Digging Deep (Xcite Romance) (2 page)

Taking a hefty swig from her water bottle, she smiled, relieved that her ability to laugh at herself was finally reasserting itself after days of being diminished by the heat.

Harrison grinned as he strolled to his side of the dig. ‘Gotta love that dry English sense of humour, doll.’

Beth called after him, ‘Thanks for the snake removal, Harry.’

He kept walking as he corrected her. ‘Harrison. It’s Harrison, I told you. I don’t like being called Harry.’

She shouted at his retreating back, ‘And I don’t like being referred to as a doll. It makes me sound like a character in an American B-movie! Message received?’

Still laughing, Harrison didn’t look round, but held up a hand as if in defeat. ‘Gotcha, doll! Message received.’

Stepping back into her square, Beth looked at her watch. It wasn’t even ten o’clock in the morning, and the heat was already making it feel as if someone was systematically pouring paint stripper across her shoulders. She could hear her students chatting happily as they worked. All except for Ryan, who was unusually quiet.

Beth sighed as she recalled Harrison’s glare towards Ryan, and realised it wasn’t just her rationale she’d left in the colder climate of home, but her common sense as well. It was time to come clean about how Ryan had messed up the mosaic and, more importantly, why she hadn’t reported the incident straight away.

Her decision made, Beth’s hands returned to working the ground, while her imagination speculated how it might have felt if Harrison had been the one she’d accidently sat on. Would I have wanted to get up quite so quickly? Her pussy twitched as if in confirmation, as her green eyes studied the Roman drain … 

Chapter Two

Hidden away in the garden at the rear of the house they were staying in, taking advantage of a few moments’ peace between the end of the morning’s digging and lunch, Harrison rested his back against the shaded trunk of a large-leafed palm tree. He’d told himself he was there so he could update his notes without being disturbed, but he knew he was really just avoiding Beth.

He screwed his eyes up against the ideas that seemed to circle on continuous loop through his head. She is a decade younger than me, lives in another continent, and is a colleague. So don’t even think about it! Determined not to contradict this train of thought with reminders of how badly he wanted to find out how far Beth’s freckles travelled across her body, what the spring of her russet ringlets would feel like in his fingers, or speculate about how she seemed to make him laugh even when the most ordinary words came out of her mouth in her cute English accent, Harrison had decided to keep as much distance between himself and Beth as possible. It would help if she wasn’t so damn good at her job.

He sighed hard. Work relationships were never a good idea – especially when they were only destined to work together for three months of the year! His year with Linda, Beth’s predecessor, had proved that. Anyway, such indiscretions were unprofessional, and Harrison had always prided himself on his professionalism
.

As he urged himself to stop contemplating why Beth, in her multiple layers of clothing, felt more attractive to him than any of the semi-clad females who worked around the site, Harrison suddenly sensed that he wasn’t alone. Lifting his head from his notes, he saw Candida lounging against the wall on the opposite side of the dust-soiled garden.

His heart sank. Of all his students, she was the last person he felt like talking to. For a second, Harrison assumed she’d been looking for him, but swallowed a muted murmur of relief when she faced the other way, and tapped urgently against the touch screen of her phone.

Intent on staying focused on the report he was writing, Harrison sat silently against the side of the house, hoping that his student wouldn’t spot him. Bending his head to his work, Harrison snapped it up again as Candida’s grating voice echoed around the small, square garden.

‘Of course I’m not ignoring your calls.’

Raising his eyebrows, he immediately felt sorry for whoever was at the other end of the phone. Candida might well have been a sight for sore eyes with her rounded chest, flat stomach, and tanned legs that seemed to go on for ever, but her voice was enough to scour the varnish off wood, and her “I’m beautiful and therefore you will love me” attitude was proof, if any was needed, that Candida Harker was Daddy’s little princess through and through. Not for the first time, Harrison cursed that the “daddy” in question was the owner of Harker International, the company providing most of the sponsorship for the dig, and so her presence on the team was secured each time Colorado University came to the site.

Harrison’s attempts to ignore the rest of her conversation were abruptly halted as Candida pronounced down the phone, ‘Well, you were right. She should have an eye kept on her. Who’d have thought it of someone so mousy and dull? I mean, she is so white and spotty she could be mistaken for the ghost of a leopard!’

There was a break from Candida’s high-decibel yakking, as whoever was on the other end of the call spoke, before she responded, ‘Well, yes, it seems she does have some sort of MILF quality. I tell you,
no
American guy would humiliate himself like that with anyone who wasn’t at least of goddess status. Which she most certainly is not! And not because he was in her debt!’

Trying not to care which of the English students Candida was ripping apart, and hoping like hell that everyone else was out of earshot of her diatribe, Harrison frowned as his student went on.

‘Supervisory skills? How the hell should I know? I’m on Harrison’s team, thank God. And will not be swapping under any circumstances.’

Harrison’s head jerked back up, his ears straining for information.
Beth?
She was bad-mouthing Beth.
Why?
He didn’t dare even rustle his papers, although he was sure Candida was so involved in her call that an entire herd of elephants could go by and she wouldn’t notice.

‘Yes, I know, but I don’t want …’

There was an odd hint of panic in his student’s voice now, and Harrison began to wish that the person on the other end of the phone was as loud as Candida, so he could hear whatever it was they were saying.

‘OK – well, I wasn’t going to tell you this …’

Like hell. Harrison recognised when Candida was building up to spill some slanderous scandal.

‘I don’t think it is her ability as an archaeologist that is in question. It is her relationship with her students. With one student in particular.’

A vision of Beth’s flushed face as she sat on Ryan’s lap, after the snake had frightened her, flashed through Harrison’s brain.

Candida was nodding in satisfaction, her previously concerned countenance replaced with one of smug relief. ‘Yes. Yes, that’s right.’

Harrison closed his eyes. Who the hell was on the end of that line? He gripped his papers, physically having to stop himself from getting up and ripping the cell phone from Candida’s hand so he could challenge the unseen recipient.

‘Well, OK, but it isn’t pretty.’ Candida paused as if for dramatic effect, as Harrison impatiently waited to hear what her
coup de grâce
against his colleague was going to be. A feeling of foreboding crept ever faster up his spine as he heard her say, ‘One of her students is fucking her in return for her silence.’

Harrison felt as though he’d swallowed an orange whole as a triumphant Candida went on. ‘Yes! Every day! Just so she won’t tell anyone he broke the mosaic he was excavating. Apparently, yesterday lunchtime Beth made Ryan beg! Can you credit it! She actually made him
beg
! And all that time the bitch was naked and getting a good time up on the open roof. Fuck! I mean, what would she have made him do if he’d smashed the whole thing, and not just crumbled the edge a bit?’

With the use of Beth’s name, the last vestige of hope that Harrison had been mistaken about what he’d heard evaporated. It isn’t true, he told himself. It can’t be – can it? But what is Candida up to? His appetite for lunch disappeared as, with morbid fascination, he continued to listen …

Four hours later, observing the half-exposed tiles through the sand before him, Harrison told himself, for the umpteenth time, that what Candida had said down her cell phone was total rubbish. He’d misunderstood, having only heard one side of the conversation. Although there was no way he could have misread the relieved smugness on Candida’s face when she’d gone on to detail the depths of Beth’s supposed depravity, and Ryan’s own motives.

Despite every vestige of his common sense telling him it was ludicrous, the conversation he’d accidentally eavesdropped wouldn’t stop bugging him. Candida’s words whirred around Harrison’s head. The thought of Beth having a sexual relationship with Ryan amplified the recurring vision of her sat, albeit by accident, in the lap of her most musclebound student, driving him to distraction.

It had to be rubbish. But the mosaic had been broken … Why was Candida dishing the dirt on two people she hardly knew?

Consulting his watch, Harrison was surprised to see it was almost time to close the site for the day. Aside from his personal preoccupations, archaeologically it had been a fairly productive day. The outline of the increasingly opulent bath house was beginning to take on a very impressive shape.

This was his third season on the site, and although the Tunisian authorities only allowed it to be opened for four months of the year, Harrison felt he’d come to know the excavation well. Last season, he and Linda had uncovered a skeleton-packed mausoleum, and the year before that they’d worked on the city’s forum.

Harrison was looking forward to adding the outline of the bathing area to the city plans, and had already begun planning the chapters he’d write about the bath house when the book about the excavation was written. He’d intended to ask Beth to help him compile the book now that Linda had been promoted and was, thank God, out of his life. Now he wasn’t so sure.

Harrison knew his fair share of ambitious people, but Linda won the prize. He couldn’t believe he’d been such a blind fool where she was concerned. That wasn’t a mistake he was
ever
going to make again.

Tapping the end of his brush against his palm, he surveyed the Roman hypocaust heating system that had once warmed the bath waters; his mind, however, was on something quite different from this amazing innovation.

Memories of Linda, all business, nifty trowel action, and deceivingly girly pigtails, which hid an underlying dangerous ambition, elbowed their way into Harrison’s consciousness alongside the stains of Candida’s gossip. The woman was fast heading towards being the youngest female Professor of Archaeology in the UK, by whatever means possible. And he had been one of those “means”.

Harrison poked pointlessly at the ground as he recalled their two African seasons together. It had seemed so romantic, working under the sun all day and cuddling up together at night. He’d liked Linda. A lot. He’d let her get under his skin, and would have done anything for her, right up until the point when the penny had dropped and he’d realised he was merely a stepping stone on her road to academic achievement.

As his head filled up with images of their dig-time fling, which had been physically highly rewarding but had ended up costing him his own hopes of climbing the career ladder, Harrison squashed down the anger her felt at his own naivety. He’d been delighted when Beth had replaced Linda. He’d believed the nightmare would be over. It appeared he was wrong. He’d put money on Linda being on the other end of that call with Candida, but for the life of him, he couldn’t think why.

Taking a gathering breath, Harrison forced himself to consider more immediate worries. He’d assumed it had been a local who’d broken the mosaic in a pointless hunt for saleable treasure. Surely Beth would have said if she had known it was Ryan who’d damaged it?

Beth was young, and Harrison knew this was her first foreign dig as supervisor, albeit in a post holding joint responsibility with his own. She was an experienced archaeologist who’d come highly recommended by her university department. He just couldn’t square the Beth he was working alongside with someone who’d be so unprofessional as to cover up a blunder like that. Unless, of course, she was having an affair with him …

Straightening up, Harrison gave the order for his students to down tools.
No. It isn’t true. It can’t be.
Fed up with pointlessly going around in circles, Harrison decided to trust his own instincts rather than Candida. He credited Beth with far more taste, and a great deal more common sense. No way would she sleep with one of her students. No way.

He glanced across the site towards Beth, and instantly Harrison’s brain reverted to the very thoughts he’d just dismissed. The image of his associate entwined in Ryan’s arms became increasingly lurid, and he couldn’t stop himself from visualising the scenarios that Candida had so gleefully expounded to her contact.

Her ginger curls jumping against her back, Harrison could vividly see Beth standing proud with Ryan on his knees before her. Her naked body was a startling white, in contrast to her student’s bronzed flesh. Her ample tits were swollen under Ryan’s grasp … He squeezed his eyes shut, trying to banish the tableau that Candida had planted in his head, yet he was helpless to stop visions of a nude Ryan, his dick rock hard, pleading with his boss to be allowed to plunge into her body.

Candida’s begrudging respect echoed in Harrison’s head again and again. “Apparently, yesterday lunchtime Beth made Ryan beg! Can you credit it! She actually made the guy beg! And all that time the bitch was naked and getting a good time up on the open roof …”

Annoyed at himself for even half-believing Candida, Harrison couldn’t shift his feelings of suspicion. After all, Beth might be a complete cutie, with her polite way of talking, and her bouncy curls, who knew her way around a dig blindfold, but that didn’t mean she was a good person. He realised that he didn’t know Beth at all. She could just be another Linda … It could all be true. She and Ryan did pot-wash alone on the house roof yesterday. They could have got up to anything …

Trying to concentrate on closing the site for the night, telling himself sternly that all this would be cleared up later that evening, and he’d undoubtedly discover that Candida was spinning a web of lies, Harrison strode over to a pile of buckets and brushes to dump his tools.

Again he looked beyond his own workers towards the British team. The light, even though it was late in the day, still semi-blinded him as he made out the slim curviness of his co-supervisor.

A grin crossed his face.

Of course! There was no way it could be true. Harrison nodded to himself as he regarded Beth, clad from top to toe in layers of light cotton, recognising that he’d felt disappointed in her without any grounds to feel that way beyond gossip. Beth would never expose her skin to the elements in the way Candida described.

From the moment Dr Andrews had stepped off the plane at Tunis airport, apart from her face and a tiny patch of skin on her neck, which Harrison noticed seemed to constantly escape the shielding of her hat’s brim, she had been covered from head to toe in long, baggy trousers, and full sleeved T-shirts to protect her porcelain skin.

Harrison smiled as he considered how, even though they’d worked together for a week now, it was still a shock each evening when Beth removed the top swathe of fabric and her hat, revealing her uncontrollable curls and alabaster arms, which were so spotted with freckles that a join the dots freak would have been kept happy for years.

There was absolutely no way Beth would be so careful about protecting herself, and then recklessly expose her burnable chest during the hottest part of the day, even if Ryan had had the pleasure of lathering it in a whole bottle worth of factor 50 sun cream.