Nobody's Baby but Mine(35)
Bifocals! Cal thought. God, how he hated those glasses. He mentally cataloged all that he disliked about the woman sitting next to him and concluded that, even if he set aside the issue of her character, there was a lot to choose from.
Everything about her was too serious. She even had serious hair. Why didn’t she loosen it up from that damned thingamabob? It was a great color, he’d give her that. He’d had a couple of girlfriends with hair that color, but theirs had come out of a bottle, and Jane Darlington’s could only have come from God.
With the exception of that small lock of hair that had escaped its confines to make a silky S behind her ear, this was one serious woman. Serious hair and serious clothes. Pretty skin, though. But he sure as hell didn’t like those big nerdy bifocals. They made her look every one of her twenty-eight years.
He still couldn’t believe he’d married her. But what else could he have done and still been able to live with himself? Let his kid grow up without a father? With the way he’d been raised, that wasn’t even a possibility.
He tried to feel good about the fact that he’d done the right thing, but all he felt was rage. He didn’t want to be married, damn it! Not to anybody. But especially not to this uptight prig with her liar’s heart.
For days he’d been telling himself she was no more permanent than a temporary live-in girlfriend, but every time he spotted that wedding band on her finger, he felt a sickening premonition. It was as if he were watching the scoreboard clock tick off the final days of his career.
“I can’t imagine buying a car without seeing it first.” Jane gazed around at the interior of the new hunter green Jeep Grand Cherokee that had been waiting for them in the parking lot at the Asheville airport with the key hidden in a magnetic case under the front bumper.
“I hire people to do this kind of thing for me.”
His nonchalance about his wealth made her waspish. “How pretentious.”
“Watch your language, Professor.”
“It means wise,” she lied. “You might try working it into a sentence sometime with a person you really admire. Tell them you think they’re pretentious, and they’ll feel warm and fuzzy all day.”
“Thanks for the suggestions. Maybe I’ll use it next time I’m on TV.”
She regarded him suspiciously, but couldn’t see even a trace of mistrust in his expression. It occurred to her that these last few days were turning her into a bitch.
She stared glumly out the window. Despite the gloom of the chilly, overcast March day, she had to admit the country was beautiful. The mountainous contours of western North Carolina formed a stark contrast to the flat Illinois landscape where she’d grown up.
They crossed the French Broad River, a name that would have made her smile under other circumstances, and headed west on Interstate 40 toward Salvation. Ever since she’d first heard the name of Cal’s hometown, something about it had struck a chord in the back of her mind, but she couldn’t remember what.
“Is there some reason I should recognize the name Salvation.”
“It was in the news a while back, but most of the locals don’t like to talk about it.”
She waited for more information and wasn’t too surprised when none was forthcoming. Next to the Bomber, she was a magpie. “Do you think you could let me in on the secret?”
He took so long responding that she thought he was ignoring her, but he finally spoke. “Salvation was where G. Dwayne Snopes settled. The televangelist.”
“Wasn’t he killed in some kind of small plane crash a few years ago?”
“Yeah. While he was on his way out of the country with a few million dollars that didn’t belong to him. Even at the height of his career, the town’s leaders never thought much of him, and they don’t like having Salvation’s name associated with him now that he’s dead.”
“Did you know him?”
“We met.”
“What sort of man was he?”
“He was a crook! Any fool could figure that out.”
The nuances of polite conversation were obviously beyond his mental capabilities. She turned away and tried to enjoy the scenery, but being plunged into a new life with a dangerous stranger who hated everything about her made it tough.
They eventually left the highway for a winding two-lane road. The gears of the Jeep ground as they headed up one side of a mountain and then curved down the other. Rusty double-wide mobile homes sitting in weedy lots at the side of the road provided a sharp contrast to the gated entrances of posh residential developments built for retirees around lush golf courses. Her stomach was beginning to get queasy from the switchbacks when Cal turned off the highway onto a gravel road that seemed to go straight up.