Birthright

pattern, she thought. Then you extrapolated from it to see how each event, each layer connected to another.
    She worked for a time shifting the data around into different headings: Education, Medical, Professional, Personal, Antietam Creek Project, Jessica.
    Sitting back, she saw one element of the pattern. From the day she’d met him, Jake had a connection to every major point in her life. Even the damn doctorate, she admitted, which she’d gone after with a vengeance to keep herself from brooding over him.
    She couldn’t even have an identity crisis without him being involved.
    Worse, she wasn’t sure she’d want it any other way.
    Absently, she reached for a cookie and found the bag beside her keyboard empty.
    “I’ve got a stash in my room.”
    She jolted, jerked around to see Jake leaning against the doorway.
    “But it’ll cost you,” he added.
    “Damnit, stop sneaking around, spying on me.”
    “I can’t help it if I move with the grace and silence of a panther, can I? And your door was open. Standing in an open doorway isn’t spying. What are you working on?”
    “None of your business.” And to keep it that way, she saved the file and closed it.
    “You’re irritable because you’re out of cookies.”
    “Close the door.” She gritted her teeth when he did so, after he’d stepped inside. “I meant with you on the other side.”
    “You should’ve been more specific. Why aren’t you taking a nap?”
    “Because I’m not three years old.”
    “You’re beat, Dunbrook.”
    “I have work I want to do.”
    “If you’d been dealing with the schedule or the siterecords, you wouldn’t have been in such a hurry to close the file before I got a look at it.”
    “I have personal business that doesn’t involve you.” She thought of the time line she’d just generated, and his complete involvement in it. “Or I should have.”
    “You’re feeling pretty beat up, aren’t you, baby?”
    Her stomach slid toward her knees at the slow, soft sound of his voice. “Don’t be nice to me. It drives me crazy. I don’t know what to do when you’re nice to me.”
    “I know.” He leaned down to touch his lips to hers. “I can’t figure out why I never thought of it before.”
    She turned away, opened the file again. “It’s just a time line, trying to establish a pattern. Go ahead.” She got up so he could have the desk chair. “The highlights and lowlights of my life.”
    She plopped down on her sleeping bag while he read.
    “You slept with Aiken? The sleazy Egyptologist? What were you thinking?”
    “Just never mind, or I’ll start commenting on all the women you’ve slept with.”
    “You don’t know all the women I’ve slept with. You forgot some events in this.”
    “No, I didn’t.”
    “You forgot the conference we went to in Paris, May of 2000. And the day we skipped out on it and sat at a sidewalk cafe, drank wine. You were wearing a blue dress. It started to rain, just a little. We walked back to the hotel in the rain, went up to the room and made love. With the windows open, so we could hear the drizzle.”
    She hadn’t forgotten it. She remembered it so well, so clearly, that hearing him recount it made her hurt. “It isn’t relevant data.”
    “It was one of the most relevant days of my life. I didn’t know it then. That’s the tricky thing about life. Too often you don’t know what’s important until the moment passes. You still have that dress?”
    She shifted on her side, pillowed her cheek on her hand as she studied him. He hadn’t had a haircut since they’dstarted the dig. She’d always liked it when his hair got just a little too long. “Somewhere.”
    “I’d like to see you in it again.”
    “You never noticed or cared what I was wearing before.”
    “I never mentioned it. An oversight.”
    “What’re you doing?” she demanded when he began to type.
    “Adding May of 2000, Paris, to your time line. I’m going to shoot this file to my laptop. I’ll download it later, play with it.”
    “Fine, great. Do what you want.”
    “You must be feeling awful. I don’t recall you ever telling me to do what I wanted before.”
    Why did she want to cry? Why the hell did she want to cry? “You always did anyway.”
    He sent the file to his e-mail, then got up and walked to her. “You always thought so.” He sat down beside her, trailed his fingers over her shoulder. “I didn’t want to leave that day in Colorado.”
    Ah yes, she thought bitterly.