Kara Lennox - One Stubborn Texan

But no one had been up here in a few months, so it was overgrown with weeds and the front porch was covered with dead leaves. At least he didn’t spot any broken windows, which inevitably led to an invasion of critters.

He climbed the stairs to the porch and unlocked the front door. The cabin smelled winter-musty, but everything appeared in order. “Take your boots off and leave them on the porch,” he instructed. “No sense tracking mud everywhere.”

Sydney looked at the dog, which was standing just outside the threshold, waiting for permission to enter. His feet were coated in mud. “What about him?”

“Nero, go lie down. You can’t come in like that.”

With a sigh that sounded decidedly human, as if he’d understood every word Russ said, Nero lumbered to a sunny spot on the porch and plopped down. He looked over his shoulder at Sydney, silently imploring her to show some sign that she didn’t hate him. For whatever reason, the dog had taken a liking to her.

Sydney entered the cabin in her stocking feet. “It’s really rustic.” She gave a glance to the mounted deer head over the fireplace, the braided rug, the granny-square afghan on the ancient sofa. She shrugged out of the backpack and let it fall with a clunk. “You don’t actually hunt, do you?” She glanced again at the deer and wrinkled her nose.

“Nah.” Not since he was a kid, anyway. Bert had taken him a few times when he first moved to Linhart, but it wasn’t really his thing. “I fish sometimes, but really this is just a place to get away from everything.”

“I would think Linhart is far enough away from everything.”

“Now you’re dissing my town.”

“Sorry, I don’t mean to. Linhart is beautiful, really. And quiet. I just don’t see why a person would need to get away from it.”

“It’s not so quiet during tourist season. Spring through early fall, it’s wall-to-wall people.” And sometimes he just needed to get away from Winnie. When she got a moneymaking idea in her head, she would pester Russ about it endlessly. She would never follow him here, that was for sure. The former Las Vegas showgirl didn’t much care for walking on dirt, either.

“Do you want to see the boxes?” he asked Sydney. “They’re upstairs in the loft. If my cousin ever got that space cleared out, we’d have another bedroom.”

“I’m not sure why you’d need another, if you come up here to be alone.”

“Maybe I won’t always be alone.” Maybe someday he would have a wife and kids who’d want to rough it here with him. Although, given his track record, that was becoming less and less of a possibility. He’d yet to convince any of his girlfriends to tromp up here with him-not even Deirdre. Then again, she’d worked in the governor’s office in Austin and would have looked as out of place in the woods as a flamingo in a desert.

None of the other women from his past would have fit in, either. Melanie What’s-Her-Name, the oil company lobbyist, had broken out in hives when he’d taken her on her first and last canoe trip. Elizabeth, the hotel events coordinator-well, he’d never even tried to picture her anywhere in the great outdoors.

Sydney was probably the only female to see this place in fifty years and she had come under false pretenses.

Still, he couldn’t deny she classed the place up. Something about her was different from those ultrasophisticated women he’d been involved with in the past. Or perhaps he was merely trying to rationalize his attraction to her.

“All right, let’s have a look at those boxes,” she said briskly.

He led her up a narrow spiral staircase to a loft bedroom. As soon as Sydney reached the landing, she let out a soft “ oh” of surprise.

The room was literally full of boxes, wall to wall and floor to ceiling, and every one of them filled with yellowed papers, photographs, scrapbooks, letters, postcards and who-knew-what.

“It would take me a month to go through all this stuff!”

“You can take as long as you want,” Russ said mildly. “There’s enough food, between what’s in the backpacks and the kitchen cabinets, to last you several days. I’ll come back to get you whenever you say.”

“You’re going to leave me here alone?” Panic edged her voice.

“I have a business to run.”

“I can’t stay here overnight,” she objected. “I didn’t bring clothes or a toothbrush or-”

“There are plenty of clean clothes in the bedroom closet and dresser drawers, and I packed a few toiletries in the backpack. But if you don’t want to stay, I understand. We have to start back within a few minutes, though, if we want to make it home by dark.”

She looked at the boxes, then back at Russ, weighing how badly she wanted to find Sammy Oberlin’s heir against how badly she didn’t want to spend the night in the woods.

“Fine,” she ground out. “I’ll stay one day, and if I can’t find anything by then, forget it. I’m going back to New York.”

Exactly what he’d been hoping to hear. But as he looked at her, standing in the loft staring forlornly at all the boxes, he felt nothing but guilt. He didn’t want to leave her here alone with her work, which wouldn’t lead to anything anyway. He wanted to take her downstairs, bundle her into the feather bed, burrow under the down quilts and make love to her until neither of them could move.

“I guess I better call the B and B and let the sisters know I won’t be back tonight.” Sydney looked around for a phone but didn’t spot one. “Let me guess. No phone.”

“I do come here to get away from everything,” he reminded her.

“Good thing I remembered to bring my cell phone.” She reached into her jacket pocket and pulled it out. She’d just bought it a couple of weeks ago, the latest and greatest on the market.

Russ eyed it with interest. “I’ve never seen a phone like that.”

She held it out for his inspection. “Cool, huh? I can use it to read e-mail, do research on the Web, listen to music-it’s an mp3 player, too. With this thing I’m always connected, always at the office. I never miss a call.”

“Um, yeah, well, hate to break the news, but unless it’s a satellite phone, you won’t get service out here.”

“What? That’s ridiculous. Everyplace has cell coverage these days.”

“Not these woods.”

She checked the screen more closely. Sure enough, her phone wasn’t receiving a signal. “My father will be worried sick about me if I don’t call him tonight.” Sydney gnawed on her bottom lip, then reminded herself to stop. It was a nervous habit she thought she’d conquered years ago.

“I can let both the B and B and your dad know where you are,” Russ said.

She could just imagine. Some strange guy calls and claims Sydney is stuck in the middle of nowhere and can’t be reached, but don’t worry? “Why don’t you call my aunt instead?” Sydney suggested.

“Sure, no problem.”

Aunt Carol would be cool about it. She could keep her father calm if he got worried.

Russ wrote down the number Sydney gave him and stuck it in his pocket. “Have fun, I’ll see you tomorrow.”

She couldn’t believe he was leaving, just like that. But she couldn’t very well beg him to stay.

Russ started a generator, so she would have electricity. Then collected the dog from the porch and started the hike back to the car. Sydney watched him until he was out of the clearing, disappearing into the trees.

She felt abandoned and forlorn. When she’d first visualized herself going through all these boxes of historical papers, she’d thought Russ would be helping her-identifying people in photos or the authors of letters. It had sounded like so much fun, a treasure hunt.