Confessing to the Cowboy - By Carla Cassidy Page 0,62
to melt off in the next couple of days,” Rusty said as he pulled on his coat. “And they’ll have the roads cleared by morning now that it’s stopped snowing. I imagine it will be business as usual tomorrow.”
“I hope so,” she replied. “It’s far too early in the year for this place to have a quiet night like this.”
“Definitely.” Rusty pulled his collar up and withdrew a pair of gloves from his pocket. “I’ll lock up the back door as I go and see you in the morning.”
“’Night, Rusty,” she said.
Minutes later Mary sat at one of the tables nursing a cup of hot tea. She’d already locked the front door and turned the sign in the window to closed. She didn’t expect Cameron to stop by at closing time nor did she expect anyone else to come in for a quick meal.
She should just go on to bed and take advantage of an early night, but she wasn’t a bit sleepy. Far too many thoughts weighed heavy on her mind.
When would the killer strike again? Would the next victim be another waitress or Mary herself? She hadn’t had a chance to ask Cameron who he’d taken off the suspect list and who might have been added onto it.
Was Denver’s new truck bought and paid for by Jason? She’d heard through the grapevine that the twins, Jeff and John Taylor, were planning on a new barn in the spring...possibly financed by her crazed ex-husband?
Or had Thomas Manning been easy pickings as Jason’s dupe? Thomas had a waitress wife who’d betrayed him. Had he maintained a simmering rage after that, a rage that had eventually been tapped into by the manipulative Jason?
Or was the murderer just a local rancher down on his luck, with a stomach to kill and a willingness to take whatever money Jason might offer him?
She didn’t want to think about her feelings for Cameron, not with the headache that had begun to pound with a nauseating intensity across her forehead. She cared about him, but their passion had exploded under odd circumstances.
She didn’t know if what she felt for him was love or gratitude. She wasn’t sure if she thought she loved him because he was the only man she’d allowed remotely in her life.
She finished her tea, rinsed the cup and then turned off the overhead lights, leaving on only the faint glow of the security lights above the counter.
Maybe an early night would ease some of the anxiety that had become a constant thrum inside her for the past couple of days. It certainly wouldn’t hurt her headache either to get an extra hour or two of sleep.
Within thirty minutes she was in her bed, wishing she didn’t feel so alone, wishing that Cameron was beside her. If the world was a different place and she’d met Cameron at a different time would he be the right man for her?
She’d once thought Jason was perfect and obviously that had turned out badly. She wasn’t sure she trusted her own instincts when it came to men. There was no way she believed that Cameron was anything like Jason, but she also didn’t know if she was drawn to him simply because he was the keeper of her secret and the first man she’d interacted with intimately since Jason.
It was easy to imagine love for lust and a sense of security. Easy to imagine loving a man who was solid and moral and adored by her own son. But did that mean she was in love with Cameron?
She fell asleep before an answer could form in her head and awakened disoriented as she heard a crackling noise and smelled the scent of something burning.
At first she thought it was some kind of a dream, but as complete consciousness claimed her, she realized it wasn’t a dream, it was very real.
Had she left the grill on in the kitchen? Had Rusty left on an appliance that had shorted out? She rolled over and turned on her bedside lamp, shock jerking her upright as she realized the room was filled with dark smoke.
It took a moment for the last of her sleep to completely fall away and reality to grab her by the throat with sheer panic. The café was on fire.
Matt! His name screamed through her head. She had to get to her son.
She jumped out of the bed and raced to her bedroom doorway, stunned to see that the sofa had been turned on its side