Digging Deep (Xcite Romance) (3 page)

The second Harrison thought about Beth’s chest and the application of cream, he wished he hadn’t. He couldn’t stop picturing what her breasts might be like, or how it might feel to apply lotion to them.

As he began to head back to the house, Harrison pulled himself together. This is just good old fashioned lust, he conceded. She has a nice chest, and I am fantasising about it. Nothing odd in that. It has nothing at all to do with me fancying Beth. Absolutely nothing! Because I don’t.

Already in the process of closing her side of the excavation for the night, Beth wiped her hands down her trousers. For once, the sunshine and work-induced sweat was not responsible for the slick coating of perspiration on her palms.

For hours she’d been mulling over how on earth she was going to tell Harrison about the fact she knew Ryan had broken the mosaic, but hadn’t said anything. She felt anxious just thinking about it, especially given the strange glances her co-supervisor had been giving her on and off all afternoon. Beth hoped the quizzical, downright disapproving stares were just because she was frightened of snakes and he thought her a wimp; but she suspected there was more to them than that.

With the sinking feeling that one of the archaeologists she most respected was about to be very disappointed in her, Beth followed her happily chatting students at a discreet distance back to the partly built house in which they were lodging, watching as Ryan ran to catch up Candida, and quickly engaged her in conversation.

Beth tried not to hear the words of the students nearest to her as they walked, but the clear air made sound travel all too easily, and she picked up the words “snakes” and “clumsy” whether she wanted to hear them or not. She didn’t need to see Ryan to know he’d have a smooth expression on his face, although the reason behind the glance of pure poison that Candida gave her, as she and Ryan muttered to one another, was totally lost on Beth.

Easing the cotton layers from her neck a fraction, in a pointless attempt to circulate air against her flesh, Beth decided she needed some time out. As soon as they were in the relative cool of the house, she would escape from everyone for a while, take her meal to her room, and plan how on earth she was going to tell Harrison about the mosaic while persuading him not to send her, and her students, home.

Chapter Three

‘Fancy strolling down to the olive fields, doll? I’d like to pace out the area so we can get some field-walking teams set up. We could fill each other in on the day as we go.’

Too wound up by how her confession would be received when she made it, Beth didn’t bother to admonish Harrison for calling her “doll” again. Pulling on a second jumper as protection against the growing chill of the evening, she gathered up the few notes she’d made. ‘Good idea. The sooner we get that task started the better.’

In her room, Beth had imagined herself and Harrison sitting at the table in the dining room while she apologised for not telling him about Ryan’s clumsiness, pleading with him not to report her to her head of department back in Wales. Perhaps this way is better, she thought, to be away from the prying eyes and ears of any of the students who still had the energy to be up.

For the eighth night on the trot, Beth marvelled at how the temperature could go from one level of unbearable and head towards another in such a short space of time. She knew they only had about two hours before the jumper she wore wouldn’t be enough to hold out the night-time cold.

Walking in silence, the lack of conversation hanging heavily between them, Beth frantically considered what to say, the crunch of her walking boots against the stony pathway the only sound as she tried to match Harrison’s giant, silent strides. In the end, she opted for a feeble, ‘You have a good day, then?’

‘Excellent, thanks.’ Harrison regarded her with what could either be open interest or suspicion, and Beth felt her stomach contract beneath the hold of his clear blue eyes. ‘We found the start of the hypocaust. Got some wonderfully intact box flue tiles.’

‘That’s wonderful!’ Beth sighed. ‘I’m sorry, Harrison, I meant to come over and examine your side of the site today, but I’ve been a bit preoccupied. My square is a bit complex. I suspect I have the drainage system kicking off, but I’m not sure yet which way it’s going to flow for sure. I’d love to see your section on the way back if it’s not too dark. Or maybe in the morning?’

Not allowing him time to chip in, scared of what he might go on to say, Beth went on with her monologue. ‘If my theory is correct, the drainage system should run from my square, through the next two, and on into the unopened middle section towards you guys. I was going to suggest we clear the top level off the connecting earth by the end of the week? With your hypocaust evidence, it seems even more urgent to do that.’

Relieved to be talking shop, and even more relieved that Harrison was nodding in agreement with her, Beth ignored the voice at the back of her head telling her she had the man of her dreams all to herself and she was discussing drainage systems! Instead, she listened as Harrison detailed his own theory as to where the heating system and drains might run, and how the layout of the bath house was shaping up in general. Beth’s relief came to an abrupt halt when Harrison added, with a less than casual air, that he was almost certain the broken Medusa mosaic had once formed the floor of the cold room’s plunge pool.

Glancing sideways at Beth, Harrison tried to gauge her reaction at the mention of the mosaic afresh. He wanted to give his colleague a chance to come clean without him trying to catch her out. When she remained silent, he prompted her further. ‘It’s such a shame it was damaged. Fresh damage too. I guess it was one of the locals hunting treasure, or maybe just a regular accident. Someone could easily trip over it, considering its position.’

As they arrived at the edge of the first olive field, Harrison glanced at Beth again, unsure if she’d make use of the opening he’d given her.

She sat down on a bank of dusty earth that surrounded the field, and gestured for Harrison to join her. ‘I have a confession.’

Resisting the temptation to tell her he already knew about Ryan’s deliberate act of vandalism, Harrison forced himself to wait and listen to all the details in her own words.

‘I should have told you as soon as it had happened, but I was so embarrassed. I badly wanted you to think well of me and my students. I couldn’t believe it when that happened on my very first day. I truly was going to tell you, but then … Although, none of that’s an excuse. I am a total fool …’

‘Doll! Slow down, you’re babbling. Tell me what actually happened.’ Harrison put down his pad of notes and shuffled round so he was facing Beth properly. ‘Are you telling me you’re the one who broke the mosaic?’

‘God no! I know I can be clumsy sometimes, but not on site! The guys at home are always telling me off for being too careful.’

‘Except when you’re being attacked by snakes?’ He couldn’t resist the gentle jibe, and gave Beth a half-smile of encouragement now that she was coming clean.

‘Being surprised by snakes is not something that happens too much in Britain!’ Beth realised she’d replied rather more curtly than she’d intended to as she saw Harrison battle to keep his countenance solemn. The glimmer in his eye betrayed his amusement at her dislike of slithery things. ‘I’m sorry about the mosaic. I should have told you, but he begged me not to.’

‘Ryan?’

‘Yes.’ Beth’s forehead creased, and she studied Harrison. He was frustratingly unreadable. ‘You knew? I guessed you’d worked it out.’

‘I overheard one of my students telling a friend about it on her phone.’

‘What?’ Beth couldn’t believe what she was hearing. ‘You mean I’ve risked my job by not telling you, have protected him at what should be the start of a very promising career if he stops pratting about, and he’s been shouting his mouth off to the other students anyway? That boy is the giddy limit!’

‘He’s the what?’ Harrison laughed despite himself.

‘It means he’s a pain in the arse!’

‘You mean a pain the
ass
.’ Harrison flashed his eyes at her again as he corrected her English into American, tempted to tell her that she looked beautiful when she was angry, but resisting, as he was sure it would earn him a slap.

Beth felt flustered as well as cross. She’d geared herself up to more or less beg for Harrison’s forgiveness, for him to give her the chance to prove herself as a competent supervisor, and now they were sitting side by side in the twilight of an olive grove, and she was having to fight the urge to giggle. It would have been romantic if the situation wasn’t so damn preposterous.

Struggling to keep to the confession she’d been building up to all day, Beth groaned, ‘Oh for heaven’s sake, an
ass
is a donkey, an
arse
is your butt!’

‘Are you saying my nether regions resemble a donkey in some way?’

Beth went pink as she failed in her determination not to think about whether Harrison was hung like a donkey or not, and turned away from the flash of devilment that shone in his face. ‘Honestly! I’m trying to clear my conscience here! I’ve been feeling guilty as hell for not telling you about Ryan.’

Harrison’s jovial look died, and he visibly stiffened. ‘Tell me what,
exactly,
about Ryan?’

Not caring for the stress he’d put on the word “exactly”, Beth’s nerves raced to her chest at top speed. ‘That he broke the mosaic when he was showing off, of course. What else has he done?’ Fiddling with a fallen olive, Beth powered on, ‘It really was an accident. If I’d told you … I should have told you, but …’

‘But you were afraid I’d think less of you, and you didn’t want to damage Muscle Boy’s career before it had even started.’

‘Muscle Boy?’ Beth felt her lips curling into a smile, causing some of the conflicting tensions within her to dissipate. ‘Is that what you call him?’

‘Only in my head.’

Beth repeated herself. ‘He was showing off. When Ryan realised what he’d done he was beside himself. He begged me not to tell you. To be honest, I was so nervous about working with you, when that happened on day one I was convinced that if you knew you’d write me off as a useless waste of space and send me packing.’

‘You’re nuts, doll! Your reputation as an archaeologist is excellent, and anyway, accidents happen.’ Harrison shifted so he was studying her directly again, his gaze imploring. ‘Is that all? There’s nothing else going on with Ryan that I should know about?’

Beth ruffled her fingers through her already tangled hair. ‘Not apart from the fact I’m getting sick to death of his attempts to make up for his blunder by being
way
too helpful and attentive.’ She recalled how Ryan had refilled her water bottle constantly, been on hand to empty her buckets and barrows of sand, and generally made himself indispensable to the point of annoyance. ‘Chivalry is all very well, but he’s beginning to get annoying.’

The piercing nature of Harrison’s steel blue eyes was beginning to unsettle her, and the tension she’d felt yo-yo around her system all day zipped through Beth’s shoulder muscles as another disturbing thought occurred to her. ‘Who did you overhear talking about the mosaic on the phone? Did they say how much of a gullible fool I was?’

Images of all the students sniggering at her expense suddenly filled Beth’s head. Maybe they haven’t been laughing at the snake episode, she thought. Maybe they have just been laughing at me in general? The limited colour in her complexion drained away, and she buried her head in her hands. ‘I am gonna kill him!’

Now Harrison was worried. ‘Doll? Are you OK, you said “gonna”?’

‘Oh ha ha! That’s it, why don’t you join in and take the piss at my expense!’

‘Doll?’ Alarmed by Beth’s blanched face and the sudden evaporation of her usual sense of self-deprecation, Harrison knew he’d been a fool to even entertain the thought that Candida had been telling the truth. No way had Beth done anything with Ryan except be stupidly kind. Reaching out a large hand, he placed it protectively on her knee, ‘Beth?’

‘No, I’m not flippin’ all right! I don’t appreciate being made to look foolish!’ Pushing his hand away, Beth refused to let herself register that she immediately missed its comforting presence. She stood up and began to stride purposefully back to the house.

‘Where you going, doll?’

‘Where the hell do you think?’ Anger lent wings to her feet as Beth marched onwards.

In silent pursuit, Harrison reached out and grabbed her shoulder, spinning Beth round so fast her boot soles squeaked against the earth. ‘Will you cool it, doll; you don’t have all the facts.’

‘What the hell else is there to know? Ryan has made me appear a total pushover. And they –’ Beth pointed vaguely in the direction of the house ‘– are all laughing at me. Great start to my first major dig as supervisor, I must say!’

‘I told you! It wasn’t Ryan I heard about the mosaic from, and I don’t think anyone other than she and Ryan know.’

Standing stock still, Beth frowned. ‘She? Which she?’

Steering Beth gently by the shoulder, Harrison guided her back to the olive field. ‘Sit down; we have got to pace this lot out, remember.’

Taking a protracted exhalation of air, Beth found herself resting against the warmth of her colleague’s side. ‘Sorry. I overreacted. Tell me everything.’

Harrison spoke in a low hush. ‘It was Candida. I heard her talking to someone on her phone.’

‘Candida? She’s the blonde one with legs up to her armpits?’

‘That’s the one. She also has, as you can’t have failed to have noticed, a voice like a foghorn and a love of gossip, so it could be that some of the other students overheard her conversation as well.’

‘Tell me the worst.’

Deciding she didn’t need to hear everything he’d overheard, Harrison told her about Ryan’s claims about breaking the mosaic as a backhanded way to sleep with her; taking the precaution of making sure he kept one hand fixed on Beth’s arm to prevent her leaping up again and storming away in a fit of justifiable, but useless, temper.

As she listened, Beth began to shiver, but the chill that infused her was nothing to do with the cold of the approaching night. She spoke with an almost deadly calm. ‘You believed her, didn’t you? You believed what you heard. You decided that if I was capable of not telling you about Ryan’s on-site stupidity, I was equally capable of blackmailing him for my silence with, with …’ She could hardly bring herself to say the words. ‘With sex!’

Guilt flooded Harrison as he saw disappointment cloud Beth’s eyes. ‘Well, I couldn’t help but wonder. I mean, Ryan has been all over you like a rash, and then, when I saw you sitting on his lap when that snake scared you … I don’t really know you, after all.’

‘For fuck’s sake! I fell! I sat on Ryan for only a few seconds.’ Beth hadn’t appreciated what it was like to seethe before – now she knew.

Harrison looked genuinely shocked, ‘You swore! That’s the first time I’ve heard you do that.’

‘Of course I bloody swore! Wouldn’t you? I’m not Mary bloody Poppins!’

Harrison held out his hands as if pleading for peace. ‘Look, I’m sorry, OK!’

He got no further with his sentence. Beth pulled away from the clutch of his hand, and rose to her feet, her hands on her hips, her whole body shaking.

‘You believed the word of a girl you tell me is famous for gossip, whose own parents have so little regard for her that they named her after a nasty fungal infection! How could you? How could you even think that I would … With a student …’ Beth couldn’t bring herself to repeat the words describing the scenarios Candida had invented. Forcing back the hypocritical guilt she felt about having a sexual fantasy about the young man in question earlier that day, she raged, ‘I know I was wrong not to tell you about the mosaic. But not that. Never that!’

Harrison opened his mouth, but nothing he could think of to say seemed more than pathetic, placating words. Distress blazed in Beth’s eyes. Suddenly, he understood just how big a deal this all was for her. Linda had told him that, apart from on site, where her ideas and theories were rarely wrong, Beth was quiet and lacked confidence in herself. The fact she’d been given the job as supervisor showed in what high esteem her head of department held her. Beth was, to quote Linda, “one to watch”. There was no way she would risk messing up.

Harrison knew he should apologise, but here and now it seemed more important to stop her marching off at high speed and killing Ryan.