He padded around the overturned dirt. “I know what month it is.” He bent a knee and ran a finger around a rock, or what looked like a rock. Then he lifted the dust on his finger to his nose and sniffed. “Classes ended a week ago, and I flew out directly after I got my PhD.” For fuck’s sake. When he said he was a newly minted professor he wasn’t kidding. “And before you ask, I’m twenty-eight and yes, I really am a professor, well…an assistant professor at the moment. Three years for the bachelor, three for the master’s—thought my brain would never recover—then another four for the PhD. I saw the disbelief in your eyes. I did do my college work in the UK though, which got me through quicker than here in the States. Best pubs anywhere. And the breakfasts! Nothing like beans and blood pudding with your eggs!”
Huh. Clever man then. I got an MBA in finance in two years and dove right into treasure management at First Liberty Bank of Chicago. A whole lifetime ago that was.
“Okay then, well you should also know that the grizzlies around here have just come out of hibernation a few weeks ago after the last snow melted off.”
That pulled his gaze from the dust on his fingers and blood pudding to me. “Do they eat people?”
“Let me put it this way. Yes.”
“Ah.” He looked around the wide open spaces as if seeing them in a whole new light. “Well, I should be fine. What are the odds of a grizzly bear passing by?”
I pointed to a track in the dirt with the toe of my boot. “Mountain lion,” I said as his eyes flared behind his glasses.
“But not a grizzly bear. Do mountain lions eat people?”
“Yep.”
“Shit. Okay, I won’t sleep out here alone. Can you send someone to get me at dusk?”
“That I can do. I’ll also leave my rifle.”
His nose crinkled. “That’s not necessary.”
“Yeah, it might be.”
“I’d really you rather not. I’m not a fan of guns.”
“You will be if a hungry grizzly bear is chewing on your leg.” With that I slid off the seat and unstrapped the Winchester 700 from the rear rack. The .375 had more than enough power to drop a bear in its tracks. “Ever shoot a gun before?”
“Does a water pistol count?” He pushed to his feet, his golden skin a little pale, and listened while I showed him how to load and unload the rifle safely. He ran through it a time or two, his intelligent eyes dulled a bit when I told him where to aim. “Thank you. I hope I won’t have to use it.” He placed it on the ground beside his rucksack. Once we had the gun show completed, he went back to work.
I stood there for quite some time, fascinated by his slow, methodical approach to the area. He explained things to me as he went as if he were leading a tour or teaching a class. I was more than a little impressed that someone so young had a PhD in his chosen field. That was some serious dedication.
“…such a short dig season here that we’ll have to get cracking on this if it’s determined to be a worthy excavation site. Now, if you look here at the sedimentary rock layers, we can determine what era these bones are from. Since you came to us, a lot of the time consuming work of prospecting has been eliminated and speeds things up.”
“Go us,” I said and got a quirky look that I couldn’t read. “Sorry about the broken bones.”
He reached out with a dirty hand and patted my bicep. “I’ll get over it eventually. Might have to take me out to dinner first though.” He winked. I stared and swallowed. “It was a joke. Unless you want to take me out to dinner of course. I always did like an older man in reindeer boxers.”
Was he flirting with me?
“I have to go,” I coughed up gruffly, just like Bane working up a furball. “I’ll send one of the hands to fetch you right at dark.”
His expression shifted and he knelt down in the dirt, reaching over his kit to grab a chisel. My gaze moved over his back then locked onto the strip of tan flesh showing as his tank top rode up. I couldn’t look away from the tempting sight of the skin atop the crack of his ass.
“Totally tubular.” I blinked, snapping back to the here and now. “You know you wanted me to say that.”
“Not really,” I muttered as I hustled to the Polaris like a prairie dog sighting a hawk.
He stood there waving, smiling like a rat in a granary, as I cranked over the engine and rode off. I’d have to assign someone to keep an eye on the Cali professor with the bun so I could focus on important things like ranching instead of how his eyes glittered when he talked about the Mesozoic era—or was it the Cretaceous era—or how his chin felt resting on my shoulder.