"You think of everything."
"I also think we should park up here, dodge the tour-bus mayhem. Keep the funny hats and loudspeakers to a minimum."
"Yes, please. Besides, I could use the air." She inhaled deeply.
Around them the few lingering white sprays of almond blossoms seemed like remnants of late spring snow, while the ground itself was blanketed with wild orchids, lavender and pink anemones, white narcissus. He watched as she climbed out of the car, then stopped to pluck a waxy yellow prickly pear flower, next an orange-blue Iris cretica. He loved the flowers of Crete, and the afternoon was fragrant with the scent of jasmine and lemon blossoms. Ahead, down the hill, was the parking lot for the palace, with two tour busses in attendance, one just pulling out.
"How long has it been since we were last here together?" She brushed her dark bangs back from her brow as she squinted into the waning sun, sniffing at her cactus flower.
"It's beginning to seem like forever. But I think it's about—what?—almost twelve years now."
"And how old is the palace supposed to be? I've gotten a little rusty."
"The latest theory going is that it was destroyed about fourteen hundred B.C. So we're talking roughly three and a half thousand years since it was last used."
"Guess our little decade doesn't count for much in the grand scheme."
"Time flies." He remembered how she'd been back then, that day so long ago when she had been in her mid-twenties, as inviting as the brazen ladies-in-waiting of the palace frescoes, and even more voluptuous. Mais, ce sont des Parisiennes, a dazzled French scholar had marveled. She was like that. Perfect sensuality. For a while he'd forgotten all about archaeology and just concentrated on beauty.