Page 17 of The Lovers
The bakery was a five-minute walk from the institute and was surprisingly crowded. Quinn and Rhys settled at a small table by the window that had just been vacated by an elderly couple. Gentle autumn sunshine illuminated the Formica tabletop, where a laminated menu stood propped up by the sugar bowl. Mouthwatering smells of baking and freshly ground coffee filled the small space, and Quinn was suddenly glad she’d come. A cup of strong coffee was just what she needed, and given her recent foray into the seventeenth century, a bit of modern-day company couldn’t hurt either.
“A double espresso and an almond biscotti, please,” Quinn said to the young waitress who approached their table. The woman wrote down Quinn’s order, but her lively dark eyes never left Rhys’s face.
“No cheesecake?” Rhys asked with mock disappointment.
“Too rich for my blood.”
“Well, maybe you can try mine. It’s not to be missed. I’ll have a slice of strawberry cheesecake and a cappuccino, Giovanna,” Rhys said to the girl, who beamed at him, pleased that he remembered her name.
“Gabriel Russell tells me you’ve just returned from the Middle East,” Rhys said as he silenced his phone and put it in his pocket, a gesture Quinn appreciated. She hated it when people constantly looked at their phones and felt the need to read every email and reply to every text in the middle of a conversation, as if they were so urgent that they couldn’t wait until later. Luke always placed his phone next to his plate when they went out to dinner and left it on the nightstand during the night despite Quinn’s objections. She gritted her teeth every time it pinged, alerting Luke to a new text or notification. Sometimes he even reached for the phone while they were making love, leaving her boiling with outrage. Quinn found his behavior to be rude, but Luke laughed it off, telling her that she needed to march boldly into the twenty-first century and accept that technology was an integral part of everyday life. So was having manners, in Quinn’s opinion.
“Yes, I’ve been back for just over a week. I hate to admit it, but I think I’m still a bit jet-lagged. It seems to get worse every time I travel.” Quinn was giving Rhys a roundabout explanation for her earlier lapse, to which he nodded, understanding and moving on.
“I’d seen the documentary about your incredible find. You spoke about that Roman soldier as if you’d personally known him. It made some obscure foot soldier who died thousands of years ago really come alive for the viewers. How were you able to learn so much about him?” Rhys asked.
“It wasn’t that I knew so much about him, per se. I suppose I imbued him with certain qualities and characteristics that I based on previous research into the standards of the Roman army and thetype of young man he might have been. Some of it is fact, some just educated speculation.”
“Which is exactly what I intend this new program to be, and I would like for you to research and narrate it. We want to make these people seem real and relevant, and creating a dramatization based as much on fact as supposition turns them from forgotten skeletons into living, breathing people once again. Who’s to say that it didn’t happen just as we envision it, eh? What do you say, Dr. Allenby? Are you on board?” Rhys asked, taking Quinn by surprise. Gabriel had mentioned the BBC’s interest, but she hadn’t expected to get an offer so soon, and in such an informal setting. She was interested, of course, but she wasn’t ready to commit, not until she’d had a chance to review the proposed compensation and conditions of the contract.
“Forward me your offer, and I will get back to you as soon as I’ve had a chance to look it over,” Quinn replied, hoping that he wouldn’t start talking shop right there and then. He seemed to notice her reluctance and nodded in agreement, instantly returning to the previous topic to put her at ease.
“That sword was magnificent,” Rhys said as he swallowed a forkful of his cheesecake and rolled his eyes in ecstasy.
“Try it,” he insisted. Quinn felt a little awkward eating off a plate of a man she’d just met, but she obediently tried a piece of cake. It really was extraordinary.
“Amazing, isn’t it?” Rhys asked enthusiastically, glad to see her reaction. “Baking is a hobby of mine. I started out with bread after my sister-in-law got me a bread machine for Christmas one year. She said it would help me relax.”
“And did it?”
“Surprisingly, yes. There’s a certain sense of satisfaction in producing something from scratch, especially when it bringspeople pleasure. I graduated to more complicated recipes only recently.”
“Cheesecake?” Quinn asked with a smile.
“Yes, but I just can’t get the consistency right. It’s always too thick, not light like this one.”
Quinn suddenly wondered if he was having her on. She’d never met Rhys Morgan in person before, but she’d heard stories. He was one of the toughest producers in the business, a sadistic perfectionist who routinely made his assistants cry. She’d expected him to be older and stodgier, but the man sitting across from her couldn’t be more than forty-five. He was casually dressed in jeans and a dark-blue V-neck jumper that set off his amazing eyes. They were by far his best feature, wide and thick lashed. His chestnut hair fell into his eyes and brushed the collar of the jumper, and his morning stubble gave him a slightly disheveled appearance. He hardly looked like the hard-boiled exec coming from a business meeting.
“So, how are you going to do it?” Rhys suddenly asked, cheesecake forgotten.
“Do what?”
“Find out who ‘the Lovers’ were. Gabriel said that if anyone could unravel this mystery, it would be you.”
“I appreciate his vote of confidence,” Quinn replied, mentally sending Gabe a heartfelt thanks.
“I’ve actually already come up with a tentative title for the series:Echoes from the Past. What do you think?” he asked, watching her over the rim of his cup. It seemed that he wasn’t quite finished discussing the project.
“It’s a fitting title for an archeological program,” Quinn agreed.
“I thought that ‘the Lovers’ might be the subject of the first episode. So, have you anything to go on? Even conjecture must be based on something,” Rhys asked, his tone now speculative and brusque.
Quinn shrugged. “I have a few ideas.”
“Like what?”
It was a perfectly legitimate question, but Quinn felt herself bristling. She thought they were just having a coffee, but suddenly it was a business meeting, one she wasn’t prepared for. She could hardly tell him that she hoped to obtain the information directly from the source and then try to manipulate it in such a way as to fit with scientific research supported by facts.
“I’ve only just come from the morgue,” she replied defensively.
