“The same,” she replied.
“This is Harley Crisp. He runs the local hardware store.” Jane had never heard a more begrudging introduction.
Harley dropped Jane’s hand and turned to Cal. “How come when she finally showed up here, she was with Tucker and not you?”
Cal clenched his jaw. “They’re old friends.”
Jane realized everyone in the bar was now assessing her, and none of them looked particularly friendly.
“Nice you could finally spare the time to come meet the people who live here, Miz Bonner,” Harley said.
She heard several other hostile murmurs, including one from the attractive bartender, and knew that the story of Cal’s chilly scientist wife who thought she was more important than everyone else had spread.
Cal diverted the crowd’s attention by directing the bartender to put the damages on Kevin’s lunch tab. Kevin looked sulky, like a kid who’d been sent to his room. “You threw the first punch.”
Cal ignored him. Instead, he grabbed Jane with a hand still damp from beer and headed toward the front door.
“Nice to have met you all,” she tossed back over her shoulder at the hostile crowd. “Although I would have appreciated a little more help.”
“Will you shut up?” he growled.
He drew her across the porch and down the steps. She saw the Jeep parked at the curb, and it reminded her she had one more battle to fight. Being married to Cal Bonner was becoming an increasingly complicated business.
“I have my own car.”
“Hell you do.” His lip was bleeding and beginning to swell on one side.
“I do.”
“You don’t.”
“It’s parked in front of the drugstore even as we speak.” She reached into her purse, withdrew a tissue, and held it out to him.
He paid no attention. “You bought a car?”
“I told you I was going to.”
He braked to a stop. She dabbed the tissue gently against his lip, only to have him jerk away. “And I told you you weren’t.”
“Yes, well, I’m a bit too old and a lot too independent to pay attention to you.”
“Show me.” He spit out the words like bullets.
She remembered Kevin’s unkind comments about her Escort and felt a moment of trepidation. “Why don’t I just meet you at the house?”
“Show me!”
Resigned, she walked down the block to the town center, then turned toward the drugstore. He stalked silently at her side and his heels seemed to strike white-hot sparks as they hit the pavement.
Unfortunately, the Escort’s appearance hadn’t improved. As she came to a stop next to it, he looked stunned. “Tell me this isn’t it.”
“All I needed was basic transportation. I have a perfectly good Saturn waiting for me at home.”
He sounded as if he were strangling on a bone. “Has anybody seen you drive this?”
“Hardly anybody.”
“Who?”
“Only Kevin.”
“Shit!”
“Really, Cal, you need to watch your language, not to mention your blood pressure. A man of your age—” She saw her mistake and quickly changed direction. “It’s perfectly fine for what I need.”
“Give me those keys.”
“I will not!”
“You win, Professor. I’ll buy you a car. Now give me the damn keys.”
“I have a car.”
“A real car. A Mercedes, a BMW, whatever you want.”
“I don’t want a Mercedes or a BMW.”
“That’s what you think.”
“Stop bullying me.”
“I haven’t even started.”
They were beginning to attract a crowd, which wasn’t surprising. How often had the people of Salvation, North Carolina, seen their local hero standing in the middle of town dripping beer and blood?
“Give me those keys,” he hissed.
“In your dreams.”
Luckily for her, the crowd made it impossible for him to snatch them away as he wanted. She took advantage of that to shove past him, open the door, and jump into the car.
He looked like a pressure cooker about to explode. “I’m warning you, Professor. This is the last drive you’re taking in that junker, so enjoy every minute of it.”
This time his high-handedness didn’t amuse her. Obviously the marshmallows hadn’t done the trick, and it was time to take stronger measures. Mr. Calvin Bonner needed to figure out for once and for all that he couldn’t run a marriage like he ran a football play.
She gritted her teeth. “You know what you can do with your warnings, buster. You can take them and—”
“We’ll talk about this when we get home.” He hit her dead on with those nuclear winter eyes. “Now drive!”