Read Online Dead By Dusk by Heather Graham - Free Book Online

looked up, as if he had been aware she was watching him.
    â€œWhat is it?” she asked.
    â€œPardon?” he said politely.
    Stephanie opened her mouth to speak, but words never left her lips.
    From upstairs, Suzette let out a bloodcurdling scream.

Chapter 3
    â€œ Eh! Americano! ”
    Grant Peterson looked up. He’d been painstakingly brushing away the dirt atop a centuries-old skeleton. The brush was almost as small as a kid’s kindergarten watercolor brush. The task required tremendous patience. The area in which he worked had been roped off by the real archeologists, the fellows who knew what they were doing.
    It was a woman’s skeleton. Some of the scholars were convinced that they had found the remains of a legendary countess. But Carlo Ponti, head of the excavations at the site, so recently unearthed by a minor earthquake, was not convinced.
    â€œSo far, with the bits and pieces of fabric left . . . I don’t think that these are the remains of such a woman,” Carlo said. “I believe we will discover that we have found a peasant. I do think that these remains will prove that a legendary battle was fought, and that the stories told beyond the history books will be verified. The ground shifted, as it reportedly did centuries ago. To those poor people, it brought death. To us, it brings a treasure of knowledge.”
    Carlo walked toward him now, a jacket casually thrown over his shoulder. “ Americano ! Come on. We’re calling it quits for the day. The road is nice and clear. We’ll go into the town and have a real cooked meal and some drinks.”
    Grant stood, arching a brow, gesturing to the dirt that covered him.
    â€œSo, shower quickly. We’ll be on our way in.”
    â€œIt’s all right. Go in without me,” Grant said.
    Carlo walked to the tape surrounding the ground where Grant worked. “Go—alone? With my German comrade Heinrich and the Swiss, Jacques? No, no, no. They are too serious. They know nothing but the earth and history. I want to hear music, and talk about movies. We’ll go see the new club. I want to see the young ladies who will be working at the new club. The two who were stuck out here with the rocks in the road, eh?”
    Grant shook his head. “You’re a lascivious old fart, Carlo,” he told the renowned archeologist. Carlo grinned. Actually, he was in his early fifties, and had a bearded, rustic kind of easy charm. He loved his work, but his every move was not dead serious, or geared in only one direction. He loved archeology because he loved history because he loved people, and what made them tick.
    â€œ Sì , let’s go look at live women, eh? Besides, the forensic anthropologists arrive tomorrow, and they will likely not want much more dirt gone before they take their photos, yes? Take a shower, and let’s go. Dusk is coming quick. And I’ve been eating from cans cooked over a fire and sleeping in a tent too long, even for me. Andiamo !”
    Grant hesitated. He should really be staying out of the town. He didn’t know for certain, but he was pretty sure that la bella direttrice of the new teatro americano was Stephanie. He’d had no idea when he signed on here as an amateur volunteer that he and Steph might wind up in the same place, but when he had arrived and heard about the resort, the club, and the theatre, he had learned almost immediately that it was owned by an Italian-American named Victoria Reggia, and once he knew that, it was an educated assumption that Reggie would have brought Steph in on the project.
    Steph, he was certain, had taken on the project to get out of Chicago—and away from him. He wasn’t at all sure how he could prove that he had made his plans the day she had walked out—way ahead of her own. And if he tried to explain that he’d felt as if he’d been waiting all his life for this particular opportunity, she’d think he was in a