Another message blipped up just before she jammed her phone into her pocket.
Toby:I wanna see you.
He wants to see me. Yes, Toby, I feel it, too, and it’s scaring the hell out of me…She’d play hard to get for a moment longer and frustrate him, as she stood ready and waiting to leave at her front door.
Rose:I wish I could. Got a lot to catch up on.
Toby:Don’t try that “hard to get” crap. You know you wanna run your hands all over my sexy archival room.
Archival room? Good God, he had an entire room? How much had been recovered from the panther shaman site? And while she was shocked, were they actually sexting about archival materials? He had an entire room outfitted in climate-controlled archival storage?
Toby:Come on, use the force, Morales. You know you wanna.
She shook her head. He’d tease her with movie lines for the remainder of field school.
Rose:On the way. I’ll be there in ten, all sweaty and filthy from work. Totally sexy.
Toby’s reply buzzed quickly.
Toby:Girl, you ain’t making it easy to get my mind out of the gutter.
Toby:You can use my shower. Bring your shampoo, and I’ll lay out a towel.
She rummaged for her toiletries and spare clothes, then pushed back outside, locking her door. She pulled her can of tea out of her chair’s cup holder and sipped as she set out walking.
Her voice of doubt whispered in the back of her mind. Does he text like that with all the ladies? He didn’t strike her as the kind of guy who spent a lot of time on his phone, writing back and forth with tons of people. He struck her as the type who sat on a barstool until the woman he was interested in walked by, then leaned into her ear, reeling her into his web, maybe bought her the next couple drinks, danced her up—gawd yes, he’d turned that tactic into a science—until her bra just happened to fall off in his Bronco and her panties just happened to drop onto the floorboard.
She was walking up the front walk when the door swung open. Toby was standing there, in a blue plaid work shirt that brought out the color in his eyes—another old pearl snap that looked bonafide ’70s—and jeans with that fancy-ass belt buckle shining like a crown jewel above an unmistakable bulge. This man was pure pheromone, and her pulse fluttered away from her as he stood at the top of the stately entrance leaning casually against the door frame, watching her, with an appreciative smile on his face.
She climbed the steps, feeling his gaze settling on her.
“Hey,” she said.
“Hey,” he smiled, giving her a subtle chin jut as if to say, What’s up?
She arrived in front of him, though he didn’t move.
“Are you going to let me in?”
“‘You shall not pass,’” he said in his best Gandalf voice.
She burst out laughing. Another saga quote. “You have got to be kidding me.”
“Yeah, you can come in.” He turned sideways so she could slip by him, and she felt his eyes resting on her profile as she entered the foyer. Had he been watching for her through the windows for the whole ten minutes she’d said it would take to get there? “I knew I could lure you up here with the prospect of ogling a big, hard…ancient pot.”
That heat surged through her now, warming her in all the wrong places, and she became acutely aware that they were alone in the vast, luxurious ranch house. A real Frederic Remington? It still awed her. She grinned and withheld the laugh that almost erupted from her lips. Big, hard, and ancient weren’t the three adjectives she would have strung together for a titillating innuendo. Fine, she’d fight fire with fire. He’d proven to be such an unbearable flirt anyway. Where was the harm in goofing around? The corner of her mouth turned up devilishly.
“Well, you know, if it’s the right big, hard pot, I’ll give it my expert appraisal, touch it, run my hands around its smooth girth, take my time with it until I know every ridge, every irregularity, every element—”
“Baby, it’s the right pot,” he choked, his voice having gone gruff and his smile dropping.
She suppressed her smile as he cleared his throat, standing at her back now as she looked down at his cowboy boots, kicked beneath the sideboard—upon which sat the urn exactly where she had set it, as if Toby thought it invisible. The leather was worn. These were work boots, and he’d used them to the point of disrepair. Why keep them, when he could afford the finest Luccheses?
“Hmm, we’ll have to see about that,” she said.
He cleared his throat again. Then again.
“If you want a shower,” he finally said, “it’s this way.”