“I’m the opposite of a person he’d want to impress.”
“I don’t know, Rip. Whenever you walk away from one of his teaching sessions, he loses the thread and has to ask Jordin what he was talking about. Maybe he lectures about everything because he’s searching for something that catches your interest.”
Ripley’s heart stutters. “Weird.”
“Sexy,” Cara retorts with a smirk.
“No one’s feeling sexy.”
“It’s a dig, Rip. Everyone’s feeling sexy about someone.”
“If you make a bone joke, I’m going to kill you.”
“Don’t have to when you do it yourself.”
Ripley rubs her eyes to dispel a vision of Smithson’s face. His faceabove her,to be clear. He’s so careful with every little thing, brushing bones with a seemingly infinite supply of patience, drawing lovely little pencil sketches of the specimens in his notebook, captioning them with tiny, careful, almost calligraphic handwriting.
He’d touch her soprecisely.With such control. And the smallest smile.
The thought gives Ripley a twist of surprise and fear in her stomach, like she’s breezed past a cop and realized she’s going way over the limit.
“I really don’t want that kind of speculation to catch on, C. Not even at camp.”
Cara pulls up in front of the ranch house, wheels skidding across the last few inches of gravel. She squints a critical eye at Ripley. “Be honest, Ripley. Are you afraid of what he might take from you, or are you afraid it’syouhe could take or leave?”
Ripley swallows an uncomfortable pang of recognition. “He can take or leave all of us, Cara.”
“Fine,” the younger woman sighs. “Don’t bang him, then. But even if he can’t get us the money, he can talk us up in the paleontology world. He can be an ally for Indigenous-led fossil exploration. And I’m just saying, what if you didn’t make it so obvious that you wish he’d fall into a hole and die? He’s doing a lot of shit he’d rather not do, you know.” She looks pointedly at Smithson, who’s gotten out of the jeep and is leaning—sort of sagging, actually—against it, much to the amusement of the crew. “Don’t tell me you haven’t noticed he hates cars.”
“He said he gets motion sickness.” Although—did he say that? Thinking about it now, Ripley’s not sure.
Cara reaches back to shake Griff awake. “A man who’s tryingto impress you might not reveal his phobias on day one, I guess. Youarehis boss, after all. As such, you should probably get over there and make sure your subordinate is okay.”
Griff clambers out of the back seat and pats her on the shoulder. “Good taste in crushes, Ripley. I’ve got a bit of a man crush on James myself.”
Ripley’s jaw drops. “You weren’t supposed to hear us. And I don’t have a crush.”
“Well, I did hear. And it’s all right to admit you like him. If a duck wants bread, might as well give it bread, yeah?” He trots off after Cara.
Fuck.
Ripley crunches a lot of gravel underfoot so Smithson knows she’s coming.
“You okay?”
“Quite all right, thanks, only I’ve dropped my mobile somewhere. My phone, I mean.” He’s leaning into the passenger door, doing a killer impression of an overcooked noodle. His voice has the muffled, hiccuping quality of someone yellingI’m finethrough a bathroom door.
And yet the totality of him is suddenly overwhelming, from the strength of his back and thighs outlined by his clothes, to the catch in hisGood morning, darlingvoice, to the brave front he’s trying so hard to put up.
“Do you need help looking?”
He tilts his head at the ranch house. “No, you go ahead. I’ll be along.”
“You sure?”
“Goahead,Ripley.”
“Okay,” she says, holding up her hands in surrender. Walking past, she spies a phone-size rectangle in his pocket.
