“I know it’s late, but do you mind staying for a bit longer?” Andrew said, his voice jaded with disappointment. “I need to copy these details and send them to Carlos.”
“Sure, no problem.”
“It might take me a while…” Andrew scanned the room, then dragged a chair to the bed and set the lamp on it. “If you can lay and place your hand under the lamp…?”
“Is Las Loma ranch one of the sketches?”
“Yes. It’s Augustine’s childhood house.” Andrew grabbed his notebook and a pencil, then he dropped to the floor next to the bed, crisscrossing his legs. “While Augustine lived near the ocean, his sons, Simón and Gabriel, resided on the old ranch with their families. Usually, the sons came to visit their father’s house, but based on the messages that we found tonight, Augustine went there not long before he died. There’s a letter from Simón to Jorge in which he mentioned their father arriving in March with carts carrying large chests.”
“Do you know where the ranch is?”
I followed his directions and lay on my back, stretching out my arm. The lamp’s heat warmed my skin but wasn’t nearly as hot as Andrew’s gaze on me a minute ago.
“Yes. A decade ago, a resort chain bought the ranch and converted it into ‘Erizo,’ a luxurious B&B. We’ll go there tomorrow.”
“Are we staying there?”
“We could if they have rooms available.”
For a while, Andrew sketched in silence and I studied water stains on the ceiling, trying my best not to think about how we’d almost kissed. At least I thought we were going to kiss. Did Andrew answer his phone as an excuse to stop the head-on collision? He could have called back Dr. Garcia later. I turned to look at him. His long lashes cast shadows against the curve of his cheekbones as his gaze traced the movement of the pencil. Maybe he had someone waiting for him in Cambridge. Should I ask?
“Adriana,” he said.
I rolled my eyes. “Yes, I’m staring at you.”
He chuckled. “That wasn’t what I was going to say.”
“What were you going to say?”
“Thank you for coming with me on this trip.” His eyes had a glint of appreciation.
A warmth rushed through me, and something like hope swelled inside me. I wasn’t sure why and what to do with it, so I shrugged a single shoulder to cover up whatever that feeling meant. “I only came because I need money.”
Andrew’s expression dimmed. “Of course.”
My smile faltered at his reaction. “But I’m enjoying this trip… and your company.” Too much. But it was the truth.
He glanced at me, then went back to sketching, his lips quirked. “I like you, too.”
“I didn’t say I like you,” I mumbled.
Andrew hmmed, like he knew I was lying, his smile wider. Probably because he came from a planet of breathtaking hunky stallions who were accustomed to women turning into wet goo in his presence.
“Tell me about your childhood,” he said.
I groaned and tore my stare from him back to the ceiling. “Why?”
“From brief comments you and William have made, I’ve gathered you had a difficult upbringing.”
“We were fine.” That was a stretched truth. “Our mother’s narcissism drove our father away. She blamed him for our poverty even though she has doneabsolutelynothing to save money or tried to find a better job. So he left us when I was seven, and William was ten. Our mother only wanted us when no one wanted her. She sometimes abandoned us for weeks at a time. Once she left with a new friend around Easter and returned mid-July.”
He stopped sketching, and worry creased his already-scrunched brow. “How did you manage to live like that?”
“You know the saying it takes a village to raise a child? In our case, it only took one sweet neighbor, Mrs. Rudy. She helped us when she could. Anyway,” I stifled a yawn, “why don’t you share with me how you grew up to be what you are now?”
“My granddad was Dean of the College of Archaeology at Cambridge. And when I was eight, he took me with him to what was supposed to be the location of Sodom and Gomorrah in Jordan.”
I stared wide-eyed at Andrew. “At eight? Your parents allowed that?”
