Lady of Heaven (37 page)

Morgan stared at
him, startled by his admission. In all of the deep conversations they’d had
over the past month, he’d never mentioned his life as a bare knuckle boxer. Her
tears began to dry up as she contemplated his confession.

“Then why do you
judge me so harshly?” she wanted to know. “In all of the time I’ve known you,
you’ve never once told me you were proud of what I did or proud that I have
succeeded in a difficult profession. All you’ve ever tried to do is talk me out
of something I really love. Is that really fair, Fox? I’ve never once tried to
talk you out of being an Egyptologist so you could be a lawyer or a doctor. 
All I’ve ever done is tell you how wonderful you are at what you do. I would
just like the same courtesy.”

His jaw ticked
faintly as he digested her words, knowing she was right but fighting with the
last scraps of reason to defend himself.

“I just don’t
want to see you get hurt,” he offered weakly. “It would just destroy me,
Morgan. You have no idea how much it would destroy me.”

“So you want to
put me in a glass bubble?” she shook her head at him. “I can get killed driving
down the street or walking on the sidewalk. It can happen anywhere.  What is it
you want from me, Fox? A pretty wife who stays home like a good girl, lives in
a box and raises children? Because if that’s really what you want, then this
marriage needs to be annulled.”

That was it for
Fox; he fixed on her intently, his enormous hands open and pleading. “God,
don’t even suggest annulment,” he whispered. “You’re right; you’re absolutely
right.  I’m so sorry I’ve come across like a chauvinist. I didn’t mean to but
that’s exactly what it looks like. I’m so busy loving this perfect relationship
that I want to create a perfect world to go along with it and that means you’re
not carrying a gun and a badge. It means you’re safe always and I have complete
control of the situation.  But I’m starting to realize that there are some
things I can’t control. I just have to accept and deal with them, and your
profession is one of those things.”

He looked so sad
that Morgan felt herself relenting. “You’ve been saying that since I met you,”
she said softly. “I haven’t seen any progress.”

He put his hands
up in surrender. “I know, I know,” he agreed swiftly. “But I will try; I really
will try.  And just so you know, you have deeply impressed me with your bravery
and skills. I think you’re extremely good at what you do. But it also scares me
to death and I’m having a hard time reconciling that.”

Morgan was
staring at the ground as he spoke. When he was finished, she just stood there
and stared at the sand.  Fox watched her, praying she was going to forgive him,
feeling more desperate and sad than he ever had in his life. As he watched,
Morgan turned and, without a word, climbed into the car. 

Fox climbed into
the driver’s side but he didn’t start the car. He just sat there with her,
feeling the silence like a huge weight on his chest. He couldn’t breathe.
Everything about him hurt. 

“Please, love,”
he whispered, closing his eyes tightly. “Don’t hate me. Please don’t do that.”

Morgan didn’t
say anything for a moment. “I don’t hate you,” she finally whispered. “I love
you so much that it hurts.  Fox, maybe I’m the one being selfish in all of
this. If it means that much to you that I’m not a cop, then I guess the bottom
line is that you’re more important than a job. My ex-husband tried to tell me
that once but I just didn’t get it. But I get it now; if I had to pick between
my career and you, then I would pick you every time.”

He turned to
her, staring at her beautiful profile, feeling anguish and regret and deep,
abiding love.  As she continued to stare at her lap, he leaned over, very
slowly and very gently, putting an enormous hand on her cheek.  Very gently, he
pulled her face to his lips, planting the most loving and delicate of kisses on
her left cheek.  The moment he did it, Morgan burst into tears again, crumbling
against him.  Fox wrapped his enormous arms around her and held her close.

“We’ll go into
town tonight and get a room,” he whispered. “I won’t make you stay out here, I
promise.”

She couldn’t
even answer him, all of the hurt and emotion she was feeling finding a release.
Fox held her tightly, his enormous hand holding her head against his chest,
listening to her sob and feeling about as bad as he possibly could. 

“Please don’t
cry,” he whispered, kissing the top of her head. “I love you so much.  Just try
to remember that everything I say or do stems from the fact that I love you
more than I have ever loved anything in my life.  I couldn’t go on if anything
ever happened to you.”

She sobbed
against his warm, powerful body, eventually quieting to the point of just
laying wearily against him, sniffling now and again.  She could hear his heart
beating steadily in her right ear and feel his hand on her head, stroking her
hair gently. She closed her eyes, his beating heart and gentle manner succeeding
in calming her.

“Were you really
a bare knuckle fighter?” she asked, her nose stuffy from crying.

He grinned. “I
was.  My ring name was Goliath Jones.”

She pulled away
from him, looking up at him as she wiped at her nose. “That’s fitting,” she
commented. Then she lifted one of his hands, looking at the knuckles. “I never
noticed all the scars you have on your hands.”

He watched her
as she inspected his flesh. “I’ve got a few,” he agreed. “I had my nose broken
four times.”

She dropped his
hands and inspected his nose; it was long and slightly off center, with a bit
of a bump in the middle.  She grinned at him. “It doesn’t take away from your
stunning good looks, you sexy devil,” she patted his cheek, watching his impish
grin spread. “Bare knuckle boxing is basically street fighting. It’s fight-club
stuff.”

“It is.”

“It’s not
legal.”

He fought off a
grin. “Are you going to arrest me?”

She smirked.
“No,” she said. “But it’s a brutal sport. You just get the crap beat out of
you.”

“Yes, you do,”
he agreed. “But, fortunately, I was the one beating the crap out of somebody
else most of the time.”

Her eyebrows
rose. “And you had the nerve to call my profession dangerous?”

His smile faded.
“Do we have to get into that again? I said I was sorry. I meant it.”

She shook her
head, putting her fingers over his lips. “I know,” she said softly. “I wasn’t
getting back into it.  I was just expressing shock because boxing is such a
dangerous sport.”

He cocked an
eyebrow. “No more dangerous that going to Egypt with you,” he teased gently.

She scowled at
him, pretending to be mad, and he scooped her up against him, nuzzling her neck
and shoulders.  He couldn’t describe the relief he was feeling now that things
were well between them again.

“Let’s go back
to camp and get Allahaba and Jabeel,” he said, his mouth muffled against her
warm flesh. “We’ll bring them into town with us. I don’t want to leave them out
here alone.”

She was quiet a
moment. “We really don’t have to go into town,” she said. “We can stay out
here. I’m fine with that. I’ve done nothing but complain and bitch the entire
time we’ve been out here and I’m sort of embarrassed about it. I guess I was
more high maintenance than I thought.”

He pulled his
face out of her shoulder to look at her, a smile playing on his lips. “I don’t
think you’ve been complaining the entire time,” he said. “And if you weren’t a
little high maintenance, I’d worry.”

She looked at
him, the impish grin on his face, and chuckled. Putting her hands on his
cheeks, she kissed him soundly on the lips.

“I love you,”
she murmured, kissing him again. “Thank you for putting up with my crap.”

His enormous
arms tightened and he pulled her against him, returning her kisses far more
lustily.  “Thank you for putting up with mine,” he whispered.

Fortunately, the
road was deserted and free from prying eyes.  The clothes began to come off and
the back seat of the car served well for their lovemaking purposes.

***

In the tent in
the dark little canyon near the Roman ruins, Morgan dreamt of guns and violence
that night.  But the morning dawned and she was glad it had only been dreams,
rising when Fox did, surprisingly, and using some of the baby wipes she brought
to wash up a little before dressing. 

 As Fox kissed
her and left the tent to go about his tasks, Morgan swabbed down with the
baby-scented wipes, washing her entire body with them including her feet. 
Finished and smelling like a baby, she put on clean jeans, tee-shirt and
socks.  The shoes went on, the hair went up, and with sunglasses in hand she
bolted from the tent.

She found Fox
and Allahaba surveying the hill. Jabeel gave her that morning’s breakfast of
the last of the cinnamon date cake and a hot cup of coffee.  Morgan ate her
breakfast as Allahaba and Fox climbed all over the lone hill.

Morgan watched
them for awhile until she grew bored and began to walk among the ruins of the
Roman settlement. She stood inside the stone squares, imagining what the rooms
would have looked like and who would have lived there. She’d seen the Gladiator
and Roman movies so she knew, at least from a Hollywood standpoint, how the
Romans treated their slaves. She walked the ruins, wondering how many men had
died there.

Sometime around
noon, Fox finished what he was doing and saw her sitting in the ruins of the
great house. Handing the Abney surveyor over to Allahaba, he made his way down
the hill and crossed the dirt road.  He came up behind Morgan as she sat on her
bottom, apparently looking at something on the ground. He crouched behind her,
his big hands on her arms.

“What are you
looking at?” he asked, kissing her on the top of the head.

Morgan pointed
to a stone on the ground. “That,” she said. “It looks like someone carved
something on it.”

Fox peered at
the stone; it was about a foot wide, maybe eight inches in height, of the same
type of rock that littered the area. The Romans had used them for building
material and there were tens of thousands of them scattered all over the place.
But this stone was different; he could see carvings on it and he reached over
her shoulder and picked it up, studying it closely.

 “I’ll be
damned,” he moved the stone around to see if he could view more of the carving
from another angle. “It looks like Latin.”

“Latin?” she
repeated, looking around to see if there were more carvings on the ground that she
had missed. “Did the Romans do it?”

He nodded. “More
than likely,” he replied. “It’s fairly faded, but I can make out a few
letters.”

“Can you read
Latin?”

He grinned, not
taking his eyes off the stone. “You didn’t read very much of my book, did you?”

She was guilty.
“Well,” she said reluctantly. “Not too much. I got distracted. But it was a
really good book so far.”

He laughed.
“Don’t sweat it,” he told her. “Towards the end of the book, I translate
several phrases from hieroglyphs to Latin so in answer to your question, yes, I
can read Latin.”

“Then what does
it say?”

He wished he had
his reading glasses as he studied the carving. “A-e-m-i-l-l-i-u-s.”

“Really?” she
was surprised, rising to her knees and knocking him off balance in the process.
As he rocked over onto his bum, she took the stone from him. “Aemillius? Is
that a person?”

He nodded. “It
must be somebody’s name.”

“And he carved
it on a stone? Wasn’t it rare for slaves to read and write?”

He pushed
himself up off the dirt, brushing off his jeans when he stood up. “It wasn’t
just slaves who were used for forced labor,” he told her. “It was political
prisoners, or prisoners of war.  It could have been a senator’s son for all I
know. This bloke was obviously educated or at least exposed to education if
he’s carving his name in walls.”

Morgan looked at
him, looked at the stone, and grinned. The she held the stone up like a trophy.
“I’m an archaeologist,” she announced. “I discovered two thousand year old
graffiti!”

She whooped and
danced around and he shook his head at her, grinning, as he turned and headed
back towards the surveyed hill.

“Come along,
doctor,” he told her. “You’ve got some digging to do.”

She stopped
mid-whoop. “Really? Cool.” She skipped after him with her precious artifact.
“Let’s dig.”

She caught up to
him, almost tripping because she was still looking at her stone.  He laughed
softly, shaking his head at her antics. As always, she was a humorous joy to be
around. “How are your arms?” he asked.

She shrugged.
“They’re still sore but I think I can dig. I’m going to give it a shot,
anyway.”

He put his
dinner plate-sized hand on her head affectionately as they approached the
hill.  Allahaba and Jabeel were already there with the shovels, picks, brushes
and buckets.  Jabeel was putting together the mesh sifter for the spoils. Morgan
ran all the way back to the car to put her precious stone into her backpack
before returning, collecting a shovel, and going to the area where Fox was
indicating.  He had her section off a twelve inch square area and get to work.