He was waiting for her. Kneeling on one knee in the classic proposal pose. Liz stared at him.
Mike smiled and held out his hand. “Elizabeth Hamilton, will you do me the great honor of becoming my wife? In sickness and in health.” Mischief danced into his eyes and into his smile. “In our present or our future.”
Her heart pounded. Emotions picked her up, shook her, dropped her back into amazement and shock. “I didn’t tell him because I didn’t want to spoil this moment for myself.” She put her hand in Mike’s.
He stood. “The ground’s kind of hard,” he said.
She choked and laughed.
“You haven’t answered my question.”
“Yes,” she said. She searched his face. “Are you sure?”
He smiled and this time the expression was tender. “Very sure,” he murmured. He stroked his thumb along her cheek, then he bent, moving slowly and deliberately, and kissed her.
At the touch of his lips any reservations she still harbored flowed away. It felt right being here with him. It wasn’t just the affirmation from her visit to the future that they had a long and evidently successful relationship, but the look in his eyes before he kissed her. A look that said he was the luckiest man alive because she had just said yes.
As he kissed her she let her body melt into his and mischief drove her as the evidence of how she affected him pushed against her. She pulled his shirt free from the waistband of his jeans, then slid her hands up his warm skin. He made a little sound of protest and pleasure. He deepened the kiss, teasing her lips open with his tongue, then plunging inside. It was her turn to sigh as pleasure took her.
When he lifted his head they were both breathing hard. He glanced around, his eyes gleaming. “Too open, I’m afraid.”
She laughed and cuddled closer. “There’s nobody here but prairie dogs.”
“And our grandson on the other side of that beacon of yours.”
“We could move far enough away that we wouldn’t accidentally roll into the light.”
Mike looked skeptical. “What if he moves around? Does the beacon go with him?”
“Of course. He is the beacon.”
“What if this is a parking lot and he comes outside to get into his car? Or to a picnic area where he takes his morning coffee break?”
Liz began to laugh. “I guess you’re right. Seeing Grandma and Grandpa making love could scar a guy for life.”
“Wouldn’t want that,” Mike said gravely, but his eyes danced with amusement.
“I suppose we should go back and tell him our news,” Liz said.
“I’m pretty sure he already knows,” Mike said, holding her close. “Or he’s guessed. But yeah, let’s go back. It seems rude to leaving him hanging.”
She reluctantly eased out of his arms. “How did you know he is your grandson too?”
Mike pulled his cell out of his pocket, flipped through some pictures, then showed one to Liz. “My mother,” he said.
The picture showed Mike standing next to a woman with dark hair and Mark’s eyes. “The family resemblance is strong,” Liz murmured.
Mike nodded. “So is the name. Mark is my middle name.” He shrugged. “Put together, it was a pretty sure bet.”
“Is that why you kept coming back and forth?”
He smiled at her. “There was a lot to take in. I needed to know this was real, then I needed space and time to think. To decide how to handle this.”
She looked up into his eyes. “Are you sure?”
He touched her cheek again, stroking down to graze his fingers along the line of her jaw. “Yes. I make decisions quickly and this one was easy.”
They hovered there, on the edge of kissing again, both of them fighting the urge to give into the desire that pulsed between them, both of them aware they could not. Finally Liz cleared her throat. She held out her hand. “To the future again?”
They found Mark as they’d left him, in his lab, but his screen was alive with images and he was working it with fingers and voice. They were too far away to be able to see the contents of the files he had open, but the technology was dazzling. Mike headed for the desk, intrigued. Liz had seen it before, and understood the fascination, so she went along. Mark heard them though, and ordered a security shutdown before they could see anything interesting.
“You’re back,” he said. “I didn’t expect you.”
Mike raised his brows. “You thought we’d leave without saying good-bye?”
Mark grinned. “I thought you’d be distracted.”
Liz smiled up at Mike. “We were.”
“We are,” Mike said. He returned her look, tenderness in his. He glanced at his grandson. “Wish us happiness. Your grandmother and I are engaged.”
“Congratulations,” Mark said. The dismay of a few minutes ago was gone. Amusement had taken its place.
Liz leaned forward and kissed his cheek. “We have to go, but we’ll be back.”
“I know,” Mark said.
“Of course you do,” Mike commented. His expression was wry.
They left a short time later. Moments after they returned to the present, Mike’s phone rang. He held on to Liz’s hand, refusing to let go, as he answered it. “Harvey! Good to hear from you. How are the contract negotiations going?”
They wandered back to the truck as Mike talked to Harvey Earnshaw, the lawyer who was negotiating with the university on behalf of Discovering Dinos. Most of Mike’s side of the conversation consisted of “yeah,” “right,” and “okay,” so Liz couldn’t get a sense of what Harvey was saying on his end of the line.
As they neared the truck, Mike said, “I can be there in an hour or so. Email the documents to me. I’ll read them over, then sign them and send them back.” He disconnected, but it was a minute or so before he spoke. “That was Harvey Earnshaw.”
“Your lawyer.”
He nodded. They reached the truck. He stopped, but didn’t get into the cab. “He has a deal. A compromise that is a fair deal.”
“What are the terms?” Liz asked.
“You and I are the main authors of the dig report and any other research papers that come out of the find.”
Liz nodded. This was a good clause.
“We are both involved in the lab work.”
Liz nodded again. The scientific work that went on after the excavation was finished and the bones were safely secured in a laboratory setting was even more important than excavating the find itself. Having Mike included in the lab work was a major compromise, one that she was sure would infuriate Alfred Scarr.
“The location of the head determines who gets custody of the whole skeleton.”
That surprised her. “The university was willing to risk giving you control of the creature’s fate?” She wrinkled her nose. “Evidently they don’t have as many prejudices as Dr. Scarr does.”
“They do,” Mike said. “But they’re playing a hunch. The way the body is lying, the head could be on either side of the line. The shoulders and neck are within Scarr’s permit area, though, so they think the odds are on their side.”
“What do you think?” Liz asked, searching his face for clues.
He shrugged. “Could go either way. If the university wins, the skeleton is processed in Scarr’s lab and then will be displayed or archived at the university’s museum.”
“If it’s on your side?”
His smile was mischievous. “It comes to Discovering Dinos’ lab, then I build a museum to house it.”
Liz’s breath caught, then she laughed. “Do you think that’s what happened?”
He looked back to the open prairie where they had so recently been inside a state-of-the-art paleo lab. “It could be.” He looked back at Liz. He touched her cheek. “But we won’t know until it happens, will we? We were both very careful to make sure our current selves wouldn’t know what our future selves did.”
Liz frowned. “Some times I’m a pain in the ass.”
Mike laughed. “Come on. I’ll drop you at the site, then I have to go back into town to read that contract and get it back to Harvey.”
“In a minute,” Liz said. She reached up to tangle her fingers in his hair, then she pulled his head down. “I want a kiss first,” she murmured against his lips.
He wasn’t hard to persuade.