“We went to the same university.”
“Right. My freshman year, a CEO of one of the newer dot.coms attended my school. We even met, but that doesn’t mean we’re friends.”
“Asad and I were friends.” At one time, she’d considered him her very best friend.
And then he’d betrayed her love and her belief in their closeness.
“A whole lot more than that, I’m guessing, or the guy wouldn’t have such an effect on you.”
“It doesn’t matter. The past is exactly that and we’re here to—”
“Work. Yeah, yeah, I know.” Russell fiddled with a microscope. “You can’t blame me for my curiosity. Everyone at CC&B thinks you’re more interested in rocks than people, especially men.”
He gave her a probing look.
She tried to ignore the pang in her heart that his words gave her. It was true that she hadn’t gone out of her way to make friends, and well … rocks couldn’t hurt you. But that didn’t mean she wasn’t interested in people at all.
“I date.”
“Really?” he asked with clear disbelief.
Bringing up the one dinner she’d shared with a fellow rock hound in the past year probably wasn’t going to count, particularly since all they’d talked about was, well … rocks. “It doesn’t matter.”
“It does when you’re acting like a woman, not a scientist.”
“That’s ridiculous. I’m always a scientist first.”
“Sure, until we got here. You offered to let Sheikh Hakim bring in a male geologist if it would make him more comfortable.” Russell’s tone gave that fact the inexplicability it deserved. “This Sheikh Asad had you on the run and he’d only spoken a few words to you.”
“I’m not on the run.”
“Could have fooled me.”
“You’re being annoying.”
“I’m good at that. You don’t usually mind.” Russell stopped looking at his microscope and gave his attention solely to her. “I’m being a nosy friend. So, spill.”
It went against the deep sense of privacy she’d always lived with, but then that privacy had left her lonely. Perhaps it was time to make more friends, true friends … not just work acquaintances.
She’d clicked with Russell on both a working and friendship level when he’d first begun his summer internship with CC&B three months ago. She’d been pleased when the college student had been assigned the role of her assistant on this survey.
“Asad and I were together for a few months in my sophomore year,” she admitted.
“Together together?”
“Yes.”
“Wow.”
“You didn’t suspect?”
“Hell, no. You’re not exactly the kind of woman who ends up in a sheikh’s bed.” The other redhead had the grace to blush at that observation. “I don’t mean you’re a troll or anything.”
“He wasn’t a sheikh then.”
“I bet he was the same in every other way, though.”
“No. He used to smile a lot more.”
“Oh-ho.”
“Now what?”
“Nothing.”
“Stop being cryptic. What is oh-ho?”
“You’re sad he’s not as happy as he used to be. I can tell.”
“Don’t be an idiot. I didn’t say he wasn’t happy.” But that’s what she’d meant and hadn’t realized it until Russell brought it up.
“But he’s not, is he?”
“His wife died two years ago.” And the pampered princess Badra had been nothing like what he’d expected her to be. “He’s probably still mourning her.”
“Not the way he looks at you, he’s not.”
She didn’t ask what way that was because she already knew and wasn’t up to false protestations.
Russell told her anyway. “Like he wants to devour you. If a woman looked at me like that, I’d have a heck of a time staying out of her bed.”
“Right.” That at least, deserved some proper skepticism. From what she’d seen over the summer, Russell didn’t have any more of a social life than she did. “You’re as wrapped up in your work as I am.”
“But I’d take time away from my precious rocks for something that intense.”
“That’s why you go clubbing every Saturday night, because you’re looking.”
“I never go clubbing … oh, you were making a point. I still say if I walked into it like you have here, I’d go for it.”
“You wouldn’t. You’re every bit as gun-shy as I am. You’re just being an idiot,” she said fondly.
Russell should know just how damaging such a course of action would be to her. He’d had his own broken heart, as he’d confided to her over a bottle of potent wine on their first assignment in the field together.
“You’ve said that before. Good thing I’ve got such a high IQ, my confidence in my own intelligence is bulletproof.”
She snorted. “IQ measures your ability to learn, not your common sense.”
“You saying I lack common sense?”
“If the fossilized fragment fits …”
“Aren’t you the clever one?”
“How far from here to our first sampling site?” she asked.
“According to my satellite GPS, about an hour in a Jeep, provided we can travel pretty directly.”
She nodded.
“We should ask Sheikh Asad. After all, he is our guide while we’re in country.”
“He’s a sheikh. I’m sure he’s got someone else we can go to.”
“And you call me an idiot.”
“What does that mean?”
“The sheikh’s not leaving our guiding up to anyone else and you know it. He wants to handle you … um, I mean this little geological expedition personally.”
IRIS rolled her eyes, but didn’t reply to Russell’s obvious innuendo.
At any rate, she couldn’t exactly deny it. Her field assistant was right. Not only had Asad insisted on being their go-to guy, she was pretty sure he’d want to accompany them on their first foray out of the encampment. She could only hope he would limit himself to the one time.
Her instincts told her to hope all she wanted, but the man was going to become her shadow, big-time busy sheikh or not.
Asad proved her first supposition right later that evening when they were all sharing dinner in his tent.
For the sake of her own sanity, she tried to talk him out of it. “That’s not necessary. I’ve been doing this for almost four years, Asad. I know what I’m doing and Russell can read his pocket transit with the best of them.”