“Yes!” Colton’s voice rang with excitement. “Everything, every move had to symbolize something and you’re right, she would consider herself above an earthly pharaoh. This makes sense.”
“We just need to find something that places Cleopatra here during her lifetime. Anything. Any sign of her to prove to the minister we should be granted a permit to excavate on a long-term basis.”
“You said you have limited capacity to dig on this trip?” Colton asked.
“Two weeks. Abet is going to hire a crew to accompany us back here tomorrow. He said it wouldn’t be worth paying them for the first day of surveying.”
Colton nodded. “I think my surveying is done. Should we call it a day?”
Dallas was about to say ‘No way,’ when she noticed the dark circles under Colton’s eyes. He’d basically flown fourteen hours from the states, immediately got on a train, arrived here and then spent the afternoon surveying in the hot sun.
“Oh my God. You must be exhausted.”
He gave a sheepish smile.
“Let’s wake them,” Dallas said, reaching for the door handle. “We can get a good night’s sleep and be back out here bright and early.”
When they returned to the city, Colton was asleep in the seat beside her. She nudged him gently and said in a whisper. “Come on, Colton. We’re here.”
He frowned and opened his eyes. “Huh?”
“We’re back in Alexandria.”
He ran a hand through his hair. “I need to find a hotel room.”
“Not tonight,” Dallas said, reaching for his hand. “You’re going to stay in my room tonight.”
She led him upstairs and he basically fell into the bottom bunk. Dallas yanked off his boots and then covered him up to the chin. He was already snoring again. She smiled.
After getting ready for bed, she crawled into the top bunk. She couldn’t stop smiling. Colton was in the bunk below her and he was so damn cute when he was sleeping. But more than that, now that she’d seen the temple, she knew they were on the verge of finding something at the site. Something big. She just knew it.
She couldn’t be wrong. She couldn’t afford to be wrong.
She fell asleep to thoughts of mummified bodies walking in underground passageways at Taposiris Magna.
Ten
When Dallas woke, Colton was standing there grinning from ear-to-ear thrusting a large cup of coffee toward her. Because of the bunk beds, his face was at her eye level.
“So, that’s what you look like with your hair down.”
Scowling, she reached for a hair binder and yanked her hair up into a tight ponytail.
He laughed.
“Is that coffee for me?” she said with a smile and reached for the mug. She took a big gulp before coming up for air. He was staring at her and she realized her camisole strap had slipped, revealing some flesh. Nothing untoward, but enough to make them both blush.
He turned away as she yanked it up.
“How long have you been awake?” Dallas said, trying to figure out how to climb out of the top bunk with a full cup of coffee.
“Here let me hold that,” Colton said, reaching for the mug as she crawled out.
“Thanks. I see you found the café across the street.”
“Yep. And I’m sorry I already ate,” Colton said, gesturing toward his bed where there was a big white bag. “But I saved you some. I picked out the healthiest thing I could. Looked like bark and seaweed so I figured you’d eat it.”
Dallas laughed. “Good job.”
She rummaged in the bag and withdrew a hard, dark roll with seeds and green flecks. She took a big bite. “Yum. You sure know how treat a girl, Colton McCloud.”
“I barely remember coming to bed.”
“You were pretty out of it.”
“Thanks for letting me sleep here,” he said. “I’ll find a place today.”
Dallas had a mouthful of her roll and had to swallow and gulp some coffee to wash it down before she could answer.
“You could stay here.”
He lifted his shoulders as if he were going to shrug, but before he could protest, Dallas spoke. “It would actually be doing me a favor. I’d really feel safer,” she said. “There’s something I haven’t told you yet. I’ve had some weird things happen—besides the break in back home—and I wouldn’t mind having you in the room, if that bed isn’t too uncomfortable.” Or awkward.
“Uh, well, I guess … um.”
Dallas hid her smile. She’d never seen Colton tongue-tied before.
Then a terrible thought struck her: Maybe he could read her mind. That she wanted to rip his clothes off right then. But maybe what was even more real was that she wanted him around. As her boss. As her friend. As her … whatever he was, she wanted him around. She hadn’t realized just how big a part of her life he was until the past few days without him.
Then his eyes grew wide as he registered what she’d said.
“Wait? What kind of weird things?”
She told him about getting robbed outside the museum, the strange return of her bag, and how she was convinced someone knew she was in Egypt and why she was there.
Colton’s brow furrowed as she spoke and when she was done, he exhaled loudly and said, “Wow. Okay. I think it’s smart for me to stay here. But do you want the bottom bunk?”
“Heck no. Bottom bunk is for the punk.”
“What?” he said. They both burst into laughter.
“Just something stupid my friends and I would say during sleepovers.”
Dallas grabbed her clothes and toiletries and headed for the bathroom before he could see her blush. She was lying. She had no friends who said that. No sleepovers. It was something she’d seen in a pre-teen movie once. It was something she wished had been said to her by friends. She shook
