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‘What?’ Hope spun towards him so quickly she would’ve toppled off the chair if he hadn’t been holding her. ‘Don’t joke about something like that!’
Turning to face her, Cam’s blazing eyes met her own. ‘It’s no joke. Whatever we’ve got here is beyond my wildest imaginings. Here, let me show you.’ He reached for his mouse, and the image on the screen switched to a sketched plan. She recognised the curve of the river, the small cluster of walls that were the remains of the chapel and the square compound where the site buildings and even a couple of cars had been drawn in to show the parking area.
‘We’ve only scanned this bit,’ Cam said pointing the mouse to a shaded-over red area between the chapel and the boundary of where she’d hoped to build her house. ‘I thought it was a busted flush because the results from the magnetometer scans this morning were just interference, but Adam started finding traces of structures within his first couple of sweeps with the resistance meter.’ He moved the mouse over to another narrow shaded area beside the river. ‘And here’s what Barnie thinks might be some kind of drainage system,’ he said, tracing the mouse arrow along a dark line leading from the bank.
‘You found a drain?’ Hope wasn’t sure that warranted this level of excitement.
Cam laughed. ‘No. We only think we’ve found a drain. Until we can dig some test pits, we can’t be sure of anything. It’ll be a few days until we can do that, though, as we have to scan the whole area first.’
‘But it’s a good result so far?’ Hope asked.
Seizing her by the waist, Cam dragged her over into his lap. ‘It’s amazing! You’re amazing!’ He kissed her and instead of his banked anger from the previous night, he was all playful pecks and nibbles until she was giggling from the sheer infectious joy of his exuberance. When she came up for air, Hope wriggled free from his lap and held out her hand to him. ‘Come and sit out on the patio and we can toast your success while you tell me all there is to know about drainage systems.’
She’d been teasing a little, but Cam managed to make it interesting, showing her examples of other systems which had been uncovered in the past from basic ditches and early soakaway systems to the sophisticated underground sewers dating back to Roman times. She couldn’t say she fancied the communal toilets he showed her from Pompeii, nor the open channels that had once run through the centre of the streets in London for people to chuck their buckets of waste into. She was glad when he skipped over the details of cholera epidemics caused by contaminated water pumps because they still had to eat. ‘I’ll never be able to watch a historical film or TV show in the same light again,’ she said with a laugh when he rose to refill their glasses.
He grinned down at her. ‘Have I put paid to your Outlander time-travel fantasies?’
She wrinkled her nose. ‘Just a bit.’ Though she could lounge there all evening in the shade, her stomach gave her a gentle rumble of reminder, so she followed him into the kitchen. ‘Do you want me to heat this up?’ she asked, retrieving the quiche from the table and setting it on the counter next to the oven.
‘I’m fine with it as it is, if you are.’
Five minutes later, they were sitting at the table with a hastily thrown together salad and huge slabs of quiche before them. Hope couldn’t stop her eyes from straying to the dark blobs and marks on Cam’s laptop screen. No matter how hard she squinted, she couldn’t see what he could obviously read in the data. Perhaps, once they’d had a chance to map the whole site, she’d be able to make more sense of things.
‘So, how was the rest of your day?’ Cam’s question drew her attention away from the screen.
Pulling a face, Hope pushed her salad around with her fork. ‘Not great.’ Though she’d lost some of her appetite, she forced herself to eat a few bites as she brought Cam up to date with the situation with Amelia.
‘I’ll never understand men who can treat their families like that,’ Cam said, shaking his head.
‘It makes you appreciate what you’ve got all the more, I suppose,’ Hope observed, remembering the affectionate way Cam had talked about his father, the way he’d spoken with pride about how hard both he and his mother had worked to give him a good life and help him on his way to university.
He nodded. ‘I feel like I’ll never be able to thank my parents enough. I still haven’t worked out what I’m going to give them for their anniversary in August.’
‘It’s the bank holiday weekend, isn’t it?’ She remembered it because he’d mentioned the dig being over before then. Given what they might have discovered, she wondered if those plans would have to change. She wasn’t in any hurry to see him leave, that was for sure. ‘Do you think they’d like it here?’
Cam blinked at her. ‘Here in the lodge? I’m sure they would, but it’s only got one bedroom. Unless you mean they could stay next door?’
Hope smiled. ‘I was thinking of something a bit more upmarket than that. We’ve got our light and sound spectacular that weekend so I could speak to Mum about designing a special package for them at the spa. She’s brilliant at that kind of thing.’
‘That’s a lovely idea, but I’m not sure my budget stretches quite that far,’ Cam replied with a shake of his head. Hope stared at him, didn’t say anything, just raised an eyebrow. ‘What?’ he asked, appearing genuinely confused.
For such an intelligent man, he could be downright stupid sometimes. ‘Do you honestly think I would expect my partner to pay for his parents to come and visit?’
‘Partner?’ Cam’s lips curled up at the corners. ‘Is that what I am?’
She shrugged, refusing to acknowledge the slight heat building on her cheeks. ‘Well, we’re a bit too old for boyfriend and girlfriend, don’t you think?’
‘I think you can call me whatever you like as long it means I get to keep spending time with you. So, you think there’s a good chance we’ll make it through the summer then?’ She could tell he was teasing, by the tone he used.
Hope paused, as though giving the matter serious thought. ‘If you play your cards right, I reckon I might let you stick around.’
Having set his knife and fork aside, Cam rose from his seat and came to stand beside her chair. He extended a hand towards her, and Hope took it, a knot of excitement curling in her belly. ‘Where are we going?’
Cam pulled her up and into his arms. ‘If I’m going to persuade you to keep me, I thought it was time to get started.’
20
The next few days passed in something of a blur. Ed had arrived and he and Cassie had taken over responsibility for mapping the rest of the site while Cam pored over the seemingly never-ending bits of data they were gathering and tried to make a decision about where to position their first set of trenches and test pits for maximum potential results.
