Buried Secrets by Kristi Belcamino (best ebook reader for surface pro TXT) 📗

seen him on TV and on magazine covers. In person, he was intimidating.

During the commotion of people standing and talking about this exciting development—practically a celebrity in their midst—Dallas slipped out the door.

After a stop in the bathroom, she was shrugging her coat on when the Crocodile Dundee man appeared before her.

He stuck out his hand. “Malcolm Land,” he said. “My apologies for my partner. He is often arrogant and has terrible bedside manners.”

The man was British and polite.

Dallas shrugged. “Did you know my mother, too?” she said in a dry voice.

“Excuse me?”

“Nothing.”

“Well, my partner, he can be rude, as I was saying…if he wasn’t so good at what he does,” he said with an exaggerated sigh and a broad smile.

Dallas turned. She was tired and anxious to get home and in bed, but the man continued.

“I was wondering,” he said and then paused, his eyes growing bright. A big smile spread across his face. “If you had time to grab a drink.”

“I’m sorry. I have to work early,” Dallas said. Oh, my God. He was hitting on her. He had to be like, her grandpa’s age.

“In that case, I must ask you now. You said something in there that intrigued me. I was wondering if you would tell me: What exactly is your theory about Cleopatra’s tomb?”

Dallas smiled tightly. “I don’t really share that.”

She turned and left. But once she passed through the first set of doors, she happened to glance back and saw him still standing there staring. He was no longer smiling.

Driving home she scrunched up her face thinking. What was it about the two men that seemed, well, so repulsive to her? Sure, Caldwell had been kind of stalker creeperish at the exhibit. And he’d grabbed her arm—touching a woman you didn’t know as a dumbbell move for men nowadays. But it was more than that. It was the intense, challenging way he looked at her and his arrogance in believing that he was destined to find Cleopatra’s tomb.

And his partner? Equally as odd. Asking her for a drink? Ew. They both were very interested in finding Cleopatra’s tomb, but Dallas didn’t think they’d find it in their searching.

Because it wasn’t under the sea.

Three

It was something her father had said that long ago night on the front porch in the dark.

He’d said that it seemed Cleopatra had spent the days leading up to her suicide in ways that appeared she was preparing for a ritualistic, religious death.

Which meant she was preparing to be buried in a temple, not a commonplace tomb in Alexandria. There were several temples within a certain distance of Alexandria that made them possibilities for her burial site.

Back at home in her loft, Dallas pounded away on the keyboard, searching temples within proximity of Alexandria, listing them on a yellow legal pad beside her computer’s mouse.

When she was done, she looked at the list. There were ten possible temples. Her eyes were starting to blur. It was late and she had an eight-a.m. class to teach the next morning.

“Whoever decided to schedule college classes before noon was an idiot,” she mumbled and then remembered: They were on break! She could sleep in! She could do whatever she wanted. But then she laughed to herself. She knew she’d be up early anyway, hitting the 6 a.m. CrossFit class. She was a creature of habit. She closed her laptop and stumbled to bed.

In the morning after CrossFit and a shower, she swung by Perk Café on the way to campus to grab her usual Chai with added Matcha. Colton sat in the corner. She hated to admit that had been at least half of her motivation for stopping—hoping he’d be there, too. It was unusually quiet. Probably some students had already left town for the winter break.

He was drinking his usual concoction—a large-sized white chocolate mocha latte with extra whip cream on top. The remnants of a glazed donut sat next to the morning newspaper he was reading.

It was a full-page spread on Calvin Train.

“Oh, brother, him again?” Dallas said, sliding in the seat across from him.

“Huh?” Colton said looking up.

“What’s Train up to now?” Dallas said, thinking besides crashing talks by archeologists in Minnesota.

“The usual—jumping off cliffs, curing his depression with Psilocybin treatments.”

“The mushrooms?” Maybe that’s what brought him to Minnesota. Maybe not mushrooms but a little peyote?

“Uh uh,” Colton said and took another bite of a massive donut sitting on a plate before him.

“Celebrating the end of the semester?” She asked looking pointedly at the donut.

“Very funny.” He folded the newspaper and tossed it at her.

They both knew he ordered the same thing every day: sugar-laden coffee and a sugar-laden donut.

“That’s gonna kill you one day,” she said. It was an ongoing joke.

“Apparently Train thinks sugar is evil, too. You guys could be BFF’s,” Colton said.

“He was there last night.”

“Where?”

“The museum.”

“Whoa. Really?”

“Yep. He was a little odd.”

“I heard he hangs out with Richard Branson and for fun they take hot air balloons up two thousand feet and swing from one to the other,” Colton said. “He sounds like the perfect friend for you—another adrenaline junkie.”

“I’m not an adrenaline junkie,” Dallas said, tossing the paper back at him.

“Yeah, right,” Colton said. His eyes took her in. “You look a little tired today. Did you go party with the archeologists after their reading?” he asked.

Damn. The concealer she’d swiped under her eyes in a half-hearted attempt to disguise the dark circles had obviously not worked.

“It’s never helpful to tell a woman she looks tired. Not if you like your fingers still attached to your hands.” She swatted at him with the fork lying next to her. “And yes, I did go to that book signing.” While you were busy on your date or whatever. “But I came home right after.”

“I thought the signing was early, like at eight?”

“Yeah. Well, I got some ideas and stayed up late checking them out.”

“Aha,” Colton said. And then smiled. “I wasn’t at a date. I was at this