in love with the wrong sort of a man.

Who's to say that Gunner is the wrong sort?
my inner balance asked, and I'll be damned if I could answer her.