“You keep me too busy illustrating your many, many specimens for your many, many papers for me to get up to anything.”
“Ha. I’m watching you.”
“Oh, isthatwhat it takes to get you to watch me? In that case, I could be up to any number of things. You’d better keep a very close eye on me tonight.” His hand comes to Ripley’s lower back as they stroll across the property line to join Cara and Griff in the jeep, and she feels a flush of warmth despite the almost-September cool.
“You like it when my eyes are close.” She raises her eyebrows meaningfully.
“And all this time, I was taking the blame for being the conspiring one,” he complains.
“Youarethe conspiring one.”
“We’ll see,” he says enigmatically, and hands her into the jeep.
Ripley’s suspicion that something’s going on is confirmed when Cara pulls up in front of the Clever Girl Museum instead of the ranch house.
“Why is everyone in on this but me? What happened to Taco Thursday?” she asks mutinously, not unbuckling her seatbelt.
“Get your ass out of the car and into the museum, Rip. Tacos will wait.”
Ripley looks accusingly at James. “That’s whathesaid,” she tells Cara.
“He’s very smart. He’s going to be right a lot of the time. If you didn’t want to live with that kind of man, you shouldn’t have let him—” Cara cuts herself off abruptly.
“Let himwhat?” Ripley yelps.
“Come along, Ripley,” James says, climbing out. “Sooner begun is sooner done.”
Grumbling, she follows him into the museum, past the informational posters bearing his artwork and the spot along the west wall where the addition will go up next spring.
As soon as the team at Oxford finishes preparing the birds, Beauty’s bones will come home to the pedestal that’s been waiting for her since last year. The rest of her skeleton will be re-created using Beast as a model.
Beast will go to the Field Museum in Chicago, which paid handsomely for the privilege of displaying the world’s only known complete specimen ofMontanopteryx ripleii.The Natural History Museum in London badly wanted him, but Ripley felt strongly that he should be closer to home. A replica of his fossil will join Beauty on the—
Her steps stutter, then stop. Her hand comes to her mouth.
Oxford has done a spectacular job with the reproductions. Beauty’s posed as James imagined her, her wings spread as they are in the oversize illustration spotlighted on the wall. Beast perches to one side, his wings folded, his head cocked inquisitively.
“There she is,” James says softly, his arms wrapping around Ripley from behind. She can tell from the touch of his breath on her neck that he’s not looking at anything but her.
Ripley takes James’s hand and pulls him forward, irresistibly drawn to these long-dead, unbelievablyalivecreatures. “Oh my God,” she keeps repeating as she walks around the installation. “How did you do this?”
“I found a way,” he says, smug. “Or, more accurately, our friends from the Field sent a preservationist to assemble them.”
“You all knew? Geraldine knew? And nobody told me?”
“Thereissuch a thing as being able to keep a secret, Ripley, regardless of whether you personally subscribe to the theory.”
“Ha-ha,” she says, rolling her eyes at him. “This is unbelievable. Is Cara going to reopen in September so people can see them? Because I think there would be a lot of demand, if—” Air exits from her lungs in a shocked rush.
From Beast’s left wing, on the second of his three “fingers,” something shiny winks at Ripley. A pale gold circle with familiar leafy scrollwork clasping a cabochon of amber whose warm brown streaks exactly match the color of her eyes.
She turns to find James on one knee, his face wreathed in hope and joy.
“Say you’ll be my wife, Ripley,” he says softly. “You and me, for all time.” The ring is on the fossil, of course, so he has nothing to hold out but his hand. Himself.
Ripley’s heart is about to leap out of her chest. “Oh, James. My dad—”
“He and your stepmom are waiting in the ranch house with champagne,” he says, breaking out the full, brilliant, recurved smile. “I assume if you want Steve to be here, your answer is…”
