Do you take this rebel - By Sherryl Woods Page 0,22

telling him about the computer scam, laughing now that it was behind them, admiring—despite herself—her son’s audacity. “Not that I would ever in a million years tell him that. What he did was wrong. That’s the only message I want him to get from me.”

“We did worse,” Cole pointed out.

“We certainly did not,” she protested.

“We stole all the footballs right before the biggest game of the season, because I was injured and the team was likely to lose without me.”

Cassie remembered. She also remembered that they’d been suspended from school for a week because of it. In high school she had loved leading the older, more popular Cole into mischief. It was only later, when he’d come home from college, that their best-buddy relationship had turned into something else.

Thinking of the stunts she’d instigated, she smiled. “That was different. No one was really harmed by it. And they played anyway. The coach went home and found a football in his garage. The team was so fired up by what we’d done, by the implication that they couldn’t win without you, that they went out and won that game just to prove that they didn’t need you to run one single play.”

Cole laughed. “It was quite a reality check for my ego, that’s for sure.”

“Okay, so we chalk that one up as a stunt that backfired,” she said. “Anything else you remember us doing that was so terrible?”

“There was the time you talked me into taking all the prayer books from the Episcopal church and switching them with the ones at the Baptist church.” He grinned. “Why did we do that, anyway?”

She shrugged. “It seemed like a good idea at the time. And I think I was mad at my mom, because she kept pointing out prayers she thought I ought to be learning to save my soul from eternal damnation. I was tired of hearing the same ones over and over again, so I thought a switch would give her some new material.”

The mention of her mother snapped her back to the present and the worries that had been stirred up about her health, first by Cole, tonight by Karen and even by that incident in town.

Suddenly she simply had to know the truth. She handed Cole her glass. “I have to go.”

“Where?” he asked, his expression puzzled.

“Home. I want to talk to my mother before it gets to be too late.”

The fact that he simply nodded and didn’t challenge her abrupt decision to leave confirmed her fear that something must be terribly wrong. Moreover, Cole obviously knew what it was. There was too much sympathy in his expression.

“Give her my regards,” he said quietly.

She considered trying to question him again about what he knew, but it was pointless. Cole could keep a secret as well as anyone, and it was evident he intended to keep this one out of loyalty to her mother.

“I will,” she said.

She started across the parking lot, but he called out to her. “Cassie?”

She turned back. “Yes?”

He lifted his glass in a silent toast. “Thanks for the dance.”

“Anytime,” she said.

He grinned. “I’ll hold you to that. There will be a great country band at the picnic tomorrow, and I haven’t had a decent Texas two-step partner in years.”

“You might still be saying that after tomorrow,” she retorted. “I haven’t been dancing in years.”

And then, because she was far too tempted to go back and steal a kiss as she once would have done without a thought, she turned on her heel and strode away without another backward glance.

At home Cassie kicked off her shoes in the living room, then noted with relief that there was still a light on in her mother’s room. She padded into the kitchen and brewed two cups of tea, then carried them upstairs. In her bedroom Edna was reading her Bible as she had every night before bed for as long as Cassie could remember.

“I made some tea,” she announced.

Startled, her mother’s gaze shot up. Worry puckered her brow. “You’re home awfully early. Weren’t you having a good time seeing all your friends?”

“Cole was there,” she said, as if that explained everything.

“I see.” Her mother set aside her Bible and patted the edge of the bed. “Come, sit beside me.” She smiled. “I remember when you used to come in here after one of your dates and tell me everything you’d done.”

“Almost everything,” Cassie corrected dryly as she set the teacups on the nightstand and sat beside her mother.

“Some things