Page 30 of Open Season

“So the scriptwriters need to learn some new dialogue.”

A new thought, an appalling one, occurred to her. My goodness, the chief wasn’t courting her, was he? Their encounters had always been bristly, but last night had shown her what a difference her new appearance made in the way men treated her. Her stomach knotted; she wasn’t at all practiced in telling a man to shove off, she just wasn’t interested. He couldn’t be interested, could he? Maybe she didn’t look as much better as she thought.

Swiftly she flipped down the sun visor and peered into the mirror attached there, then just as swiftly flipped it back up. Oh, dear.

“What was that about?” he asked curiously. “You didn’t look long enough even to check your lipstick.”

She’d forgotten all about her lipstick. Anyway, a quick peek was all it took to tell her that, no, she wasn’t mistaken about the change.

“I was just wondering if cop cars had visor mirrors, too,” she blurted. “It seems kind of. . . sissy.”

“Sissy?” He looked as if he were biting the inside of his jaw.

“Not that I’m questioning your masculinity,” she said hastily. The last thing she wanted was for him to feel he had to prove his masculinity to her. Men, she had read, tended to take such comments personally. Their egos were all tied up with their virility, or something like that.

He sighed. “No offense, Miss Daisy, but following your train of thought is like trying to catch a jackrabbit hopped up on speed.”

She didn’t take offense, because she was too thankful he hadn’t been able to follow that particular train. Instead she said, “I wish you wouldn’t call me Miss Daisy. It makes me sound like an—” She started to say old maid, but that description hit too close to home. “—a fuddy-duddy.”

He was biting the inside of his jaw again. “If the hairnet fits. . .”

“I do not wear a hairnet!” she shouted, then sank back in the seat in surprise. She never shouted. She never lost her temper. She hadn’t always been exactly polite to him, but neither had she shouted at him. She began to worry, was there a law against yelling at someone in law enforcement? Yelling at him wasn’t the same as yelling at a cop who’d stopped her for speeding;—if she had ever speeded, that is—but he was, after all, the chief of police, and it might be even worse—

“You’ve gone off into the ether again,” he growled.

“I was just wondering if there was any law against yelling at a chief of police,” she admitted.

“You thought you were going to be thrown in the pokey for yelling?”

“It was disrespectful. I apologize. I don’t usually yell, but then I’m not usually accused of wearing a hairnet, either.”

“I can see the provocation.”

“If you keep biting your jaw,” she observed, “you’re going to need stitches.”

“I’ll try not to do it again. And for your information, I call you Miss Daisy as a sign of respect.”

“Respect?” She didn’t know if that was good or not. On the one hand, of course she wanted him to respect her, on the other, that wasn’t exactly the kind of reaction she wanted from a man who was, after all, at least several years older than she. Maybe last night at the club had been a fluke, and she wasn’t as attractive now as she’d thought. Maybe men would dance with anyone at a club.

“You remind me of my aunt Bessie,” he said.

Daisy nearly moaned aloud. Oh, dear, it was worse than she’d thought. His aunt! Now she knew last night had been a fluke. Stricken, she flipped the visor mirror down again to see if she could possibly have made that big a mistake.

“I won’t even ask,” he sighed.

“I look like your aunt?” She almost moaned the word.

He began laughing. He actually laughed at her. Mortified, she raised the visor and crossed her arms again.

“Great-aunt, actually. And I didn’t say you looked like her; I said you remind me of her. She wasn’t very worldly, either.”

Naive. He meant naive. Unfortunately, he wasn’t wrong. That’s what happened when you spent your life with your nose buried in a book. You might know a lot of interesting facts, but when it came to real-world experience, you were pretty much in the dark.

He turned down the highway toward Fort Payne. “Why are we going to Fort Payne?” Daisy asked, looking around at the cedar trees and green mountains. The drive was a nice one, but she couldn’t think of any reason why they should go there.

“We aren’t. I’m just driving.”

“You mean we aren’t going anywhere in particular?”

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