“What? No!”
Lauren shrugged. “I don’t know. Looks like someone we should hate.”
“Just because she’s pretty and successful is not a reason to hate someone. I mean,
Lauren refocused on the girl. “I can hate her for you.”
“Lauren! I don’t want you to do that!”
Lauren raised her brow. “Do you think she would be down here if my brother wasn’t?”
I blinked, and looked back at the twittering girl, and Mike, laughing. I crossed my arms and tried not to frown. “Kilky is interesting in its own right.”
“Yeah, but that’s not what’s going to be selling papers back home.”
“Well. Hmph. We still can’t hate her for trying to do a good job.”
“Okay.” Lauren nodded sagely. “But if she goes after Paul when I’m not around, I want you to take her out.”
Mike raised his brows when I finished dressing for dinner. “You’re wearing a dress.”
I smoothed my hands over the black sheath. “It’s been known to happen.”
We headed downstairs, but he didn’t drop the subject. “Twice. Once for the month mind, once in Paris. And your hair’s up. You’re channeling Tamera.”
I let out an exasperated huff, even though that was exactly what I was doing. “You sound like Cam.”
He opened the door outside and we headed for the coastal path. “Well, there’s a reason one of us is your best friend and the other is your boyfriend. Play nice with Jane, okay? I had to pull some strings to get her here.”
I stopped walking until he took my hand and gently tugged me back into motion. “Mike! You didn’t have to do that!”
He shrugged. “She wasn’t that far. Just in London.”
I shook my head in disbelief. “I don’t even know what the point of this is. Why am I talking to her?”
“Because you always want the media on your side. And if you lay out all the details, Ivernis won’t seem so mysterious and people will stop being interested.”
I raised my brows at him. “Does that work?”
“We’re gonna find out.”
Jane looked up when we walked into the restaurant. We sat, and Jane smiled at me. “Now I can see it.”
“See what?”
“The resemblance.”
“What?”
“You’re Tamara Bucherov’s daughter, right?”
I slowly swiveled to look at Mike. He raised his brows and shook his head slowly.
I looked back to Jane. “Yes.”
“But you’ve never modeled or anything before?”
“No.”
“And how long have you two been dating?”
“I’m sorry. Is this an article on Ivernis, or Mike?”
She smiled brightly, teeth flashing like only American teeth did. “Both. It’s a human interest story.”
“Well.” I wanted to leave, but dinner hadn’t even arrived. “I don’t really want my personal life written about. I’d rather talk about Ivernis.”
Jane leaned forward. “Look. You have this academic character, this Dr. Ceile, who’s trying to discredit you because of your personal life, right? Because of your mom and your boyfriend.” She nodded at Mike. “And that’s offensive and ridiculous. If he discredits you, it should be because you’re searching for the Irish Atlantis.”
I raised a brow. Mike tapped his foot against mine under the table, a clear indication not to be a smart ass. I mostly resisted. “Sounds about right.”
“So my job is to make people like you. And if they think Mike’s in love with you, it will be easier for them to love you.”
That was kind of weird logic, but okay. Still—”If you’re a sports journalist, how is this going to help the archaeologists involved on the dig? Everyone’s going to expect you to be on Mike’s side, which is my side, which is not going to convince the academic community that we’re to be taken seriously.”
She leaned forward. “Because I plan to write the story for our sister site, which does mainstream news. And I plan to make sure people will pay attention. I’m not a hack, you know. I’m not doing this as a favor to Mike, I’m doing it because there’s a story here.”
My fingers knitted together. “There is?”
“You’re a woman passionate about her career, and you’re being mocked because it’s easy to make Ivernis sound ludicrous and you sound frivolous. Mike told me about all the work you did to get your grant and prove an Iron Age site existed here. I want to show the world you did that work.” She shrugged. “Also, it doesn’t hurt for the public interest that you ended up in a relationship with the Leopards’ running back.”
Underneath the table, Mike took my hand and squeezed.
Jane placed her recorder on the table. “Are you in?”
I swallowed. “I’m in.”
We kept digging. Sometimes, in the field, everyone laughed hysterically and told stories and played mindless word games, but other days there were too many hours of where you were entirely in your own head. Too many repetitive hours of sticking the shovel in the ground, bending at the knee, lifting, throwing, over and over. Nothing there. Nothing here. No Ivernis.
On Thursday, I took a moment’s break and swept my eyes over the land. A smile twisted my lips. Would it hurt if I came here, years later, and there was nothing? Just sheep. Just grass and wind and heather.
Not Ivernis, here. Just Kilkarten.
I closed my eyes and breathed in the salt and earth.
Maybe I loved Kilkarten more than I loved Ivernis.
Maybe it wouldn’t hurt, coming back here.
If I’d been asked four months ago for my reaction to not finding Ivernis, I wouldn’t even have been able to consider the possibility. If forced under pain of death to give that option thought, I would’ve guessed I’d be utterly devastated.
Thirty-one teams didn’t win the Super Bowl every year. And the next season, they all went out and tried again.
My heart would ache if I never found Ivernis. But even if I never found it, even if my heart hurt, I would still come back here if it meant I was with Mike.
Because that was really all there was to it. I loved Mike. I couldn’t promise that I would love him in two years, or seven, or twenty. But right now, I loved him more than my lost city.
And I knew that by the time it ended, we might be so entwined that I wouldn’t be able to separate from him completely, and I would just have to cut off a whole part of myself, and that I would bleed when that happened. But right now I just didn’t care. Because I agreed with the poets, that it was better to have loved...
I kept shoveling. The sun moved; the mist came and went. We ate and laughed and napped. Pete told me about the calf born that morning. MacCarthy admitted he was considering moving to Dublin. Three-thirty came and went, and people started to get antsy. I considered calling the day early. Mike was only here two more days. Might as well spend every last second I could with him.
Or maybe I’d go home with him.
“Natalie!”
Across the field, Simon Daly waved frantically, jumping up and down and shouting my name. “Come look!”
I dropped my shovel and started to run.
His unit was a massive ten by five, and they’d shoveled about two feet down. Most of the workers stood
