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“How can you ask something like that?”
“What would you have done if you were me?”
“I guess I’d have taken control of my life before it got this far.”
That made her angry. “Spoken by someone who knows absolutely nothing.”
“You asked.”
She jumped to her feet. “You’re a jerk, you know that, Mat? Lucy’s right.”
He shot up, too. “You led me on!”
“Well, excuse me for not running up to you in that truck stop and announcing that I was Cornelia Case!”
“That’s not what I’m talking about! You had plenty of time after that to tell me the truth.”
“And end up having you either snarl at me or bow and scrape?”
Outrage flashed in his eyes. “I never bowed and scraped in my life!”
“This morning you told me you’d made coffee! As soon as you knew who I was, you treated me like some kind of houseguest!”
“I told you I made coffee? What the hell’s that supposed to mean?” His eyes were turning the color of storm clouds, but she didn’t care.
“That’s not all, and you know it!”
“No, I don’t know it! And I never bowed and scraped to anybody in my life!”
“Then tell me why we’re sitting out here instead of finishing what we started two nights ago! This is Iowa, Mat! Iowa!”
The fact that she’d had to remind him—that it mattered who she was—hurt too much. “Forget it. Just forget it.” She yanked open the door to the sunporch and hurried inside.
Mat watched the screen door slam and tried to figure out what had just happened. How had he become the bad guy? Was he supposed to throw the First Lady of the United States
on her back and do everything to her he’d been thinking about all day? Damn her for not being Nell! And what was all that crap about bowing and scraping?
He jerked open the door. “Come back here!”
She didn’t, of course, because when had she ever done anything he’d asked her to?
He heard the side door slam and realized she was running off. Out to the motor home where she could lock herself away from him. Out to the motor home after he’d ordered her to stick like glue to his side. Had she once stopped to consider the crackpots who might be looking for her? Of course not.
He didn’t let the fact that he’d already made a fool of himself today with the backfiring incident keep him from charging through the house to the side door and out into the yard. On the way, he tried to calm himself down, and he’d almost succeeded when he found the door of the Winnebago unlocked. He nearly went catatonic. She was an idiot! And, First Lady or not, he intended to tell her so.
He stomped inside and found her throwing a sheet down on that miserable miniature couch where he’d spent the past four nights. “Are you out of your mind?” he exclaimed.
She whirled around, every inch the Queen of Sheba. “What do you want?”
“You didn’t even lock the damned door!”
“Quiet! You’ll wake up the girls.”
He glanced toward the closed door at the back, lowered his voice, and bore down on her. “As a taxpaying citizen of the United States, I resent like hell what you’re doing.”
“Then write your senator.”
“You think that’s cute? What if I were a terrorist? Exactly where do you think you’d be right now? And where do you think this country would be if some nut decided to take you hostage?”
