kept her field camera in the office just for moments like these. She put in a fresh roll of high-resolution film and tore the top sheet off her desk blotter to make a clean white surface. A ruler next to the box gave perspective. Then she carefully photographed each side in close-up, at midrange and from a couple of feet away, just as she’d been taught all those years ago in Mexico.
“We can learn as much from the matrix in which a piece of pottery is embedded as we can from the potsherd itself.” The voice of their supervising prof, Dr. Andersen, sounded in her memory. “Your photographs should include this information. It could be important.”
Cate was surprised she remembered that much—the day they’d excavated the midden and found the fragments of pottery was the day Daniel Burke had arrived. Cate’s memory of anything but him after that point had been burned away by the force of their attraction. There was a thesis for you—The Passionate Flame: Biological Urges and the Death of Brain Cells.
“—long it might take?”
Cate blinked and resisted the urge to roll her eyes at herself. Damn that Daniel Burke anyway. Now she looked like an airhead.
“I’m sorry, what was that?” She put the camera back in its case and ran a slow hand over the surface of the box. She was not normally given to touching things. Her colleague Julia was always doing that, though—rubbing fabric between her fingers, stroking passing dogs in Central Park. Now Cate felt the same urge to touch this box. Something about the carvings invited you to follow them with your fingers, to touch them as though they were braille and had a message for you.
“I was just wondering how long it might take to get an opinion from your colleague,” Morgan said, doing a good job of disguising her eagerness. But Cate knew that feeling—that excitement when you were this close to finding an answer that had eluded you. Some said that curiosity killed the cat. But curiosity was an archaeologist’s best friend.
“I’m not sure,” Cate hedged. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw the glossy brochure advertising the conference, facedown in the trash.
Daniel might help.
No. No way. Not to satisfy her own curiosity, not to help out Ms. Morgan Shaw, would she get on a plane and fly across the country to see Daniel Burke strutting around Big Sur as though he were God’s gift to archaeology and women.
“A couple of weeks? A month?” Morgan persisted.
What are you afraid of?
Nothing. The thought was ludicrous.
So he had a rep for flamboyance. So he’d been on Jah-Redd last night. The fact remained that he was an authority on ancient symbology, and if anyone would know about this box, it would be him. Besides, she hadn’t taken in a conference since that one in D.C. last year. And she hadn’t seen the ocean since the Jurassic period—or at least it seemed that way.
Think of it. Big breakers crashing on the beach. Someone else doing the cooking. Late-night conversations with experts from all over the world, in fields as diverse as geology, history and archaeology.
The beach. No walls. No taxis honking and sirens screaming. Nothing but the vast Pacific, stretching out into infinity, and seagulls telling you about it as they wheeled overhead.
“A couple of weeks,” she said suddenly, handing the box back to Morgan Shaw, who tucked it carefully into its container. “I’m considering a conference next weekend. If I go, I would show these photographs to an archaeologist there.”
A smile as broad and warm as the California sun broke across the other woman’s face. “I’d love it if you could help. I don’t know what it is about this box. It’s not an obsession—it’s more like an itch that I just have to scratch, you know?”
Cate did know.
Because Daniel Burke had been the itch she’d been longing to scratch for the last eight years.
3
“FEEL LIKE HAVING A DRINK with me tonight before you head home?”
There was a pause while Cate imagined Julia Covington checking her watch and raising her eyebrows. “Cate, it’s ten in the morning and already you’re scheduling drinks?”
“I feel the need.” Thinking about a nice, cold glass of chardonnay was better than thinking about Daniel Burke. “So, can you? Or do you have plans already with Alex?”
“Just dinner, but we don’t eat till late. The usual place at six?”
“I’ll be there,” Cate promised with a little more fervency than strictly necessary.
Jake’s was a real Irish pub just down the street from the Museum of Antiquities, where Julia was a curator. You could get anything from a pint of Guinness to a good French champagne—or a California chardonnay, if that happened to be on your mind. Plus they served shrimp wontons that were about as far from Ireland as you could get, but that Cate adored.
The waiter put a big plate of them between Cate and Julia, and Cate dipped one in rice vinegar, savoring the tartness against the sweet shrimp on her tongue.
“I’ve been waiting for this all day,” she sighed.
“I’ve been waiting to find out what the emergency is.” Julia sipped her cabernet and eyed her friend with that narrowed gaze that meant Cate hadn’t fooled her one bit. “Either something happened at the department or you’ve got man trouble.”
Man, she was good. “Both.”
Julia leaned forward with interest. “Did they hire some hot new prof who actually has looks to go with his brains?”
“No such luck. A woman named Morgan Shaw came to see me. She has an antique store in Connecticut, and she brought an artifact with her. A wooden box. Kind of fascinating, all carved with nature figures, flowers and musical instruments. Very Egyptian looking, but not Egyptian, of course. If that were the case, I wouldn’t be having such a hard time dating and placing it.”
“Do you want me to have a look?” She and Julia had met at an archaeology symposium a year or two after Cate had graduated. Two women in a man’s field, they had gravitated together in self-defense, then had become friends. Since she’d taken up the curatorship at the museum, Julia would consult with Cate once in a while when she ran across a particularly interesting piece. But this was different.
“No, it’s not that. I want you to talk me out of going to California.”
Julia sat back and stared at her. “Not getting the connection, babe.”
“I don’t even make sense to myself. Did you see Jah-Redd last night?”
“Did the Romans invade Britain? Of course I saw it. How about that Indiana Jones guy with the Clive Owen mojo? Was he hot or what?”
Cate sighed and wished she’d gone home and poured a glass of whatever was in her fridge. “That Indiana Jones guy is Daniel Burke, who, despite his truly annoying tendency to hog the media spotlight, is an expert in ancient artifacts, specializing in symbology. He’s going to be at a conference in California and I’m toying with the idea of going to it and showing him some
