Her Dirty Archeologists by Mika Lane
7
PENN KELLER
“Well, look at this place!” Fleur chirped.
She was fooling no one.
She might sound excited, but the panic splashed across her face for about the tenth time in twenty-four hours was unmistakable.
I, on the other hand, was strangely at home. As if this were the work I was meant to do. I looked over at my brother, and he nodded back, clearly thinking the same.
There was something exhilarating about traveling on dusty, dirt roads, the desert landscape rolling as far as the eye could see. And, as if it were possible, the excitement multiplied the moment the intended destination came into view. These archeological sites were really nothing more than makeshift little cities, scraped together with the most basic of amenities—barely enough to keep their inhabitants alive for the length of time they’d be excavating.
And alive did not equal comfortable.
We arrived just as the sun was going down, leaving us little time to set up our camp before we lost daylight. But our timing also treated us to the first of many majestic desert sunsets.
Life was good.
But not so much for Fleur.
She’d had the presence of mind to change out of her high heels and mini-skirt before we got into the jeeps carrying us from the closest village to the site. So when she jumped out, her sneakers stirred up a cloud of powdery sand. The hem of her perfectly pressed khaki pants was now coated in desert, another insult to her being.
“C’mon everybody. Let’s get the tents up. Then we can move our things in and cook something for dinner,” my brother announced.
Jonas mapped out where each of our tents should go, as well as our makeshift mess tent where all the cooking and hanging out would take place, and he, Drake, and I started setting up, starting with the lab tent where we’d keep our tools and inventory any valuables we found.
Fleur took a seat on the ground and after shaking out the contents of her tent bag, grabbed the accompanying instructions and was trying to read them in the waning light.
“Drake, I’m thinking we ought to help her out?” I suggested quietly.
He glanced her way and responded in a low voice. “Let her work on it. She’ll figure it out. Everyone handles their own shit. That’s how I run the show.”
He was her boss, so I let it go.
In minutes, we guys were not only done pitching our tents but had also moved our belongings into them and were outfitting the makeshift kitchen. Fleur, on the other hand, was still studying her tent diagram, occasionally picking up a tent pole and looking at it like it was a mortal enemy.
So I took matters into my own hands.
Drake might not have wanted me to help, but that was bullshit. Sure, we three guys could get our tents up in a matter of minutes, but that was because we’d done it a hundred times before.
How often had Fleur put up a tent?
From the looks of it, never.
“Hey, Fleur.”
She looked up from her instructions, and in the early evening light, I could swear her eyes were rimmed with red.
It was time to help the woman out. Drake could go to hell.
I extended my hand and pulled her up off the ground. “Gather up all the poles and move them aside.”
As she did, I spread the tent base out and secured two corners with stakes.
“Let’s put in these other stakes,” I said, waving her over.
If she was going to become an archeologist and frequent excavations, pitching a tent was a basic skill.
“Okay. Push this in as far as you can and finish it off with this mallet,” I said, demonstrating.
She gingerly took the stake, then with all the fury bottled up from a shitty day, stabbed the thing into the ground with so much force there were only a few inches left exposed.
“Damn. You’re a brute,” I teased.
For the first time in pretty much all day, she smiled.
And what a gorgeous smile it was, showing off the pretty freckles on her flawless complexion.
She took the last stake from me. “This is kind of fun,” she said, using the mallet like she was killing an enemy.
“Okay. Now I’ll show you where the poles go.”
She listened attentively as I explained how the poles had interior bungees holding them together, and that after they were extended, she was to slide them through the pockets on the outside of the tent.
I showed her the first one, and she did the rest.
Then, we raised the tent and slipped the pole ends into their clips.
“Wow,” she said, hands on hips, admiring her new home. “Hey, what is this for?” she asked, pulling one last piece of fabric from the tent bag.
I took it from her and stuffed it right back in. “That, Fleur, is the rain fly. Helps keep your tent dry. But we don’t need this in the desert.”
She was beaming. “Sure. Makes total sense. I’m psyched. My tent looks good.”
On impulse, she threw her arms around me. “Thank you so much, Penn.”
I instinctively turned my nose into her thick, red hair and took a deep inhale. While she might have smelled a little different before we’d begun our long journey, even after many hours of sweating in a hot, sticky city, then in the arid desert, she still smelled great—just simple shampoo and a little perspiration.
It had been a while since a woman had thrown her arms around my neck, so in my effort to make it last, I embraced her back and laughed, too, hopefully reassuring her that our embrace was nothing more than a friendly one.
She didn’t need to know I’d be jerking off later that night, imagining running my lips down her soft neck…
“Hey, guys,” Drake called. “Can you come over for a briefing?”
We all took seats in the camp chairs Drake had set up in our ‘kitchen’ area. The mess tent was an open overhang consisting of not much more than a gas stove, a few dishes and pots and pans, several large coolers of food, and a week’s supply of water, with more to be picked up later from the closest village.
“Good work, everyone,” Drake said. “As the field director of the site, I’ve put together a plan for maximum efficiency. Let me know if you have any questions about it.”
My brother would love this, structure being his thing. I preferred things a little more laid back, but I could hang. After all, I wasn’t much more than a tag-along on this trip.
Hired muscle, Jonas had kindly told me. But hey, it was essentially a paid vacation. I wasn’t about to look a gift horse in the mouth.
Fleur tentatively raised a finger in the air, her face quite pale in the light of the solar lanterns Drake had set up.
“Fleur, what’s up?” he asked.
Her mouth opened and then closed without sound. Finally, she emitted a little squeak.
Jonas leaned closer to her. “Fleur, are you all right?”
Her eyes widened, and she managed to point to the top of one of her work boots. “Is… is that what I think it is? Is that a scorpion?” she asked in a shaking voice.
“Oh. Look at that,” my brother said. “Our first scorpion sighting.”
“Healthy little critter, isn’t he?” Drake said, leaning in for a better look.
My fellow archeologists were clearly oblivious to Fleur’s terror. I dashed for a cup to scoop it into before the poor woman had a coronary.
Just as I bent before her to remove the uninvited guest, she put a hand on my arm.
“Wait. Let me.”
Really?
She took the cup from my hand and with a deep breath, held it next to her shoe. Tapping her foot lightly against it, the scorpion clumsily tumbled in.
I reach to take the cup from her. “Here, let me have it.”
But she snatched it out of my reach. “I… I’ve got it,” she said, getting to her feet.
We three watched in disbelief as she tiptoed toward the edge of the camp, arm extended to put the maximum distance between herself and the scorpion, and chucked it into the night.
Hot damn. To go from abject terror to balls out fierceness in a matter of minutes? I didn’t know many dudes who could do that, much less women. In fact, I’d been on digs before when I’d seen guys run away screaming for less, whether they’d seen a scorpion, a snake, or even a garden variety frog.
“W… wow, Fleur,” my brother stammered. “That was impressive.”
Impressive didn’t begin to describe it.
This woman, completely out of her comfort zone, had just quietly and calmly moved a scorpion from our campsite.
“So what’s next on the agenda?” she asked.
* * *