“What’s that stand for?” Corrie asked as nonchalantly as possible as she took one of the bowls from his hands.
He looked at what she was referring to, and tugged at his sleeve, covering the tattoo so she could no longer see. “It’s nothing.”
Well, that was bullshit. Seriously, though. Was it possible that he had her initials tattooed on his arm? No . . . there was no way.
Right?
“It’s my mom’s initials,” he said a few moments later as he kept his focus on the suds in the dirty water. Corrie scrunched her face in embarrassment, thankful he didn’t notice. Of course they weren’t her initials. The very thought of it was absurd.
“She’s . . . she’s not well,” he continued. “Got diagnosed with cancer a few months before I left to come here. It’s my way of having her here with me.”
His voice was calm and even. He didn’t look at Corrie.
“Oh, I’m sorry, Ford. I shouldn’t have . . .” She wanted to touch him. To put her arms around his shoulders and tell him it would be okay. Not that she knew whether it would be okay. But she wanted him to feel better, and she knew Ford well enough to know that as even-toned as he seemed, he was not okay.
“It’s okay. It’s hard being here sometimes, that’s all,” he said, glancing at her for a moment, then returning to the dishes. “Only being able to speak to her on the satellite phone once a week. Not knowing the condition she’ll be in once I get back.”
“What about your dad? Is he handling it okay?”
Ford paused, gripping the side of the tub for a moment while staring straight ahead into the darkness of the jungle. “He died two years ago.”
Corrie closed her eyes and silently winced. Jeez. Talk about a foot in the mouth. “Before you go apologizing again, don’t. He’s not worth it,” Ford followed up, pulling his mouth into a tight line.
She remembered him talking about his parents that night in the library. The Sunday evening phone calls he never missed. The first time he’d watched Raiders of the Lost Ark with his dad. How much he was looking forward to his upcoming father-son trip that summer. Guess a lot had changed over those last several years. She had so many questions, but it was likely hard enough for Ford to reveal as much as he did to her, so she let it go. But why was he here if his mother was sick? Sure, this was his job, but it wasn’t like finding Chimalli was Ford’s passion like it was Corrie’s. Ford probably couldn’t care less about Chimalli, to be honest. He was always more interested in unearthing lost cities and structures, not necessarily the specific people who lived in them.
“Can we talk about something else?” he asked, breaking into her thoughts.
“Of course. What do you want to talk about?”
“What about that jaguar? Did you really outrun it?” He tipped his head at her and smiled. There it was again. And there were the flutters in her stomach.
Corrie laughed. “I swear, I don’t know how that rumor got started. No, it wasn’t a jaguar. It was a jaguarundi. The size of a giant housecat. All people hear is ‘jaguar’ and now I’m a jag hunter. And I wouldn’t say I outran it, but rather outsmarted it. Though, to your earlier point, no, it wasn’t injured.” She smiled back at him, and he chuckled.
Mm. She liked that sound. She liked making him laugh. Almost more than she liked getting under his skin.
Who knew?
“What about the whole necklace thing, then? The one where you allegedly stole back that jade necklace that had been stolen from the auction?”
“I mean, that one’s sort of true. Though, in all fairness, you can’t really steal what’s already been stolen. And besides, I didn’t take it, anyway. I still maintain that Bernard Sardoni gave it to me.”
“Gave it to you? I thought I’d heard you got it from his bedroom?”
“Yes, that’s right.”
He cocked his head. “And? How did you even get in that situation in the first place?”
“Well, I’d gone to that auction with a friend of mine who’d been the one responsible for the necklace, and when the necklace went missing, they blamed him. So I did some digging, learned Sardoni was the likely culprit, snuck my way into a party he was having a few days later, and during the party he invited me to his room. And while we were in there . . . he put the necklace on me.”
She nonchalantly glanced at Ford, who was hanging on to her every word. This was fun. And, admittedly, the time she fooled mob boss Bernard Sardoni was one of her favorite stories, even though, at the time, she had been terrified. But she couldn’t let her friend take the heat for the necklace’s disappearance.
“Wait . . . did you . . .” Although he didn’t finish his question, it was obvious what he wanted to ask. The same question everyone asked: whether she’d had sex with Sardoni.
“Ew, of course not, Ford. I do have standards, thank you very much.”
“But you did use your sex appeal to get in his bedroom,” he said, more like a fact than a question.
Hmm . . . was Ford admitting that he found her sexy? She fought her smile back.
“Well, how else was I going to get up there? I mean, how the heck do you think I got into that party, anyway?”
Though, that was the reason Sardoni brought her to his room. Thankfully, she’d gone in with an exit plan.
“And that’s it? He put the necklace on you and said, ‘Here you go’?”
“No. About a minute later, his wife came bursting into the room, with the maid I’d paid a hundred bucks to snitch, and then I snuck out during the commotion. Seeing as he stole the necklace in the first place, it wasn’t like he was going to report me to the police.”
Ford covered his mouth to hide his shock. “No way. I can’t believe you did that. That’s so dangerous, Corrie. And ballsy. Maybe you are a badass.”
She smiled and had to turn her head to keep him from being able to see her blush. For some reason, his acknowledgment felt like confirmation that all her outrageous antics had been worth it. They at least made for decent fodder at dig-side dinners.
“What about you? What’s the wildest thing that’s happened to you since you became Dr. Ford Matthews?”
“I don’t do wild,” he said, wiping the last of the droplets off the makeshift counter.
“Oh, come on. No Holy Grails? Or chasing Nazis through the desert?”
He snickered. “Nope.”
“What about sword fights and snakes?” she jested.
“Certainly not.”
“Don’t you have any fun?” she asked, playfully tugging on his arm.
And accidentally brushing her breasts against his bicep. They both froze, each glancing at the place where their bodies connected, but neither making any effort to break apart. They hadn’t been this close since . . . since that night in the library.