Confessing to the Cowboy - By Carla Cassidy Page 0,83
a very slow learner.”
She thanked the stars that Matt wasn’t here now, that she’d agreed to let him spend the night with his friend. She wanted Jason to forget he had a son, to kill her and then steal away in the night and never bother anyone else here in Grady Gulch again, including Matt.
“I can kill you, go back to Switzerland and take off the makeup, grow back my hair and lose a few pounds and then I figure I have two choices. I can either play the grieving ex-husband and come back here to claim my son. Or I can tell whoever makes contact with me that you and I were divorced a long time ago and I’d rather my son stay in the town where he’d grown up, that it would be too traumatic at his age to displace him from the people he knows and loves.”
As he spoke he turned the knife back and forth in his hand, the light catching the razor edge each time he turned it, but she knew he wasn’t ready to use it yet. Mary had always known the second that Jason was about to attack because his left eye twitched.
“I have a feeling your boyfriend, the sheriff, would take him on, raise the kid as his own. And every time he looked at Matt he’d think of you and what a failure he was as a sheriff. You’ll haunt him until the day he dies.” He shrugged his broad shoulders. “I haven’t decided how to play that out yet.”
Tears blurred Mary’s vision as once again she looked around frantically, seeking escape and praying that the blow to Junior hadn’t killed him.
The only thing she saw that might provide her any help at all was the switch to the security lights. If she could reach it before he attacked, then at least for a few seconds the place would be plunged into complete darkness and those precious seconds might allow her the time to get something to use as a weapon.
She fought back the need to vomit as her stomach clenched tighter and tighter. Where was Cameron? Shouldn’t he be finished with the traffic accident and be here to pick her up?
Hearing the sleet still pelting the windows, she realized she couldn’t depend on Cameron. The weather could keep him busy for some time.
And she was out of time.
With a twitch of his eye and a roar of rage, Jason lunged toward her. She had a split-second sight of the knife raised above his head when she threw herself at the switch and the café was plunged into darkness.
Chapter 17
“It’s just my ankle,” Cameron’s dad said and muttered a curse beneath his breath as Cameron helped him to his feet. Thankfully the sleet had slowed as Cameron’s mother stood beside the two men. She wore no coat, only a face of worry as she watched the two men maneuver to a standing position.
“Get inside before you freeze to death, Mom,” Cameron said. “I’ve got him now and I’ll get him inside.”
As she hurried to the front door, Jim Evans leaned heavily on Cameron’s shoulder. “Thanks for coming,” he said gruffly.
“That’s what good sons do,” Cameron replied while the two began to slowly make their way toward the house. “They come when their fathers need them. Are you sure I don’t need to take you to the hospital to get that ankle x-rayed?”
“Nah, I know the different between a break and a sprain. I just twisted it on the ice and went down so fast I didn’t know for sure what had happened.”
“You shouldn’t have been out here in this weather at all,” Cameron said with a touch of censure. “And don’t tell me that you had to go out and check on the livestock because Bobby isn’t around to do it anymore. Even Bobby would have told you it was foolish to venture out on a night like this.”
“You’re right.” Jim shot him a quick glance. “Bobby would have told me the same thing.”
Cameron helped his father up the stairs to the slippery deck and then into the living room where he deposited him into his favorite easy chair.
He knelt down and removed his father’s ice-encrusted work boot, then slid off his sock and raised his jean leg up enough that he could take a look at the ankle.
It was slightly swollen, definitely sprained rather than broken in his nonprofessional opinion. “Mom, get the ice bag. Fifteen minutes with ice on