Her Greek Doctor's Proposal (14 page)

As she was interim team leader, the painful job of contacting John’s family had fallen to Laurel. Tears welled in her throat again as she remembered their stunned silence, then bewildered and disbelieving questions. Then a near hysteria of grief and pain that had cracked her heart in two.

Did it make her weak and pitiful that she’d been beyond relieved to finally be done with her deliverance of the shocking news, passing the phone to Andros to further explain and try to comfort? Probably, yes. But with her own memories of receiving the nightmare call about her parents forever burned into her heart and mind, it was all she could do to maintain her composure. To not begin sobbing with them, which would have just made it all the worse for John’s family.

Laurel drew in a deep breath, swallowed again at the threatening tears. She looked at the dig team—her team—perched or sprawled on the chairs, and realized two were missing. “Where are Jason and Sarah?”

“Jason’s coming in a minute,” Becka said. “He’s feeling a little sick to his stomach. Because, you know…”

Becka’s voice faded away as a few team members looked down at the floor. Yes, they all knew. Jason had become good friends with John over the past months, even though the college boy had been seven years younger than John. Almost like a big brother to the young man, Laurel supposed, and her chest pressed in even tighter at the thought.

“Sarah didn’t answer her phone when I called to ask if she was ready,” one of the girls said. “Probably still in the shower or something. Or maybe she, you know, needed a little more time to compose herself.”

Laurel understood. She wished she had more time, too.

“Well, let’s go ahead and get started.” Laurel braced herself to ask what she had to ask. Knew their answers might well mean working with a thin crew, and she’d simply have to put in even more hours on her own. In fact, she might prefer that. No matter how much she wanted to find the artifact, she couldn’t feel good about possibly putting others at risk for it.

“This is a devastating thing for all of us,” she said. “John was not only an enthusiastic, hardworking person, he knew a lot about archaeology after volunteering on so many digs the past few years. We’ll miss him as a friend. And we’ll miss him as a teammate.”

All eyes on her, they sat silently, two of the girls sniffing back tears. Laurel dug her fingers into her palms, kept her eyes away from the anguish on the girls’ faces, and forged on. “No one knows why John died. What he had, or where he got it, or even if it could possibly have been contagious. If it was the same thing as the Wagners or not. Dr. Galanos said the hospital is working to find out, but we just don’t have those answers yet. So I must give you all the option of deciding whether or not you still want to be part of this dig.”

“I do,” Becka said instantly. “If it was contagious, we’d already have been exposed anyway, right? I feel fine, and it seems to me everyone else does too. What’s the point of quitting now, when we’re so close to the end? I mean, I found those cool coins just last week, and the day before Sarah found those amazing ivory feet, just like the ones in the Delphi museum! Think what else we still might find!”

Becka’s impassioned plea lifted the weight in Laurel’s chest ever so slightly and she managed a smile. “Thank you, Becka. Though you have to take a few more days off until your leg has had time to heal. I’m not asking you all to decide this minute. I’ll be working on the mountain as soon as we’re done here, and possibly in the cave as well. Those who want to join me are welcome,
so long as you understand there may be a risk involved, and you’re willing to take that risk. Any of you end up deciding you want to pack it in and schedule flights home, I completely understand and support your decisions.”

Just by watching them, seeing who made eye contact with whom and what expressions they wore, made it fairly easy to figure out who wanted to go and who would stay. And who could blame them? No matter how few hands would be left, though, she had to keep believing there was still a chance to finish what she had come to do.

“Talk it over with one another. Feel free to take the day off, then sleep on it,” she advised them. “You can let me know in the morning, and we’ll go from there.”

As she looked at the uncertain faces, her whole body felt a little numb, but jittery and anxious as well, and she knew the antidote was work. Give them time and space without them feeling as if she was hovering around to coerce them, or judge them. Last thing she’d want would be for someone to stay on from guilt. Shorthanded or not, everyone still working tomorrow needed to feel as passionate about the project as Becka did.

“I’m heading up, if anyone wants to go. If you decide to come later, you’ll find me at the mountain excavation first.”

She swung up her day pack, and Becka followed
her to the stairwell. “Let me tell Jason you’re ready to leave. I’ll be right back.”

Laurel’s lips twisted a little that the only person still for sure on board was handicapped with a bandaged-up leg and couldn’t work for days. She closed her eyes and lifted her face skyward. “Any way you two know where it is? Don’t angels have special powers? I need your help, here.”

“You talking to the ceiling, or yourself?”

She opened her eyes to see the dark chocolate gaze of the man she’d gotten to know, oh so intimately the night before. They were serious eyes, questioning. As he walked across the wide foyer, bronzed and strong and so gorgeous, the utter male beauty of him stole her breath. That jittery nervousness in her stomach faded away to a feeling of warmth.

Which was dangerous. If this attraction had been a distraction she couldn’t afford before, she could afford it even less now.

“Just talking to my parents,” she said, keeping her voice light so he wouldn’t read too much into it. “Hoping for some divine intervention.”

Sympathy joined the other emotions in his eyes as he came to stand in front of her. His hands stroked her arms, slowly, softly, soothingly as they had last night. “Find any?”

“No luck so far. Guess I’m on my own.”

“No. Not on your own.” He pressed his lips
to her forehead, and she found herself briefly closing her eyes, finding that simple touch also seemed to leach away some of her stress. “I’m here to help. Starting with talking to your crew if they have questions.”

“Thank you.” Their eyes met, and the reassuring touch of his hands on her arms made her wish it were that easy. That poor John hadn’t died, that she wasn’t beyond shorthanded, that she wouldn’t likely have to spend time away from the dig getting the Wagners settled back in Delphi or heading home, whichever they wanted. That anyone deciding to stay wouldn’t be risking their health. That she wasn’t facing imminent failure at what she’d wanted so much to accomplish. “They didn’t say much. It might be good if you talked to them now. Maybe they’d feel more free to say or ask things with me out of the room.”

“All right.” He gave her arms a squeeze. “I don’t have clinic appointments until nine. If—”

“Laurel! Laurel!”

They both turned to see Becka limping down the stairs, grabbing the handrail as she stumbled in her hasty descent. Panic was etched on her face, and an echo of it filled Laurel too, making her stomach clench. What could possibly be wrong now?

Andros leapt up a few steps to grasp Becka’s arm. “Steady now, before you fall.”

“Oh, thank God you’re here, Dr. Drakoulias!” The girl clutched at him. “It’s Jason. He’s really sick. I think—” She gulped down a little sob. “I think he has what the Wagners have. And…and John. Oh, God, what are we going to do?”

L
AUREL SAT IN
the dirt on the side of the baking mountain, bagging and labeling potsherds, barely paying attention as she did. Wondering why she was even bothering.

It was over. Finished. She wasn’t going to prove her parents’ theory. She wasn’t going to get their names in archaeological journals one last time, and her own too, to jump-start her belated, fledgling career. Probably wouldn’t even receive the grant she’d wanted so badly, enabling her to get going on a project of her own. One that would inch her toward accomplishing at least an iota of what her parents had accomplished by her age.

How could they have died for nothing? Why couldn’t their last excavation have been worth more than potsherds and jewelry and artifacts that, while interesting, were similar to all those already unearthed in Delphi?

She’d wanted that for them. For herself, and for her sisters, giving them a small feeling of peace
over her parents’ passing. And now? Now she had to wonder if this work, their work, had been worth the very high cost.

Worth all the summers they’d had only a long-distance relationship with their girls. All the times Laurel had tried to play parent, while they had dug for history. Worth the hole left in their family that had started to form even before they’d died.

She swiped her dusty hands across her wet cheeks. John’s family would be feeling the same emptiness, wondering why and for what, and her chest felt even heavier.

So often when digging, she could feel the spirits of the ancient people who’d lived there, hear them speaking, see them cooking in a vessel they’d unearthed, or wearing the jewelry they’d found. Sometimes it even felt as though the hand of fate was guiding her, showing her exactly where an artifact might be, drawing her there. But today the mountain was silent.

She pushed to her feet and looked into one of the wide, deep pits. The one that had been painstakingly re-excavated after her parents had been crushed by its walls. Her throat got so tight she could barely squeeze out the words. “So this is it, Mom, Dad. This is the best I could do, and I know it’s not nearly enough. Not what you would have expected of me. I’m sorry.”

She gathered up the few bags, walked the worn goat path to her car and cleaned up before driving to the hospital in Vlychosia. Andros had arranged for Jason to be transported there, and, no matter how much it hurt, she owed the living more than she owed the dead. Starting with Jason, to see how he was and see if there was anything she could do to help. Then talking with Mel and Tom to tell them the dig was over. To ask what she could do for them as well.

She peeked into Mel and Tom’s hospital room, surprised they weren’t there, and a jolt of alarm went through her, sending her quickly back out of the room. Had they gotten worse? Were they back in the ICU?

Heart pounding, she practically ran down the hall, trying to find someone she could ask. She spotted two men in doctors’ coats about to round a corner, one with thick dark hair, a sculpted jaw and a muscular frame, and knew without a doubt who it was. “Andros!”

He stopped and turned, spoke to the man with him, then moved in her direction. She jogged toward him, breathless. “Where are Mel and Tom? They’re not worse, are they?”

“No, no. They’re fine.” He cupped her face in his warm palm for a moment before sliding it down to her shoulder. “In fact, they’re being
released. I was going to drive them back to the hotel after all the paperwork’s done.”

She took a deep breath of relief. “What about Jason?”

“Not sure yet, but so far not worse. He’s getting good nursing care, so let’s hope for the best.” He looked at his watch. “How about a cup of coffee? They won’t be ready to go for maybe another hour.”

She didn’t know if coffee would lift her spirits or jangle her nerves even more. Regardless, being with Andros would be the one thing sure to help her feel at least marginally better.

The coffee shop was surprisingly large, but the tables were tiny, their knees bumping against one another’s beneath it. He reached for her hand, and his warm strength felt so comforting, she twined her fingers within his.

“You talked to the dig crew, right?” he asked.

“Yes. I told them to make their travel plans to go home.”

“Good.” His brows were pinched together in a small frown as his thumb absently stroked up and down hers. “We want them to wait a few days before getting on a plane. Or being close to other people. Quarantined, basically. And I also want blood tests from everyone. If no one else gets sick, you can all go.”

“You did blood tests for the Wagners and John. You know it wasn’t a fungal infection.”

“We’re looking at other possibilities. With John dead and three others sick, the national infection-control folks are involved. We’ll be doing a battery of tests this time, a viral serology panel, looking for emerging infections. Something we maybe haven’t seen before. Takes a long time to determine something that complicated, though, so I don’t expect we’ll know anything for a while yet.”

His tone was as serious as his expression, and she realized it was a very good thing she’d shut down the dig. The pain she felt over not achieving her dream, her parents’ dream, would be far worse if anyone else got sick. “It seems impossible that all this has something to do with the dig. But I know my parents wouldn’t want anyone else to die trying to accomplish what they didn’t have a chance to.”

“Plenty’s been achieved in the last five years of that dig, Laurel. Right? What more could there be to accomplish?”

She felt the supportive hold of his hand in hers, looked at the sincerity in his eyes, the caring, and nearly told him. But her lips closed and she shook her head. Even now, with the dig ending, she found she couldn’t. Why, she wasn’t sure, but it just seemed she should still keep the secret her
parents had held close. “You never know. That’s what makes you keep digging.”

“I just realized I don’t even know where you call home. I’d like to know, so when I think of you I can picture you there.”

Home? Did she have such a thing anymore?

She’d been so consumed with everything that had happened, she hadn’t even thought about leaving here in a few days. About not seeing him again. But the low, husky voice, the serious dark depths of his eyes, put that reality front and center. Added another layer of weight to her heart.

“Indiana. After my parents died, the only digs I worked on had to be close to where we lived, studying protohistoric Caborn-Welborn culture. But I recently sold the house, since my sisters don’t need a place to roost anymore. And because I hope to head to Turkey soon, making that home for a while.” If she could get the funding, which would be tough going, now. And why didn’t that thought bother her as much as it had just last week? Must be the depressing reality of everything that had happened since.