The bitterness behind his words was unmistakable and prompted her to declare, 'He's being very sweet.'
'Good. That's good.'
'When you and Officer Gonzales came to the house, that was an isolated incident.'
'So you've said. A bunch of times.'
'Well, it's true. Roger regrets that night. Deeply. He's sworn never to raise a hand to me again.'
'A groom shouldn't have to swear to something like that, though, should he?'
'His contrition is sincere.'
Dodge's expression remained skeptical, which compelled her to convince him.
'Roger thinks the beating outside his gym was a random, aborted mugging, and I've never told him differently.'
Dodge didn't really give a damn if Campton knew he'd been the one to attack him, although he'd just as soon the department not get wind of it. But he figured Campton himself protected him from anybody in authority finding out. Even if the woman-beating asshole guessed, or learned through some other means, the identity of the man who'd jumped him, he wouldn't file a legal complaint against Dodge, knowing that if he did, his ill treatment of Caroline then would be made public. Nor was the millionaire likely to challenge him in private, because men who hit women were usually cowards.
It suited both men to leave it alone. But in a perverse way, Dodge wished he could rub the son of a bitch's nose in it.
'He remembers the mugger whispering something to him,' Caroline continued. 'But he was on the brink of unconsciousness and can't recall what the mugger said.'
Dodge looked even more skeptical.
'He considers himself lucky to be alive.'
'He is,' Dodge said bluntly.
'Since the beating, and his painful recovery, he's been extremely sweet. I think the scare caused him to rearrange his priorities. In any event, he's gone back to being the Roger I first met. He can't do enough for me. He's charming and thoughtful. I've fallen in love with him all over again.'
He said nothing, but his eyes turned stony.
'You're basing your low opinion of him on that one incident,' she said with heat. 'You've never seen the real Roger. The night he slapped me, he wasn't himself.'
'No?'
'No. If you could see him now, compare the two, you'd realize that. I'd never seen him act that way before, and certainly not since you beat him up.'
'So he changed his spots because of my attack, his brush with death? That's what you think?'
'Yes.'
'Bullshit. A leopard never changes his spots. My old man was right about me. I'm a cop, and a damn good one, mostly because I think like a criminal. I have criminal impulses. My daddy knew it way back, and I own up to it now. People adjust their behavior to fit the society they live in. They integrate because they have to. But what they are on the inside doesn't change.
'So if Campton has gone back to being nice and sweet, it's not because he's seen the light and had a Pentecostal conversion. He's lying when he says he doesn't remember what his
Her cheeks had grown hot with anger. 'I'm marrying him.'
'Because you love him?'
'Yes! Very much.'
He took a step closer, forcing her to tilt her head back farther in order to look into his face. 'You know what I think?'
'I don't care what you think.'
'I think you're going through with the wedding not because you're so wildly in love but because you're stubborn. You don't want Caroline King's judgment questioned. You don't want to be proved wrong.'
'You know nothing about me.'
'I know one thing.' He came nearer still. 'I know you're all I goddamn think about.'
She felt his words like a punch to a place low and deep inside her. They made her breath catch. They caused her heart to thump. They made her want to take that leap off the high board.
She was afraid he was going to kiss her. She was afraid he wasn't.
He didn't.
After countless tense moments, she turned and went to the driver's door of her car, opened it, and got in. He didn't try to stop her as she drove away.
For the third time, she left him staring after her. The first time she had retreated into her house, touched by the policeman's concern. The second time, she had returned to her real estate class inside the office building, upset over the beating he'd given Roger but acknowledging that Dodge's concern wasn't strictly professional.
This time was not so much a retreat as a full-fledged escape. From him, yes. But also from herself and the colossal mistake she was likely to make if she stayed.
Dodge arrived at the tire plant the following morning in a surly mood, cursing the rush-hour traffic, cursing the floors he'd have to mop today, cursing himself for making a mess of his visit with Caroline.
Things had been going real good. He would even go so far as to believe that she'd been glad to see him, and not just because she'd wasted a Sunday afternoon sitting alone in an ugly, empty house, and anybody's company was better than none at all.
But then he'd gone and shot off his mouth about her fiance. She had jumped to Campton's defense, as she should if she was bent on marrying the guy.
But, dammit, Dodge knew he was right. Petite as she was, Caroline King had a steel I-beam for a spine. He'd sensed it the moment he met her, when she'd been smarting inside and out but was too proud and obstinate to cry in front of him. Losing her parents at a relatively young age had no doubt forced her to be self-assertive. Or maybe she'd been born with that stiff backbone and circumstances had only reinforced it.
Whatever, the upshot of it was that she was mule-headed, and, in large part, that was why she was going through with her marriage to Roger Campton.
Dodge refused to accept that she loved the rich, handsome son of a bitch.
Once again, she'd been mad as a hornet when she left him. He cursed himself for being a goddamn idiot. Why was it that he could talk any other woman out of her clothes, out of information, but he couldn't communicate with the one woman he wanted most to communicate with? Around her, his glibness deserted him.
He'd gone home and drunk a six-pack, slept badly for having to get up to pee every hour on the hour because of the beer, and arrived at the tire plant in a truculent mood, which is probably why, when he spotted Crystal beside a souped-up truck with oversize tires and semiobscene mud flaps, engaged in deep conversation with her felonious boyfriend, he wended his way through the parking lot toward them.
Practically issuing an engraved invitation for a confrontation, he moved up close behind her and said, 'Hey, Crystal.'
She spun around, looking like a terrified rabbit caught in headlights, except that
