Heaven and Earth: Three Sisters Island Trilogy #2

It was small, charmingly quaint, and heads above the majority of accommodations he usually had on a research jaunt. He knew a lot of people thought he was a man more suited to a dark and dusty library. He often was, but he was just as much at home in a tent in the jungle, so long as he had enough battery power for his equipment.
Satisfied with his living arrangements, he headed outside to unload the Rover.

On his second trip he stopped to watch the sheriff ' s cruiser pull up, and Ripley climb out.

' Deputy Todd. '

' Dr. Booke. ' She was feeling vaguely guilty about giving him a hard time on their first encounter. Which she wouldn ' t have felt, she thought resentfully, if Nell hadn ' t scolded her about it. ' You ' ve got a lot of stuff here. '

' Oh, this is only part of it. I ' ve got more being sent it tomorrow. '

Nosy by nature, she looked in the back of the Rover. ' More than this '

' Yeah. Lots of neat stuff. '

She turned her head. ' Neat '

' Lots of it. Sensors, scanners and gauges and cameras and computers. Cool toys. '

He looked so pleased with the idea that she didn ' t have the heart to smirk. ' I ' ll give you a hand hauling what you ' ve got inside. '

' That ' s okay. Some of it ' s pretty heavy. '

Now she did smirk, and hefted a large box out of the back. ' I can handle it. '

No question about that, he decided and led the way inside. ' Thanks. You work out What do you bench-press '

Her brows lifted. ' I do twelve reps of ninety pounds in a set. ' She couldn ' t get a good gauge of his body type in the long coat and the thick sweater under it. ' You '

' Oh, about the same, considering body weight. ' He walked out again, leaving her following and trying to get a sense of his shoulders. And his ass.

' What do you do with all this ' neat stuff '

' Study, observe, record, document. The occult, the paranormal, the arcane. You know, the different. '

' Freak shows. '

He only smiled. Not just his mouth, she noted, but his eyes as well. ' Some people think so. '

They hauled the rest of the boxes and bags in together.

' It ' s going to take you a week to unpack. '

He scratched his head, scanned the piles now crowding the living space. ' I never mean to bring so much, but then, you never know what you might need. I was just in Borneo and could ' ve kicked myself for not packing my backup energy detector ' like a motion detector, but not, ' he explained. ' You just can ' t find one of those on Borneo. '

' I bet. '