Page 13 of Us in Ruins

“Margot Rhodes.” He said her name like he’d just tried cilantro and discovered it tasted like soap. He glanced at her hand—only glanced, decidedly did not shake it. Heat prickled the back of Margot’s neck at the rejection. “Mind telling me what you’re doing in my temple... in your pajamas?”

“Your temple?” Margot asked. To her surprise, there was a lilt to her voice, playful, teasing. “You don’t look like the goddess of love.”

“Finders keepers.” Van rolled his neck as if oiling the hinges, testing for creaks. Every action was laced with annoyance. Like he’d been terribly inconvenienced in that statue and was late to an appointment he couldn’t miss. “So, what are you? A secretary? A reporter?”

“I’m an archaeologist,” Margot said, squinting.

Van pivoted so fast that Margot nearly impaled herself on a sharpened marble bow, nocked by one of the guardians. She startled onto her heels as his gaze ran the length of her, a computational look in his eyes. “I know every archaeologist in southern Italy, and you’re not one.”

Margot bristled. “You couldn’t possibly know that.”

“Then, who are you working with? Speichler? Charles and deWolfe?” Van asked. Then, shaking his head like he was already three steps ahead of her side of the conversation, he added, “Doesn’t matter. Atlas will be back soon, and you’ll need to be long gone.”

“No, he’s...”

Van arched an eyebrow. When Margot trailed off, breathless at the weight of his look, he closed the space between them, looming over her. “No one knows how to find this place except me. Not even Atlas knows how to operate the temple door, I made sure of it. How did you get in here?”

The words froze in Margot’s throat. Her cheeks flushed, reminding her pink was a verb. Because, well, how could she tell him that he was the only reason she’d found the temple?

Van leaned close enough that she could feel his breath, hot against her ear. “I’m going to ask one more time. What are you doing here?”

“The same thing you are,” she said, a stubborn, determined edge to her voice. “Looking for the Vase of Venus Aurelia.”

“Why would you be looking for—”

Van brushed past her, stalking toward the altar. His palms slammed against the polished stone. Head hanging toward his chest, he swallowed a groan of frustration. When he turned back to Margot, she suddenly wished she’d taken Master Park’s tae kwon do lessons more seriously.

“What have you done with them?” Van’s voice plateaued, unamused and impatient.

“I didn’t do anything with anything,” Margot said. An admittedly flimsy argument for an equally vague accusation.

A laugh cracked through Van’s chest, hollow. “Please. The shards of the Vase, they were all right here moments ago. I don’t need to look for them because I already found them.”

Margot inched forward, slowly, the way you’d approach a wild, wounded animal. “Do you know what happened to you?”

How did you break it to someone that they’d missed the invention of the internet, the introduction of women to the workforce, and the rise, fall, and unfortunate comeback of low-rise jeans?

Van didn’t back down. “I was fitting the Vase of Venus Aurelia together, but now it seems someone’s stolen the shards.”

“No. No. I didn’t. They weren’t there when I came down here, and they haven’t been for a long, long time. But you... you have no idea.” At Van’s expression—a mixture of confusion and rising irritation—Margot sighed. “I mean, of course you don’t. How could you know? Down here probably looks the same to you now as it did then.”

Van cursed under his breath. He ran an agitated hand through his hair while the other searched his pockets. “Could you quit all your blabbering, kid? I’ve got a few more pressing issues than how the ruins look.”

Kid. It wormed under Margot’s skin. The polite placating she’d grown too used to hearing when people underestimated her. Not this time.

Her voice grew thorns. “The shards are gone.”

“What aren’t you telling me?” Van’s fist fastened around the collar of her shirt.

This close, she could see the pale greens of his eyes, the contour of a nose broken at least once, and there, on his otherwise fair cheeks, a smattering of freckles from spending too much time in the sun.

Her traitor of a heart leaped. Not the time. When she’d imagined Van Keane, she thought he’d have been a noble explorer, someone curious and driven. Instead, he was just a jerk with something to prove.

“I haven’t seen the shards,” Margot said. Her voice softened. Even if he was a jerk, she couldn’t deny the way his cheek twinged, the muscle clenching in frustration and disappointment. Everything he cared about: gone. She could feel his desperation as if it were her own. “No one’s ever seen them all. Except you.”

His knuckles grazed the skin of her neck, clutching her tighter. His lips pinched into a line. Steam could have poured out of his ears, and it wouldn’t have surprised Margot.

“Take a look around. They’re gone,” Margot said. The bite found its way back into her voice as she placed a hand over his knuckles, attempting to extricate the collar of her jacket. It didn’t matter how prestigious he was or how cute his lone cheek dimple was when he smiled. She was not some rag doll for him to throw around. “If you’d listen to me for two seconds, you’d know that when I walked in here, you were as stone as those statues, and you have been for the last century.”

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