Dusk drifted into the velvety darkness of a prairie night. The members of the Discovering Dino dig team and Liz gathered together in front of a campfire and talked. About the day, what they’d found, what they were expecting for the next day, about themselves. They were unwinding after a long, hot day in the sun and there was a sense of mellowness among them.
It was a very different atmosphere than the one Liz had learned to expect at Scarr’s camp. There people broke up after dinner was over and the dishes washed and put away. A few worked in the lab tent, but most retired to their own tents. This friendly atmosphere that surrounded her now was as much a surprise to Liz as the quality of the team Mike Edmonds had put together.
His dig supervisor, Will, had a Ph.D. from a top school. The two summer students who worked with Will were also at top schools. That Mike was able to assemble such a well-qualified team was surprising, given the animosity Scarr—and, she assumed—other academic paleontologists had toward Mike and his business-oriented excavations.
Though she didn’t express her surprise, Will caught on to it. Mike had moved away to deal with an email as they had Internet, thanks to the enterprising Josh. Will nodded his head in Mike’s direction and said, “You wonder why I work for him and not an academic like Scarr.”
Liz shrugged and said with a laugh that had an edge of bitterness she couldn’t quite contain, “No one would want to work for Scarr if they didn’t have to.”
Will laughed too. The two students listened silently. “There are other paleontologists. Most of them aren’t as self-serving as Scarr is.”
“Yeah, that’s true.” As she moved through the various academic levels on her quest for her Ph.D., Liz had worked on other digs, in increasing levels of responsibility. As an undergrad, she’d simply dug where ordered and learned her craft. As a masters’ student, she also dug, but she’d explored too, and worked in the site lab tent. Once she was at the Ph.D. level, she worked more closely with the dig’s organizer and she’d had her name included in the dig reports. She worked, she achieved, she moved on.
She was proud of her accomplishments, but she was very aware that she wasn’t the kind of splashy, spectacular person Zac Doyle was. Liz did her work, she didn’t talk it up. As far as she knew, Zac worked hard at his craft too, but he was one of those people who excelled at making sure that everyone in the paleo community knew about his accomplishments, and that they realized this his were somehow more important than anyone else’s.
There was quiet around the campfire for a minute. Liz looked over, past the flickering fire, to the shadows where Mike was still on his phone. She looked back at Will. “Why did you choose to work for Discovering Dinos?”
He prodded the fire with an iron poker that had come from town, like the wood burning in the firepit. There was not enough vegetation in this dry, dusty badland to supply wood for burning. “Why did I opt to work for a dino pirate like Mike, you mean?”
She flushed and hoped that no one would notice in the flickering light. “No. Why choose a private organization rather than a museum or a university?”
Will took a while to consider that. “The easy answer is that Mike had an opening and I needed a job.” He shrugged. “That’s part of it.” He poked the fire again, his eyes on the flames. “The other part. Well, the other part was that I discovered I wasn’t suited to the cut and thrust of academic life. I’m not particularly competitive. I love puttering around in my lab, cleaning bones, looking for clues about the animal’s life. I like writing up what I find and knowing I can pass on my knowledge that way. I don’t want to teach undergrad classes, or mentor grad students. Or go to conferences where I have to present papers to impress my peers so I can get ahead in my department.” He shrugged. “Mike lets me do what I want to do.”
“But he’ll sell the bones you dig up.”
“Will he?”
Liz frowned. “Doesn’t he?”
“At times,” Will said. “Discovering Dinos is a business. All of our digs are privately funded, either through the company or through investors.”
Liz raised her brows. “I think you’re proving my position.”
Will shook his head. “How is Scarr’s dig funded?”
“A grant from the university provides the base, but there are quite a number of smaller grants that top up the funds.”
“From where?”
She frowned, thinking. “The second largest funding comes from a museum. Then there are several grants from private charities and donors.”
“And they all want their piece of the pie,” Will said softly.
She stared at him.
“Think about it,” he said. “Say Scarr strikes it big on his dig here, the university gets its name mentioned in the news reports of a new dino find. They’re also mentioned prominently in any papers that result from the find. The museum gets the bones. If our shared dino is a new species they will be able to display the only one on record in their museum. And then there are the private donors. They are also mentioned in the papers that are published and may have their names listed at the museum, along with the university’s. Name recognition brings in more funding for the university and the private charities.”
“The bones will stay here, in the United States,” Liz said, a little desperately.
Will shrugged. “Who says they’ll go out of the country under Mike’s watch?” When Liz didn’t immediately respond, he added impatiently, “All I’m saying is that no one is altruistic and the academic digs are doing it for the same reasons Mike is.”
“And what’s that?” She was rewarded by a long, well duh, look from Will.
But it was Mike who replied. “I’m fascinated by dinosaurs.”
Nicely done, Liz! She felt herself go hot all over. Still, she didn’t regret the conversation. And it was better that Mike should be part of it, rather than just being defended by his deputy.
Will shot Mike a glance, then grinned. “She has a somewhat…distorted view of what we do.”
“Not surprising, considering,” Mike said. He resumed his position by the fire, on the other side of Will, beside one of the summer students, who were taking in the conversation with wide eyes and closed mouths.
“So enlighten me,” she said.
Will laughed at that and stood up. “I’m ready to head in. I had an early start today and I want to make another tomorrow. Good night.”
The students decided it was a good time for them to slip away as well, leaving Mike and Liz in the darkness, lit by the stars above and the leaping light from the fire. For a time they sat silently, the only sound the crackle of the burning wood.
“What do you know about Discovering Dinos?” Mike asked finally.
Liz leaned forward, her elbows on her knees, as she stared at the fire. “Not much. I’d never heard of you until I ended up on Scarr’s dig.”
Mike poked at the fire, as Will had done earlier. “Did Scarr tell you that I sell the bones I find to the highest bidder?”
She nodded. “Usually dilatant billionaires from the third world.”
“Hmmm. And did he tell you I’m destroying priceless evidence every time I dig, because I don’t have the proper education?”
“Constantly.” She was watching his face now, her attention completely caught. A smile flickered on the edge of his lips, but she wasn’t sure if it was bitter, amused, or rueful. Perhaps it was a combination of all those emotions.
“I suppose he says my company is crass, commercial and making a fortune off of what should be a pure academic endeavor.”
“Your dino tourism program,” Liz said. “Yeah, he has mentioned it.”
Mike laughed. Liz realized that the smile was amused, not bitter, because his laugh was clear of any darker emotions. “Those two who slipped away before our discussion turned into an argument—Justin and Maggy? They started coming to the Discovering Dino summer digs ten years ago, when I was just getting started. At first they came with their parents, but when they were older they came on their own. They’re both in university now and they both plan to become paleontologists. And they’ll succeed too, because they know what it takes to be a paleontologist. More importantly, they know what it means. The rough digging conditions, the long hours of backbreaking work. The nitpicky work in the lab. There’s no romance in why they’ve chosen this career. Their eyes are open and they’re prepared.”
“You’re saying you’re a teacher as much as a prof in a university lecture hall is.”
He cast her an approving grin. “Yeah. I’m hands on. I teach the basics, but I also instill a love for the craft, not just the technical details.”
“There’s no apology in your voice.”
He raised his brows. “Should there be?”
She thought about that, then shook her head. “No, I suppose not. For selling bones to billionaires, maybe.”
He made a derisive sound. “So the femur of a hadrosaur gets locked up in a case in some rich guy’s mansion and he shows it off to all his friends to impress them. Is that any worse than the femur being put in a box and stored away in the basement of a museum, because the museum already has dozens of hadrosaur femurs? To be brought out once a year or three, if that, when a researcher decides they want to take a look at it?”
Put that way, he had a point. Liz laughed. “You’re good at identifying the flaws in the system.”
He shrugged. “I’m outside the system, so I see it differently.”
“Nice of you not to say ‘more clearly,’” Liz said, keeping her tone light.
Mike flashed her an amused smile. “Doesn’t mean I wasn’t thinking it.”
She laughed again. “With that, I think it’s time I turned in as well. I’ll see you tomorrow.”
“Good night,” he murmured as she stood up.
She headed off. When she reached her tent, she looked back. He poked at the fire, spreading the embers, relaxed, a man comfortable in the world he had created for himself.
Something twisted in her stomach and she thought how very attractive that was.
Mike prodded the logs still producing a bright flame in the darkness. It was over a quarter of an hour since Liz had disappeared into her tent. She’d extinguished her light a couple of minutes ago and, except for the flames in the firepit, the camp was in darkness. He was alone with his thoughts.
That was fine with him. Though he enjoyed being around people and he liked the atmosphere of a camp on the open prairie, he found that he needed quiet at the end of the evening to recharge and think thorough the problems thrown his way during the day. Tonight his big problem was Liz Hamilton and his feelings for her.
When he’d met Liz Hamilton she’d been a woman in jeopardy. His mouth turned up into a wry smile as he thought the hokey words. As clichéd as the statement was, it provided a pretty good description of her situation. She’d been out on the prairie, in the open, with a major storm on the way, and no shelter in sight. He had stopped to help, because he would have stopped for anyone in the same situation. What happened after that had been a surprise. The instant attraction that caught him by the throat when he’d first saw her face, an attraction that didn’t dissipate even when he learned who she was.
That attraction was still there and he fought it every time he was near her. During the day he hid behind his sunglasses and hoped she wasn’t aware that he watched her more often than he should. When he invited her to move into the camp he told himself it was so he could keep an eye on her—and that was still true—but he also liked the idea of being with her outside of work.
A log crackled and shifted. He pushed it back to the center of the fire. Flames caught a fresh portion and blazed high. Tonight when he’d come back from dealing with Harvey Earnshaw’s email about the contract negotiations, his damned ego had leapt when he realized that she and Will were talking about him. He liked that she was interested in him, that she was digging for information about him. He’d given her another nugget, let her see part of himself, before she retired for the night. He could have supplied more—all the details about how he’d formed Discovering Dinos, why he hadn’t gone on to grad school after he completed his undergrad. But he held back. He wanted her to open up to him as well, and monopolizing their conversations wasn’t going to do it.
It occurred to him that he was thinking about Liz a woman, not a paleontologist and colleague. He needed to get that sorted out in his head. They were locked together on this find, for the immediate future and very likely for a lot of time beyond it. Harvey had been practically rubbing his hands with glee tonight. He’d emailed that negotiations were going well and that all of the extreme, outrageous clauses he always included in his initial demands weren’t causing so much as a ripple at the university’s end.
It was Harvey’s policy to include demands he was certain the other side would not be willing to meet. Then, when they protested and insisted those clauses be deleted, Harvey would concede—always with a great show of reluctance. Later, when the opposition wanted other concessions, he’d refuse, citing his earlier compromises, and the other side would back off. That way, he ensured that the really important stuff slipped through under the radar and he ended up with a contract that was tipped in Discovering Dino’s favor. Tonight Harvey said it looked like he was about to get all of his must have clauses included, especially that one, really big, red herring.
Mike tipped his head back and smiled at the black, star spotted sky. If Harvey was right, he would be seeing a great deal of Liz Hamilton over the next months. Should he follow the attraction between them and see if it led to sex and a relationship? Or perhaps just to friendly sex with no ties between them? He mulled that over while the fire gradually die down.
As the flames faded into embers, he decided that casual sex between friendly colleagues was the best idea. No messy possessiveness on either side, so no painful emotional break up at the end of the season, but satisfaction on both sides.
He spread the embers, then dumped the last of the coffee from the urn onto them and added dirt on top for good measure. Then he turned in for the night, ready to deal with whatever the next day threw his way.
Tomorrow morning brought a sleepy-eyed Liz to breakfast and along with her a lot of thoughts about bed and waking up together that told him he needed to step up his plan to move their situation into his friendly colleagues and lovers scenario. He didn’t have a lot of luck at breakfast. She ate quickly and disappeared down into the rift while he was still munching on bacon and eggs. Still, he figured he’d see her down at the excavation and didn’t worry.
Forty-five minutes later he did find her there. He also found Scarr and Zac Doyle. He greeted them both politely. Zac nodded acknowledgement, but Scarr simply glared at him. Well, that was fine. He didn’t care about Alfred Scarr. He went to work with Will on his side of the find.
Scarr shot them both a look, then grabbed Liz’s arm and dragged her deeper into the federal side, away from Will and Mike.
“You’d think we carried the Ebola virus,” Will muttered.
Mike laughed. “Wouldn’t it be fun to find some way to make him catch it?”
Will laughed too, and they continued on, though Mike kept an eye on what Scarr was doing with Liz on the other side of the rift.
Whatever it was, he seemed to be deeply emotional about it. He waved his hands in the air as he talked and occasionally he pointed aggressively. It was that aggressive pointing that Mike worried about. But he stayed where he was and worked on clearing away debris, exposing more and more of the ancient bones that made up the skeleton.
Eventually Scarr nodded to Zac and they both headed down the rift, away from the find. Liz came back to her side of the skeleton and started working on the neck bones.
She was only a few feet away, but Mike couldn’t read her expression. That worried him. She looked closed off, not simply focused on her work. He got a couple of bottles of water from the cooler and went over to offer her one.
She stared at it, then looked at him and smiled. “Thanks.” She drank deeply, then said, “They’ve gone exploring.”
He blinked. This was not what he expected. “Scarr and Doyle?”
She nodded. “Scarr figures that there must be more bones like these in the rift and he wants to be the one to find them.”
While she drank more water, he tried to figure out if she was upset by this. “Shouldn’t Zac be helping you with our dino?”
“Scarr and Zac want a find of their own. Scarr doesn’t like the idea of sharing this one.” She looked at her neck bones, then back at him. “Truth be told, Mike? I’m glad they’re not interested in this creature. If exploring the rift makes them happy and keeps them from interfering in my dig, I’m all for it.”
He laughed. “Me too.”
She shot him a grin. “Besides, if there’s anything on my side of the line, it’s buried deep and not easy to find. I know. I’ve looked. Thanks for the water. I’ve got to get back to work.”
As he watched her sashay back to her bones, a laugh rumbled deep in his throat. He’d thought she wasn’t up to dealing with Scarr and Doyle, but it seemed there was a lot more to Liz Hamilton than he’d thought.