Running Back

He laughed and tweaked the side of his glasses in a familiar gesture. “All good. And you? All settled with the contract?”

“Yeah.” I tossed a glance back at Mike. His sisters had gathered at each shoulder. “Come on, let me introduce them to you.”

The O’Connors didn’t move as I brought the archaeologists over. Anna looked properly bored, while Lauren had on her frozen business face, but it was Mike’s expression that actually surprised me. I could have sworn a storm gathered in his eyes and dislike in his jawline before he smoothed it all away. Did he resent Jeremy because he’d been the original instigator of the excavation? I didn’t want Jeremy to know about all the drama beneath the signing. Good grad students didn’t have time for drama.

I moved a little closer to Jeremy, feeling protective under the stone-cold glares of the flame-headed siblings. “This is Dr. Jeremy Anderson, and Dr. Grace Ahearn and Dr. Duncan Grady. Dr. Anderson is the one who inspired me to work on Irish archaeology in the first place.”

Mike’s brows rose almost imperceptibly, but I had become a master of Michael deciphering, and that did not look favorable. I swallowed. “And these are the O’Connors. The, uh, new ones.”

Lauren reached out, business like, and shook hands, while Anna muttered hello and whipped out her cell so she could watch without having to participate. Mike followed a half second after his sister, wrapping his hand around Jeremy’s. “Hey.”

They were about the same height, though Mike was broader, and his muscles came from throwing people around, not dirt. Jeremy had a thinner face, and currently wore a grin as he shook Mike’s hand. “Running back for the Leopards, huh?”

Mike’s hand fell away. His shoulders relaxed, his eyes lidded and that false, charming grin came out. “Yeah, that’s me.”

“Too bad you guys lost so quickly this season. I rooted for you.”

Mike’s smile didn’t change, but I recognized the tension in the set of his eyes. “Hey, I’m always rooting for me.”

Jeremy waved a hand around. “You excited for the excavation?”

Mike smile widened. “Something like that.”

I cleared my throat. “Have you guys checked in at the inn yet? I thought I’d show you around and then we’d grab dinner in the village. But there’s no rush if you want to get settled in first.”

Jeremy smiled. “Maybe a tour first before dinner.”

I spent the next few hours pointing out the planned unit locations, and explaining what the resistivity specialist had said. Grace and Duncan had been working on Iron Age sites for longer than I had been alive. It was both intimidating, flattering, and depressing—the last because I realized very quickly into my tour that all three of them regarded me as an underling—a useful one, but certainly not the leader of the project. They had just as many ideas as I had, and as we talked it quickly became clear whose plans would trump whose.

And it was fine that mine were at the bottom of the pile. Really. I was twenty-four and they were in their fifties. Well. Jeremy was only thirty-seven.

But we were the money and they were the artists.

Which kind of sucked.

But I got it. I had to pay my dues. Besides, if this became a big deal, then I could just stay here. And if they liked me, they probably had a ton of connections that would be fantastic and helpful and everything I needed.

I took the professors to O’Malley’s restaurant for dinner with all the usual suspects—Kate and Mike, tentatively made up; Lauren and Paul, sniping as usual; Maggie and Anna, both with a similar disdainful attitude. One big, distorted family.

Kilkarten was the main topic, of course. Jeremy took center stage as he recalled how the quest for Ivernis had begun. “It started when I was excavating a site in southern Italy. It was a second century site, and everything we found was exciting but expected—except for the toggles.”

Lauren and Mike both kicked me. “Beads without holes,” I said quickly. Jeremy was still talking.

“They had similar patterns and colorants to ones found in Ireland, so much that I was convinced they were connected. But the connection between Ireland and Rome is contentious. It’s much easier to believe all trade went through France and Britain. I wrote papers on the subject and did extensive research, and spent a decade excavating potential sites.

“When nothing showed up right away, people lost faith—though not Natalie.” He paused and smiled warmly at me. “She kept doing research back home, while I headed over to Ireland to see what I could find on this side. It took years, but I finally tracked down references in the scribblings of illuminated manuscripts. You see, Ireland has several great oral poems, such as The Tain, but while that one was actually preserved, many more were lost. However, when the monks started transcribing the Greek and Arabic works, they often used young boys to write who’d grow bored and doodle in the margins.”

He gestured at Dr. Grady. “Aware of this, I gained permission from the university to study the off-drawings in their extensive hold of manuscripts. And I was able to put together the narrative about the Iverni people, also called the Erainn. And you can follow that to the Dairine, known in the Ulster Cycle of legends. And so with the help of Dr. Grady, we combed the materials for any mentions of land and location, which were usually put as mythological. But with Natalie’s research into the geography we were able to find the probable location of Iverni.”

I sighed happily. Jeremy’s perseverance always made me warm and fuzzy and delighted.

Mike turned to me. “So you knew Ivernis was supposed to be somewhere nearby, and used all your geophysical whatever to figure out the most likely place for a city back then.”

I nodded.

“Isn’t that sort of like figuring out what you want your evidence to prove before actually gathering it?”

Look who suddenly had opinions about something he’d spent weeks shunting aside. “Of course not. I mean, the evidence that a site was located here is strong enough even without Jeremy’s research. It’s not like I made anything up.”

He shrugged. “Yeah, so, your research holds up that maybe there’s a site. But why assume it’s Ivernis? Isn’t that like the same as Schliemann’s Troy?”

I went hot and cold and wished I’d never told him anything. “Mike.”

Jeremy and the others regarded him with some disdain.

Mike relaxed back into his chair. “Just saying.”

“Don’t.” I kicked him again. Hard.

Anna—blessed, oblivious Anna—took that moment to interrogate the professors about studying archaeology at college. Kate, sensing her daughter’s active interest in an academic field, also leaped in the conversation.

Mike excused himself first. “Nice to meet all of you,” he said as he stood, and the professors all looked up at him. “Welcome to Kilkarten. Be sure to let me know if you need anything.” He strode off.

Across the table, Lauren’s brows shot up. I quickly tucked my legs out of reach in case she wanted to kick me, just to make sure I’d noticed Mike’s somewhat aloof manner.

Which I definitely had. I smiled at the table and excused myself, and then ran out after Mike.

It was drizzling again, so light it almost just felt like a heavy mist, and gray blurred out everything two feet beyond me. Mike’s hair, like always, carried an extra gleam, like a copper penny cutting through the haze. I caught up with him, grabbing his arm. In the fog, he stood out like a moonbeam on the water. “‘Welcome to Kilkarten’?”

He stared stubbornly ahead as we continued on the path back to the inn. “It’s my land.”

“We are all well aware of that, Mr. O’Connor. Did you need to rub our noses in it?”

“‘Our’? You’re an ‘our’ with that group?”

“Mike! What is going on with you? There’s no reason to get so worked up.”

His lips pressed together into a narrow, thin line. “How can you like a guy who takes credit for your work?”

“What?” I shook my head. “What are you talking about? Jeremy is a genius. He’s not taking any undue credit.”

“Yeah, he is. So he found some stupid beads—and don’t even get me started on the fact that