* * *
The next morning, she was the first one at the breakfast buffet, to her embarrassment. She’d slept fitfully and her dreams had been confusing and vivid, mostly about the elusive Mr. Lang.
But if she hoped to find a new beginning with him, it was a dream gone awry. He stared right through her as he walked past the buffet and kept going. She stood gaping after his tall figure in the tan suit and cream-colored Stetson, wondering what she’d done to antagonize him now. Probably, she sighed as she put a tiny amount of food on her plate, she’d breathed the wrong way.
“Here, now, Miss Haley, that’s not enough to keep a bird alive,” Mrs. Lang tut-tutted. The small, dark-eyed woman shook her head. “You’ll make me self-conscious about my cooking.”
“Your cooking is delicious,” Christy protested, embarrassed. “It’s just that the, uh, the heat is difficult for me.”
“Oh.” The white lie produced good results, because Mrs. Lang smiled and lost her worried look. “I forget that you’re not used to the desert. But don’t you worry, you’ll adjust soon enough. Just take it easy, drink plenty of fluids and don’t go into the sun without a hat!”
“You can count on me,” Christy said with a jaunty smile.
She sat down alone at a table, picking at her food, while the much older Professor Adamson and his wife Nell smiled politely as they passed and went to their own table. The others drifted in one at a time, yawning and looking dragged out. George noticed Christy sitting alone and made a beeline for her.
“What a beautiful morning.” He grinned as he sat down with a disgustingly full plate and proceeded to eat every bite. “I never get this hungry back in Wichita. Great food, isn’t it? You’re not eating,” he added with a frown.
“I’m so hot,” she said and smiled at him. “I’ll get used to the climate in a day or so.”
“Lots to do today,” he murmured between bites. “Mason’s going to use the laptop to match the pottery fragments we’ve found so far. He spent the night writing a program for it.”
“Computers make me nervous,” Christy confessed. “We have one at school that we’re teaching our second-graders to use, and I’m terrified of it.”
“You should see Mr. Lang’s,” he confided. “He’s got one of those mainframe jobs—you know, the kind that cost twenty grand or so. He uses it to keep his cattle records on, and he’s got some great graphic software that he uses in his mining work. What a setup!”
“He must be pretty smart,” she said.
“Smart doesn’t cover it. The man’s a wizard, they say. A couple of the gang tried to beat him at chess last night. Talk about ego problems…he could checkmate the best of them in three moves or less.”
“I’m glad I don’t play chess.”
“Well, I wish I didn’t,” he said with a grin. “Eat up. Time’s awasting.”
They went out to the dig in the equipment truck again, and Christy settled down to another day of sifting through sand to find pottery fragments.
She was sitting in the shade of the truck with a soft drink from the cooler at lunchtime when the Jeep roared up. Nathanial Lang climbed out of it, still wearing his suit, and looked around the relaxed camp until he located Christy. He studied her from a distance for one long minute and then went and said something to Professor Adamson before he came to join her.
“You’re alone,” he remarked, going down on one knee beside her. “Did George die?”
She gaped at him. “I beg your pardon?”
“I’m going into Tucson for some supplies I ordered. Come with me.”
Her heart jumped into her throat. “Are you sure you aren’t mistaking me for someone else?” she asked, staring into his eyes at point-blank range. “You walked past me as if you hated the very sight of me not five hours ago.”
“I did, but that was five hours ago,” he said pleasantly. “I’ve checked you out with the professor. He says you can go.”
“I’m not a library book that you can check out… Mr. Lang!”
He’d pulled her up by one hand with apparent ease and she was protesting on the run. He lifted her by the waist, soft drink and all, and put her inside the Jeep, smiling a little as he noticed her attire. Long khaki walking shorts and high beige socks in saddle oxfords, with a lemon cotton shirt that buttoned up and a yellow tank top under that. She’d tied a jaunty yellow-and-white scarf around the band of her hat and she looked very trendy with her long silvery blond hair falling down around her shoulders.
“You look like a teenager,” he said, grinning.
She smiled back, shocked by his attention when she’d given up on ever getting it. “Thank you,” she said, feeling and sounding shy.
He let go of her, shut the door, and got in beside her. “Hold on,” he instructed as he started the Jeep and put it in gear.
It shot off like a gray bullet, bouncing her from one side to the other so that she had to hold her hat to keep it on her head.
“Doesn’t this thing have shocks?” she cried above the roar of the engine.
“Why do we need shocks?” he asked with lifted eyebrows.
She laughed and shook her head. Even a simple thing like going to town took on all the dimensions of an adventure with this man. She held on to the dash with one hand and her hat with the other, drinking in the peace of the desert as they sped along the wide dirt road that led to the paved road to Tucson. Fields of saguaro and creosote, prickly pear cactus and ocotillo, cholla and mesquite stretched to the jagged mountain chains that surrounded Tucson. It was a sight to pull at the heart. So much land, so much history, so much space. She could hardly believe she was really here, sitting beside a man who was as elemental as the country he lived in. Her head turned and she stared at him with pure pleasure in his masculinity, little thrills of delight winding through her body. She’d never felt such a reaction to a man before. But then, she’d never met a man like Nathanial Lang.
He caught that shy scrutiny. It made him feel taller than he was to have such a pretty woman look at him that way. He was glad he’d let his mother talk him into changing his staid bachelor image, and he was especially glad about the improvement when he was with Christy.
“How are you enjoying your stint in the sun?” he asked.
“It’s harder work than I expected,” she admitted. “I’m stiff and sore from sitting in one place and using muscles I didn’t know I had. It’s rather boring in a way. But to sit and hold something a thousand years old in my hand,” she said with faint awe, “that’s worth all the discomfort.”
He smiled. “I find the Hohokam equally fascinating,” he said then. “Did you know that the Tohono O’odham are probably descended from the Hohokam? And that their basket weaving is so exacting and precise that their baskets can actually hold water?”
“No, I didn’t! I’ll bet they cost the earth.”
“Some of them do, and they’re worth every penny. I know an old woman who still practices the craft, out on the Papago Reservation. I’ll take you out to see her while you’re here.”
“Oh, would you?!” she exclaimed, all eyes.
“She’ll be glad to find someone more interested in her craft than in the price of it.” He pulled out onto the paved highway and shot the Jeep smoothly into high gear.
She