“Maybe we’ll just put you in the exhibit,” I suggest, accepting a Malteser and popping it in my mouth.
Fraser looks down at himself. He’s wearing brown corduroy trousers and a tweed jacket with leather patches on the elbows. A pair of round spectacles sits on his nose. He’s only just turned thirty, and he’s gorgeous, but he does insist on dressing as if he’s time-traveled from Victorian England.
He looks back at us. Hallie presses her lips together, trying not to laugh. Zoe grins openly.
“What are you implying?” he asks indignantly.
“Nothing at all,” Hallie soothes. “Anyway, I think I might apply to borrow the Venus de Willendorf from Vienna. Although I’ll probably get asked if I modeled for it.”
That makes us all chuckle. The Venus figurine, which is nearly thirty thousand years old, portrays a woman with… how do I say it politely… big boobs and wide hips. Hallie is curvy, but she doesn’t have quite the same proportions as the figurine.
“Not at all,” Fraser says, “You’re not… I mean you have very…” Her eyes gleam, and he gives up and clears his throat. “Well, you only have two weeks before Valentine’s Day,” he continues, “so get your thinking caps on. I was planning to…” His voice trails off as he looks behind us, and his eyes widen. We all turn to follow his gaze.
For the first time in my life, I do a double take, and I inhale sharply.
A man stands in the doorway. He’s wearing a black suit with a white shirt and a black tie, and he looks like James Bond, a stark contrast to Fraser in his tweed and the three of us girls in our casual clothing. He’s tall, the same height as Fraser, so probably six-two, broad shouldered, and drop-dead handsome. Something about him suggests he’s wealthy—the cut of his suit, maybe, his fancy tie pin, or the way his dark hair is styled with a fashionable fade. He’s clean shaven, his jaw so smooth it wouldn’t surprise me if he’d used a cut-throat razor. He also has the greenest eyes I think I’ve ever seen, a light sage color, so striking I can see them from across the room.
I haven’t seen him for ten years, but it’s unmistakably the guy who broke my heart when I was a girl.
He’s staring at me, but he doesn’t look shocked, just… interested. He knew I was here.
My head spins, and I feel faint as all the blood rushes from my brain. I don’t want to think about where it’s going.
“Linc!” Fraser strides across the room and throws his arms around the guy.
Linc holds his arms out to the side for a moment as if surprised at Fraser’s reaction, then laughs and wraps them around him, and the two men exchange a bearhug.
“Bro,” Fraser says, releasing him, “I didn’t know you’d arrived.”
Wait, what? Fraser knew he was coming?
“Got in yesterday,” Linc replies. His voice was deep back then, but it’s huskier now, more mature. He’s grown from a boy into a man.
I’ve thought of him so much over the years, wondering what happened to him, and what he looks like today. I know my other brother kept in touch with him, but after what happened I didn’t want to ask any questions, and I certainly couldn’t ask my father. So just like the One Ring, history became legend, and legend became myth, and while Linc didn’t exactly pass out of all knowledge, he’s preserved in my mind as if in amber, forever eighteen, so it’s a huge shock to see him grown up.
I knew he would have filled out. Developed real facial hair rather than the bum fluff he sported back then. Probably lost the intense earnestness of youth, become more serious, more cynical. But would he have become less passionate about the things that mattered to us in those days? Or lost the spirit of adventure I’d found so attractive in him?
Did he think of me at all? I had no way of knowing.
Judging by the look on his face as Fraser steps back and Linc looks at me, he hasn’t forgotten me. He opens his mouth to say something, but turns as, behind him, my other brother, Joel, appears at a run, skidding to a stop as he sees the scene.
“Ah,” Joel says, “I wondered where you’d gone.” He looks at me and frowns. Joel is twenty-eight and an underwater archaeologist, which goes some way to explaining why his hair always looks as if he’s just dried it with a towel.
So Joel knew Linc was here too. My brothers were obviously hoping to ensure we didn’t meet.
Does my father know he’s here?
“I was looking for Fraser,” Linc says. “I didn’t realize… there would be other people here.” He looks at me. I know it’s a lie.
I can feel Zoe and Hallie looking at me curiously, but I keep my gaze fixed on him as Fraser walks toward us and Linc follows.
“Let me introduce you,” Fraser says smoothly. “This is Hallie Woodford, and this is Zoe Moon, two of the museum’s archaeologists. Ladies, this is Lincoln Green.”
“And before you ask, no, I wasn’t named after the color of Robin Hood’s tights,” Linc says, holding out his hand to Zoe.
Her lips curve up as she slides her hand into his. Two seconds in, and he’s already charmed her. He hasn’t changed a bit.
“Hello…” she says with interest, about an inch from tweaking her bow tie and saying, ‘Ding, dong!’ like an actor from the 1950s.