She waited to speak until she was certain she had some control again. “I’ve survived hits before. My advice to you is not to criticize something you have no capacity for understanding.”

“I apologized.” He didn’t release her shoulders when she tried to draw away. “But I’m not very good at following advice.”

Maggie became still again. Somehow they had gotten closer, so that now their thighs brushed. The combination of anger and desire was becoming too strong to ignore. “Then you and I don’t have any more to say to each other.”

“You’re wrong.” His voice was very quiet, very compelling. “We haven’t begun to say all there is to say.”

“You work for me—”

“I work for myself,” Cliff corrected.

She understood that kind of pride, admired it. But admiration wouldn’t remove his hands from her shoulders. “I’m paying you to do a job.”

“You’re paying my company. That’s business.”

“It’s going to be our only business.”

“Wrong again,” he murmured, but released her.

Maggie opened her mouth to hurl something back at him, but the dog began to bark in quick, excited yelps. She decided turning her back on him to investigate her pet was a much grander insult than the verbal one she’d planned. Without a word, she began to make her way around the slope of the gully to the pile of earth and rock and debris the backhoe had dumped.

“All right, Killer.” The going was so rough that she swore under her breath as she stumbled over stones. “You’ll never find anything worthwhile in that pile, anyway.”

Ignoring her, the puppy continued to dig, his barking muffled as his nose went farther in, his backside wriggling with either effort or delight in the new game.

“Cut it out.” She bent to pull him out of the heap and ended up sitting down hard. “Damn it, Killer.” Staying as she was, she grabbed the dog with one hand, dragging him back and unearthing a small avalanche of rock.

“Will you be careful?” Cliff shouted from above her, knowing she’d been lucky not to have one of the rocks bounce off her shin.

“It’s the stupid dog!” Maggie shouted back as she lost her grip on him again. “God knows what he thinks is so fascinating about this mess. Nothing but dirt and rocks,” she muttered, pushing at the pile that had landed near her hip.

“Well, grab him and get back up here before you’re both hurt.”

“Yeah,” she muttered under her breath. “You’re a big help.”

Disgusted, she started to struggle up when her fingers slid into the worn, rounded rock her hand had rested on. Hollow, she thought curiously. Her attention torn between the gully and the dog’s unrelenting barks, Maggie glanced down.

Then she began to scream, loud and long enough to send the puppy racing for cover.

Cliff’s first thought as he raced down the slope to her was snakes. When he reached her, he dragged her up and into his arms in an instinctive move of protection. She’d stopped screaming, and though her breathing was shallow, Maggie grabbed his shirt before he could carry her back up the slope. “Bones,” she whispered. Closing her eyes, she dropped her head on his shoulder. “Oh, my God.”