Neither had Cal’s reply. Fern stared through the windshield at the road as it came at them. “Just so long as you and Rodney get what you want, right?”
“I don’t want to talk about Rod’s plans.”
“Then you shouldn’t have brought up my black eye.”
“I just wanted to know if your old man likes to use you as a punching bag.”
“And what if he does? Why should that matter to you?” Sweet Ida, this man was infuriating. Coarse as a brick too.
Cal didn’t respond. He pressed on the brake, and the car rumbled to a standstill behind a low-slung cabriolet waiting to turn east.
“Fine. You don’t like my questions? How about you ask me one?”
It was a surprising offer. He didn’t seem like the kind of man who would want to answer questions. She had plenty of them, but…she wasn’t sure if she wanted to know the answers, exactly. So, she settled on something safe.
“Is Mama Rosa your mother?”
A laugh burst out of his throat, and the small hairs on the back of Fern’s neck stood on end.
“No, she’s just Mama Rosa,” he answered, still grinning. “Rod likes her. And she likes the kale she gets from the Lion’s Den.”
“The Lion’s Den is the place you brought me?”
He nodded, his smile fading again. It never seemed to last long.
“And kale is money?”
Cal gave a slight nod of his head as he let up on the brake and swerved around the cabriolet. It had stalled in the middle of the road, and a man had gotten out of the car to lift the hood.
“You really don’t get out much, do you?” he asked. She weathered the comment with a straight face.
“Has my brother been to the Lion’s Den?”
“Unfortunately,” Cal answered. She’d figured. Buchanan had known Cal on sight.
The bright lights on the Pier came into view. From here, it looked like a carnival stretching into the harbor. Cal turned off and drove into the parking area where dozens of other cars had lined up in the lot. He hadn’t changed his mind about the pretzels.
“I told you—I can’t,” she said.
He turned off the engine and opened his door. “Sure, you can. Nothing wrong with your legs.”
He got out and stood by the open door.
“It’s not about my legs.” She raised her voice so hecould hear her over the noise of a trolley arriving along the tracks. The linked cars came to a stop in front of the Pier.
Cal leaned down, his hands bracing the roof. “It’s about your face, I got it. You don’t like people staring. Here’s the truth, princess: Somewhere between this car and Pretzel John’s cart, someone’s gonna stare at you. Maybe a lot of people. Some asshole’ll probably make a comment too. Who the hell cares? Who the hell are they anyhow? They’re nobody.”
Fern stared up into Cal’s face, his eyes flat, as if bored. “You can’t understand,” she said.
“That so?”
While he wasn’t as handsome as some of the other men she’d met at the Saturday night dinners, he had a face people would appreciate. His dark eyes and broody scowl, his black hair and broad shoulders, they drew ladies’ attention. Fern’s, too.
“No one looks at you with horror,” she said. “No one looks at you like you’re…like you’re disgusting.”
Like it was a pity she was even alive, taking up precious space. Those long glances, filled with something crueler than cold shock, were the stares she dreaded, not the insistent curiosity of children who didn’t realize they weren’t whispering like they thought they were.
Cal looked out to the Pier, his hands still braced on the roof. Fern thought maybe he’d try telling her that no one looked at her that way. That she was making it all up in her head or making it a bigger deal than it was.Buchanan and her mother had tried saying similar things over the years.
