Quint yawned next to her. “How much longer do you think Fernel will be?”
Once again, he seemed to be tuned into her thoughts. Or maybe he was getting good at reading her body language. He certainly had explored her from head to toe enough to know the lay of the land and had hands-on experience at pushing her buttons.
His gaze narrowed on her. “Why are you looking at me like that?”
“Like what?” She feigned innocence while batting her eyelashes at him like a well-practicedXtabay.
“Like my heart is on your radar again.”
Pedro swatted at a fly that had made its way into the tent. “What’s the rush with Dr. Fernel, Parker? You got a hot ox waiting for your big blue Bunyan?”
Quint chuckled, knocking Angélica’s leg with his again under the table. “I’m not sure if he just insulted you or complimented me.”
She held up her fist in Pedro’s direction. “He knows better than to insult me. I’ve made him cry before.”
“You fight dirty,hermana,” Pedro said, referring to their younger days of teasing and roughhousing during digs. “And you cheat.”
Pedro was the closest thing to a brother she had. Her parents had stopped at just one child due to their archaeology careers taking them far from home too often. When she was a kid, Angélica had often wished for playmates. Then one summer, Pedro had come to work at her parents’ dig site, tall, thin, and gangly, overflowing with teenage boy energy. They’d formed a fast friendship that had grown into a family type of bond. He’d once told Angélica that him having four other sisters had made it easy for him to take on one more, even if the newest one was always covered with dirt and far bossier than the rest.
She wrinkled her nose at him. “I only cheated a little.”
“You pulled outmuchochest hairs.”
“Notmucho. Like ten. Or maybe twenty. But who was counting?”
“Me. I needed all the hairs to impress hot ladies.” Grinning, he shook his head. “Eres una mujercita malvada.”
“I am not,” she defended herself against his “evil little woman” allegation.
“What doesmalvadamean?” Quint asked.
“It means ‘sweet and loving,’ ” she lied, which earned a bark of laughter from Pedro.
Quint yawned again. “I don’t know about you all, but I’m ready to whisper sweet nothings to my pillow.” He thumbed toward Angélica. “Not to mention that the boss lady here promised to tell me a bedtime story that didn’t involve ancient kings, mythical gods, or ugly vultures.”
“What about scorpions?” Her father swirled his coffee before taking a drink. “Or snakes?”
“Of course I’ll include snakes,” said Angélica, playfully shoulder bumping Quint. “What’s a good story without a slithering surprise?”
“Evil woman,” Quint said, bumping her back.
“Ha!” Pedro’s grin widened. “Big brains like ours think the same.”
He’d almost nailed that idiom.
Juan looked toward the tent flap. “Maybe I should go find Dr. Fernel. He should have been back by now.”
Angélica hoped he hadn’t gotten lost in the dark somehow in spite of his tent being just two away from where they sat waiting.
“He’s on his way,” Daisy said as if she had the geoarchaeologist on her internal radar. “I’m so excited to see the results of the work Dr. Fernel has done over the last couple of days. It’s hard to visualize what we’re looking at with the vegetation blocking our view.”
Truth be told, Angélica was excited too, especially about the sweat equity it would save. Just thinking about the amount of machete work in store for them without a clear path in sight made her shoulders ache.
“It may not be that much different than what he showed us when he first arrived,” she told Daisy, even though she had her fingers crossed that the topography was clearer.
The odd-shaped lumps on Dr. Fernel’s initial map made it hard to determine if she was looking at actual ruins buried under trees and vegetation or just accumulations of downed trees and cap rock ridges lining partially sunken limestone cavities and crevices.
“I wonder if the drone video will show anything more than leaves,” Quint said.
