Midnight Snow by Jo Barrett

Author:Jo Barrett [Barrett, Jo]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: romance, short story, contemporary, western
Publisher: The Wild Rose Press
Published: 2016-08-14T04:00:00+00:00

Chapter Six

Clare took a quick shower and put on some makeup. She was going to start this thing right. She wasn’t going to let him push her into anything, but she was willing to talk, to explore new possibilities that included Jackson in her life.

Just because he said he was falling in love with her, didn’t mean that he was ready to do anything crazy, like get married. She needed to do a little probing first. He had to prove to her that he was over Brittany and not rebounding with her, and she had to prove the same to him, and to herself about Mark.

They’d both had bad endings where romance was concerned. There wasn’t anything wrong with being cautious, but she wasn’t an idiot. She wasn’t about to let the possibility of real love slip away.

Hearing heavy boots on the front porch, she glanced at her reflection in the mirror.

“It’ll do for a sort of dinner date.”

With a small grin, she left the bathroom and took a step into the hall toward the front door. But before she could take another, the sound of pounding ricocheted through the house. That wasn’t Jackson, and they weren’t going to stop pounding on her front door until it gave way.

In a near state of panic, her heart leaping in her chest, her hands shaking like never before, she grabbed her rifle from where it stood beside her grandfather’s desk, not wanting them to use her own weapon against her, and ran for the bedroom in the back of the house. She slammed and locked the door, then put the gun on the bed, and struggled to shove the dresser in front of the door.

She stifled a scream at the sound of a loud crash from the living room. They’d made it inside. Her life might depend on how she handled the next few minutes, she couldn’t allow the panic rising in her throat to gain control of her actions.

The dresser finally in place, she grabbed the gun and moved to the far corner of the room behind the bed. As much as she’d like to let off a warning shot, thinking it might scare them away, somehow she had a feeling it wouldn’t work.

With her eyes on the bedroom door, now vibrating from the beating it was taking, she rifled through the nightstand for more ammunition. Bullets spilled out onto the floor beside her foot, and she crouched down beside them.

She wished she’d ran upstairs instead of staying on the main floor. They could try to come in through one of the windows instead of the door, but at least she realized that. They wouldn’t catch her off guard.

Several minutes of pounding, of things crashing in other parts of the house, strengthened her resolve. She was ready. If they got through, she’d shoot, no questions asked.

Then abruptly as it had started, the crashing and banging stopped, followed by hurried footsteps. She wasn’t convinced they were gone and kept her place behind the bed, her gaze moving from the door to the windows, her ears struggling for the slightest sound.

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