Chapter Two: INdy's Proposition

"Would you like your check now, miss?"

Lara glanced up from her reverie in obvious embarrassment. She nodded to the bartender and
began sipping her gin and tonic water tentatively. All day, she couldn't forget about what a
jackass she had made of herself in front of Professor Jones. Here was the man she had wanted to
meet all her life, and all she could do was annoy him and incur his wrath. What a fool she had
been! And how was he still alive and looking so young after all these years? Lara had tried to
drown her troubles in the comforting oblivion of alcohol, which she had unwittingly discovered
on one of her previous adventures,* but to no avail. Her stupidity and ignorance kept coming
back to haunt her. Lara picked up the check warily and was about to pay when something red
leaking through the parchment caught her eye. She flipped the paper to reveal a note scribbled in
a bold, red handwriting: Meet me outside the door of room 811 as soon as possible - H. Jones.
Lara crimsoned and turned the paper over lest someone should see. So he was going to rub it in
was he? Or perhaps he was willing to forgive and forget - if they could sleep on it tonight. The
very idea repulsed her. "I just won't go," she said to herself as she paid the bill and exited the
barroom.

Lara fell back in her room heaving a sigh of exhaustion and apparent relief. A low rumble and a
nudging at her legs told her that Marco Kitty, her grey-and-white Persian mix cat, was hungry for
attention and possibly food. "Winston, did you feed Marco yet?" Lara asked of her faithful butler
as she stroked her kitten's fur affectionately.

"Yes, Miss Croft," replied Winston from his quarter of the suite. Everyone she was acquainted
with thought it scandalous that she share a hotel room with her butler except Jean-Yves. But he
was a Frenchman and had probably shared a few hotel rooms in his life as well, and not as
innocently as Lara and Winston.

Lara thanked Winston for the information and softly scolded the cat, "You can't possibly be
hungry, love, you were just fed."

Marco mewed pitifully, but he seemed to understand that he wasn't going to get any scraps from
his mistress at present. Instead, he circled Lara a few times and settled down to sleep.
"You just rest, little fellow," Lara cooed to her pet, "just rest . . ." Suddenly, rest didn't seem like
such a bad idea. Lara slipped into her pajamas and was just settling down in her bed when she
heard the front door opening. "What the blazes?" she began, but her sentence was halted by the
sight of a man entering her bedchambers.

"You didn't show up," said the man, looking more than a little annoyed. "I'm not used to being
refused."

"Get used to it," retorted Lara as she pulled her covers up to her chin in false modesty, "and leave
this room at once. How did you get in here anyway?"

"I followed you when you left the bar downstairs because I figured you weren't going to come to
me," Professor Jones explained. "When you entered your apartment, to my good fortune, you
forgot to lock the door. I didn't realize that I intrigued you so much as to cause you to be careless.
Now can we please talk business." His eyes were fixated immovably on her face.

Lara didn't like the way he was staring at her. It made her feel queer inside as if she were being
convicted in a courtroom. "What do you mean?"

"I would like to enlist your help in uncovering a very important relic," he began. "Are you
interested?"

"You mean shoot the breeze with you and your men? I work a single, you know. I don't do
partnerships."

"Are you certain you won't reconsider?"he asked in that low commanding voice of his. "It's the
discovery of a lifetime, and you won't be unrewarded."

"Listen, Jones," she snapped at him, "I've worked on commissions before and I was nearly
cheated out of my eyeteeth and killed to boot. I'm not questioning your personal integrity, but I
just can't trust anyone, even you."

"That's a shame," he said pityingly, "I feel sorry for people who can't trust anyone. Well, I tried,"
he continued to himself, securing his fedora more snugly in his head as he turned to go. "I won't
bore you with the story of how I discovered the secret to youth or how-"

"The what?" inquired Lara, forgetting even the pretense of decency by letting the blanket slip
down her shoulders.

"Sorry," he said. "I can't tell you unless you're in on the deal. It's all part and parcel of the
agreement to help me."

"You men are all alike!" sulked Lara. "You never give anything without expecting something in
return."

"It seems to me that you women are no worse," he replied calmly. "It certainly took you long
enough to comply to my simple request to leave the water this afternoon."

Lara bristled at this reference to the afternoon's fiasco. "Must you lay on a guilt complex,
Professor Jones? All right already I'll help you. I guess I sort of owe it to you after how I treated
you."

Indiana couldn't hide the smile that was sneaking on his lips. "I knew I could persuade you, Lara.
Well, goodnight, I guess, and I'll meet you tomorrow morning in the lounge." He exited the room
and the last thing he said before he slammed the door behind him was, "And please, call me
Indy." And with that, he was gone.

"Right," muttered Lara. "In your next life."

Just then, Winston's boyish face popped into the doorway. "I suppose we will be seeing
Professor Jones for tea someday soon," he stated with a look of puerile optimism on his
countenance.

"Goodnight, Winston," was all Lara could think to say.

********************

But it wasn't a good night for Lara. Even with the aid of the alcohol she had recently
consumed, she just couldn't seem to fall asleep for wondering about Indiana Jones. If she
remembered correctly, he had been alive and already discovering priceless artifacts before World
War II. How could he still look so young after all these years? Maybe when he had drunk from
Christ's cup he had become immortal. No, he had lost the cup so he wouldn't need to be
immortal to protect it like the knight had. Besides, all of that probably never happened. The
illustrious adventurers' amazing stories were probably just that- stories; stories trying to
romanticize the actually dull and tedious work of a "real" archaeologist. Try as she might, Lara
simply could not solve the conundrum, the real reason for his continued youth, not to mention the
mystery of where he had been for the last fifty years. And what about those bones she had found
in the temple at Angkor Wat,* the bones she had been sure were his? Finally, after many hours of
restlessness, she finally fell into a troubled sleep.

The next morning, Lara exited her suite and nervously headed for the hotel lounge. The lounge
was located in a small apartment above the lobby which was reached by a stairway on the outside
of the building. It consisted of a counter in the back left corner which provided free coffee for the
guests, a chess table on the right wall where two gossipy old ladies were currently occupied, and
a computer next to the coffee counter. There was also a large picture window on the far wall
which looked out over the pool area and the ocean beyond. Lara sat down on a green leather sofa
facing the window and sighed.

"Looking for me?" asked a voice from behind her.

Lara nearly jumped two feet at the unexpected sound of Professor Jones' voice. "Hello,
Professor," she said as calmly as she could as she turned around to look at him. Surprisingly, he
was dressed in his most formal professor attire and fedora-less.

Indiana chuckled and smiled at the startled tomb raider. "I always seem to catch you off guard
whether its by the pool or in your bedroom last night." At this remark, the heads of both of the
women at the chess table shot up.

"Oh, hush, will you?" Lara whispered sharply. "We're not the only ones in this room, and I don't
want some stupid rumor to start circulating that we are an item. Besides, you didn't catch me off
guard, I was merely a little startled."

"I'd say," said Indy dryly. "Well anyway, that's not what I want to discuss with you. I wanted to
tell you about," he lowered his voice, "the Fountain of Youth."

"Pardon me?" asked Lara in surprise.

Indiana glanced suspiciously at the ladies playing chess. "Come on," he whispered, "let me take
you on a little drive, and I'll tell you everything."

"I don't know if I like the sound of that," Lara said uncomfortably.

"Oh, come on, Lara, I'm not always a cad, I can be strictly business, too," he spat in disgust.
Then, to prove his point, he pulled out his reading glasses from his vest pocket and put them on,
"See? Now are you coming or not?"

Lara hesitated briefly before giving her assent. "This better be good," she muttered.

Indy raised his eyebrows mischievously and offered her his arm, which Lara refused. His
welcoming smile was immediately replaced by an annoyed frown. "Here we go," he said under
his breath as Lara followed him to the parking lot.


* See Stockholm Syndrome, my first Lara fic.

* There is a pile of bones with a fedora and whip lying next to it in the Angkor Wat level of TLR.
Check it out.