He looks at her like he’s not sure what language she’s speaking.
“You can stay, Smithson,” she says, irritated at herself for being someone whose friendly gestures seem suspicious. “I have noidea why your creativity prefers a cabin in middle-of-nowhere Montana to a beach house in Berkeley, but suit yourself.”
He clears his throat in what she imagines is an epic battle against having an emotion in public. “Yes. Well. I would like that, thank you.”
“You’re welcome.”
“And regarding last night,” he adds, “I won’t cross that line again.”
“We already covered this.”
“We covered the part whereyouhave reasons not to cross the line. Not the part whereIhave reasons too. Rest assured, I much prefer a friendly relationship between you and me.”
“Friendly?”
“Collegial,” he amends.
“No,” she says with a vehemence that surprises both of them. “Not collegial. Friendly.”
He tilts his head, his eyes inscrutable behind those Clark Kent glasses. A little gust of wind rattles his papers, nudging the dark lock that falls over his forehead. She pushes a flyaway curl back from her face and he looks away, his hand twitching.
Suddenly, she knows he’s been watching her hair in the breeze this whole time.
“All right. Friendly,” he says.
“Good,” she says. It feels like she should follow that up with something, so she says “Good” again. She stands up cautiously, determined not to throw up in his cabin. “I have to go regret my choices for a few hours, but I’ll see you at dinner, I guess.”
“Okay, bestie,” he says blandly, trying not to smile.
“Try to contain yourself, Smithson,” she says, channeling Maggie Smith onDownton Abbey.“This display isn’t seemly.”
She shouldn’t try to make him laugh. Shouldn’t let the husky, delighted sound send her into a paroxysm of shivers. And she won’t, from now on. Definitely not.
“You will, though,” she mutters, shuffling away. “Don’t kid a kidder, Adams.”
16
July 3:
Fifty-Six Days Until the End of the Summer Excavation Season
On an afternoon like this, it feels impossible that the sky will ever be anything but Montana blue. Even the rising breeze wouldn’t necessarily have tipped Ripley off that the weather was about to change.
But this morning’s satellite weather report begged to differ. Even without the cartoon clouds added to the Doppler images, it was clear what the swirling, eastward-moving system would bring: water, and lots of it.
“Think it’s gonna rain?” Cara asks, watching Griff chisel underneath the small raptor she’s been working on.
“Hmph,” Ripley grumbles.
“Come on, that was funny.”
It is and it isn’t. Out here, rain can grant your wishes, washing away surface soil so fossils can shine through like the nerdy girl who finally takes off her glasses in a high-school movie. It can also lay a curse, scattering bones and fracturing them into unreconstructible fragments. It can flood any dig site that’s below ground level, which is pretty much all of them.
Beauty is safely above the canyon floor, but Cara’s raptor isn’t—hence the extraction. It’s small, but with the surrounding matrix, the cap, and the wooden supports, it’ll be pretty chunky.
“Ready, mate?” Griff puts his tools aside and rolls the specimen into Smithson’s waiting arms.
“How much plaster did you put on this thing, Ripley?” Smithson grunts, muscles popping in his neck.
