NaNo Begins! Chapter One of Operation Osiris.

So you may have noticed in effect, but my thesis is finally done and dusted, and it is now time for NaNoWriMo 2011!! 

 And in true celebration of both the end of Honours, official qualification as an archaeologist (!!!), and the beginning of NaNo 2011, here is the first chapter of the third book in the Daphne Savoy series, Operation Osiris! 

Enjoy! :D 

The first step to getting over your ex-boyfriend is to fly across the Atlantic Ocean after him. Fail, Daph. Fail.

I stood in the baggage claim at JFK international airport, foot tapping along to the obligatory Sinatra blasting out of my headphones and contemplated the utterly ridiculous predicament I had managed to get myself into.

About three weeks ago, I’d broken it off with him because other forces – scary forces – had threatened to tear us apart. By using him to get to me, staying together would have put us both in danger and at the risk of sounding like a cheesy heroine in some romantic novel, I tried to save us both by leaving him.

So, within a week, he had packed a bag, sworn he wasn’t letting it go that easily, and taken off for New York City on business. Of course, with the promise that ‘I’ll be back’.

And now I was pretending that I didn’t care. Yeah, right.

It was one afternoon in the Egyptology department at the British Museum in London where I worked, that I was skimming an email from Inna Laurens, the current curator for Egyptian artefacts at the Metropolitan Museum in New York, had sent me. As it turned out, the Valley project we had set up October last year was coming along nicely on both the London and New York end – despite recent upheavals due to the incarceration of the previous Met curator.

Ms Laurens had written to me – me personally! Epic excitable moment, Daph is moving up in the Museum world – and requested that the British Museum Egyptology department go for a visit to swap notes and see how the Met was doing.

In a moment of excitable panic, I’d forwarded the email straight to the whole team and raced into the office of my boss, Professor Frank Kensington, to share the good news.

As it turned out the ever-organised Gloria Gomez had already clicked onto the airline webpage and booked tickets for the whole team. Her new fiancé, Harry Thomas, had barely finished his coffee and biscuits by the time an Egyptology team pow-wow had been called and a trip to New York had been agreed on, booked, and filed into the revolving filofax on Gloria’s desk.

So, three weeks later, here I was at New York’s John F Kennedy international airport, quietly singing along to ‘New York, New York’, and waiting for my bright purple suitcase to sail by on the conveyor belt.

It was a little scary being back in the same city as the ex when despite my firm resolve I was doing the right thing, all I wanted was to hug him and smell his cologne. I missed, dammit! The past few weeks had been torture, and I’d been pretending to everyone that I fine. Even at home in my haunted flat I refused to cry, though my neighbourhood friendly ghost, James, knew I was one poke away from sobbing woman.

His attempt to help was the constant run of the History Channel, and I was certain I now knew pretty much everything there was to know about Hitler.

As for the ex I certainly wasn’t thinking about? I did a quick scan around and, assured no one was currently looking, I flicked up a photo of him on my mp3 and smiled.

For two seconds. Then I clicked it away, took a deep breath and spotted my pimped-out bag puttering towards me. I heaved it and soldiered on back to where Gloria and Harry were trying to casually neck at the coffee stand. It had been such a long flight between the newly affianced and constant fidgeting of the Blonde scientist.

“Daphne, that luggage...” sighed Frank, joining us with his own plain brown suitcase.

“What’s wrong with it?” I asked defensively, accepting a steamy latte from Gloria and passing a cup of tea on to Frank.

“It’s just...bright?” Harry suggested. Gloria kissed him on the cheek, and he blushed.

“Yes, that was what I was going to say,” Said Frank with amusement. “Now children, shall we?” When the last member of our team joined us, he pointed the way to arrivals.

I was going to be fine; I thought as I sipped my latte and shuddered at the feel of the caffeine rushing into my veins. What was the likelihood that I couldn’t avoid him, right? New York was a pretty big city for foreigners.

Justified in my firm new resolve to avoid Eric at all costs, I rounded the bend with the coffee in one hand and bag in the other, and stopped dead.

Eric Stanhope stood there, looking gorgeous as hell and larger than life just beyond the barrier, with a sign in his hands that read ‘Daphne Savoy and team’.

Why did the fates hate me, I groaned internally, and grudgingly stopped over to him pretending not to notice the chortling coming from the direction of my colleague and friend, Roy Fonda. It was as always his mission in life to annoy me.

Roy rushed forward to see his friend and give him a man hug. “Mate, I missed you at the office!”

Eric grinned, his face lighting up, as he greeted Gloria and Harry as well. “It’s certainly been quiet being back in New York without the crazy British antics of you lot to keep me entertained!”

Gloria swatted him with a please purr, “Don’t you mean ‘Spanish charm’?”

Eric bent to kiss her on the cheek and nodded, “that too.”

Frank shook his hand. “Well, Eric, my boy, you’ve certainly slipped right back into the thick of things! Inna said she was sending someone to pick us up but she never mentioned it would be you. I take it your business at the Metropolitan has you conducting once again?”

“Inna’s got me jumping through rings of fire a little, but she knows that I’m deeply entrenched in both ends of the Valley Project now. It feels a bit like I’m back in time at my same old desk with almost the same sheets of paper as before. It’s almost like I never left.” Then he turned towards me and looked straight into my eyes. “But at the same time everything is different.”

That was about the time the breath spewed out of my lungs and left my dizzy and winded like I’d run a marathon. Damn him and his stupid beautiful eyes!

“Good to see you, too, Daph,” he murmured, and before I could catch my breath he had pulled me into a tight hug. His lips were by my ear and he whispered, “Remember what I said; this isn’t over and you know it. You don’t have to fight everything on your own.”

Then he released me and took my bag before turning to everyone else and showing them the way.

I stumbled after them in a daze.