(A Little Town in Texas, #1) Hard-Headed Texan by Candace Camp

Author:Candace Camp [Candace Camp]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Harlequin
Published: 2001-11-05T05:00:00+00:00

Chapter 7

Antonia leaned back in her chair and rolled her head from one side to the other. She laid down the pen and clenched and unclenched her hand. It had been a long, hard day, and she had only now, at almost seven-thirty, finished writing up the notes for the surgery she had just performed on Homer Harris’s bay gelding, who had somehow or other run into a steel fence post and opened up his side. It hadn’t helped any that she hadn’t gotten to sleep last night until almost three o’clock in the morning. That was the fourth time this week that she had been unable to go to sleep when she went to bed, and every time it happened, it just got worse and she got more irritable, until she was getting to where she dreaded seeing night approach.

With a sigh, she stood up and took off her lab coat. She wondered what she might have in the fridge to eat. She didn’t want to go by the grocery store or drop in to the Moonstone. But she certainly had no inclination to cook tonight. She was weary to the bone.

It was those damn calls.

Antonia’s mouth twitched in irritation. She had had three more of them this week, and it had worn her nerves thin. She told herself that it was not Alan, that he didn’t know her number or even where she was. She reminded herself that playing silly phone tricks was a favorite among middle school children, and that, moreover, there was not much for a child to do in a little town like Angel Eye, and the restiveness of spring had probably set in. Lots of people got hang-up calls, and though she had received too many of them to write it off as coincidence, it did not mean that her ex-husband was after her.

That was what she told herself. What she felt was an entirely different matter. Every time she received a call, she was thrown back into the days after she had left Alan, when he had harassed her with just such phone calls at all hours of the day and night, culminating in his finding her alone and beating her unconscious. She could not keep from remembering the terror that had accompanied her out of her marriage, the shaky uncertainty that perhaps he was right and she never would be able to escape him, no matter what she did. And no matter how much she reminded herself that she was a different person now—stronger, more capable, no longer frightened and insecure—just the thought of that time still had the power to turn her to jelly inside.

She had stopped answering her phone, letting the answering machine take the calls, but she had found that that strategy did little to ease her tension. Whenever the phone rang now, she went to stand beside the answering machine, every nerve on edge, listening for the silence, the click, letting out her breath when it was someone she knew on the other end leaving a message, but going even tauter when the silence stretched out.

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