A Little Time in Texas by Joan Johnston

he called. “Come see what I found!”
     

    Dallas wasn’t sure what woke him, but he was suddenly alert, all his senses tuned to danger. He reached down to the floor beside the bed and touched his revolver in the dark. He always kept it nearby, ready at a moment’s notice. He listened, but the house was quiet. He left the gun where it was and rose. The feeling of danger had passed; now he felt anxious. He quickly yanked on a pair of jeans before he headed for Angel’s bedroom.
    The door was ajar. It had been shut last night. He slowly eased it farther open, not certain what to expect, but ready for anything. His gut tightened when he found the bed empty.
    “Angel?” The bathroom door was open. That room was empty as well.
    He knew she was gone, but that didn’t stop him from searching the house. He shoved a frustrated hand through his hair as he tried to imagine where she would have gone, and why. He peered out the front window. The truck was still there—not that he had expected her to try to drive it. But she had done a lot of things he hadn’t expected.
    She went back to the cave.
    He didn’t want to think that, but it was the only conclusion that made sense. As he pulled on his socks and boots and threw on a shirt and jacket, he swore at himself for not paying more attention to what she’d said yesterday.
    She took my horse!
    That thought came out of nowhere, but as soon as it came, he knew it must be true. All the same, he drove his pickup around to the stable to check. Sure enough, Red was gone.
    “Damn! Angel Taylor you have a lot to answer for!” he muttered to himself.
    She’s scared of the dark.
    As he drove like a madman toward the cave, he worried about how she was handling the dark. Was she afraid? Would she have the courage to go into that darkened cavern by herself?
    She has a flashlight and a knife.
    Of course! He had bought them for her at the store. He had thought she was delighted by the penknife and Mickey Mouse flashlight merely because they were unusual. She must have been planning to run away all along! He smiled ruefully. He wondered whether she had tried the Twinkies or the potato chips yet, and how she had liked the taste of them.
    She may get lost.
    There were three turns to make before she arrived at the water-bound tunnel. He wasn’t sure she had been paying close enough attention when they were in the cave together to realize that. What if she accidentally took a wrong turn andgot lost? What if her flashlight battery wore down before he found her?
    She might find a portal and disappear into the past!
    Dallas didn’t want to contemplate that possibility, but asked himself why he refused to accept the fact she might really be what she said she was. What if she really had come from the past? What if she did manage to get back?
    He would well rid of her. Why, she had been nothing but a bother and a nuisance since he had rescued her from those cowboys. He was a solitary man, used to his privacy. Angel had invaded it and brought…excitement and laughter and a curiosity that made him look at everything with new eyes. She also possessed an innocence that was as seductive as it was charming.
    Dallas reminded himself that he had no use for the marrying kind of woman. Hadn’t his mother cured him of the notion that true love could last a lifetime? He had watched his father become a shell of his former self after his mother ran away. He had heard his father cry when he read the note his mother had left and had hidden his own sobs of despair and betrayal in his pillow. He would never let a woman do to him what his mother had done to him and his father. No woman was going to wrap herself around his heart and leave himhurting when she decided to see what was over the next horizon. Better just to take what he needed from a woman and avoid the emotional strings that tied a man in knots.
    She’s gotten under my skin.
    So maybe he was a little worried about her. That didn’t mean his heart was