Confessing to the Cowboy

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.

At ten o’clock she locked the door and turned the sign hanging there from Open to Closed. She’d tucked Matt into bed an hour before and normally this was the time that Cameron would show up for a quick cup of coffee before he headed home.

She didn’t expect him tonight. He had a murder to solve. Dorothy’s murder. Her heart crunched with pain as Rusty stepped up next to her. “Kitchen is clean, grill is ready for the morning. You want me to help you clean up out here?”

“No thanks. I’ll take care of it.” She’d sent the waitresses home at closing time rather than have them stick around to clean their stations and sweep and mop the floors, which was part of their usual jobs.

“Are you sure you’re okay?” Rusty’s tough-guy features didn’t change, but his gruff voice was softer than usual.

Mary smiled at him with genuine affection. “I’m fine, or at least I will be fine. Cleaning up will help me decompress a little bit. Go home, Rusty.” Home for the big man was one of the cabins that Mary rented out located directly behind the café.

Three of the cabins were currently vacant. In one of them Candy Bailey, a young waitress, had been murdered. The other one had also been rented to another waitress who had moved out right after Candy’s murder. The third had been empty for a long time and the fourth was Rusty’s place.

“If you need me just call. You know I can be here in two minutes,” Rusty said.

She nodded. “Thanks. Really, I’ll be fine.”

Minutes later as she swept up the floor between the tables, her thoughts returned to the murders. She’d managed to keep her mind fairly numb until the café had closed and she was alone, but now the horror reached out to chill her to the bone.

Three murdered women. Three dead waitresses. Had each of the women somehow offended the killer when serving him? Was he somebody who visited the café regularly? She couldn’t imagine any of her customers being capable of such a thing. But she also knew how a pleasant face, a friendly smile could hide the soul of a monster.

She switched the broom for a mop and continued cleaning the floor while her head raced with thoughts. If the killer was a customer, then Cameron had a huge pool of potential suspects to investigate. Almost everyone in the small town of Grady Gulch, Oklahoma, came in to eat at one time or another. Many were regulars, others were occasional diners. There was also the possibility that the killer didn’t ever eat here at all.

Three waitresses...friends...women she had considered part of her extended family were now gone. Why? What would drive somebody to kill them? A piercing ache shot through her as she finished up the floor and began to wash down tables and chairs.

Did somebody have a grudge against the café? Against her personally? She couldn’t imagine either. The café was popular, and she and Matt had worked hard over the past eight years to fit in and become a part of the close-knit community.

This couldn’t be about her past. Her heart iced over at the very thought. No, that was impossible. This couldn’t be about her and the man she’d once married.

She emptied her mind of everything as she focused on finishing the chores. When the café was ready for opening the next morning she walked through the kitchen toward the door that led to her living quarters.

The navy blue ginger jar lamp set on the end table by the sofa created a soft glow of light around the living room. The first thing she did was move to stand in Matt’s bedroom doorway.

As she gazed at her sleeping son, her heart expanded with love, and for a moment all thoughts of murder left her mind. Matt was a well-adjusted, good boy, who rarely needed a stern word or a disapproving look.

Sometimes she worried that he was too accommodating, that in his eagerness to please he’d make mistakes and trust the wrong people. But they were normal motherly concerns and she had bigger worries plaguing her mind.

She walked through the living room and into the bathroom, needing a quick shower before going to bed. As she stood beneath the warm spray of water, her thoughts turned to Cameron.

In another lifetime, he might have been the man she’d invite into her heart, but she was living in this lifetime and had decided long ago that nobody, especially no man, would ever be allowed too close.

She couldn’t let any man close to her, there were too many secrets in her past, too much of herself she’d never be able to tell anyone. She feared that if she tried to have a relationship she’d slip up, make a mistake and all would be lost.

Still, there were times when she was in her bed alone that she longed for strong arms to reach out to her, when she wished for an intimacy that she’d never really experienced before with any man.

There were also times she wished she had somebody to talk to about Matt, someone to brag to when he did something amazing and to commiserate with when things went wrong.

Each time she tried to imagine who that man might have been, an image of Cameron filled her mind. Over the past several years he’d made it a habit to stop in at the café right at closing time.

He’d drink the last cup of coffee in the pot and they’d sit and talk. She’d been there for him when his younger brother had died two years ago in a tragic farming accident and his grief had not only shattered his heart, but also made him the sole child of his older parents.

He’d been there for her when Candy Bailey had been found murdered in one of the cabins she rented behind the café. They’d gone through bad times together and had also shared a lot of laughter.

She knew he was romantically interested in her, and although she enjoyed their evening conversations, she never allowed him to believe their relationship would be anything other than friendship.

The cost of developing anything meaningful with Cameron was too high. She might mess up, accidently share too much with him. He was a sheriff and as far as she knew, there was no statute of limitations on murder.

Chapter 2

Cameron sat in his office alone and sipped a cup of strong coffee, hoping for an adrenaline rush that would get him through the day. It was just after seven in the morning and he hadn’t gone to bed the night before until well after midnight.

He’d just collapsed onto the king-size bed when he heard a faint scratching on a door down the hallway and remembered he was now, at least temporarily, a pet owner.

He’d jumped out of bed and opened the laundry room door. Twinkie exploded out and raced to the front door, obviously in desperate need of a potty break.

Cameron opened the door, and watched the little mutt as she sniffed the grassy area until she found a place she liked. When she’d finished her business she came back inside and looked up at Cameron expectantly.

“Good girl,” Cameron had said, and Twinkie’s tail had wagged in response, then she raced straight to Cameron’s bedroom and placed her front paws on the edge of the mattress.

“Oh, no, little girl. That’s my bed.” Cameron got the four-poster bed from the laundry room and set it next to his. “This is Twinkie’s bed.”

The dog had looked at it as if she’d never seen it before in her life. Cameron ignored her, got into bed and turned out the bedside lamp. The whine began low in Twinkie’s throat as her front paws tap-danced on the side of the mattress.

After fifteen minutes of trying to be firm, Cameron had given in and pulled the pup on top of his bed. Twinkie immediately curled up at Cameron’s feet, her body warmth radiating through the blanket.