She gave an involuntary shiver at being “his woman.”
“Walk to the beach with me,” he said, wrapping his arm around her. “Wind’s getting fierce and the waves are something. Anyway, you’ll need another shower after getting this close to me.”
Smiling, she nodded and stayed close as he dropped off the hose in the garage, and they headed toward the boardwalk and over the dunes.
“Oh,” she exclaimed as she saw the waves, high and white and angry. Her hair whipped straight back, the wind strong enough to feel it press her whole body. “Yikes. I didn’t realize it had picked up this much.”
“This isn’t even the first real band. It’s gonna be serious, Kate.”
She nodded. “I can see that.”
Three-, four-, even five-foot waves stacked and broke in lines of phosphorescent white. The horizon to the south had gone the color of a bruise as night fell for the last time before the furious storm hit somewhere along the crystal beaches of the Panhandle.
They made their way down the boardwalk and sat on the top step where it met the sand, braving the wind.
“No night for a walk,” she said.
“You’d have to carry me.” Eli fell straight back, laying on the wood with his feet hanging down to the sand. “Actually, I may sleep here and dream about how you like Construction Eli.” He opened one eye and looked up at her. “Maybe I’ll hang up the drafting table and grab a toolbox.”
“Mmm. Hot.”
He laughed and sat up, bracing himself on his arms. “I could go into landscaping. Carry a shovel around. Look rugged. Have you swooning at parties.”
She laughed into the wind, and he caught a strand of hair that whipped across her face, guiding it back and tucking it—unsuccessfully—behind her ear with one filthy fingertip.
She closed her eyes.
“So, have you been deep into research while I did my level best to save Lakeside and the Summer House?”
She held his gaze, then looked out at the churning waves. “I have.”
“And?” He tried not to sound interested or anxious, she could tell. But he failed.
She had known this would come. She had been hoping she would have another day or two, just to put together her findings against hypothesis.
She had wanted to keep the research to herself a little longer because the moment she said any of it out loud, the conversation would set up another one that she didn’t really know how to have.
But here they were, on the outskirts of a hurricane, windblown, exhausted, and finally alone.
“It’s…okay.”
“Okay?” She heard the disappointment in the two syllables.
“More than okay,” she assured him. “As scholarship. As history. The documentation is better than I expected.”
“What do you mean?”
“I know you said just the gospels, and I have studied them, but I also…looked up some other stuff and have a few…theories.”
“Oh?”
“Well, I had to compare the manuscript evidence before I just accepted them as…” She smiled. “Gospel truth.”
He didn’t smile back, but looked hard at her, clearly bracing for whatever answer she would give.
“I expected to find a few dozen copies, specifically of those gospels, as primary source material. It’s the usual way historical documents are given weight and validity.”
“And?”
