"There weren’t that many," Linda admitted. "But the ones I did go on, I loved.” She gave a soft laugh. “Although admittedly, I was not built for the long hauls in the heat. I came back to the museum after my son was born and stayed indoors after that. But the early years were the best years of my professional life."
"How did you get into it?" Darius asked. "Archaeology, I mean. I can’t remember any young person I know from my youth waking up and deciding to become an archaeologist."
Linda smiled.
"I had an early mentor," Linda answered. "When I was very small, my uncle was married to a woman named Anna. Dr. Anna Caldwell. She was an archaeologist. They met when she came to Sweet Blossom Bay to find out if there was an undocumented Calusa settlement on the hotel grounds."
"On Hearts Hotel grounds?" Darius asked, looking momentarily panicked before he composed himself.
Linda looked at him curiously for a moment wondering why he’d have such a reaction to that information. A picture of him staring at the wetland between his house and the hotel the evening before suddenly flashed into her mind but she shook it off.
"Yes," Linda confirmed, missing the small carefulness in his voice. "My uncle and Anna married a year later." She took a sip of wine before continuing. “Anna was wonderful and so interesting. She used to take me out to the hotel grounds with a notebook and have me draw what I saw. Stones. Shells. Patterns in the sand. She told me archaeology was just careful looking, and that any child who could draw a shell properly was already halfway there."
Darius listened the way a man listened when he was actually listening.
“She sounds like the perfect Aunt,” Darius stated.
“She was,” Linda nodded in agreement with a nostalgic smile on her face. “I loved spending hours with her digging in the dirt and learning about archaeology. After that I read everything I could and history suddenly became a whole lot more interesting to me.”
"That’s a great story," Darius said quietly, his eyes never leaving her face.
"What about you?" Linda suddenly realized she knew very little about Darius.
She watched him hesitate for the smallest beat. Then he sat back, turned his wine glass slowly, and told her.
He told her about Penny, who had been his attorney for forty years and longer than that his closest friend. He told her about Isabel, his younger sister, who had lost her son and daughter-in-law in an accident, and then her husband a year later, and who had walked through the world like a woman underwater until they had come to Sweet Blossom Bay this summer and she had started to laugh again. He told her about Emma, his great-niece, who had asked Isabel if she could start school here in the fall.
Linda listened, as he talked about his family and his younger years. Of losing his parents and having to take over the family business. She found, somewhere in the middle of the second course, that she was leaning toward him without having decided to. She caught herself doing it and did not lean back. He noticed and did not look away, but leaned in closer. The candle between them on the table flickered, and neither of them said anything for a moment.
Then all too soon the dinner was over. As they stepped outside the restaurant Darius held out his arm.
“It’s a beautiful evening,” he commented. “I don’t know about you but I’m not ready for it to end just yet.” He smiled. “Would you like to go for a walk along the boardwalk?”
“I would,” Linda answered and linked her hand through his arm. Her pulse picked up speed as the warmth of his muscled arm touched her palm.
They walked together off the wooden deck and down the path to the small public beach that ran along the waterfront below the restaurant then onto the boardwalk.
The bay was a long, quiet sheet of dark glass under the rising moon. The lights of Sweet Blossom Bay glittered across it. They walked slowly as they talked, and Linda found she could not remember exactly what they had discussed afterward. She remembered the warmth of his arm under her hand. She remembered the slow, steady rhythm of his stride matching hers. She remembered the small, careful way he asked her questions and waited for her answers, as if they mattered.
They reached a quieter stretch of the boardwalk, where the path bent in along the dunes, where the lights of the restaurant fell away behind them, and Darius slowed.
He turned toward her. Their eyes locked. Linda felt the breath hitch in her throat at the look in them.
"Linda," Darius said, his voice a throaty purr.
Before she could answer he lifted his hand to brush a strand of hair back from her cheek. His fingers were warm. His eyes were on hers, careful and quiet and unmistakable in their question.
Linda didn’t look or step away, not even when he bent his head closer toward her until their lips met.
The kiss was soft at first until he stepped in closer and deepened it as her arms curled around his neck. The bay and distant sounds faded away as she leaned into him. She’d lost all trackof time and didn’t know how long they’d been locked in their own world until finally Darius drew back resting his forehead on hers. His hands still cupped her face.
"I have wanted to do that," Darius said quietly, "since the first afternoon I saw you on the beach."
Linda felt her breath catch in her throat. She didn’t have an answer ready. She didn’t know that she needed one. She lifted her hand and laid it lightly against his shirtfront, where his heart was beating as fast as hers.
She was about to say something when his phone buzzed in his pocket.
Darius let out a soft, pained sigh and for a moment Linda thought he was going to ignore it.
