Page 5 of Colorado Christmas Carol

He put the skull down and picked up first the right and then the left skeletal arm.

“He was right-handed—note that the right side of the skeletal remains is larger than the left. Also, the way we deduce the gender of the remains is through examination of the pelvis. To put it simply, it’s larger in a female, smaller in a male. ”

He took his time examining the other skeletal remains the students had uncovered, and everyone around him seemed fascinated. Essa certainly was.

“That’s so cool,” Essa exclaimed. “How do you learn all that?!”

He grinned from ear to ear. “From hard work and a lot of time spent with my nose stuck in a book.”

“Or in a dig pit,” the student taking notes said with a glance at the professor. “For hours on end!”

“It goes with the title of forensic archaeologist,” Dean chided the student. “And yes, it’s worth all the agony.”

“Where did you study?” the student asked.

Dean glanced at his watch. “My goodness, did you say you had to be back by six?” he asked Essa. “I’m so sorry! We’re going to be late! We’d better leave.”

“Time goes by too fast,” she wailed.

“We only just got here,” Mellie added.

Dean chuckled. “It’s been an hour,” he told them. “But I’m glad it seemed like just a little time to you two.”

“Come back when you can,” the professor told him. “You’re a great help!”

“Thanks. I won’t be in town much longer, but I’m happy to help while I’m here. See you later.”

Dean led the way past the other students, who stopped to ask him several questions about the new dig site and the skeletal remains inside.

They had barely thirty minutes to get back to the hotel, but Dean drove at a steady pace and without rushing.

“You’re always so calm,” Essa said admiringly. “I just go nuts when I’m late, or when I’m in a bad situation. You make everything seem so easy and simple.”

He beamed. “Thanks. I really mean that,” he added.

“Oh, I enjoyed today. Thank you so much!”

“Yes, thanks a million,” Mellie enthused. “I loved every minute of it! I think I might want to study anthropology when I’m older!”

“I’m glad you both had fun. So did I,” Dean said, and seemed really surprised by the thought.

Essa wondered if he’d had much fun in his life. He seemed tormented by his own brain. But she didn’t mention it. People often responded badly when she blurted out very private things she’d discerned by her own sensitivity.

* * *

Dean left them in the lobby and went up to his room. Duke was waiting for Mellie.

“Ready for supper?” he asked the child.

“Oh, very! We had such a good time. Dean knows a lot about skeletons! He was teaching one of the students at the dig site!”

“About what?”

“Gender and race in skeletal remains,” Essa piped up. “He seemed very knowledgeable.”

“How did he discern those?”

“Gender by size of pelvis, race by dentition,” she said.

Duke pursed his lips. “And what if the remains were a mixture of two cultures, or even three?”

She just stared at him.

“One of my friends is a forensic anthropologist,” he explained. “He said that it complicates things if you have mixed-heritage people, and there are a lot of them these days.”

“Well, I guess it would be pretty hard. But these are at least two thousand years old,” she commented.

“Different set of circumstances,” he conceded.

“It was still fun!” Mellie said.

Essa sighed. “And now it’s back to the real world. I have to get to work! See you, Mellie.”

“See you!”

Essa glanced at Duke and didn’t say a word to him. He didn’t speak, either.

Mellie just sighed. It would be nice if her two favorite people liked each other. What a shame that they seemed to be enemies from their first meeting.

* * *

After the supper rush, when the kitchen was clean, breakfast preparations were made, and she was through for the night, Essa trudged out of the kitchen, drooping.

To her surprise, Duke was waiting for her in the lobby. The giant Christmas tree in its red-and-gold trim was gathering admiring glances, along with the twin golden reindeer flanking it, both with red velvet bows around their necks.

“Can I speak to you for a few minutes?” he asked.

She looked at him with visible reluctance. “It’s so late . . .” she moaned, because it had been a long day, and she was really tired.

“This won’t take long.”

She shrugged and followed him into the bar.

“I don’t drink . . .” she began.

“Well, I do. Have a seat.” He put her into a booth while he went to fetch a gin and tonic from the bar. He came back and slid into the seat. “Want coffee or something cold?” he asked as an afterthought.

“No thanks. I had a Coke in the kitchen.”

He sat back in the booth, staring at her evenly. He took a sip of his drink before he spoke. “Give me your impression of Mr. Sutter,” he said.

She stared at him, surprised. “Can I ask why you want to know?”

“No.” He took another sip.

She really wanted to blow up at him. He was terse, unpleasant, mildly arrogant, and conceited. But, on the other hand, he was really gorgeous, and she wasn’t used to being singled out by gorgeous men.

“He seems very self-contained,” she said after a minute. “There’s something simply horrific in his past, something that torments him constantly . . .”

“How do you know that?” he asked, shocked.

She blinked. “I don’t know. It’s a . . . well, a sort of sensitivity. I’m extremely vulnerable to sound and light—I have migraines. But it works with people, too. I sense them. Sort of.”

“Go ahead.” He nodded, encouraging her.

She wondered what he knew about Dean and why he was so interested in the man. Then she remembered Mellie. He was concerned as a parent, of course. He wanted to know about a man who had befriended his daughter as well as Essa. Of course he’d checked him out.

“Well, he’s incredibly controlled. Never loses his temper, never gets angry when another person might. He said that his stepmother taught him those things, but he didn’t sound as if he cared for her. I got the impression that she frightened him. He’s methodical, highly intelligent . . .”

“And extremely dangerous,” Duke interrupted coldly.

She gasped faintly. “What?”

“Never mind what. But if he invites you anywhere away from here, where you’d be completely alone with him, find an excuse to not go with him.”

“Why?” she burst out, stunned.

He ground his teeth together. “I can’t tell you. It’s confidential information. Suffice it to say that I know what I’m talking about. Most people are far different from the public faces they assume.”

He irritated her by fingering Dean as dangerous. It was absurd! The man was gentle and kind. Unlike this barracuda!

“So, is your private face sweet and kind, then?” she retorted, throwing down the gauntlet.

“My private life is none of your business,” he said pleasantly. “Any more than yours is mine—what you have of one,” he added with faint sarcasm.

She glared at him. It was an insult. He assumed that since she wasn’t pretty or what he would call intelligent, she never got out of her room. It was true, but she wasn’t admitting that to him!

“I can go out any time I like!” she returned hotly.

He just raised an eyebrow and smiled. Smugly.

She got up, feeling cold and devalued; like the young teen who’d been the target of half a dozen unkind people who enjoyed tormenting her.

Her father had said she had to learn to deal with people—so she’d tossed one of her tormentors into the backstop on the baseball field and been expelled.

Not for long, because her father did get involved then.

But she felt just as miserable now, with this blond idiot making her feel like an insect.

The jolly surroundings of holly and tinsel and golden bells didn’t put her in any sort of holiday mood. They were a reminder of the joy she’d lost. And here was Mr. Perfection reeling off all her disadvantages.

She glared at him. “I’m tired and worn out. If you need any other information, you can text me,” she said angrily. “And if I wanted to find someone dangerous, I wouldn’t be looking for him at a dig site!” she added icily.

She turned on her heel and started walking.

He started humming the theme song to the Pink Panther. She walked faster.

* * *

She threw things around in her room, absolutely out of her mind with fury. The Pink Panther theme indeed! She wasn’t Inspector Clouseau, and just because she went to a dig, she wasn’t trying to be a forensic detective.

She could hardly think for the anger. So to counter it, she pulled out her laptop and sat down to work on her novel.

It was about a serial killer. She’d read countless books on them and hoped she had learned enough background to make the antagonist believable.

The hero wasn’t the usual muscular sports-type hero.

He was more like Raylan in the Justified TV series—lanky and smart and afraid of nothing.

He’d started out to be dark-haired and light-eyed, but lately he looked more and more blond in her mind’s eye.

No connection to that conceited man downstairs, she thought quickly, and felt even more sorry for Mellie, who had to live with him.

But no worries about that right now. She had a new idea for a scene, and she was going to write it before she lost the thread.

So far she had six chapters of what was probably going to be a sixteen-chapter book.

It was more fun than she’d realized to write a novel.

Now her only problem was going to be who would buy it.

Well, that was a problem for later. Right now, the only thing she needed to consider was working on it. Which she did.

* * *

The next morning, Mellie came into the kitchen where Essa was working, morose and upset.

Essa stopped what she was doing and went to the child. “What’s wrong?” she asked softly. “You look like the end of the world!”

“Dean said I could go to the dig with him today if I wanted to, and Daddy said no way.”

Essa sighed, recalling what Mellie’s dad had told her in confidence about Dean. She didn’t believe he was dangerous, but taking a child alone to a dig site sounded a little bit off. He might mean to ask Essa to go along as well, of course. But if he did ask, would she go now, after talking to Duke?

“We just went yesterday,” Essa said gently. “And your dad may have someplace special that he’s going to take you this afternoon, did you think of that?”

“No!” Mellie looked at her plaintively. “He doesn’t take me places, Essa,” she said softly. “That’s why it was so much fun to go with Dean. Daddy doesn’t . . . he just doesn’t do that sort of thing. It’s work, work, work, all the time,” she added sadly.

“Yes, but he might realize that, after seeing how much fun you had yesterday,” Essa told her.

Mellie brightened. “Really?”

She smiled. “Really. So you should stay here, just in case,” she added.

“Okay. I will.” Impulsively, she hugged Essa tight. “You’re so nice. You’re like my mother was,” she added quietly. “She was nice, too. Well, sort of nice.”

“Did you lose her a long time ago?” Essa wanted to know.

“I was five,” Mellie said. “Daddy’s been different since then,” she added. “He never laughed a lot, but he was different. Now, he never even smiles.”

Except when he’s taunting me, Essa thought irritably, but she didn’t dare say it.

“I have to get back to work, but I’ll see you later,” Essa promised, smiling.

“Okay. Thanks, Essa,” Mellie said, smiling back.

“You’re very welcome!”

* * *

She was just finishing a complicated sauce when Duke walked into the kitchen, flaming mad.

“What the hell did you tell my daughter?” he demanded, hands on his hips, face taut with anger.

“You can’t be in here!” she said quickly, darting a glance at the rest of the kitchen help.

“I’ll leave when you answer me!”

“Oh, gosh . . . !”

She rushed him out of the kitchen. Time was of the essence. She could get fired, even though the manager liked her.

“What do you mean, what did I tell her?” she asked under her breath.

“You said I was planning to take her someplace this afternoon! I am not, the hell, taking her anywhere. I’m working!”

She gave him a speaking glance. “If you don’t take her someplace, Dean will!” she said harshly. “He asked her to go with him to the dig, just the two of them. So I told her you might be planning to take her somewhere, so she wouldn’t try to sneak off with him!”

He looked shocked. He blinked. “She didn’t say that.”

“She doesn’t tell you a lot of things, does she?” she asked shortly. “She’s a lovely, sweet child, and you’re too busy to notice! One day you’ll wake up and she’ll be grown and getting married or working somewhere in a profession!”

He hesitated.

“I don’t have time for this. I have to finish the lunch menu!” Essa said, and started to leave.

He pulled her back around gently by one arm. “All right, I’ll take her somewhere,” he muttered. “But you have to come, too.”

Her eyes widened like saucers. “Why?”

He gave her a glowering look. “Because if you’re still here, he’ll probably substitute you for her,” he said shortly.

“He hasn’t talked to me today.”

“That doesn’t mean he won’t,” he said doggedly. “You can’t go anywhere with him alone. Not you or Mellie.”

“But he’s such a nice man! Why?” “I wish I could. It

“I can’t tell you,” he said shortly. “I wish I could. It would make matters a lot clearer.”

She drew in a quick breath. “All right. Where are we going, then?” she asked curtly.

“Someplace . . .” He stopped dead. He didn’t know. “It’s a surprise!” he said. “It’s a birthday surprise,” he added.

Her eyebrows arched. “Whose birthday is it?”

“Somebody’s,” he said. He thought. “My great-uncle’s.”

“Oh. Does he live here?”

“He died two years ago.”

“But we’re celebrating his birthday . . . ?”

“Nobody knows he’s dead but me. So we’re going to see him and eat cake,” he said stubbornly.

“In the cemetery?!”

“Get out of here,” he muttered.

She tugged at her arm, which he was still holding.

“If you don’t come, Mellie will refuse to go,” he added.

She shrugged. “Okay. I’m game. I love celebrating dead peoples’ birthdays. Should I bring a cake?”

“Only if you want to end up wearing it,” he said as he released her.

She smiled sarcastically. “Or you could wear it.”

His eyes narrowed.

“Okay. I’m gone. I’m already a memory . . . !” She headed back to the kitchen.

“In the lobby, at four!” he called after her.

She threw up a hand and kept moving. She wondered if she’d lost her mind. She also wondered what he knew about Dean . . .