Nobody's Baby but Mine(127)
“Apparently he didn’t finish.” He gently pushed her away and gave her a nudge toward the door. “Go on now. I’m right behind you.”
Cal looked even more dangerous in the living room than he’d looked on the porch, where the light had been dimmer. She noted his narrowed gunslinger’s eyes and cattle rustler’s expression. She wanted to believe that the three other men present would come to her rescue if he proved to be completely unreasonable, but she suspected that they were on his side.
Cal ignored her as she made her way to stand near the television, the farthest point in the room from the place he occupied near the kitchen door. As if she were invisible, he addressed the room’s other occupants.
“Here are the facts . . . I love Jane, and she loves me. I want to stay married, and she wants to stay married. All of you are standing in the way.” He fell silent.
Seconds ticked by. One after the other.
“That’s it?” Ethan finally asked.
Cal nodded.
Kevin tilted his head toward her. “Hey, Jane, he says we’re in the way. If we weren’t here, would you go off with him?”
“No.”
“Sorry, Bomber. You’ll have to think of something else.”
Cal glared at Kevin. “Will you get the hell out of here? This doesn’t have anything to do with you. I mean it, Tucker. I want you out of here. Now!”
Jane saw that Kevin was only prepared to defy Cal so far, and he’d reached his limit. But as he began to rise, Annie’s words forced him back in his seat. “He’s part of this, and he stays!”
Cal turned on her. “He’s not family!”
“He’s the future, Calvin, the same future that you don’t want to look at.”
Her words seemed to infuriate him. He reached into his pocket, drew out a set of keys, and fired them at Kevin, who came slowly to his feet as he caught them.
“Sorry, Mrs. Glide, but I just remembered a previous engagement.”
Jane rushed toward him, finally seeing a way out of this mess. “I’ll go with you.”
Everyone in the room seemed to stiffen.
“That,” Kevin said, “. . . is a really bad idea.”
“Sit down, Jane.” Jim spoke in his firm paternal voice. “It’s too late for you to get a plane out tonight, anyway, so you might as well hear Cal out. Kevin, thanks for your concern.”
Kevin nodded, shot Jane a sympathetic smile, gave Cal a worried look, and left.
She sank down into a chair near Annie’s. Cal stuck his hands in his pockets and cleared his throat, still addressing his family instead of her. “She thinks I only want her because she’s playing hard to get, and that once the challenge is gone, I won’t be interested. I told her that’s not true, but she doesn’t believe it.”
“You do like a challenge,” Lynn pointed out.
“Trust me . . . living with somebody who’s trying to discover the Theory of Everything is more than enough challenge. Do you have any idea what it’s like to see mathematical formulas scrawled on the front page of your newspaper first thing in the morning, or on the bottom of a grocery list when all you want to do is remember to buy beer? Or how about all over the lid of your cereal box before you even have your eyes open?”
“I never wrote on your cereal box!” Jane bolted out of the chair.
“You sure as heck did! Right across the lid of my Lucky Charms.”
“You’re making this up. He’s making it up! I admit I sometimes doodle a bit, but—” She broke off as she remembered a morning several weeks ago when a cereal box had been the only thing available. Resuming her seat, she spoke stiffly. “That sort of thing constitutes an irritation, not a challenge.”
“For your information, Professor, sometimes I can be talking right to you, and without any warning, you’re gone.” He splayed his hands on his hips and stalked toward her. “Physically you’re standing right there in front of me, but your brain has taken off into hyperspace.”
She shot up her chin. “An irritation, not a challenge.”
“I’m going to kill her.” Gritting his teeth, he slumped down onto the couch next to his parents and glanced over at his brother. “You see what I’m up against?”
“On the other hand,” Ethan said, “she looks real good naked.”
“Ethan!” Mortified, Jane turned to Lynn. “It’s not the way it sounds. It was an accident.”
Lynn’s eyes widened. “A strange accident.”
“You’re getting off the subject,” Annie said. “Personally, I believe Calvin. If he says he loves you, Janie Bonner, he means it.”