Silent Killer Page 0,114
I think you need to be a little more specific.”
“If you hurt my mother, you’ll have to answer to me. Is that specific enough for you, Deputy Perdue?”
The boy had balls. Not many fifteen-year-old kids would confront a man twice their age and a great deal larger, who also happened to be a deputy. It was obvious that Seth Cantrell saw himself as his mother’s protector, and damn if Jack didn’t admire the boy for it. Over dinner that evening, he debated whether to tell Cathy about Seth’s visit to the sheriff’s office that morning.
“Don’t you like smoked pork chops?” Cathy asked.
“Huh?” Jack had been so deep in thought that the only words he’d caught were pork chops. “They’re delicious.” He reached over on the platter, pierced another juicy, tender chop and laid it on his plate.
Cathy eyed him quizzically. “Want to tell me what you’re thinking about so hard that you stopped eating?”
The chop was so tender he was able to slice it with his fork. After eating a couple of large bites, along with some mashed potatoes and butter beans, he rinsed it down with iced tea.
“Seth stopped by the office today,” Jack told her.
“Did he say or do anything that he shouldn’t have?”
“Get that worried mother-hen look off your face. Seth behaved himself.”
She sighed.
“He told me that if I hurt you, I’d have to answer to him.”
Cathy’s eyes widened. “He didn’t.” The corners of her mouth tilted upward in a hint of a smile.
“Oh, he did. You’d have been proud of him.”
“I am. It’s just—”
“He knows about us, about the fact that I spent the night here last night.”
Cathy’s lips curved into a closed-mouth smile. “Oh, yes, he knows. My guess is that everybody in Dunmore knows. It seems I have at least one nosy neighbor who thought it was her Christian duty to call my mother this morning and tell her.”
“Son of a bitch,” Jack grumbled. “Did you have to deal with your mother today?”
“Sort of. She stopped by Treasures, and before she opened her mouth, I told her, in front of several customers, that I was thirty-four years old and that my personal life was no one’s business but my own, and that included her.”
“Have you talked to Seth?”
“He came to see me this morning. I’m pretty sure that’s why he confronted you. You see, I told him that you and I are going to be seeing quite a bit of each other and that I didn’t know what the future held for us, but we had a right to find out.”
Jack released a long, low whistle. “So how’d that go over?”
“He wasn’t thrilled,” Cathy admitted. “About our dating or…or about our sleeping together.”
“You admitted to him that we—”
“He’s fifteen, Jack, not five. He knew you spent the night. Besides, I told him that who I have sex with is no one else’s business and that I don’t care if everybody in town knows you and I are lovers.”
Jack let out a loud, guttural laugh. “Damn if I don’t know where your son gets his brass balls. Lady, you amaze me. What happened to that sweet, shy, people-pleaser you used to be?”
“She grew up. And like you said, she grew a set.”
Jack shoved back his chair so quickly that he almost toppled it over. He rounded the small kitchen table where they’d been eating the delicious meal Cathy had prepared and yanked her out of her chair. Startled by his sudden, unexpected actions, she shrieked, but when he hauled her up against him and gave her a resounding kiss, she kissed him back.
They broke apart, both of them laughing.
He tugged on her hand and nodded toward the door.
“But I made banana pudding for dessert,” she told him.
“It’ll keep. We can have it for a midnight snack.”
“Midnight snack? But it’s only seven o’clock. Do you plan to keep me in bed for the next five hours?”
“Yep. We’ll make love for five hours, take a break and eat banana pudding, then make love again.”
She didn’t hesitate another second. She followed him out of the kitchen, down the hall and straight to her bedroom.
Chapter Twenty-five
Griff had handled this situation all wrong from the very beginning. He had kept the truth from Nic, telling himself that he was protecting her. That had been as good an excuse as any, and a partial truth. He did want to protect Nic. She was the most important thing in the world to him. He’d kill to protect her. He’d die to protect