Beautiful Sacrifice

pole dancer. “It’s as boring as you are.”
    With that, she strode up the aisle. The curious group of students who had overheard the exchange began to drift away to their mundane lives.
    “My God, when will this craziness end?” Lina muttered. “I can’t wait for December twenty-second. I’m tired of breaking the news to wide-eyed adrenaline freaks that the earth will turn and life will go on as always.”
    “People like Melodee make my head ache,” Hunter agreed. “Shall we try that coffee again?”
    Lina hesitated, then smiled up into his eyes, eyes that were almost as light as her father’s but silvery blue rather than gray. Beautiful in a way her father’s would never be, because Hunter was vividly there, his attention focused only on her.
    “Is your cell phone with you?” she asked wryly.
    “I set it to vibrate.” A slow smile. “Cheap thrill is better than no thrill at all.”
    She told herself not to laugh. It didn’t work. The idea that a man like Hunter had to get his adrenaline rush from a phone shaking against his butt was ridiculous.
    “Coffee,” she agreed.
    “Thank you.”
    “For what?”
    “Giving me another chance.”
    She gave him a sidelong look. “I’m addicted to coffee.”
    As they walked to a local coffee shop, Hunter waited for her to ask where he had been, why he’d run out on her with a rushed apology. He was still waiting when they took their coffee to a back booth. Lina had been too busy glancing over her shoulder and looking at people who passed by to pay much attention to him.
    Maybe she hadn’t noticed that he had been gone for the last two weeks.
    Lina slid into the booth, then bent over and inhaled the rich scent of coffee, cinnamon, and chocolate rising from her reinforced paper cup. She closed her eyes and sighed with pleasure.
    Hunter’s jeans started not to fit.
    Damn, he thought. It’s been way too long if a bit of simple, sensual female appreciation makes me hard.
    But there was something about her thick, dark eyelashes and full lips, the slick pink of her tongue as she caught a drop of coffee on the rim of the cup. It was sexier than watching most women undress.
    “You’re very quiet,” he said.
    “I told you,” she said, taking another sip, “I love coffee.”
    “Can you look and lick—er, sip—at the same time?”
    “Depends.”
    “On what?”
    “What I’m looking at.” She glanced up and saw him watching her mouth. Suddenly the booth felt very small, intimate. When she spoke, her voice was husky. “I can multitask.”
    Hunter didn’t know Lina well enough to be thinking what he was thinking, much less to say it. He let out a silent breath and shifted on the seat.
    “I have some photos,” he said.
    “Please, no etchings.”
    He laughed. “Nothing that clichéd.”
    “Bring it,” Lina said. “For this coffee I’ll look at almost anything.”
    Silently Hunter took a handful of photos from the manila envelope and fanned them across the table, facing her.
    Lina looked down.
    The world shifted.
    She squeezed her coffee cup so hard the heavy paper gave and coffee slopped over, scalding her.
    Hunter whipped the photos out of the way, grabbed napkins, and began cleaning up. “You okay? Burn yourself?”
    Silently she shook her head, refusing to meet his eyes.
    No wonder he looks dangerous. He’s a damned grave robber.
    She told herself that the disappointment breaking coldly over her was way out of line. Hunter was nothing to her. Less than nothing.
    Thief of the dead.
    “I’ve had enough coffee,” Lina said abruptly.
    Before she could stand, his hand snaked across the table and grabbed her wrist, pinning her in place. The grip was gentle. And unbreakable unless she wanted to make a scene.
    “Let’s see that hand,” Hunter said.
    “It’s fine.”
    “Okay. Then tell me about the photos.”
    “I didn’t really look at them.” She hadn’t had to. An instant was all she needed to know she shouldn’t be here, with him.
    “What’s wrong?” Hunter asked.
    His voice was gentle, but his eyes were as implacable as the hand around her wrist.
    “I don’t talk about artifacts without provenance,” she said flatly. “Or are certificates of export and import in that envelope, too?”
    Hunter glanced around the coffee shop with eyes gone as flat as her voice. Too many people. Too close.
    “How about we talk in your office?” he asked.
    “Until I see papers for those artifacts in the photos, I have nothing to talk about