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He halted and sighed. “I thought we’d established that you’re not good at improvising.”

“This time I will be, you’ll see.”

While we took the tortuous path down to the water, I ran over in my head different scenarios of my imminent confrontation with Professor Harris. The first possibility was that he’d deny everything, and I’d believe him because I still couldn’t believe he’d steal my work. In the second scenario, he ran away with the statue, selling it on the black market. And in the third scenario, and probably least likely, he fell to his knees crying and admitted he’d been jealous of my intuition and my genius.

Of the three scenarios, the first seemed the most likely.

By the time we made it down to the springs, the incoming ferry was a white speck in the distance.

“You should tell him that he was upstaged by a dog. He’s gonna love that.” Levi snickered as we settled under the trees and he extracted a thermos of coffee from his backpack and handed me one of Callie’s pastries. I was too nervous to eat, but Levi was the image of laid-back confidence in a white T and khakis, the collar of his bomber jacket up, and sexy morning stubble. His wide, happy-go-lucky smile was on full display as if he hadn’t just revealed major childhood psychological trauma to me last night. It made me even more determined to make sure it stayed there on his gorgeous face once and for all, proving to him that this business of bad stars was bullshit. As soon as we got back to Italy, it was going to become my mission.

But first I had to deal with this nightmare. The butterflies in my stomach had morphed into a frantic swarm of bees by the time I heard the approach of footsteps on the cliff above us. I closed my eyes and thought of the perfect little statue. I was going to protect her.

The footsteps stopped, and when I opened my eyes there was Professor Harris silhouetted against the morning sky. I stood and stepped out of the shadows, Levi right behind me. “Diana!”

“Professor Harris.” I crossed my arms, surprised that I didn’t need to play the role of angry, vengeful harpy. I was one. Betrayal radiated from me as if I was the sun. It burnt me up from the inside.

“What are you doing here?”

“Funny, that. I got a call from my friends.” I gestured to Nikos and Callie who were standing behind him blocking the way back up the footpath. “About an amazing discovery they’d made. Right here, on the island you’re excavating. I thought there must be some confusion because you’d never told me anything about it.”

“Well, it’s simple, Diana. I didn’t want to get your hopes up,” Harris replied as if I were a spoiled child who needed appeasing.

I wasn’t going to let him off the hook though. “If my discovery of this so-called hoax was as meaningless as you’d made it out to be then why have you stopped construction of that hotel?”

“I was being cautious. Marcangeli found out about it, and to keep his team away, I was obliged to claim the site.”

“That’s why you wanted my notes. To take credit for what you might find!” I cried, heedless of the camera crew behind him watching the scene unfold.

“My dear, no!” He stepped closer, his tone changing from annoyance to paternal reassurance.

“I suppose you won’t mind then that we’ve invited some impartial authorities as well. They’ll be here today to officially document the find,” Nikos chimed in. “For the record, this artifact and any others that you may find belong to Lyra. They’re not to leave the country.”

The man who had filmed my interview back in Italy spoke up. “Reginald, I’m not following. Was this woman’s discovery a hoax or not?”

Professor Harris grit his teeth and charged at me, seizing my elbow roughly. Levi grabbed him and Harris spit out, “Now is not the time, Leroy. I need to speak with Diana.”

Levi removed Harris’s hand from my arm. “You can do that without touching her.”

“It’s okay, Levi.” I was ready to take on Harris and followed him over to the cluster of trees.

“Well, Diana, you’ve ruined a day’s filming,” he said, wiping his glasses with a handkerchief. “The whole point of these shows is to build up to the unexpected discovery. If you had just gone along as planned, you still would have gotten credit, but in a much more memorable way.”

“Are you trying to get me to believe that you were hiding things from me for the drama of it all?”

“Of course! I’ve been doing this for years. Audiences want drama, they want to root for the underdog. That could have been you!”

Sadly, as predicted, I kind of believed him. It did have some very perverted logic to it. Maybe I had misjudged him . . . except no! He’d delighted in belittling me in front of others for months. He wanted this for himself.

“And you would’ve been my savior. Reginald Harris comes to the rescue of a naïve doctoral student who was too dumb to see what she’d found!” I shook my head. “I don’t think so.”

“Part of the deal, Diana, was that you’d end up with the Etruria Foundation fellowship. But you were too impatient.” He puffed out his chest. “This is your biggest flaw as an archaeologist and scholar, your desire to discover something at all costs. The reality is that there are many boring years of going over the same square of dirt with nothing to show for it.”

His words hit a nerve. Was I like that? “No, you’re wrong,” I said finally. “It’s not about me. I want to honor the past. To learn from the people who have walked this earth before us.”

He waved me off. “Tell yourself that.”

“Excuse me!” cried the filmmaker. “We need to get rolling if we want the best light.”