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.”
Corrie blinked several times before fire rose through her belly as his words sank in. “You . . . you took this from me?” She was unable to contain the confused anger rising through her voice.
“Yes.”
“Why? Why would you do that? You know how much this dig meant to me.”
“Because he was going to pay me a lot of money if I succeeded.”
“You did this . . . for money?” She scoffed and shook her head. “How much? How much is he paying you?”
He slumped his shoulders. “A million dollars. One-point-five million with any skeletal remains, but all he really wants is the knife.”
A torrent of fury whirled through every inch of her. Money? He wanted fucking money?!
“What world are you living in? That’s ludicrous, Ford, for someone to pay an archaeologist that much to find an artifact. No one does that. And that’s not why we do what we do. We do it to preserve history. And for the adventure. We don’t do it to line our pockets with gold.”
“Well, I needed the money!” he shot back. “For my mom’s treatments.”
“So you compromised an archaeologist’s moral code and your integrity to get it?”
“My integrity? I did this for her. I’m broke, Corrie. Completely and utterly broke. My father wasted everything they had on phony artifacts and left my mother with nothing. And I’ve been supporting her ever since, even after I got a pay reduction due to budget cuts that conveniently happened to coincide with my breakup with the boss’s daughter. So, yeah, I did this for her. I did it so I can pay for treatments that might save her life,” he argued.
“Ford, there are other ways to get money. Once word gets out about this dig, our reputations will be that of money-hungry gravediggers. No one in the professional archaeology world will respect us after this.”
“What do you care about those people? They don’t respect you anyway.”
Thwack!
Corrie’s open hand flew out and smacked Ford’s face as tears rolled down her own. Cheap. He’d made her feel cheap. Confirming all the whispers and crass jokes made about her all these years. Except she wanted to believe Ford was different. That he saw her for more than that.
Clearly, she was wrong.
“Corrie, I’m sor—” He moved toward her, but she snatched herself away.
“Fuck you, Ford. It’s because of people like you that I’ve acquired this reputation. People who’ve treated me like a joke—a caricature,” she said, her voice shaking.
“That wasn’t what I meant. You’re better than those people. Who gives a damn what they think about you?”
“I do!”
“Well, maybe you shouldn’t.”
Corrie laughed, numb and filled with disbelief. “That’s rich coming from someone who’s gotten where they are by keeping others down. I trusted you, Ford. I trusted you with everything. Gave you parts of me I haven’t shared with anyone. And here you are, throwing it all back in my face like none of it ever mattered.”
“I tried to tell you. Two times today—” he pleaded.
“After you slept with me.”
He paused, clearly having no retort.
“You lied to me,” she continued, pointing her finger at him. “From the moment I got here—no, before even—you’ve been lying and manipulating me so you could get what you wanted. Was this your plan all along? Get me to fuck you—to fall for you—so you could finally win?”
“What? No. Absolutely not,” he said, standing straighter. “I would never do that.”
“Really? How do you expect me to believe you?”
He sighed. “I don’t. And I’m sure you never will. But those moments we had? They were real. And if you can believe anything, then believe that.”
Real? They could never have been real. Not when all of it had started with a lie and deception.
“Okay . . . if those moments were real, why this? Why this now?”
“Because it’s fine to accept that this needs to end.” He bowed his head.
“I don’t buy that. Something happened. Something between our meeting with Ethan and Sunny and your decision to get the knife by yourself. So what was it? Was it the investor?”
“Let it go. This isn’t going to do anyone any good.”
Thanks for the confirmation.
“So it was him. What did he say to you?”
“Corrie . . .” he said, sounding tired and dejected.
“You owe it to me. After everything that’s happened, I deserve to know the truth.”
“Fine, you want to know?” he said, his voice raised. “He threatened you, Corrie. He threatened you, me, and everyone else in this camp. He knew about everything. Told me to halt our inquiries into the thief and told me that if we didn’t deliver the knife to him within a week, he’d go after every single person here.”
“And you believed that? What on earth could he possibly do to us? Not offer us jobs in the future? Well, fine by me. I don’t need to work for blackmailing asshats.”
“He has photos, Corrie. Photos of us by the waterfall today.”
A pit formed in the bottom of her stomach and she swallowed. Hard.
“Of us . . . naked?” She could hardly get the words out.
Ford’s features softened and he rested on the edge of the bed. “Yes,” he said, his voice low and gentle. “On the plus side, he doesn’t know who you are. But on the minus side, he thinks you’re my intern and he plans to release the photos to Yale if I don’t do what he says. It won’t be hard for people to put two and two together and figure out it’s you.”
Corrie wrapped her arms around her body, shrinking into an unknown abyss. After all these years trying to preserve her reputation. All her efforts to combat the impact of that goddamn Archaeological Digest spread. And now someone had photos of her and planned to use them against her. Photos of her body.
It belonged to her. Her and no one else.
Ford was right—it wouldn’t take much for her identity to be figured out. Certainly no one would mistake her for the auburn-haired, fair-skinned Sunny. But, worse yet, Corrie knew how these things worked. Once the photos were out, there would be no way to control who got their hands on them. No way to protect her body.
“This is all your fault, Ford. You let this happen,” she said, her anger rumbling through her voice. But it was time for Corrie to take matters into her own hands. Fuck this Ford’s the boss bullshit. Corrie was in control now.