“I’m thinking something dark green to make your pretty eyes pop. Something to make all the other dudes jealous of me,” he said, and why was she melting into a puddle at his remark about her eyes? “We still got time before your Padawans are due back,” he added. “You wanna get started on your new job?”
She leaned back and furrowed her brow, her legs still straddling his waist and his grip upon her still tight, as if she didn’t weigh all of one hundred and thirty-two pounds.
“What do you mean?”
“Go see another site.” He was goofily grinning and jutting his chin smugly as if he knew he could wrap her around his finger just saying the romantic words new rock art site.
“Mmm, you talking dirty to me, Doctor Dixon?” His eyes darkened in a way they hadn’t done before. “As in, getting dirty hiking to a rock shelter?”
“You inviting trouble, baby?” he murmured, pecking her jawline to her lips. “I was thinking we could pack up some food and take it to a new site to watch the sun go down over Casas Grandes, but if you got a different idea in mind to feed my appetite, I’m very flexible.”
“I’m sure you are,” she said, unable to wipe the grin from her face as she felt his arousal growing through the front of his jeans.
Now that they’d gotten it out in the open where they stood, she felt anxiousness propelling her forward as if to make her run headlong into this relationship thing and not look back. Brakes be damned.
He let her slide back down to her feet, then, still grinning and chewing his dimpled cheek, he took her hand and pulled her up the steps to the front door. They began rummaging through the kitchen, sliding the bread out of the sleeve and grabbing butter knives to make sandwiches to pack. Upon a glance, there was, in fact, peanut butter pockmarks all over the front of the sink where Sage’s aim had missed earlier. And jars of peanut butter sitting out on the counter. Soon, with sandwiches made and a package of junk cookies leftover from Sage’s visit packed, with a handful of fruits and a couple long necks, they were heading out to the Beast.
He didn’t drive far before he stopped. An old sheep trail led them down into the canyon, where he parked his oxidized monstrosity, and the two of them trekked along the path over the arroyo and up the other side. She saw a small shelter come into view. No art was visible from the outside.
They climbed inside, hauling the cooler. It was, in truth, a tiny washout in the rocks. Only a few red-ochre figurines dotted the walls of the same style that had been superimposed on the panther shaman and sun god. No artifacts were present. No matting or bits of flint dotted the floor. It was barren. She felt him watching her for her reaction and cast a sidelong glance at him.
“Disappointed?” he asked, though he looked as if he had a trick up his sleeve.
“Okay, Toby, what are you getting at?”
He grinned, then sidled up to her, turning her to face outward across the canyon toward the main house. From a distance, she could see part of her crew’s camper ring upon the flatland overlooking Ghost Canyon from the other side. Her eyes widened. If she could see the campers, then she could probably see panther shaman. She searched the opposite cliff face, spotting the site easily and nearly directly opposite of them. She’d seen this niche they stood within from the other side.
He draped his arms around her from behind, resting his head upon her shoulder, and she lifted her hand to rest upon his forearm, enjoying the view.
“I should tell you,” he began in a husky voice beside her ear, “that in my archive room, on the top shelf, is a flat box, and in it is a single mat, almost completely intact, woven like the fragments you found in panther shaman, but painted in yellow and red.”
She held her breath. “I do believe that now you’re talking dirty to me. Tell me you found it here.”
He chuckled and let go with one arm for a second as he fished something out of his pocket. A moment later, he held his photo collection in front of them both on his phone.
“I pulled this off my hard drive this afternoon just to show you,” he said.
“So you planned on bringing me here?”
He didn’t answer, but with the touch of his thumb, a picture of a mat opened on a dirt-and-rock sandstone floor, with a red ochre deer painting behind it. It was this shelter. She craned her head back to look up at him. He wore a satisfied grin.
“You wanna know something even better?”
“You’re prince charming and will feed me chocolate every day for the rest of my life?”
He laughed. “Seriously, though, I hadn’t thought about this in a long time, until I met you and you went full Indiana Jones on me and mentioned that the context an artifact is found in is just as important.” His grip tightened, and he slid his phone back into his pocket. “When my brothers and I were kids climbing around these canyons, we discovered that if one of us stood here and talked, the others over there, in panther shaman, could hear us crystal clear. The acoustics naturally echo in that direction.”
Rose’s mind lulled, then raced. She whipped around to face him as the implications of what he’d said sank in, gripping his forearms.
“Then this niche could have been a prominent ceremonial feature, which is supported further by the find of a painted mat, which would more likely have been ceremonial than utilitarian.” He listened to her exuberance with an amused twist of his mouth. “Someone could have delivered a ritual across this way or chanted or marked certain parts of the year, like the equinox or solstice or something, for the others over there. And if the sun god site marks the summer solstice, then these people were aware of and might have venerated the change in seasons. What if this rock shelter has a sun alignment, too? Oh my God, Toby!”
He still wore a satisfied smile and nodded. “Yup. I smell a journal publication in your future, woman.”
She ran her hand through her hair, hanging long since she had released the voluptuous curls from their hair-band bondage. Then she threw herself against him and pressed her lips to his. To think she had this to share with him now. To think that she was on a precipice of such amazing discoveries. So much survey work would be required to plan such a grand recording project, potentially a collection to then manage afterward—and maybe more. This was more major of an undertaking than most senior researchers were ever given in their entire careers.
She had no idea where to even begin. After spending years scrounging through libraries, archaeology journals, and site reports to painstakingly piece together a fragmented picture of how panther shaman might fit into the bigger picture of Texas archaeology, to have so much new information dumped in her lap was overwhelming.
Her tongue danced with his. He welcomed her kiss with open arms and the comfort of someone who’d kissed her happily many times by now. And she could feel the rigid column of hardness in the front of his jeans. He’d made it clear he wanted her but hadn’t once pressured her. She leaned into his sex, rocking her body there, and listened to his breath catching in his throat. Happiness at a future finally made clear was urging her to throw caution to the wind with this man who’d flirted so shamelessly with her and who’d welcomed her child into his home. With her mother safe now and with her dad’s approval, the burdens of life felt suddenly weightless.