Confessing to the Cowboy - By Carla Cassidy Page 0,5
me?” she asked miserably. Once again she caught her lower lip and reached up to twist a strand of her hair.
Cameron frowned, the gesture doing nothing to detract from his handsomeness. His face was all angles and planes that radiated strength. His warm hazel eyes were now deeper in hues of brown than usual. “I don’t know. But I can tell you that two dead waitresses was a coincidence, three is a definite pattern. There’s no question in my mind now that we have a serial killer targeting your waitresses.”
“But that’s crazy. What on earth could these women have done wrong that would warrant their deaths? Serve cold coffee?” A faint hysterical laughter attempted to escape her lips, but was instantly swallowed as she gazed at Cameron for answers.
“I wish I could tell you why, and I definitely wish I could tell you who.” His jaw clenched tight and, for a moment, his eyes were cold and hard. “I’m just hoping Dorothy’s murder can give us something, anything that might provide a lead. This guy has been so damned careful and so damned lucky.” Frustration drifted from him in waves.
Mary dropped her hand from her hair and instead placed it on him, able to feel the muscles in his forearm beneath the long-sleeved khaki shirt he wore. “You’ll get him. You’re an intelligent man, Cameron. You do your job well and you have good men working for you. It’s just a matter of time before you have him in custody.”
He smiled at her, that sexy uplift of his lips that warmed her like no other man’s had ever done. “There are days I feel like I should be digging ditches instead.”
“You know you love what you do, and hopefully you’ll catch this madman before another woman dies.” She stood from the sofa, finding his nearness slightly overwhelming. Escape. She needed to escape from him before she followed through on her impulse and leaned into him.
“And now I’ve got a dinner rush to attend to,” she said, attempting to focus on business and not on how much she wanted Cameron’s arms around her, not on the horror of Dorothy’s horrendous death.
“I intend to warn your waitresses again about locking up doors and windows, about safety issues before I leave the café. You might also tell them the same thing. Each and every one of them is a potential victim until I get this guy behind bars.”
“I’ll remind them.” Her heart pounded at the knowledge that simply by working for her, women she cared about were placing their lives in potential danger.
As the two of them reentered the main café area, Mary got to work helping expedite orders as Rusty went back to the kitchen to cook with his helper, Junior Lempke.
The dinner rush was always busy, but with the news of Dorothy’s murder making the rounds, the restaurant was unusually full. Mary worked, always conscious of Cameron’s tall, commanding presence as he pulled each waitress aside and spoke to each of them for a couple of minutes.
When he finally left, she focused solely on what needed to be done to keep the people in her café happy and well fed. At six o’clock Matt and Jimmy came in and sat at a small table for two near the counter. It was the usual place where Matt ate and most nights Jimmy was with him.
Mary had a feeling Liza Rosario wasn’t much of a cook, but she often had Matt over for playdates with her son. Jimmy was a bright, nice boy who was Matt’s best friend and Mary didn’t mind feeding the kid dinner each evening as she suspected dinner at home would be something frozen and heated or from a box.
If the boys had their way, they’d order burgers and fries every night, but Mary always ordered for them, insisting they eat real meals with real vegetables. Tonight was meatloaf, green beans and applesauce, along with two huge glasses of milk.
The evening rush seemed to last forever. Just when she thought things were starting to slow down, more people would arrive. It was always this way when tragedy struck...friends and neighbors gathered here to find solace or laughter or just simple conversation and connection.
Jimmy eventually went home and Matt went back to their living quarters to work on his homework before his bath and bedtime. Mary kept her mind emptied of everything but the basic minute-to-minute things she needed to do to keep the café running.