The Camden Cowboy. Victoria Pade

dark hair curved to his nape. And when his biceps bulged with the force required to pull the hatch up, chills danced along Lacey’s spine.

      “Buried treasure?” she said when he yanked out an old trunk from a narrow compartment under the floor, her voice cracking and giving away the fact that she was watching him rather than what he was doing.

      He didn’t seem to notice, though.

      “Kind of looks like a pirate’s treasure chest, doesn’t it?” he said, setting the trunk beside the hole in the floor. “But as far as I know the Camdens have always been pretty landlocked, and this isn’t big enough for too much treasure.”

      It was about the size of two shoe boxes stacked on top of each other. Hammered silver corners sealed the distressed metal that it was made of, and it was closed tight with a rusted padlock hooked through the latch.

      After palming the padlock, Seth said, “Wonder where the key to that is? Probably long gone. I’ll have to saw it off to see what’s in here.”

      “Gold doubloons?” Lacey suggested.

      He picked the trunk up and shook it. But whatever was inside didn’t sound like coins. It just made a thunking noise.

      “I don’t think so,” Seth said. But beyond that he didn’t seem overly curious as he stood again, balancing the trunk on his hip. “I might as well take this with me now and see if I can find a key that fits the lock. But the desk will have to wait. Want to show me the farm equipment thingy?”

      He was smiling.

      “It’s through this other barn door,” Lacey said, leading him from the tackroom through a door at the back that opened to the outside.

      “Ah, that’s just an old rotary hoe,” Seth said the minute he saw it. “But you’re right, it isn’t going to be easy to get out of here. I’ll need a different truck than I drove today so that I can hook up a trailer bed and haul this away.”

      “So another day for that, too,” Lacey said, sounding cheery at that prospect. Despite the fact that she needed him to get his things moved, she was still happy to think that there would be another time when he’d come out here.

      And again, she hated herself for that feeling.

      “Any chance I can put off moving things until next Friday?” he asked, as they went from the barn to his truck to drop off the trunk and then on to the house for him to see what was in the attic. “The truck with the trailer hitch on it is having some work done and won’t be back until then. And I’d like to do everything at once.”

      If she said that wasn’t all right did that mean he’d have to make more than one trip?

      It was tempting to find out. To see if she could get him out there twice. But that was where Lacey drew the line with herself. She was being silly and she knew it.

      So she said, “Sure.”

      “You can let your guys start building the shelves in the tackroom—that desk is too battered already to be salvaged, so it doesn’t matter if they bang it up some more before I get it out of there. I’ll just use it for kindling anyway.”

      They’d reached the house by then. Lacey was ahead of Seth as they climbed the steps to the second floor. It didn’t occur to her until they were already under way that her position in front of him put her own rear end at his eye level. It made her self-conscious and she suddenly wished she’d let him go first.

      But she still hadn’t thought of a way to switch places with him when they were at the foot of the four steps that led up to the attic from the second floor, so she had to take the lead on those, too. And when she stepped up into the attic itself and turned around, she caught him raising his eyes in a hurry so she knew what he’d been looking at.

      But she did feel a hint of secret gratification in the fact that he had a small smile on his face.

      The ceiling in the attic was high enough for them both to stand up—although Seth had to slouch as he took stock of what was there.

      An old, rolled-up rug. Boxes filled with Christmas decorations, toys, books, clothing, bedding and various discards. An antique mirror. A rocking chair. And other stuck-in-storage odds and ends.

      “Doesn’t look like anybody got up here at all,” Seth commented. “Apparently it’s been overlooked for quite a while. But I’ll take care of it next week.”

      “Or whenever,” Lacey heard herself say. “We need the space in the barn, but this stuff can stay as long as the house does—which will be until construction is finished. Then we’ll demolish the house and the barn, and this whole area will be practice fields—which is actually why we need a different road …”

      “I saw the model downstairs. Why don’t you show me what we’re talking about?” Seth proposed.

      Lacey was pleased with herself for having remembered the road issue in the midst of her distractions. She was only too glad to take him back downstairs where the architect’s model had been put on display in the living room of the farmhouse.

      She was also only too happy to talk about the training center project once they got there. To explain all that the center would encompass.

      Referring to each toylike section of the model, she pointed out the administration building, and the conditioning center and training facilities that would include locker rooms, hot and cold tubs, meeting rooms, training areas, weight rooms, equipment rooms and a video department.