Читать книгу The Ransom - Maggie Price - Страница 9

Cross C Ranch

Layton, Texas

KATHRYN CONNER was coming home.

Kathryn Conner Mason, the man sitting on the ranch house’s shady front porch amended. He had one hand clenched around a coffee mug and that morning’s newspaper draped across his blue-jeaned thigh.

He could hear himself breathe.

Feel the sweat trickle from the pores of his underarms.

Taste his fear.

His spine stiff, he propped a shoulder against one of the porch’s vintage white columns and stared out across the pristine lawn.

The July sun beat down without mercy, but the smothering heat couldn’t touch the icy fear that crouched darkly inside him. He owed a Dallas gambling syndicate over a half million dollars and he had less than three weeks to come up with the money. In full.

He could no longer sleep. Had lost interest in food. Could barely breathe. For weeks he’d been popping pills that did little to ease the smothering sensation of being buried in a pit from which there was no way out.

And then he heard about Mrs. Devin Mason’s imminent return to Layton, Texas. Kathryn was coming home.

And bringing her son.

Dropping his gaze to the newspaper, he focused on the picture that showed the smiling images of Kathryn, her pretty-boy actor husband and their son. Ex-husband now. The divorce had become final just weeks before Senator Sam Conner’s death.

Kathryn hadn’t even come home for her grandfather’s funeral. Had never stepped foot on the Cross C after she went off to college ten years ago.

Why, he didn’t know. Couldn’t care less. All that mattered was she would arrive the following day.

And she was filthy, stinking rich.

Kathryn was his lifeline. She would save him.

And so would her son.