Raiders of the Lost Heart(81)

Us. A word Corrie had never used when discussing relationship status with any of her partners.

Though relationship status was also a foreign term in Corrie’s vocabulary.

Ford stopped what he was doing and turned to her. Searching her face. Clearly scouring his own thoughts. Why wasn’t he saying anything? She couldn’t have been wrong about the connection they’d made. Sure, the sex was great. Fantastic, in fact. But there was so much more beneath the surface. And pain at the idea that she’d never see him again after this.

“Ford . . .” she said taking a few steps toward him, her voice soft and timid, “what happens to us once we leave here?”

He stared at her, unflinching.

“You go back to Berkeley and I go back to New Haven. That’s for the best, don’t you think?”

“No. No, I don’t think that’s for the best. Please tell me you aren’t being serious. You know there’s something more between us. I don’t know why we didn’t see it before.”

“We’d never work, Corrie. You know that. We’d end up arguing all the time,” he said as if exhausted, then resumed getting dressed.

“So what? Maybe that’s exactly why we would work. They say opposites attract.”

“But we’re not opposites. We argue because we’re both stubborn, egotistical know-it-alls—”

“Who happen to understand each other better than anyone has ever before,” she said, inching closer still and tracing her hands along his chest and collarbone. She gazed at his face, twirling her fingers along the nape of his neck and into the wet tips of his hair. Warmth spread over her body as he wrapped his hands around her waist and succumbed to their magnetic energy. Yes . . . he wanted it, too.

“What if I took a sabbatical? Moved to New England for a few months.” The words came out of her mouth without any forethought, but it felt right hearing them aloud.

A life with Ford no longer seemed an impossibility.

It seemed a necessity.

“Corrie, what are you saying? Are you saying you want to move . . . move for me? Because I thought you didn’t do relationships.”

“I don’t. Or at least I didn’t. But at least over these last twelve years, maybe that’s because deep down I always wanted you. You’re the only person who can occupy my mind, no matter how much I’ve tried to keep you out. The only person I’ve ever truly wanted to know. And the only person I’ve ever wanted to know me.”

He brought his hand to her cheek, brushing his fingertips across her warm skin, flushed from her reveal. She hadn’t intended to tell him all that. But something told her she needed him to know.

“I . . .” he started, staring into her eyes. “I want those things too . . .”

Corrie’s heart warmed, soaring with elation. She’d finally opened her heart to someone else and they’d reciprocated.

“But,” he continued, sending a sinking knot into her stomach, “we can’t be together. I’m not the man you think I am. You deserve better.”

He pulled away from her, leaving an emptiness in her arms.

“That’s not true,” she said. “Ford, I know you. The real you.”

“I wish that were true.”

“Then tell me.”

“Corrie, please don’t make this any harder than it already is,” he said, his voice exasperated.

“Harder? Ford, you’re literally breaking my heart right now,” she said, her voice shaking. “Why are you doing this? Why are you pushing me away when a few hours ago you were pulling me closer? What happened between then and now?”

“I’ll tell you everything tomorrow. At the airport on our way back to the US.”

“The airport?” She cocked back her head and stared at him incredulously. “Ford, no. Whatever it is, I want to know now. There’s no reason this has to wait.”

“Yes, there is. Because once I tell you, you’re never going to want to speak to me or see me again.”

“So instead you’re going to leave me to fret about it all night? How can that be better?”

“It just is.”

“But how?”

“Corrie, let it go.”

“No, Ford, I can’t let it go. I have to know now because . . . because . . . because I’m in love with you!” she blurted out.

Silence fell over the tent as they both froze. He then hung his head and spoke. “Please don’t say that.”

A lump formed in Corrie’s throat. Thirty-five years of her life, and the first time she tells someone other than a family member that she loves them, the response is please don’t say that? So that was what it felt like when men told her they loved her and she didn’t reciprocate.

Except Corrie hadn’t loved them and she was pretty sure Ford did love her.

“Ford . . . please. I—” she said, taking a step toward him. She needed to hold him. Hold him so he could feel her love.

But he cut her off and stepped away, turning his body to the side. Closing himself off to her. “I’m not even supposed to be here,” he said, stopping her in her tracks.

“What are you talking about?”

“Here, leading this dig.” He closed his eyes for a moment, then looked her straight in the face. “I learned about this dig through Dr. Crawley and that the investor was planning to hire you, so I called him and convinced him to choose me instead. Told him that I knew as much about Chimalli as you did.”