Page 11 of Digging Up Love
“For goodness’ sakes, Ali. Either invite the man in for coffee or get out of his way so he can finish up ’fore he catches his death of cold.”
The voice came from the top of the pit. He’d forgotten they had an audience.
The intruder dropped her confident pose in a snap. “Right, sorry. I’ll just ...” She bit her lip and dropped her eyes to the ground, casting about.
Interesting. She knew the owner of the property well enough to take orders from her at the drop of a hat. The woman pivoted and took a step, stumbling back when she came face to face with the femur. He caught himself just before his fingertips grazed her arms. Her shoulder blades hit his chest, and she spun away.
“Um, is that what I think it is?” Her eyes hadn’t left the bone.
“That depends,” said Quentin levelly.
“On ...”
“On what you think it is.” He hitched a shoulder.
Meeting his eyes, she groaned. “Are you being cagey for a reason?”
“Come again? You’re the one who dropped in on me, with no explanation.”
“Well, since this is my grandparents’ yard, I feel like I deserve to know what’s going on here.”
Hergrandparents’yard? He lifted his eyes to where the two elderly women hovered at the pit’s edge, but they’d disappeared. Great. Alone with the troublemaker.
Wait a minute. His flustered mind translated the implications of what she’d just said. The homeowners’ granddaughter?
Oh no. Please, no.Why had he iced her out like that? Quentin took a deep breath through his nose, thumb and index finger pinching his forehead. This was bad. Very bad. He might’ve screwed the university’s chances. If the owners of the property wouldn’t let them excavate because he’d pissed off their grandkid, he was done for.
He dropped his arm and produced a polite smile. “Look, I’m very sorry, Aliyah ...,” he started.
“Alisha.”
Shoot, he’d called her the wrong name? Worse and worse.
“Alisha, right. I’m so sorry, I didn’t realize you were ...”
“Related to a white woman? Yeah, I get that a lot.”
“Actually, I was more worried about this.” He bent to retrieve the fossil from her boot imprint. And yeah, he hadn’t expected a gorgeous Black woman to drop in on him out of the sky out here in Farmville.
She leaned forward to inspect the fragment in his hands, and he hissed. “Sorry. I just—” He slipped the fossil into a plastic bag from his pocket. “Sorry. But can I j-just ask you to please ...” As he stammered, a slight smile played across her lips. Did she enjoy seeing him squirm?
“Stop stomping around your fossils?”
“Yes.” He breathed out the word in relief, and her grin widened.
“Got it.” She glanced around. “It’s just hard to believe our backyard is some sort of point of interest.”Ourbackyard? So she lived here too. Quentin filed that information away. “Didn’t catch your name, by the way?”
Good manners finally returned to him, and he extended a hand. “Quentin Harris, associate professor of vertebrate paleontology at Chicago Northern.”
She gripped his hand, her fingers chilly. “Nice to officially meet you. And now I’ll let you get back to work.” Letting go, her feet remained planted. “Uh, which way?”
Realizing she didn’t want to disrupt the site, he angled a real smile her way for the first time. Respect for fossils earned brownie points with him. He turned slightly to indicate the side of the pit behind him. So far he hadn’t seen any evidence of exposed fossils in that section. She moved past him, boots sticking in the mud like in wet cement.
“Do you need a hand?”
She waved him off. “No thanks, I’m good.” Another step, and she face-planted. He reached her side in a single stride and knelt next to her. The cold muck seeped into his jeans.
Alisha pushed herself to hands and knees, and a glop of mud fell off her chest. “Ugh.”
