“Then where?”
She leans forward, puts the line of her jaw against his. His collarbones meet the twinned radius and ulna of each forearm, holding her up. The crests of his pelvis push into her inner thighs, strong and sure.
“In my bones, James,” she whispers, her lips at his ear. “Where else?”
Epilogue
One Year Later
A crisp breeze sweeps down from the mountains and through the canyon where Life Paleontology is wrapping up its first season. The wind brings the bittersweet smells that mark the end of summer: warm wheat, cool rain, and turning leaves.
Ripley’s summer crew left a few days ago, heading back to their universities, winter excavation sites, or regular jobs. This year, she and James hired a couple of Cara’s high-school-age cousins too. It worked out great, especially because the main road is so much closer to this dig than it was at Yellowtail; since it’s five minutes away, not twenty, the high-schoolers could drive in from home instead of staying on-site.
“Is that everything?” Ripley calls down into the canyon.
“I think so. No sign of Matteo’s hammer, though. I suppose it’s now consigned to history,” James says, his face coming into viewat the edge of the drop. He’s wearing one of the logoed shirts Ripley ordered for their new company. Over his left pectoral, a fossilized bird unfurls its wings. Below that is their slogan:Life Paleontology Finds a Way.
From under James’s right sleeve, the tail of his latest tattoo curls saucily down. It’s the beast fromThe Wild Dragon—a fantasy novel displaying his very first cover commission. Ripley asked if he was going to get a tattoo for every bestselling book’s cover, to which he tartly replied, “I’m getting one foreverycover I illustrate, sales be damned.” She wouldn’t mind if he did, although her favorite piece will always be the phoenix inked over his heart. She framed the original watercolor, which he titledRipley, Rising.She loves all the pieces in his new Ripley series, especially the ones where he’s included himself, but this is the only one she’s willing to display in public.
“We should get Matteo a new hammer,” Ripley says. “He deserves a thank-you gift after working so hard this season.”
“He deserveshalfa thank-you gift,” James counters, setting down the last of the stray pieces of equipment he’s collected on his sweep through the dig: a chisel with a broken handle, a couple of small brushes, a roll of aluminum foil, a plaster-covered mixing stick, and a bucket handle Ripley remembers losing her mind trying to find last week. “Cara can buy him the other half. Clever Girl found another holotype this summer, after all.”
“We had a great summer too,” she says soothingly.
The past few months were everything Ripley wanted from a summer season. She loved the days when they uncovered exciting things and the days that felt boring and frustrating. There were all the usual glitches that come with a new start-up, and Ripley hasn’t yet found the next missing link between Beauty and modern birds.
They did stumble over a very nice juvenileTyrannosaurus rex,though. It’ll take another year or two to fully excavate something that big, but there’s no rush. Matteo did a beautiful job on it this summer—that is, when he wasn’t supervising the high-schoolers or working part-time over at Clever Girl. This fall, he’ll be starting his undergraduate degree at UC Berkeley. Ripley hopes she’ll run into him now and then while she’s getting ready to defend her PhD on the migration patterns of proto-avian theropods in ancient North America. Her new supervisor at Berkeley—a lovely woman who was recently elected president of the APS—doesn’t mind at all if Ripley works on her dissertation in England.
Overall, the summer’s been busy. Happy. And after they spent a gray, wet winter at Oxford, she felt happy to behome—here, in this place, with the people she’s come to think of as family. With the money from Beast’s sale, Ripley could have taken a good chunk of time off, but there’s a particular joy in knowing she wants to do this work even if she doesn’t have to.
James closes the distance between them, threads his arms under Ripley’s, and lifts her into a hug. His hair is longer and less disciplined now. Loose, artistically rumpled dark curls ruffle in the Montana breeze, caressing her ear when she tucks her chin against his neck. His body has changed, too, after a rigorous second summer of digging and drawing. She can feel the difference in the musculature across his shoulders and in the ease with which he picks her up and holds her in her favorite kind of hug, letting her back stretch out after a long day of hunching over a specimen. He smells like sunscreen and clean sweat and a hint of the expensive English bath products she insists he keep using.
“Are you sad to be leaving, my darling?”
“A bit. But we’ll be back next summer.” After the FBI’s quick, slightly sheepish release of Beauty and Beast, the rancher nextdoor put his property up for sale. Ripley suspects he wasn’t doing well financially, and when it became clear he wouldn’t get a payout from Will, he found himself without many choices.
As had Will himself. Upon closer examination, his fossil was found to be a jumble of stolen bones from a total of six museums. Ironically, if he hadn’t tried to pass them off as a single specimen, he and his team could have identified four holotypes hiding in various research collections.
Well, three, after Ripley and Cara snagged a holotype for Beauty.
The former Shipman property is now owned by Daphne and Mei, a very sweet couple who run an organic farming collective. Ripley wasted no time approaching them about the fossil rights. They were thrilled to have an extra income stream during their first few precarious, mortgage-heavy years.
Which means that, for at least the next couple of summers, Life Paleontology and Clever Girl will be neighbors, separated only by the winding course of the creek. Sister businesses, as Ripley likes to think of them.
They went halves on a bigger, more efficient solar installation this summer. Cara still pulls Ripley aside at least once a week for a consultation on a tricky excavation or an ID on a weird bone, and Cara’s experienced enough now that Ripley can do the same with her.
“Oi! Love chickens!” Across the property line, Griff smirks at them from the passenger seat of Cara’s jeep. “Stop snogging and get in or I won’t be responsible for how many of the tacos perish.”
“My dear Griffin,” James says, his lips against a spot on Ripley’s shoulder where the collar of her rucked-up shirt has fallen open. “Quite bold of you to criticize, considering the time we stumbled upon you and Cara—”
“Fair, fair,” Griff says hurriedly. “I’ll respect the tacos. I make no promises for what Geraldine will do to you, though.”
“In that case,” Ripley says, unwinding her arms from James’s neck, “put me down, James.James.Respect the tacos, Professor,” she says, laughing.
“Tacos will wait.” He squeezes her extra tightly before setting her down. There’s something happening with his mouth, some hint of a suppressed recurve that has her suspicious.
“What are you up to?”
