But both of her parents had given their lives in pursuit of it. Unlike Geary, she wasn't going to stop until she restored honor and dignity to her family name.

Well you certainly did a good job of it tonight.

She snatched the rental car door open and threw her purse inside. "You freaking, flippin', moronic frat boy!" she shouted, wishing she'd pulled that stud out of his nose and made him eat it.

Disgusted, she pulled her phone out and started the car. She called her best friend, Pam Gardner, as she left the parking lot for Centennial Park and headed for her hotel room.

"How'd it go?"

Tory wiped at the tears as she stopped at a light. "Awful! I've never been more embarrassed in my life."

"You didn't drop your pages again?"

She cringed at how well her girlfriend knew her-the two of them had been best friends since they'd met in her aunt's deli up in New York when they'd both been small kids. "Yes, but that's nothing compared to this."

"What?"

Tory pulled out into traffic as she snarled. "There was this… this… I can't even think of a word strong enough to convey what he was, there, and he made them all laugh at me!"

"Oh no, Tory." She could hear the tears in Pam's voice for her. "Are you serious?"

"Do I sound like I'm kidding?"

"No, you sound really pissed."

And she was. God, how she wished she could find him walking back to his dorm room so that she could mow him down. "I can't believe this night. I was supposed to be applauded and instead, I'm ruined. I swear to God in heaven if I ever see that man again, I will commit murder."

"Well if you need help moving the body, you know where Kim and I live."

She smiled at her friends. She could always depend on them in any crisis. Kim and Pam were living proof that while a good friend would bail you out of jail, a best friend would be in jail alongside you. "Thank you."

"Any time, sweetie. So when are you coming back?"

"I'll be back in New Orleans tomorrow." She couldn't wait to be home again where everything was familiar.

"Well look on that bright side, Tory. Whoever the dickhead was, you'll never have to worry about seeing him here."

That was true. Tomorrow she'd be home and she'd never see that asshole again.

Tory's dignity was still stinging two days later as she knocked on the office door of Dr. Julian Alexander. He was supposed to be the leading expert in the world on ancient Greece. She'd been told that if anyone in the world could read her journal, he was the man.

She prayed it was so.

A deep masculine voice told her to enter.

She pushed the door open to find an exceptionally handsome man in his early thirties sitting behind a beat-up wooden desk. He had short blond hair and beautiful blue eyes that seemed to gleam in the dim light. His office was littered with ancient Greek artifacts, including a Bronze Age sword hanging on the wall behind him. Bookshelves lined the walls and were filled past brimming with additional artifacts and textbooks.

Man, she could easily call this place home and was grateful to be with a kindred spirit. Even though she didn't know him, she liked him already.

"Dr. Alexander?"

Looking up, he frowned at her as he closed his leatherbound agenda. "You're not one of my students. Are you considering taking one of my classes?"

She hated how young she looked at times, not that she was any older than an average grad student, but still… she had a hard enough time with her credibility that she didn't need that strike, too. "No. I'm Dr. Kafieri. We spoke over the phone."

He stood up immediately and offered her his hand. "Sorry for the confusion," he said graciously as she shook it. "I'm really glad to finally meet you. I've heard a lot of…"

"Mixed things I'm sure."

He laughed good-naturedly. "Well, you know how our circles go."

"Not broad enough most days."

He laughed again. "True. Do you have the book with you?"

She set her briefcase down on the small chair in front of his desk and opened it. She'd very carefully wrapped the book in acid free paper to protect its delicate condition. "It's extremely brittle."

"I'll be careful."

She watched as he unwrapped it and frowned. "Is something wrong?"

"No," he said with a note of awed reverence in his voice, "it's just amazing. I've never seen a bound book this old."

By his face she'd say it also brought back some kind of painful memories for him. "Can you read it?"

He opened the cover carefully before he studied the brittle pages. "It looks Greek."

"Yes, but can you read it?" she repeated, hoping that he could at least recognize some part of it.

He looked up and sighed. "Honestly? I can make out some of the words from basic root meanings, but this particular dialect is something I've never seen before. It definitely predates my area of expertise… probably by several hundred years or more."

She wanted to curse in frustration. She was so tired of hearing that. "Do you know of anyone who might be able to translate it?"

"Yeah, actually, I do."

It took a full minute for that unexpected answer to seep in. Dare she even hope so? "Are you serious?"

He nodded. "He's the historian I always go to whenever I need information. There's no one in the universe who knows more about ancient civilizations than he does. In fact, he knows so much about them you'd think he lived through them."

This was even better than she'd hoped for.

"Where does he teach?"

Julian closed the book and wrapped it back up. "Ironically, he doesn't. But you're in luck, he's here in town for a few weeks helping with Project Home Again and Habitat for Humanity."

Her heart was racing with the prospect of having someone corroborate that the book was as old as Atlantis-to have them verify it was Atlantean in nature…

It would be a dream come true if he could actually read some of it.

"Is there any chance we could meet with him?" she asked breathlessly.

"Hold on a second and let me see." He pulled a cell phone out of his pocket and dialed it.

Tory chewed her thumbnail and silently prayed to talk to the one man who held the key to her book. She'd give anything to meet him…

Julian smiled at her. "Hi Acheron, it's Julian Alexander. How you doing?"

She could faintly hear the voice at the other end of the phone.

Julian laughed at something the man said. "Leave it to you… look the reason I'm calling is I have a colleague here in my office who has something we need you to take a look at-I personally have never seen anything like it, and I think from a historic point of view you'd be very interested in it, too. Any chance we can stop by?" He shook his head. "Yeah, it's some really old shit-nice phraseology, by the way." He paused as he listened. "Yeah, okay."

Julian looked at her. "Can you leave right now to see him?"

"Absolutely." She'd crawl over broken glass to meet the man!

He returned to his call. "She can do it. We'll see you in a few." He hung up and smiled. "He's a little busy at present, but he's more than happy to look at it."

"Oh bless you both!"

Julian returned the book to her. "Would you like to follow me over?"

"Sure. Where are we going?"

He picked his jacket up off the back of his chair and shrugged it on. "Acheron's doing volunteer work for Habitat for Humanity. He's over on Esplanade on a rooftop."

Tory frowned at the image in her mind of a stodgy classics professor on top of a roof. "So his name is Acheron…?"

"Parthenopaeus."

She laughed. "Good grief, I never thought I'd meet someone more Greek than me." With a name like that, he had to be old. No modern parent would be so cruel.

With a strange twinkle in his eye, Julian grinned. "Yeah, he's amazing when it comes to historical facts. Like I said he knows ancient Greece better than anyone I've ever known or heard of." He led her out of his office.