She’d immediately marched into the office of Dr. William Davenport, head of Newberry’s Physics Department, where she discovered Cal was giving the college a major endowment as a token of his appreciation for their flexibility regarding her work schedule in the upcoming months. She’d felt impotent and humiliated. With nothing more than the stroke of a pen over his checkbook, he’d taken control of her life.

The flight attendant stopped to pick up their glasses. As soon as the woman disappeared, she vented her smoldering resentment on Cal. “You had no right to interfere in my career.”

“Get off it, Professor. I bought you a few extra months vacation. You should be thanking me. If it wasn’t for me, you wouldn’t have all this free time to do research for that lab you work for.”

He knew far too much about her, and she didn’t like it. It was true that being temporarily relieved of her teaching schedule would benefit her research for Preeze, although she wasn’t going to admit that to him. Her computer equipment was already en route to North Carolina, and with the aid of a modem, the change in location wouldn’t affect her work. Under other circumstances, she would have been delighted with three months free time, but not when she hadn’t arranged for it herself, and not when she had to spend any part of it with Calvin Bonner.

“I could do my research a lot better in my office at home.”

“Not with a whole army of reporters camped out on your doorstep asking why the city’s most famous newlyweds are livin’ in two different states.” His eyes flicked over her as if she were debris. “I go to Salvation this time every year and stay until training camp starts in July. Maybe that giant brain of yours can come up with a convincing excuse for not bringing my brand-new bride along, but I can’t seem to think of anything.”

“I don’t understand how you can perpetrate a fraud like this on your family. Why don’t you just tell them the truth?”

“Because, unlike you, nobody in my family’s a good liar. It’d be all over town before long, and then the whole world would have the details. Do you really want the kid to grow up knowing how we met?”

She sighed. “No. And stop calling her ’the kid.’ ” Once again she wondered if the baby would be a boy or a girl. She hadn’t made up her mind whether she’d let them tell her after she’d had her ultrasound.

“Besides, my family’s been through enough in the past year, and I’m not puttin’ them through any more.”

She remembered Jodie mentioning the death of Cal’s sister-in-law and nephew. “I’m truly sorry about that. But whenever they see us together, they’ll know something’s wrong.”

“That’s not going to be a problem because you won’t be spending a lot of time with them. They’ll meet you, they’ll know who you are, but don’t plan on getting chummy. And one more thing. If anybody asks how old you are, don’t tell ’em you’re twenty-eight. If you get pressed, admit to twenty-five, but no older.”

What was going to happen when he found out she was thirty-four, not twenty-eight?“I’m not going to lie about my age.”

“I don’t see why not. You lied about everything else.”

She fought back another wave of guilt. “Nobody’s going to believe I’m twenty-five. I won’t do it.”

“Professor, I’d seriously advise you not to piss me off any more than you already have. And don’t you have contact lenses or something so you don’t have to wear those damned egghead glasses all the time?”

“They’re actually bifocals.” She took a certain pleasure in pointing that out.

“Bifocals!”

“The kind with an invisible line. There’s no correction at the top, but magnification at the bottom. A lot of middle-aged people wear them.”

Whatever unpleasant response Cal was about to make was cut off as a burly passenger struggling toward the coach section with two large carry-on bags banged one of them into his arm. She stared at the man in fascination. It was fifteen degrees outside, but he was wearing a nylon tank top, presumably so he could show off his muscles.

Cal noticed her interest in the man’s attire and gave her a calculated look. “Where I come from, we call those muscle tops wife-beater shirts.”

He’d obviously forgotten he wasn’t messing with one of his little love bunnies. She smiled sweetly. “And here I thought hillbillies never hit their sisters.”

His eyebrows slammed together. “You don’t have any idea what hillbillies do, Professor, but I suspect you’ll be finding out soon.”

“Hey, sorry to interrupt, Cal, but I was wondering if you’d autograph this for my kid.” A middle-aged businessman thrust a pen at Cal, along with a memo pad that bore the name of a pharmaceutical company. Cal complied, and before long another man appeared. The requests continued until the flight attendants ordered everyone to their seats. Cal was polite to the fans and surprisingly patient.

She took advantage of the interruption to begin reading a journal article written by one of her former colleagues on the decay products of the six-quark H particle, but it was difficult to focus on nonlinear physics with her own world so far out of kilter. She could have refused to go with him to Salvation, but the press would have hounded her and cast a shadow over her child’s future. She simply couldn’t risk it.

No matter what, she had to keep their tawdry story from becoming public knowledge. The humiliation she’d face, as gruesome as that would be, wasn’t nearly as bad as what that information would do to her child growing up. She had promised herself she would base all her decisions on what was best for this baby, and that was why she had finally agreed to go with him.

She pushed her glasses more firmly on her nose and once again began to read. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Cal glaring at her, and she decided it was a good thing she didn’t have psychic ability because the last thing she wanted to do was read his mind.

Bifocals! Cal thought. God, how he hated those glasses. He mentally cataloged all that he disliked about the woman sitting next to him and concluded that, even if he set aside the issue of her character, there was a lot to choose from.

Everything about her was too serious. She even had serious hair. Why didn’t she loosen it up from that damned thingamabob? It was a great color, he’d give her that. He’d had a couple of girlfriends with hair that color, but theirs had come out of a bottle, and Jane Darlington’s could only have come from God.

With the exception of that small lock of hair that had escaped its confines to make a silky S behind her ear, this was one serious woman. Serious hair and serious clothes. Pretty skin, though. But he sure as hell didn’t like those big nerdy bifocals. They made her look every one of her twenty-eight years.

He still couldn’t believe he’d married her. But what else could he have done and still been able to live with himself? Let his kid grow up without a father? With the way he’d been raised, that wasn’t even a possibility.

He tried to feel good about the fact that he’d done the right thing, but all he felt was rage. He didn’t want to be married, damn it! Not to anybody. But especially not to this uptight prig with her liar’s heart.

For days he’d been telling himself she was no more permanent than a temporary live-in girlfriend, but every time he spotted that wedding band on her finger, he felt a sickening premonition. It was as if he were watching the scoreboard clock tick off the final days of his career.

“I can’t imagine buying a car without seeing it first.” Jane gazed around at the interior of the new hunter green Jeep Grand Cherokee that had been waiting for them in the parking lot at the Asheville airport with the key hidden in a magnetic case under the front bumper.

“I hire people to do this kind of thing for me.”

His nonchalance about his wealth made her waspish. “How pretentious.”

“Watch your language, Professor.”

“It means wise,” she lied. “You might try working it into a sentence sometime with a person you really admire. Tell them you think they’re pretentious, and they’ll feel warm and fuzzy all day.”

“Thanks for the suggestions. Maybe I’ll use it next time I’m on TV.”

She regarded him suspiciously, but couldn’t see even a trace of mistrust in his expression. It occurred to her that these last few days were turning her into a bitch.

She stared glumly out the window. Despite the gloom of the chilly, overcast March day, she had to admit the country was beautiful. The mountainous contours of western North Carolina formed a stark contrast to the flat Illinois landscape where she’d grown up.

They crossed the French Broad River, a name that would have made her smile under other circumstances, and headed west on Interstate 40 toward Salvation. Ever since she’d first heard the name of Cal’s hometown, something about it had struck a chord in the back of her mind, but she couldn’t remember what.

“Is there some reason I should recognize the name Salvation.”

“It was in the news a while back, but most of the locals don’t like to talk about it.”

She waited for more information and wasn’t too surprised when none was forthcoming. Next to the Bomber, she was a magpie. “Do you think you could let me in on the secret?”

He took so long responding that she thought he was ignoring her, but he finally spoke. “Salvation was where G. Dwayne Snopes settled. The televangelist.”

“Wasn’t he killed in some kind of small plane crash a few years ago?”

“Yeah. While he was on his way out of the country with a few million dollars that didn’t belong to him. Even at the height of his career, the town’s leaders never thought much of him, and they don’t like having Salvation’s name associated with him now that he’s dead.”