Beautiful Sacrifice

simply lacked the gut-sensitivity to understand. Then she’d grown up and accepted her parents for what they were—brilliant in their work, indifferent as parents.
    A knock on her locked office door and Hunter’s voice saying “You in there, Lina?” made her heart kick. The man who had blackmailed her had shown her more respect than her parents ever had.
    More approval, too.
    “Yes,” she said. “Let me get the lock.”
    “Jase Beaumont is with me.”
    “Nice to meet you, Mr. Beaumont,” Lina said as she unlocked the door.
    “Same goes, Dr. Taylor.” Jase shook her hand and gave her an easy smile.
    Hunter locked the door behind him. His glance went over Lina like a man who had been cold and finally was standing close to a fire.
    She felt stroked.
    Feeling a blush darken her cheeks, she looked away from Hunter to Jase. He was shorter than Hunter, with dark chocolate eyes and bittersweet-chocolate hair. His skin was the kind of brown than went deeper than a tan. A gold wedding band gleamed on his left hand. Both men were freshly showered, their clothes clean, and their eyes weary. She took a folding chair from behind the door and placed it next to the visitor’s chair across from her desk.
    “Sit down,” she said. “I’ve got half a pot of coffee if you’re interested.”
    “Thanks,” Jase said.
    “Black,” Hunter said. “I’ll get it.”
    Lina waved him off and started pouring coffee into mugs that held the museum logo. “If you want something to eat, the cafeteria is still open.”
    Jase and Hunter exchanged a look. After what they had seen, they didn’t feel particularly hungry. Or clean, despite showers hot enough to burn.
    “We’re good,” Hunter said to Lina. All he really wanted from her was a kiss to drive out the basement’s deadly cold. Hewished he had the right to simply go to her, hold her, feel her living warmth. “Do you have a sketch pad and a pencil?”
    She smiled. “That’s like asking if I’ve worked on digs.”
    She opened a desk drawer and pulled out a sketchbook, plus three grades of pencils, and handed them to Hunter.
    He caught her hand and the pencils, holding her, breathing her in, eyes half closed. Her swiftly inhaled breath told him she liked it. Slowly he took the pad and pencils, drinking her warmth through his fingertips.
    Jase gave Hunter a sideways look that told him he could feel the heat.
    “Thanks,” Hunter said to her, his voice deep. Forcing himself to focus on something other than his blunt hunger for Lina, he opened the pad and flipped past sketches of glyphs and artifacts—some of which he recognized—until he found an empty page. As he began to sketch, he asked, “Have you made any progress on your end of the artifact chase?”
    “No.” She leaned against her desk for the simple reason that her knees wanted to shake. The hunger she’d felt radiating from him was more complex than plain old sex. “When I mention new artifacts, everyone wants to buy them but nobody has them. My father, who has been on a dig in Belize, hasn’t heard anything. Mercurio de la Poole, who is the only other recognized expert on the cult of Kawa’il, was coy. He wouldn’t say anything unless I was there in person.”
    “Do you think he has them?” Jase asked instantly.
    “I don’t know,” Lina said. “Mercurio has no particular motivation. His museum is run by the state of Quintana Roo with money from the Mexican federal government and artifacts from Reyes Balam land channeled through state and federal governments. He has his own digs in Belize, where he hasfound some indications of the cult of Kawa’il. Since the government funds him, if he had your missing artifacts he would study them, publish, and take his bows.”
    “How well do you know him?” Jase asked.
    “Quite well. He and my father worked together for years. I spent summers, vacations, and every moment I could beg from Celia on the digs where Philip and Mercurio were.”
    “How did de la Poole and your father get along?” Jase asked.
    “Nobody ‘gets along’ with Philip,” Lina said. “You just go along and understand that he won’t ever change. All you can do is control your own response to him.”
    Hunter heard what she didn’t say, the child hoping and trying and always failing to find approval. My uncles would love her to death, he thought. So would his mother, if she hadn’t been killed by a hit-and-run driver in a crosswalk ten years ago. His father had been with her. He