He stares at the money. “Won’t they know we were here?”
“They’ll knowsomeonewas here. You think a grad student has never been working late and wanted an ice cream bar?”
“I can’t believe you carry actual cash.”
She sends him a look. His family probably never touches anything so plebeian as bills and coins. “Having fuck-you money was my dad’s rule. I always had to carry enough to be able to say ‘Fuck you’ and get myself home.” She spies one of those little chest freezers with pictures of frozen treats on it. Bingo.
“Money means safety in your family,” James says. She can practically hear the lines of consternation popping up between his eyebrows. She glances over her shoulder. Yup, there they are, shadowed in the dim light. She wishes she didn’t get that ache in her throat from the curious, troubled angle of his eyes.
“Yes. Money means independence. Freedom. Health. Among other things.” She tests the sliding glass lid on the freezer unit. The lock feels like it won’t put up too much of a fight. “Why, what does it mean in your family?”
“Control.” He makes a surprised, disquieted sound, as if the word popped out without official permission. “I meant—no, I meant control,” he says heavily.
She stops jiggling the lock to look at him. “Your family is seventeen flavors of fucked up, aren’t they?”
One side of his mouth flicks upward. “Well, when you put it likethat,” he says. “They’re difficult and demanding, yes, but they’re my only family.”
“I’m not judging. My family isn’t exactly Hallmark-movie material. But you have your trust fund, so you’re free.”
He shakes his head. “Not exactly. We each receive a very modest annuity starting at age thirty. The capital matures when we’re forty. Until then, it’s a discretionary trust. My father can cut me off at any time if he feels I don’t meet certain criteria. Gainful employment, no dishonorable pursuits, et cetera, et cetera.”
“That’s areal thing?”
“It is. I have my salary, but it’s fairly low, and London is expensive. I need the income from the trust if I’m going to…fulfill certain obligations,” he says obliquely.
“Saving the world again, Superman?” She gives the freezer unit a jiggle and a shove, and it pops open. Ripley lets out a whoop.
“I can’t believe breaking and entering is in your skill set.” He’s trying to scowl, but Ripley’s ninety-nine percent sure he’s attempting to suppress an undertone of admiration.
“Life finds a way, James.” She hands him a chocolate-covered vanilla ice cream bar, then rips open a caramel one and bites into it. “Oh my fucking God.”
She has a weakness for this kind, with the bittersweet dark chocolate and the generous swirl of caramel. With no freezer on the dig site, she rarely gets to have them during the hot weather. She’s definitely going to eat another.
“Did you notice any napkin dispensers?” she mumbles, licking a chunk of chocolate from the crook of her thumb. “James? Can you see—”
She looks up. James is staring at her, his face drawn, his eyes dark pools above rock-cut cheekbones. He’s taken one neat bite out of his bar, but he’s not chewing. Ice cream drips toward the dip in his stupidly classical lower lip. She can still feel the give of it under her thumb.
She pulls her hand away from her mouth, a shiver flashing up the back of her neck. “Sorry—did you want a caramel one too?”
He closes his eyes for a moment that’s a little too long to be a blink. “I’m fine with vanilla.”
“I figured Clark Kent was a vanilla guy.”
His mouth hardens. “I’m no superhero, Ripley. And I like flavors other than vanilla. I meant—I didn’t mean—bloody hell.”
His eyes drop to the smear of chocolate on her hand, then bounce away fast.
Even that brief touch of his gaze makes Ripley feel rain in her hair, his hands on her back, his lips crushing into hers. Heat blooms in her belly.
She’s never let herself consider what he might like in that way. She’s never imagined him asking for something that isn’t strictly vanilla in the stripped-down fever of a voice she heard on the side of the road.
But she’s imagining it now, and it has to stop. Because if there’s one thing he didn’t say to her yesterday or today, it’s that he’s in love with her. Hefelt somethingwhen he first saw her, but there’sno such thing as love at first sight. Love is deeper than that. It takes time to uncover the shape of such things.
And he’s leaving in barely eight weeks, never to darken her dig site again.
“Eat your food, Lex Luthor,” she says. “We have eight hours in one of the world’s best paleontology museums. We’re going to see some damn dinosaurs.”
James frets as Ripley investigates how to turn on the lights inside the display cases. She’s pleased by how the halls look like beachside pathways lined with lanterns. She figures out the sound system in the Late Cretaceous diorama and threatens to ride one of the roaring tyrannosaur models just to see his scandalized expression.
