Birthright Read Online Free

Archaeology wasn’t classroom and publishing to Callie. To her it was digging, measuring, boiling in the sun, drowning in the rain, sinking in mud and being eaten alive by insects.
    To her, it was heaven.
    When the radio station she had on segued into a news cycle, she switched to CDs. Talk wasn’t any way to deal with vicious, ugly traffic. Snarling, mean-edged rock was.
    Metallica snapped out, and instantly improved her mood.
    She tapped her fingers on the wheel, then gripped it and punched through another opening. Her eyes, a deep, golden brown, gleamed behind her shaded glasses.
    She wore her hair long because it was easier to pull it back or bunch it up under a hat—as it was now—than to worry about cutting and styling it. She also had enough healthy vanity to know the straight honey blond suited her.
    Her eyes were long, the brows over them nearlystraight. As she approached thirty, her face had mellowed from cute to attractive. When she smiled, three dimples popped out. One in each tanned cheek, and the third just above the right corner of her mouth.
    The gently curved chin didn’t reveal what her ex-husband had called her rock-brained stubbornness.
    But then again, she could say the same about him. And did, at every possible opportunity.
    She tapped the brakes and swung, with barely any decrease in speed, into a parking lot.
    Leonard G. Greenbaum and Associates was housed in a ten-story steel box that had, to Callie’s mind, no redeeming aesthetic value. But the lab and its technicians were among the best in the country.
    She pulled into a visitor’s slot, hopped out into a vicious, soupy heat. Her feet began to sweat inside her Wolverines before she made it to the building’s entrance.
    The building’s receptionist glanced over, saw a woman with a compact, athletic body, an ugly straw hat and terrific wire-framed sunglasses.
    â€œDr. Dunbrook for Dr. Greenbaum.”
    â€œSign in, please.”
    She handed Callie a visitor’s pass. “Third floor.”
    Callie glanced at her watch as she strode to the elevators. She was only forty-five minutes later than she’d planned to be. But the Quarter Pounder she’d wolfed down on the drive was rapidly wearing off.
    She wondered if she could hit Leo up for a meal.
    She rode up to three, found another receptionist. This time she was asked to wait.
    She was good at waiting. All right, Callie admitted as she dropped into a chair. Better at waiting than she’d once been. She used up her store of patience in her work. Could she help it if there wasn’t much left over to spread around in other areas?
    She could only work with what she had.
    But Leo didn’t keep her long.
    He had a quick walk. It always reminded Callie of the way a corgi moved—rapid, stubby legs racing too fast forthe rest of the body. At five-four, he was an inch shorter than Callie herself and had a sleeked-back mane of walnut-brown hair, which he unashamedly dyed. His face was weathered, sun-beaten and narrow with his brown eyes in a permanent squint behind square, rimless glasses.
    He wore, as he did habitually, baggy brown pants and a shirt of wrinkled cotton. Papers leaked out of every pocket.
    He walked straight up to Callie and kissed her—and was the only man of her acquaintance not related to her who was permitted to do so.
    â€œLooking good, Blondie.”
    â€œYou’re not looking so bad yourself.”
    â€œHow was the drive?”
    â€œVicious. Make it worth my while, Leo.”
    â€œOh, I think I will. How’s the family?” he asked as he led her back the way he’d come.
    â€œGreat. Mom and Dad got out of Dodge for a couple weeks. Beating the heat up in Maine. How’s Clara?”
    Leo shook his head at the thought of his wife. “She’s taken up pottery. Expect a very ugly vase for Christmas.”
    â€œAnd the kids?”
    â€œBen’s playing with stocks and bonds, Melissa’s