Love, Lust 'n Geology (1ST DRAFT)

Chapter 4: The morning after

Chapter 4: The morning after

The next morning, she was awoken by the sounds of the team's preparations to head out. Normally, she would have gotten up and hung out with Chris and Phil, but the memory of her late night 'conversation' with Grant was still fresh in her mind. No way was she going to risk getting into an exchange with him at the start of her day off!

Tom's card lay on the floor beside her bed. Rolling onto her side, she reached for it and inspected it again. It indicated that he worked in the OPP detachment in Ignace. He must live in the area. She recalled driving by a detachment in Dryden. If he lived all the way over there, then it was unlikely that he'd be working here.

Her thoughts wandered back to the events of last night. She was still upset at herself – more than upset! – over what she had let him do! Never had she allowed a man to go even remotely as far as she had permitted him to yesterday. But there was also an aspect of his behaviour, that the more she thought about it, the less it appealed to her, and that was that he hadn't had the consideration to wait till after she'd left, before escorting the redhead out. He must have known that it would be obvious to her what their intentions were. You're no gentleman, Tom! she thought to herself. But then why did she expect to find gentlemen here? After all, weren't gentlemen and rednecks mutually exclusive?

She waited till the door clicked shut before throwing off her blanket. There was always the chance that the troops had forgotten something, but in that case, it wouldn't be Grant who'd be back to retrieve it. The main room she entered was a combined kitchen, dining, and living room. It also contained a desk in the corner, where her laptop had almost permanent residence. While putting on the kettle, it occurred to her to look up Tom's address on the canada411 website. A couple of entries came up for 'Hughes' in Ignace, but only one with the initial 'T.' The street sounded awfully familiar. She'd likely driven by it. She looked it up on Google Maps. It was just a stone's throw from downtown Ignace.

The kettle began to whistle, demanding her attention. She wasn't a breakfast person, never had been. When little, she'd almost gag when her mother forced her to eat an egg and down a full glass of milk. Like most South Asians, her day began with a cup of tea. She owned an oversized mug, and had brought it with her from home: it held a whopping 16 oz. of liquid!

She'd discovered, however, that when doing fieldwork, breakfast was a necessity. The first day she'd gone without, ignoring Grant's advice to eat something. He'd been training her, so they'd spent the day pretty much side by side. About an hour after they'd started, her stomach had growled, loudly. Grant had turned to her, raised a brow, and given her the first of what would turn out to be many critical looks of the field season, with not only her but also Chris and Phil, the unlucky recipients. The next morning, he'd commended her in a loud and significant manner on her excellent decision to eat breakfast. Since then, her breakfast-free days had been restricted to her days off, like today.

Carrying her tea over to the dining table, she sat and gazed out the window at pine trees and a portion of a small lake that was just a few minutes' walk from the cabin. It really was quite beautiful. She tried to shut out all thoughts of Tom, but like the persistent and annoying drip of a leaky faucet that one has tried every which way to fix, they came filtering back. She closed her eyes and grimaced, recalling how Tom's hands had freely roamed over her, then under her dress, and then ...! Yikes! Her heart began to beat faster, but only out of sympathy for what she'd endured, of course! Why hadn't she kept things innocent, or relatively innocent – after all, it wasn't as if she'd never kissed a man before! Why had she let them get so out of control, so ... so ... primal? But on second thought, she had to concede that evolution had brought some pretty powerful forces to bear on her last night. Perhaps she should be thankful for what hadn't happened, rather than bemoaning what had?