Excavated Read online

  No use not to tell her. “The Garden of Eden.”

  Dana’s eyes seemed to pop out of her head, and even Sawyer turned to give Lucy a surprised look.

  Lucy shrugged. “I thought it sounded strange too, but Dr. Wentworth wouldn’t have made a referral if there wasn’t something worthwhile for us to consider.”

  “The Garden of Eden?” Dana repeated.

  “I’m sure it’s just a speculative site,” Lucy explained, trying to sound natural and disinterested. “But biblical archaeologists are really doing some interesting work. And our Noah’s ark episode was one of our most popular. This might be really good for us.”

  “Okay,” Dana said, still jotting down notes. “The Garden of Eden it is.”

  ***

  Lucy was quickly getting a bad feeling about Dr. Bronsen.

  It wasn’t his long, rumpled gray hair, bright orange bow tie, or propensity to mumble—academics were notorious for not caring that much about their appearance and for not always being particularly adept at social interaction. Rather, what gave her prickles of worry was what he was saying.

  He’d shown her a map of the Middle East, giving a long rambling explanation of how the Genesis description located the Garden of Eden at the juncture of four rivers. He pointed out each of the rivers in turn, with a lot of geographical and geological data that sounded to Lucy like hokum.

  But Philip had referred this man, so she tried to keep an open mind.

  Dana was quietly taking notes, sitting to the side and slightly behind Lucy. But Lucy could feel the suspicious vibes growing in her assistant too.

  “I don’t understand,” Lucy said when the man finally reached a brief pause in his rambles. “So you’re saying the Garden of Eden is actually under water now.”

  “That’s right. When the ice caps melted, the whole area would have been flooded. See here." He pointed again at the map. "The flooding would have been Noah’s flood, of course.”

  Lucy swallowed. “Of course. But what exactly is the site you would like us to film, if it’s all under water. You understand that Girl Meets Ghost has to have a physical location to—“

  “Naturally, naturally. And I’m convinced we will find a physical location with a little investigation. It’s hidden under water now, but it’s still there.”

  “What exactly is still there?”

  “The laboratory.”

  Lucy swallowed again. “The laboratory?”

  “Yes, of course. You understand, don’t you? You aren’t as narrow-minded and biased as mainstream scientists and archaeologists. The Garden of Eden was never actually a garden, despite all the mythology built up around it. It’s a laboratory, where they experimented with life until the first human being was created.”

  All of Lucy’s kook-sensors were firing at full capacity. “They?” she breathed.

  “The Grays. When they came to this planet originally, they would have seen the potential. So they set up a laboratory—the Garden of Eden—and created human life there. I’m convinced, if we can just do the underwater search, that we can find remnants of the lab. And with it absolute, concrete proof of alien life.”

  Now Lucy had more reason than most to believe there was more to this world than humans could see and touch.

  But she knew a kook when she saw one.

  She and Dana’s eyes met briefly, and they both reached the same conclusion.

  Ten minutes later, they’d managed to send Dr. Bronsen on his way, disappointed and shaking his head about narrow Western minds.

  Both of them were giggling helplessly when they collapsed back into their chairs.

  “I don’t understand,” Dana said breathlessly, her pretty face overwhelmed with laughter. “Why would Dr. Wentworth have referred this man to us?”

  Lucy’s amusement faded as she thought about this question.

  Then she knew. She knew.

  Philip had sent her this crazy person on purpose.

  ***

  “Excuse me.”

  Philip had been working for hours, meticulously cataloging his findings from the dig in the office of his trailer. His mind was fully focused on the task, and he had trouble breaking his concentration at the unexpected voice.

  He needed the focus, the distraction, since when he wasn’t working he was miserable.

  He’d known he hadn’t wanted things with Lucy to end, but he hadn’t realized how bleak and monotonous his days would be after she left.

  “Excuse me,” the voice said again, louder this time.

  He blinked and looked over his shoulder, seeing Kurt standing at the doorway to the office. “Yes.”

  “There’s a phone call for you.”

  He shook his head. “Later.”

  “But—” Kurt began.

  “Later,” Philip repeated, more curtly this time.

  “It’s Ms. Nelson.”

  Philip blinked again, trying to shift his intent concentration enough to keep up with what was happening. But the last words broke through his consciousness.

  He reached over to take the satellite phone Kurt handed him.

  He knew the grad students he worked with were annoyed and frustrated with his behavior for the last few weeks. He’d been driving them all hard, and he hadn’t even managed to keep up his typical blunt civility.

  But the strange look of relief on Kurt’s face as he handed him the phone still surprised him.

  “Lucy?” Philip asked, when Kurt closed the door.

  “You ass!” she exclaimed, without greeting or preamble. “You vindictive asshole! What the hell were you thinking?”

  Philip blinked yet again, his mind finally starting to fire on all cylinders. “Would you like to explain yourself?” he asked, his voice light and cool.

  “No, I would not. You know exactly what I’m talking about. What the hell were you thinking making me waste my time with that…that…kook?”

  Despite his physical fatigue and the mental strain of the last three weeks—or maybe because of it—Philip had a hard time suppressing a ripple of laughter.

  He could only imagine Lucy’s face as she was confronted with the ancient-alien theorist he’d set loose on her.

  “What do you mean?” he asked, managing to sound innocent. “I thought he’d be right up your alley.”

  “You thought no such thing. You did it on purpose. Just to be mean. He wanted…He wanted…”

  She was almost choking from outrage or something, and when she couldn’t finished, Philip prompted, “What did he want?”

  “He wanted me to find a biology expert who would recreate the conditions necessary to harvest human-alien hybrid embryos.”

  Philip lost it. He just lost it. He howled with laughter.

  “It’s not funny, Philip,” Lucy insisted, although her voice was sounding less angry now.

  “It really, really is,” he rasped, trying to restrain his amusement and failing utterly.

  Lucy must have given up the fight, since she started to laugh too.

  Philip felt a strange softening in his chest as he listened to her. His amusement morphed into something else.

  “Well, it was just plain mean,” Lucy said at last, something almost warm in her tone now. “I thought it was a real referral. I thought you were being nice.”

  Philip experienced a strange tightness in his throat—like a surge of hope had risen and gotten trapped there. He cleared his throat and managed to say casually, “I would be happy to be nice. I thought that wasn’t what you wanted.”

  Someone had foisted Dr. Bronsen on him a couple of weeks ago, and he’d had the sudden inspiration to send the man to Lucy. It had been a spontaneous instinct rather than a real strategy, but now he realized it was a very good idea.

  “Lucy?” he prompted, when she didn’t answer.

  “I don’t know what you want, Philip,” she said at last, sounding young and kind of lost.

  His heart ached for her—she was hurting over something, and it felt like it was somehow his fault. H
e had no idea how to fix it. “All I ever wanted to do was keep in touch. All I wanted was for us to not break things off completely. That's all I want. Nothing more.”

  “But…” She sounded torn.

  Knowing an advantage when he was confronted with one, Philip jumped into her lapse in conversation. “I have a conference in New York three weeks from now.”

  “You do? What about your dig?”

  “We’ll have to wrap up by then. I told you. It’s only a few weeks in summer that we can dig here. The weather doesn’t cooperate otherwise.”

  “What’s the date of the conference?”

  He told her. “Will you be in town?”

  “Yes.”

  “Should we get together? Just for drinks. No expectations. We can just see how it goes. If it feels wrong, then no harm done. At least we’ll know.”

  She hesitated for a long time. “I guess that would be all right. But just for drinks. No falling into bed.”

  “Of course not. Just drinks. No falling into bed.”

  ***

  Three weeks later, Philip and Lucy fell into bed. The big bed in Philip's hotel room.

  They’d met for drinks in the bar downstairs and ended up talking for more than three hours, moving into the restaurant to have dinner as the evening went on. Then Lucy, who’d had far too good a time for her own good, decided she better leave while she could, so Philip walked her into the lobby.

  She’d reached up to give him a friendly kiss on the cheek.

  Clearly that kiss had been a mistake.

  They’d ended up in his room, having kissed their way up the elevator and down the hallway. And now they were tearing at each other’s clothes as their embrace became more heated and urgent.

  “Oh God,” Lucy gasped, arching up off the bed as Philip suckled one of her nipples through the lace of her bra. “We weren’t supposed to do this.”

  “Whoops,” Philip murmured dryly, raising his head briefly to meet Lucy’s eyes.

  She laughed—she couldn’t help it—and then the laughter mixed with her pleasure as Philip’s mouth moved lower and lower.

  He brought her to climax with his mouth—his lips and tongue hungry and skillful through the flimsy fabric of her panties. Then she clawed at his trousers until she freed his erection and rolled on the condom.

  As soon as he slid himself in, Lucy completely lost it. She couldn’t hold still, trying to ride him eagerly from below even as he was holding himself tensely and trying to catch his breath. Her urgency must have snapped his control as well, since his attempts at restraint failed utterly.

  They moved together with the same almost desperate hunger she remembered from the island. If anything, they were even wilder, harder, louder, needier.

  The first round of sex was over quickly—since neither of them could hold out long—but there were other rounds later that night, with only brief respites between them.

  Finally, just before dawn, Lucy was exhausted, sore, drenched in sweat, and utterly sated—collapsed on Philip’s chest. “Oh God,” she kept gasping hoarsely. “Oh God.”

  “I hope that’s a refrain of satisfaction,” Philip murmured eventually, one of his hands stroking her damp hair. “Because I’m not as young as I used to be, and, if you’re asking for even more, I’m not sure I can accommodate. At least not at the moment.”

  She shook with tired laughter. “I should demand you pleasure me even more—just to pay you back for siccing that wacko on me. But, honestly, if I come again, I might actually pass out.”

  Philip’s body shook too, with answering amusement. “I knew Dr. Bronsen was a good idea.”

  She found enough energy to lift her head and look down on him. “Seriously, Philip. Why did you send him my way?”

  He gave her a familiar half-shrug—one she’d seen from him many times before. “Just a spontaneous gesture.” He paused. Then added, as if as an afterthought. “I was thinking about you a lot.”

  She let out a breath and rested her head on his chest again. She could feel his heart beating beneath her ear.

  For the first time in a month and a half, the heavy weight in her stomach was gone.

  It felt so good not to feel it. It felt so free.

  “Why did you agree to have drinks with me if you didn’t want to have sex with me?” Philip asked.

  “I don’t know,” she replied honestly. “I really don’t know. It just felt like something was wrong between us, and I wanted to fix it.”

  “So what now?” His fingers were still gently brushing her hair back from the side of her face.

  “I don’t know.”

  She couldn’t stand for that sick heaviness to return—as it threatened to at just the thought of telling him she shouldn’t see him again.

  But she was absolutely terrified at the idea of anything else. She’d been down that road too many times before.

  “Why don’t we just…” Philip trailed off, as if he were thinking something through, even as he spoke.

  “Why don’t we what?”

  “Why don’t we just take it day by day? This doesn’t have to be a big deal. Every time we see each other, we can reassess whether we want to see each other again. If it’s too complicated for you or if it’s not what you want, you can just say ‘no’ to the next date. I know you’re worried about…about commitment. But I don’t think you need to worry. Just decide whether you want to see me tomorrow. Or I guess tomorrow is actually later today. That’s all that’s on the table right now.”

  Lucy thought about that for a long time.

  It was true.

  She was the one blowing things out of proportion. She was terrified about a commitment that wasn’t even on their radar yet.

  Right now it was sex. And Philip’s companionship tomorrow. And maybe for the rest of the week, while he was at the conference.

  It was that—or week after week of that horrible heaviness.

  “Okay,” she said.

  “Okay what?”

  “Okay—let’s go day by day.”

  She felt something relax in his body, something almost intangible.

  He said lightly, “I’ve got sessions I can't miss in the morning and the early afternoon tomorr—today, but I can skip things in the afternoon or the evening. What’s your schedule like?”

  “I’ve got nothing really. I try to take some days off before we start a new shoot.”

  “Where’s your next shoot?”

  “Southern France. Some really interesting cave drawings and maybe a ghost or two.”

  “Do you want to have dinner? Or we could do a movie or a show or—”

  “Dinner is good.”

  ***

  They had dinner. And then they had sex again. Then Lucy decided it wouldn’t hurt to see Philip again the following day.

  She decided the same thing each day until the last day of his conference.

  She started to get scared again—started to feel like the future was rising up to beat her down—but Philip told her it was still day-to-day. He would call her the next day, so all she would have to decide was whether she wanted to pick up the phone.

  The next day, she picked up the phone.

  And she picked up the phone each day following, when he called her every evening.

  On the last day of her shoot in France, Philip mentioned that, if she wanted, she could stop by Edinburgh on her way back the following day, since the semester had started at the university and he couldn’t get over to France.

  Since all she was committing to was just the one day—and since she really wanted to see Philip again—she decided she might as well stop by Scotland on her way home.

  It wasn't really very far out of her way.

  Nine

  Philip collapsed onto his back in Lucy’s bed—hot, breathless, and exhausted.

  Lucy, who was lying beside him, turned her head on the pillow to look over at him. Her face was flushed and damp from what had been a couple of what sounded like very good orgasms for her, b
ut there was a playful gleam in her eyes that he found absolutely irresistible. “Sex is hard work for a man of your age,” she teased. “You should be careful not to overtax yourself.”

  He gave her the aggrieved scowl she was clearly expecting, but then he pulled her into his arms.

  She arranged herself against him, her head pressed against his shoulder and her arm wrapped around his middle in a way he really liked.

  “I missed you,” he murmured, nuzzling her hair. “A month is too long.”

  They’d only been together for four months, but going nearly a month without seeing her had been much harder than Philip had expected. She’d been busy with a big film shoot and he’d been busy with his end of the semester work, so they hadn’t been able to find a time to get together until now, when Philip had a few weeks off for winter break.

  “Hmm.” Even her wordless hum sounded dry and ironic. “I guess taking care of yourself in the shower just isn’t the same.”

  Philip swallowed, managing to hide his annoyance. She always did this. Whenever their interaction even hinted at emotional intimacy, she would change the mood immediately to something light and teasing.

  At first, her reticence had been a relief, since he was a little skittish about the relationship himself. He wasn’t sure he would have even been able to pursue it had they not given themselves a simple escape route. After all, his experience with women had taught him to expect to be hurt.

  But, more and more, he found himself resisting her distancing techniques. They were together and had been together since the summer. They talked every day and got together as often as they could. Philip knew she wasn’t seeing anyone else, and he wasn’t remotely tempted to even look at anyone else.

  The natural next step would be to make some sort of commitment—or at least acknowledge that they were a real couple—but Lucy never let the conversation get anywhere close to such a thing.

  Philip was in too deep to hold her at arm’s length. He’d always known that, once he fell for someone, it would be all the way—which was why he’d given up on love for so long. It was simply too dangerous for him.

  There was no going back with him from Lucy, but she refused to admit there was something to go back from. He knew she had commitment-issues—she had a string of broken engagements to prove it.