dark.
“What’s going on?” she asked in confusion, stepping outside. “What’s happening?”
A digger she didn’t know grabbed her hand and started tugging her toward the excavation site.
“Rainstorm,” he said abruptly. “One that is very, very early. We did not know it was coming. We must cover up the exposed areas or they might be washed away.”
Bailey gasped, hurrying along after him. She could feel that the temperature had dropped nearly ten degrees in the time since she had stepped out of her work area. When she got to the site, the exposed areas looked painfully vulnerable. She could see where one group had been excavating what looked like a stoneware stove, one corner jutting out of the earth. If they did not cover it up, it might all be washed away.
She fell in with a group dragging tarps from the storage bins to the carefully marked sites. The first fat drops of rain chilled her to the core, and in a few minutes, it started pelting down. At the site itself, like most of the other women, she gave up the robes to wear khaki shorts and a tank top, and the cold water on her skin was almost shocking.
She knew it could not have been long, but it felt as if they worked for hours, covering the site and then anchoring them as well as they could. By the time they were done, the rain had gone from splatters to a sheeting downpour. Still, the crew worked grimly, willing to stay in the cold as long as it took as long as they could save the site.
Finally, she heard the head archaeologist’s voice cutting through the hubbub like a foghorn.
“That’s it! That’s all we can do! Head back to camp.”
Frozen to the bone, Bailey started to trudge back to camp with everyone else, but then Dario took her hand. She looked up in surprise. He was as soaked as anyone else, his dark hair hanging down almost to his shoulders, but there was a wild grin on his face. He leaned down until his mouth was close to her ear.
“Come on,” he said. “If you are not afraid.”
“I am not afraid of you,” she retorted, and she turned to follow him.
With Dario holding her hand, the path became clear. He moved like a mountain goat up the mountain, moving up along the slope as if he had walked it every day of his life. They had left the others long behind them. The wind carried to them traces of shouts and laughter, but louder still was the rain, the way it struck the mountain and the sand.
Bailey was starting to shiver harder when Dario turned around a corner that she had thought was solid stone. Instead, it turned out to be an outcropping of rock that hid a shallow cave. It was perhaps a little smaller than her trailer, and it was obvious that someone had been there before.
There was a small stone ring at the mouth of the cave, and beyond, there was a thick pallet of blankets on top of a large air mattress.
“What is this place?” she asked softly, and when he turned to her, she could feel her heart beating faster.
“Mine,” he said, and in that moment, Bailey knew that he wasn’t just talking about the cave. She didn’t know if it was fate or simply pure animal attraction, but in that moment, she could do nothing besides fall into his arms.
They were like people starving and suddenly there was a feast in front of them. When Dario took Bailey into his arms, she whimpered with need and pressed herself as close to him as possible. This man was what she wanted, what she felt as if she had needed for her entire life.
Their frantic hands tore at each other’s clothes. With quick motions, they removed their sodden clothing, letting it drop to the ground. Underneath, they found skin that was chilled from the rain, but with quick hands and hungry mouths, they sought to warm each other.
Bailey could barely believe this was happening. Her whole life, she had played it safe, worked hard, kept her nose to the grindstone, and did the work that was in front of her. Rolling into a cave with the man that she wanted like water,