Free Better Than Gold by Mary Brady Page B

an unmistakable light of excitement in his dark eyes. Damn.
    No, she didn’t want to see that light and she certainly did not want to see what was in the boxes. She wanted him to take those bones and rags and go. She wanted to move forward with her funky little life, finish the restaurant so the chef she had hired didn’t give up on her, so the banks to whom she promised payment didn’t come demanding what little she had. “Look at old bones and raggedy clothing?”
    He grinned and his eagerness brightened. “That’s about the size of it.”
    “Yes.” Okay, so she wanted to see them, get his opinion.
    “I’ll bring the boxes out where the light is better.”
    His gaze rested on her face. His eyes searching and...like expensive dark chocolate, like the moment of shadow just as the sun sets—they stopped the air moving in and out of her lungs.
    She tore her attention away and took a gulp of air. “I’ll help.”
    He picked up a box and moved away. She followed his lead and they carried the remains out and placed them on the floor in front of the window.
    He had a very good backside.
    “So I would guess people outside your department usually blow you off when you ask them to come look at your bone and rag collections,” she said. Maybe old bones would shock her back into sanity.
    “Gave up long ago. Most prefer museum replicas.”
    “That’d be my first choice. The woman who runs the museum here claims to be a descendent of Liam Bailey.” Shut up. Shut up. Shut up. Don’t pique his interest.
    He pulled on a pair of disposable gloves, hunkered down and flipped open the lid of one of the boxes.
    The light flared again in the professor’s eyes. He loved this, the hunt for antiquities, even if they were only old bones and tattered cloth.
    “We could be looking in on a pirate.”
    She hunkered down beside him. “I can see you on the deck of a two-masted schooner, long dark hair flowing in the wind, shirtsleeves billowing.” She touched his arm as if touching that sexy sleeve.
    He leaned away from her touch and reached under the top layers of bags to pull out a large plastic bag containing remnants of brown fabric.
    The bag and the sudden look of all business on Dr. MacCarey’s face dispelled all the visions in her head of the romance of pirates.
    The dead man’s clothes. The man in her wall’s clothes. The answers to many of her questions and maybe enough of Daniel’s.
    Or maybe they would raise too many more questions, and Dr. MacCarey wouldn’t leave for a month—maybe he’d stay and look for the treasure while Pirate’s Roost became just a memory.

CHAPTER SIX
    M IA WATCHED D ANIEL take on the persona of college professor as he hand-measured the weight of the bag of clothing remnants. “The cloth is substantial in weight when compared with much twenty-first-century clothing, some noted exceptions being denim and felted wool.”
    “I keep trying not to envision a fully dressed human,” Mia said, but leaned forward anyway.
    The creases beside Daniel’s mouth became visible through the darkness of his trendy stubble. As a teacher of young adults, he must have practiced this look of stern concentration many times before today.
    “Clothing allows one to envision a living breathing person.”
    “That’s my problem,” she replied as she studied him.
    Whatever measure of rapport the two of them had was diminished to instructor and student. The change felt like a loss, so she smiled.
    “There isn’t much left of this specimen’s clothes, except the type and content of the cloth and dye. Any remaining structure will help determine the cut, style and time frame in which he lived.”
    “Is the cloth brown because it’s brown cloth or because it spent time in the wall with a—um—dead man?” She found she couldn’t call him a specimen.
    “That’s a very good question. The lighter-weight cloth is most likely part of his shirt.” The anthropology professor turned the bag over so she could see