for sure.
He loved history and wars and generals and naval battles, which she supposed was a guy thing, because her dad liked the same sort of stuff. He could name dates and places better than any history teacher she’d ever had.
Russ was passionate about his outdoor pastimes and he’d entertained her with stories of bears and coyotes, white-water mishaps, camping nightmares, encounters with all kinds of weather including tornadoes, which sounded terrifying. She’d found herself actually wishing she was a little more outdoorsy-adventuresome. She normally thought of herself as brave and daring, but with the exception of the chow, she’d never faced down any critter more threatening than a philandering husband.
Russ asked her about her work as a private investigator and she regaled him with some of her more memorable cases, like the time a cheating husband had caught her with a camera in the bushes behind his house and she’d wound up in jail, or the time she’d been investigating a routine workman’s-comp-fraud case and found herself uncovering a major drug-smuggling operation.
So, yes, the day had gone far better than she’d expected. But there’d been no repeat of the kiss and no mention made of it.
Sydney was beginning to think she’d imagined the attraction between them, except that every once in a while she caught Russ looking at her with so much heat in his gaze that they didn’t need a woodstove.
In truth, she’d spent quite a bit of her own time watching him covertly, imagining him naked. Imagining what it would feel like to touch him bare skin to bare skin rather than bundled in all these winter clothes.
She knew it was ridiculous. She and Russ were polar opposites and the only reason their worlds had intersected at all was because he happened to be the unwilling center of a case she’d been desperate to solve. Now that he’d refused to take the money, their business was concluded. She would go back to her life in New York and their paths would never cross again.
Any liaisons they made would, by necessity, be temporary and she’d already decided she didn’t want a one- night stand. Still, that didn’t mean she couldn’t think about it. Which she did-a lot.
“I have a favor to ask,” Russ began suddenly just as they sat down to dinner. “I know you don’t owe me, but I have to ask anyway.” He was unusually intense, and she got the feeling he’d been thinking about this favor for a while, and that it was important to him.
“Ask away. I’m not vindictive and if I can help, I will. What is it?”
“I’d like you to keep my identity confidential. If word got around that Sammy Oberlin’s heir had refused ten million dollars, it would create all kinds of problems.”
Sydney gave herself a moment to think about it. If she talked about this case to anyone, the news would spread like wildfire among private investigators. Every heir-finder in the country would camp out on Russ’s doorstep, waving a contract in his face and begging him to sign. Reporters, too. The story was too irresistible to ignore.
The fact was, she hadn’t planned on telling anyone. Why advertise her failure to bring the case to a satisfactory conclusion? But mostly, she didn’t want her father to know. Lowell might be proud of Sydney for solving the case, but he would be crushed that she came so close to saving Baines & Baines, yet ultimately failed.
“I won’t say a word,” she said, “on one condition.”
Wariness flashed across his face. “What?”
“Could you just tell me why you don’t want the money? The real reason? I promise I won’t try to change your mind. But I know you haven’t told me the whole story.”
Chapter Eleven
Russ put down his fork and sighed. “It’s because of my mother.”
Sydney waited for him to continue.
“Winnie was a showgirl. She was beautiful-still is, but back then she was spectacular. She landed a job at the Clover-Sammy’s casino, the Four-Leaf Clover-when she was twenty, but she had only one goal in mind. She intended to catch the eye of a millionaire and marry him. When Sammy Oberlin himself started paying attention to her, she thought she’d died and gone to heaven. She didn’t care that he was twenty years older than her or that he treated her like a possession. She wanted the ring on her finger and an end to all her money problems.”
Sydney knew the type. She’d gone to college with more than one girl whose only aim was to nab a Harvard Law School student so she could live in a big house, drive a Mercedes and never have to work again.
She wondered if Russ thought
“Sammy put her up in a nice apartment, but he wouldn’t move her into his house. And he wouldn’t marry her, not even when she deliberately got herself pregnant with me. But he paid her well. She had the clothes, the car, the jewelry. She also had a cocaine habit, a gambling addiction and a lot of shallow friends who used her because she could buy them booze and drugs and they could hang out at her place.
“Then one day, it wasn’t enough. Winnie threatened to break things off with Sammy unless he married her. So he did-in a bogus ceremony that was never registered with the state.”
“That’s how I found you,” Sydney said. “The bogus wedding records. You were, what, about three at the time?”
He nodded. “I don’t remember it. So they were supposedly married, but Sammy still wouldn’t move Mom in with him.”
“And she put up with that?”
“For a while. Eventually she got tired of his lies and she wanted to leave. But by then she was so addicted to the high-flying lifestyle, she couldn’t. The idea of having to get a job, a real job-her showgirl days were over-terrified her.
“Then one day, Sammy made the decision for her. He’d fallen in love with one of Mom’s so-called friends and wanted to marry her, which of course infuriated Mom even more since by then she’d figured out her marriage wasn’t legal.”
“Paula,” Sydney added.
“Right. But Sammy had to get me and Mom out of the picture. I think I already told you that part. He paid us off to move far, far away.”
“How old were you then?” This story both fascinated and repulsed Sydney. She’d gotten the idea that Sammy Oberlin wasn’t a kind and gentle soul, but it sounded as if he was downright cruel to string along a woman-the mother of his child-for years on end.
“I was twelve. We moved to Dallas, which was far enough away to suit Sammy. Mom thought living in the town where Neiman Marcus was born would be the ultimate. But it turned into a nightmare. Sammy paid Mom a chunk of money to go away and she seemed intent on spending it as fast as she could. But life in the fast lane caught up with her. After her third trip to rehab, social services took me away from her.”
“Oh, Russ.” Sydney couldn’t imagine how hard it must have been for a twelve-year-old boy to watch his mother self destruct.
“It was the best thing that could have happened, a wakeup call of sorts. Mom decided to move back to her hometown and live with her mother. She sobered up, regained custody and she took what remained of Sammy’s settlement to buy the Cut ’n’ Curl and go to beauty school. It was the first time I can remember that she set a goal and actually stuck with it. She was working harder than she ever had and for the first time in her life she was happy.”
“So because of that…you think having money is bad?” Sydney wasn’t going to try to change his mind. She’d promised. But she did want to understand.
“Money
