The Repentant Demon Trilogy Book 1: The Demon Calumnius by Samantha Johns Page B

his nearby home in his jeep.  The native workers who did the heavy lifting around the camp went to their camels, as did Doug and Abigail.  She realized when she faced the man who handed her the reins that she did not have a stool. 
    Doug dismounted his camel to offer her a leg up, something he had not really done before.  After several attempts, which ended the first time with her crotch in his face and the second time with her hanging over his back facing his rump, which she needed to grab with both hands to right herself, she suggested, “Let me just try to jump up, the way you did.”
    “You can't do it,” he argued politely. “Abigail, you are too short.”
    “I'm not short,” she said, insulted. “As a matter of fact, I am above average height at five foot six.”
    “Okay,” he said with moderate exasperation, “the camel is too tall.”
    She would have laughed, but her mood would not permit it.  His mood did not seem great, either.
    “We are hot, tired, and hungry,” he said.
    “And it's actually much worse than that, isn't it?” said Abigail. “In spite of that, we need to talk—I need to talk, Doug.”
    “Well, I was surprised to find you had been married,” he said.  “And at first I was upset that you hadn't told me about such a major thing.  But I calmed down inside after a while.  I realize that we haven't known each other very long, and I'm sure you were going to tell me about it when the time was right.”
    “You aren't the slightest bit concerned what kind of scandal I might have been involved in?”
    “No, I'm not,” he said matter-of-factly. “I don't believe anything I hear as gossip.  It's something I consider wrong to participate in at all.”
    “Everyone seems to be gone now, except for a few Bedouins,” Abigail began, feeling better. “It's just you, me, and the camels.  And it’s a very short story.  What do you say we get it behind us?”
    He nodded, climbing down from Al Fahl.  They sat on the tool trunks.
    “I was twenty-three, and it was my first expedition.  The lead professor was Ashton Petty, who I knew very well, having had him for two classes at that point.  He was sixty-seven, and I admired him very much—there is no way I even considered a romantic relationship with him as I knew he was married with two sons.  Not being a gossiper, as you understand as well, I hadn't heard any of the rumors about the estrangement with his family.  But after a while of working together, he explained his situation.  He had a plan, and he asked me if I would help him with it.
    “His wife had been unfaithful throughout their marriage, his sons, as it turns out, were not actually his, and she had actually begun living with another man who was the biological father to one of the sons.  The reason for all this DNA testing became clear when his wife filed for divorce so that she could marry this man with whom she'd been having an ongoing affair throughout their entire marriage.  The second son is of unknown paternity.  Both were grown men by that time, in their thirties, although I'm sure it would still be upsetting news regardless of age. 
    “Professor Petty—I still call him that, and always did throughout it all—had been diagnosed with cancer and had less than a year to live.  He didn't want his ex-wife to inherit his estate, and she had possible legal grounds to claim it, as it was considered marital property to which she was entitled in the divorce proceedings.  As for the sons, he had set up a trust for them years earlier and did not want to change that arrangement because he considered them his sons regardless of who had contributed the sperm.  His plan was for me to marry him as soon as the divorce became final so that he could will everything to me.  He began pouring money into accounts in my name, but most of that went to his final medical expenses.
    “His greatest concerns were over his writings, research notes, and artifacts.  Professor Petty did