Words of Love - By Hazel Hunter Page 0,1

and the creation of man. Thus it was arranged in the darkness and in the night by the Heart of Heaven.

Handwritten lines of sepia ink floated in front of her eyes as she quickly translated the archaic Spanish and their attempts to imitate Mayan K’iche.

“Jessica?” she heard Brett say.

He was standing directly below her and handing up her suitcase.

She blinked.

“Hi,” she said, quickly. “I mean here, let me take that.”

• • • • •

“You can take off the life vest,” Brett said as Jessica grasped the shiny, purple, hardshell luggage. “I’ll stow them with the boat.”

Her tennis shoes were nearly at his eye level and he couldn’t help but glance at them again. They should have been my first clue.

Brett looked up at Jessica as she hauled up the suitcase.

And the baggage should have been my second.

Actually, any number of things should have warned him. In his own department, it was a given that archaeologists did at least some fieldwork. In fact, it was a requirement for his students. But not so in art history, where Jessica was a grad student. Although she’d said in her emails that she’d been to the field, that couldn’t possibly be true–at least not in Central America.

Tennis shoes instead of boots?

A suitcase and not a backpack?

He watched her, off in her own world again. It gave him yet another opportunity to regret this whole idea.

He needed an epigrapher now, no doubt about it–someone who could translate the Mayan glyphs on the spot, as needed, and on the fly. And he couldn’t turn to any of his usual colleagues. That would be a mistake. He’d worked very hard to keep his discovery a complete secret and, up to this point, it was. The most fabulous archaeological discovery in memory was still unknown to the rest of the world. But he wasn’t going to make any progress without glyph translations and it wasn’t his specialty.

If he brought in any of the recognized authorities, word would spread like wildfire. Just the presence of an epigrapher on a site with him might be enough. But a student, and a girl at that, would only feed his growing reputation–false as it was.

He grimaced at the thought.

As she took off the vest, he couldn’t help but think that her clothes were the last indication of her lack of field experience, though he hardly needed another.

They were the clothes she wore at school, bulky and oversized, and too heavy for this weather. Instead of the usual baseball cap, she wore a canvas sun hat, like the ones you could buy in the airport. With the big glasses, the bandana around her neck, and the long sleeves and pants, the only skin that was exposed to the sun was her hands. He looked at them as he took her vest. They were so white that they were almost bright, even under the thick cloud cover overhead. He hoped she was using sunscreen.

He stowed the vests and took his backpack, stocked to the gills with supplies. All of his own gear was already at the site, accumulated and cached over the last few years. As he tied the vests down, he remembered the questions of the man where he’d rented the boat. Brett had been surprised that Jessica was as fluent in Spanish as he was but he had motioned to her not to answer the questions. He fielded them and there had been too many. Yet another reason to get this site guarded, excavated, and published. But not until he’d found what he was looking for–the thing that all Mayan archaeologists had been looking for.

He shouldered the pack as a few big drops of rain hit the boat with hollow thunking sounds.

Dammit.

Tropical Storm Angela had not cooperated. Even in the short time they’d been at the shore, the river had risen at least two inches. He glanced upstream. Somewhere to the north rain was falling–a lot of it. He’d known from the start it was going to be close. The swift and swollen river was higher than he’d ever seen it. They needed to get to the site–fast.

He climbed the embankment and checked the knot in the rope. He gave it an extra yank and felt it tighten. When he turned to Jessica, she was smiling. Actually, she never seemed to stop smiling. Here in the mud, with a hard rain beginning, and already a day of travel behind them, she was smiling. And though he was used to the female students