He shifted in his seat, the sound of rustling cloth against the leather cushion loud in the small space. A new gust of his cologne followed. She breathed it in, momentarily soothed by the image of a lush forest, instead of the reality of the car’s dark interior.
“Have you heard anything?” he asked. Was he worried the photographs hadn’t worked? That his brother would be disappointed?
“I’ve been in my room.” Her eyes drifted toward the turret again. It seemed so far away right then.
Cal let out a long, pent-up breath. He wasn’t happy, and Fern guessed it was because Rodney wouldn’t be happy.
She didn’t see his hand coming across the space between them until his fingers touched her chin. Fern started at the warm, coarse brush of them as he turned her face toward him. She jerked out of his grasp.
“Who gave that to you?” he asked.
She’d forgotten all about her bruised undereye. Remembering it now brought on a swell of inexplicable nausea.
“The judge or your punk brother?” Cal prodded.
Fern bristled. Buchanan would never hit her. Then again, she never imagined her father would have either.
“Was it Francis?” he pushed when she didn’t answer. Fern looked over at him. “He said he talked to you. That you gave him a hard time.” Cal gripped the steering wheel with both hands. “He the one who hit you?”
She finally shook her head to stop him from asking. “My father.”
His fingers loosened on the wheel, and silence filtered into the cab of the Roadster. Outside, gulls croaked and screeched in the night sky, and cars whizzed past.
She expected Cal to offer an apology. Some half-hearted, meaningless thing. Instead, he reached into his coat pocket and extracted a silver case.
“You want a smoke?”
A visceral and immediate memory of hacking on a cloud of stinging smoke came to her. “God, no.”
He huffed a laugh. Fern couldn’t see his face clearly, but she saw the rise of his cheek in profile.
“What, no one here you want to piss off this time by smoking?” He tucked the case away after retrieving a cigarette for himself and propping it between his lips.
“Yes, all right, I wanted to make my mother angry,” she admitted, her own anger rising. She didn’t like being laughed at. “So what if I wanted them all to look at me in shock rather than pity? I’m tired of pity.”
“Then stop pitying yourself,” he said as he capped his lighter.
The tip of his cigarette glowed, and her chest felt thesame kind of red-hot burn. “You don’t know how I feel about anything. You don’t know me.”
“I know you hide up there like a leper.” He gestured with his cigarette toward the turret.
“God, now you’re sounding like my mother. Put on a dress, and you’d probably turn into her.”
He finished exhaling a cloud of smoke. It was fast ruining the scent of his cologne. “Just don’t make me wear heels.”
Fern gaped at him, a retort lost on her tongue. That cheek lifted again, and with her eyes adjusting, she could now see his mouth had curved into a smile. She hadn’t expected a joke or a smile. Not from him.
She fought a grin herself. Tossing around jokes with him wasn’t right. This man had removed her clothes, taken photographs of her while she was unconscious. He’d used her and dragged her into a situation she didn’t want any part of.
Her half-smile faded, and so did his. He tapped the steering wheel as he smoked, his head turning just enough so he could glance in the rearview mirror.
“You want to go for a ride?” he asked.
Fern stared at him. “What?”
“A ride,” he repeated, and when she continued to stare, mute, he must have read her panicked thoughts. “Not to Rodney. Just around.”
He wanted to ride around in his car. Disturbingly, her gut reaction wasn’t to say no, though it should have been.
