A red veil descended over his eyes. He slammed the door shut and charged into the kitchen. He was going to kill her!
She sat at the counter sipping a cup of tea. “Forget something?”
“Yeah, I forgot something all right. I forgot to smack you silly!”
She didn’t look the slightest bit intimidated. Damn it! No matter what he threatened, no matter how loud he yelled, she didn’t even cringe, probably because she knew he wouldn’t touch her. Now he had to satisfy himself by pumping up the volume. “You are going to pay for this!”
H
e grabbed one of the Lucky Charm boxes and turned it over, spilling the cereal everywhere. He yanked open the sealed flap on the bottom, and sure enough, a neat slit in the inner bag had been carefully resealed with Scotch tape.
He gritted his teeth. “Don’t you think this was just a little childish?”
“It certainly was. And immensely satisfying.” She took a sip of tea.
“If you were pissed off about the way I took off last night, why didn’t you just say so?”
“I prefer docudrama.”
“I can’t believe anybody could be so damned immature!”
“I could have been a lot more immature—emptying the marshmallows in your underwear drawer, for example—but I believe revenge should be subtle.”
“Subtle! You ruined five perfectly good boxes of Lucky Charms and spoiled my whole day in the process.”
“What a pity.”
“I ought to… I swear I’m…” Damned if he wasn’t carrying her upstairs right now and making love to her until she begged his forgiveness.
“Don’t mess with me, Calvin. You’ll only get hurt.”
Seriously. He was seriously going to kill her. He regarded her through narrowed eyes. “Maybe you’d better explain why you got upset enough to do this. It’s not like anything really important happened last night, is it? You yourself said it was—How did you put it? Oh, yeah. You said it was quite pleasant. Now to my way of thinking, pleasant doesn’t add up to important.” He regarded her closely. “But maybe it was more than pleasant for you. Maybe it was more important than you want to let on.”
Was it his imagination or did something flicker in the depths of those melted shamrock eyes. “Don’t be ridiculous. It’s your lack of courtesy I found offensive. It would merely have been good manners on your part to have stayed around instead of running off like a teenager hurrying to tell his buddies he’d scored.”
“Manners? Is that what five boxes of mutilated Lucky Charms is all about?”
“Yes.”
Just one good shot. He was already late for his meeting, but he couldn’t leave until he got off one good shot. “You’re about the lowest breed of human being there is.”
“What?”
“Right up there with the Boston Strangler and the Son of Sam.”
“Don’t you think that’s a little extreme?”
“Not hardly.” He shook his head and regarded her with disgust. “I married a damned cereal killer.”
Chapter Fourteen
J ane smiled as she headed toward Heartache Mountain in her battered Escort late that afternoon. She’d spent nearly four hours last night sorting through all that cereal, but it had been worth it to see the expression on Cal’s face. One day soon he’d figure out that he couldn’t walk all over her. She hoped the marshmallow exercise would point him in the right direction.
Why did he have to be so thoroughly intriguing? Of all the pitfalls she had imagined in this marriage, growing to care so much about him had not been one of them. As much as he irritated her, she loved the fact that her intelligence didn’t intimidate him, as it did so many others. She felt alive when she was with him: her blood pumping, her brain at full alert, all senses engaged. Until now, she’d only felt that way when she was engrossed in her work.
Everything would have been so much easier if she could dismiss him as an egotistical, self-centered jock, but he was far more complex than that. Beneath that belligerent good ol’ boy exterior lay, not only a keen mind, but a highly developed sense of humor. In light of the marshmallow incident and the fact that he would soon find out about her car, she rather hoped it kicked in soon.
She pulled up in front of Annie’s house and turned off the ignition. The Escort shuddered for several seconds before it finally shut down. As she’d hoped, Lynn’s car was nowhere in sight, so she was still at lunch with Cal, which gave Jane a chance to check on Annie.