Before Sunrise (2 page)

“I don't need a law clerk,” he returned.

“Then what do you need?”

“You wouldn't be working for me,” he corrected. “I have ties to a group that fights for sovereignty for the Native American tribes. They have a staff of attorneys. I thought you might fit in very well, with your back
ground in anthropology. I've pulled some strings to get you an interview.”

She didn't speak for a minute. Her eyes were on her hands. “I think you're forgetting something. My major is anthropology. Most of it is forensic anthropology. Bones.”

He glanced at her. “You wouldn't be doing that for them.”

She stared out the window. “What would I be doing?”

“It's a desk job,” he admitted. “But a good one.”

“I appreciate your thinking of me,” she said carefully. “But I can't give up fieldwork. That's why I've applied at the Smithsonian for a position with the anthropology section.”

He was quiet for a long moment. “Do you know how indigenous people feel about archaeology? We don't like having people dig up our sacred sites and our relatives, however old they are.”

“I just graduated,” she reminded him. “Of course I do. But there's a lot more to archaeology than digging up skeletons!”

He stopped for a traffic light and turned toward her. His eyes were cold. “And it doesn't stop you from wanting to get a job doing something that resembles grave-digging?”

She gasped. “It is not grave-digging! For heaven's sake…”

He held up a hand. “We can agree to disagree, Phoebe,” he told her. “You won't change my mind any more than I'll change yours. I'm sorry about the job, though. You'd have been an asset to them.”

She unbent a little. “Thanks for recommending me, but I don't want a desk job. Besides, I may go on to graduate school after I've had a few months to get over the past four years. They've been pretty hectic.”

“Yes, I remember.”

“Why did you recommend me for that job? There must be a line of people who'd love to have it—people better qualified than I am.”

He turned his head and looked directly into her eyes. There was something that he wasn't telling her, something deep inside him.

“Maybe I'm lonely,” he said shortly. “There aren't many people who aren't afraid to come close to me these days.”

“Does that matter? You don't like people close,” she said.

She searched his arrogant profile. There were new lines in that lean face, lines she hadn't seen last year, despite the solemnity of the time they'd spent together. “Something's upset you,” she said out of the blue. “Or you're worried about something.”

Both dark eyebrows went up. “I beg your pardon?” he asked curtly.

The hauteur went right over her head. “Not something to do with work, either,” she continued, reasoning aloud. “It's something very personal…”

“Stop right there,” he said shortly. “I invited you out to talk about a job, not about my private life.”

“Ah. A closed door. Intriguing.” She stared at him. “Not a woman?”

“You're the only woman in my life.”

She laughed unexpectedly. “That's a good one.”

“I'm not kidding. I don't have affairs or relationships.” He glanced at her as he merged into traffic again and turned at the next corner. “I might make an exception for you, but don't get your hopes up. A man has his reputation to consider.”

She grinned. “I'll remember that you said that.”

He pulled the car into the parking lot of a well-known hotel restaurant and cut off the engine. “I hope you're hungry. I missed breakfast.”

“So did I. Nerves,” she added.

He escorted her into the sparsely occupied restaurant and they were seated near the window. When they finished looking at the menu and gave their orders, he leaned back in his chair and studied her across the width of the table with quiet interest.

“Is my nose upside down?” she asked after a minute.

He chuckled. “No. I was just thinking how young you are.”

“In this day and age, nobody is that young,” she corrected. She leaned forward with her chin on her elbows and watched him. “Don't fight it,” she chided. “You might never run into anyone else who'd make you so uncomfortable.”

“That's a selling point?” he asked, surprised.

“Of course it is. You live deep inside yourself. You won't let yourself feel anything, because it's a form of weakness to you. Something must have hurt you very badly when you were younger.”

“Don't pry,” he said gently, but the words warned.

“If I hang around with you very much, I'm going to pry a lot more than this,” she informed him.

He considered that. He had cold feet where Phoebe was concerned. She wasn't the sort of person who'd settle for a shallow relationship. She'd want to go right to the bone, and she'd never let go. He was like that, too, but he'd been burned badly once, by a woman who liked him because he was a curiosity

“I've been collected already,” he said quietly. “Do you understand?”

She saw the brief flash of pain in his eyes and nodded slowly. “I see. Did she want to show off her indigenous aborigine to all her friends?”

His jaw tautened and something dangerous flashed in his eyes.

“I thought so,” she murmured, watching the faintest of expressions in his face. “Did she care at all?”

“I doubt it very much.”

“And you found out in a very public way, no doubt.”

His head inclined.

“I'm sorry,” she said. “Life teaches painful lessons.”

“Have you had any yet?” he returned bluntly.

“Not that sort,” she admitted, toying with her fork. “I'm rather shy with men, as a rule. And boys I went to school with either saw me as one of them or somebody's sister. Digging isn't very glamorous.”

“I thought you looked cute in mud-caked boots and a jacket three times your size.”

She glared at him. “Don't start.”

His dark eyes slid over her dress. It wasn't in the least revealing. It had a high lace collar and long sleeves gathered tight at the wrists. It cascaded down in folds to her ankles and under it she was wearing very stylish granny shoes. Her platinum hair was in a neat braid down her back. She wore a minimum of makeup and there was a tiny line of freckles right over her nose.

“I know I'm not pretty,” she said, made uncomfortable by the close scrutiny, “and I'm built like a boy.”

He smiled. “Are you still naive enough to think that looks matter?”

“It doesn't take much intelligence to see that pretty girls get all the attention in class.”

“At first,” he agreed.

She sighed. “There are so few boys who like to spend an evening listening to exciting discoveries like a broken bowl of charred acorns and half a soapstone pipe.”

“Mississippian,” he recalled, from their discussion about the find last year.

She beamed. “Yes! You remembered!”

He smiled at her enthusiasm. “I did a few courses in cultural anthropology,” he confessed. “Not physical anthropology,” he emphasized. “And so help me, if you say anthropology should be right up my alley…!”

“You didn't tell me that in Charleston,” she said.

“I didn't expect to see you again,” he replied. He hadn't even planned to come to her graduation. He wasn't sure if he regretted being here or not. His dark eyes searched her pale ones. “Life is full of surprises.”

She looked into his eyes and felt a stirring deep in her heart. She looked at him and felt closer than she'd ever been to anyone.

The waitress brought salads, followed by steak and vege
tables, and they ate in silence until apple pie and coffee were consumed.

“You're completely unafraid, aren't you?” he asked as he finished his second cup of coffee. “You've never really been hurt.”

“I had a crush on a really cute boy in my introductory anthropology class,” she said. “He ended up with a really cute boy in Western Civ.”

He chuckled. “Poor Phoebe.”

“It's the sort of thing that usually happens to me,” she confessed. “I'm not terribly good at being womanly. I like to kick around in blue jeans and sweatshirts and dig up old things.”

“A woman can be anything she wants to be. It doesn't require lace and a helpless attitude. Not anymore.”

“Do you think it ever did, really?” she asked curiously. “I mean, you read about women like Elizabeth the First and Isabella of Spain, who lived as they liked and ruled entire nations in the sixteenth century.”

“They were the exceptions,” he reminded her. “On the other hand, in Native American cultures, women owned the property and often sat in council when the various tribes made decisions affecting war and peace. Ours was always a matriarchal society.”

“I know. I have a B. A. in anthropology.”

“I noticed.”

She laughed softly. Her fingers traced a pattern around the rim of her coffee cup. “Will I see you in D.C. if I get the job at the Smithsonian?”

“I suppose so,” he told her. “You put me at ease. I'm not sure it's a good thing.”

“Why? Are you being tailed by foreign spies or something and you have to stay on edge because they might attack you?”

He smiled. “I don't think so.” He leaned back. “But I've had some experience with intelligence work.”

“I don't doubt that.” She searched his eyes. “Is it expensive to live in D.C.?”

“Not if you're frugal. I can show you where to shop for an apartment, or you might want to double up with someone.”

She kept her eyes on the coffee cup. “Is that an invitation?”

He hesitated. “No.”

She grinned. “Just kidding.”

His fingers curled around hers, creating little electrical sparks all along the paths of her nerves. “One day at a time,” he said firmly. “You'll learn that I don't do much on impulse. I like to think things through before I act.”

“I can see where that would have been a valuable trait in the FBI, with people shooting at you,” she said, nodding.

He let go of her hand with an involuntary laugh. “God, Phoebe…! You say the most outrageous things sometimes.”

“I'm sorry, it slipped out. I'll behave.”

He just shook his head. “I'll never forget the first thing you ever said to me,” he added. “‘Do you have shovel-shaped incisors?' you asked.”

“Stop!” she wailed.

He caught her long braid and tugged on it. His dark eyes probed hers. “I hate your hair bound up like this. I'd like to get a handful of it.”

“I know how you feel,” she murmured, glancing pointedly at his own ponytail.

He smiled. “We'll have to let our hair down together again some time,” he mused, “and compare length.”

“Yours is much thicker than mine,” she observed. She pictured it loose, as she'd seen it, when they were tracking people around the toxic waste site last year. She remembered standing on the riverbank with him while they kissed in a fever that never seemed to cool. If they hadn't been interrupted, anything could have happened. She flushed as she remembered how his hair had felt in her hands that
last few minutes they were together as he crushed her down the length of that long, powerful body…

“Cut it out,” he said, glancing at the thin gold watch on his wrist. “I have to catch a plane.”

She cleared her throat and tried not to look as hot and bothered as she felt. And he tried not to see that she was.

They finished their meal and he drove her back to the hotel where Clayton and Derrie were staying. He parked the car in a parking space a healthy walk from the hotel door, under a maple tree, and turned to her. The difference in their heights was even more apparent when they were seated. Her head barely came up to his chin. It excited him. He didn't understand why.

“I have my own room,” she said without looking up. “And Derrie and Clayton won't be back yet.”

“I won't come in,” he said deliberately. “I don't have much time.”

“I wish you could stay and have supper with us,” she remarked.

“I left a case hanging fire to come here. It was all I could do to manage one day.”

“I don't know anything about you, really,” she told him honestly. “You said you were FBI when you were in Charleston, and then you told Derrie you were CIA,
then you turned out to be a government prosecutor. You keep secrets.”

“Yes, but I don't lie as a rule,” he said. “I would have told you more if I'd been around long enough. It wasn't necessary, because I wasn't going to be around, and we both knew it. I came here against my better judgment, Phoebe. I'm too old and too jaded for a woman your age. You haven't even reached the stage of French kissing, while I've long passed the stage of Victorian courtship.”