she’d obviously gone far today, so far she’d gotten lost! For someone with an IQ of 180, she was the stupidest woman he’d ever met.
“Damn!”He flung the purse down on the couch. The latch flew open and the contents spilled.
“Something wrong, C-Man?”
“What? Uh, no.” Cal had forgotten about his youngest brother Ethan. When Ethan had shown up at the gate twenty minutes earlier, Cal had made up an excuse about having to return a phone call and stuck him in here while he’d tried to find a clue to his missing wife’s whereabouts.
Buying himself a few days’ extra time before he introduced Jane to his family was proving to be even tougher than he’d thought. Ethan had been back from his ski trip for three days, his parents from their vacation for two, and all of them had been hounding him.
“I was looking for my wallet,” he lied. “I thought Jane might have put it in her purse.”
Ethan rose from an easy chair near the fireplace, which was large enough to roast a Honda, and walked over to peer out the patio doors. Cal’s anger softened a bit as he gazed at his brother. While he and Gabe had shone on the playing fields, Ethan had made his mark in school theatrical productions. Although he was a decent athlete, organized sports held no appeal for him simply because he’d never been able to grasp the importance of winning.
Blond, more slightly built than either Cal or Gabe, and heartbreakingly handsome, he was the only one of the three Bonner brothers who took after their mother, and his male-model good looks had caused him to endure an endless amount of ribbing from Cal and Gabe. He had thickly lashed light brown eyes and a nose that had never been broken. His dark blond hair was conservatively cut and always combed. Normally he favored oxford shirts, neatly pressed Dockers, and penny loafers, but today he wore an ancient Grateful Dead T-shirt and jeans. On Ethan, the outfit looked like Brooks Brothers.
Cal frowned at him. “Did you iron that T-shirt?”
“Just a little touch-up.”
“Jesus, Eth, you’ve got to stop doin’ crap like that.”
Ethan smiled his Christ smile solely because he knew how much it irritated his big brother. “Some of us take pride in our appearance.” He regarded Cal’s muddy boots with distaste. “Others of us don’t care how we look.”
“Can it, asshole.” Cal’s language always deteriorated when he was around Ethan. There was just something about the kid’s unflappability that made him want to cuss. Not that it bothered Ethan one bit. As the youngest of three boys, his brothers had toughened him up at an early age. Even as children, Cal and Gabe had sensed that Ethan was more vulnerable than they were, so they’d made sure he could take care of himself. Although no one in the Bonner family ever admitted it, all of them secretly loved Ethan best.
Cal also respected him. Ethan had gone through a wild period, during college and into his early twenties, where he’d drunk too much and slept with too many women, but when he’d received the call, he’d made up his mind to live as he preached.
“Visiting the sick’s part of my job,” Ethan said. “Why don’t I just look in on your new wife?”
“She wouldn’t like it. You know how women are. She wants to be all fixed up before she meets the family, so she can make a good first impression.”
“When do you think that’s going to be? Now that Mom and Dad are back in town, they’re champing at the bit to meet her. And Annie’s really rubbing it in because she’s seen her and we haven’t.”
“It’s not my fault all of you chose now to go gallivanting around the country.”
“I’ve been back from my ski trip for three days.”
“Yeah, well, it’s like I told everybody when I came over for dinner last night, Jane got sick right before you got back. Damned flu. She should be feeling better in a few days-next week at the latest-and then I’ll bring her over to the house. But don’t expect to see much of her. Her work’s real important to her, and she can’t spend too much time away from her computer right now.”
Ethan was only thirty, but he regarded him through old, wise eyes. “If you need to talk, C-Man, I’m willing to listen.”
“There’s nothing for me to talk about except the way everybody in this family wants to stick their noses in my business.”
“Not Gabe.”
“No, not Gabe.” Cal jammed his hands into the back pockets of his jeans. “I wish he would.”
They each fell silent, preoccupied with thoughts of their wounded middle brother. He was down in Mexico, on the run from himself.
“I wish he’d come home,” Ethan said.
“He left Salvation years ago. It’s not home to him anymore.”
“I guess no place is home without Cherry and Jamie.”
Ethan’s voice tightened, and Cal looked away. Anxious to break the mood, he began picking up the contents of Jane’s purse. Where was she? These past two weeks he’d forced himself to stay away and let his temper cool.
He also wanted her to feel her isolation and understand that he was the one holding the key to her prison. Unfortunately she didn’t seem affected.
Ethan came over to help. “If Jane’s flu is this bad, maybe she should be in the hospital.”
“No.”Cal reached for a small calculator and pen so he didn’t have to look at his brother. “She’s been pushing herself pretty hard, but she’ll feel better as soon as she gets some rest.”
“She sure doesn’t look like one of your bimbos.”
“How do you know what she looks-?” He lifted his head and saw Ethan studying her photo on the driver’s license that had fallen out of her wallet. “None of the women I dated were bimbos.”
“They weren’t exactly rocket scientists.” He laughed. “This one practically is. I still can’t believe you married a physicist. The way I remember it, the only thing that got you through high-school physics was the fact that Coach Gill taught the class.”
“You’re a damned liar. I got an A in that class.”
“Deserved a C.”
“B minus.”
Ethan grinned and waved the driver’s license. “I can’t wait to tell Dad I won my bet.”
“What bet?”
“The age of the woman you married. He said we’d have to schedule the wedding ceremony around her Girl Scout meetings, but I said you’d come to your senses. I believed in you, bro, and looks like I was right.”
Cal was irritated. He hadn’t wanted everybody to know that Jane was twenty-eight, but with Ethan staring at the date of birth on her driver’s license, he couldn’t deny it. “She doesn’t look a day over twenty-five.”
“I don’t know why you’re so sensitive. There’s nothing wrong with marrying someone your own age.”
“She’s not exactly my age.”
“Two years younger. That’s not a big difference.”
“Two years? What the hell you talkin’ about?” He snatched the license away. “She’s not two years younger than me! She’s-”
“Uh-oh.”Ethan backed away. “I think I’d better go.”
Cal was too stunned by what he saw on the license to hear the amusement in his brother’s voice, nor did he notice the sound of the front door closing a few moments later. He couldn’t take in anything except the date on the driver’s license he held in his hand.
He scrubbed the laminate with his thumb. Maybe it was just a smear on the plastic that made the year of her birth look like that. Or maybe it was a misprint. Damned DMV couldn’t get anything right.
But he knew it wasn’t a misprint. There was no mistaking those grim, condemning numbers. His wife was thirty-four years old, and he’d just taken the sack of a lifetime.
“Calvin, he’ll be comin’ to fetch you before long,” Annie Glide said.
Jane set down the tea she’d been sipping from an ancient white ceramic mug that bore the remains of an American flag decal and gazed at Annie across the cluttered living room. Despite its unorthodox decor, this house felt like a home, a place where a person could belong. “Oh, I don’t think so. He doesn’t know where I am.”
“He’ll figure it out soon enough. Boy’s been roamin’ these mountains ever since he was in diapers.”
She couldn’t imagine Cal ever wearing diapers. Surely he’d been born with a belligerent attitude and a full set of chest hair. “I can’t believe how close your house is to his. The day I met you it seemed as if we drove several miles
