Open Season Read online

  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?”

  “I said we’d go for a ride. That means riding.”

  Now she was back to the awful suspicion that he might be courting her, though if he was, he went about it in a strange way, telling her she reminded him of his great-aunt and laughing at her. On the other hand, he was a Yankee; maybe that was the way they did it up North. “I’d rather ride in the other direction,” she said uneasily. “Back toward home.”

  “Tough.”

  Well, that definitely wasn’t very courteous, so he couldn’t be courting her. Vastly relieved, she beamed at him.

  “What?” he demanded, giving her a wary look.

  “Oh, nothing.”

  “You’re smiling at me. It’s damn scary.”

  “My smile is scary?” The beam dimmed.

  “No, the fact that you’re smiling is scary. That tells me your train of thought has gone off track again.”

  “It has not. I know exactly which track it’s on. I’m just relieved that you don’t.” Darn, she wished she hadn’t told him that. She had to remember that he was a cop, and cops were notoriously nosy.

  “Oh?” Just as she had feared, now he was interested.

  “Private stuff,” she informed him. A gentleman would leave it at that.

  She should have remembered that he wasn’t a gentleman. “What kind of private stuff?” he demanded. “Sexy stuff?”

  “No!” she said, horrified. And because having him think she might want to do that was worse than what she really had been thinking, she said, “I was just afraid you might be courting me, and when you told me ‘tough,’ I was relieved, because you wouldn’t have said that if you had been. Courting me, that is.”

  “Courting?” His shoulders started shaking a little.

  “Yes, well, whatever it’s called these days. ‘Dating’ seems a little too high-schoolish, and besides, this isn’t a date. It’s more like a kidnaping.”

  “You haven’t been kidnaped. I just wanted to talk to you, privately, about last night.”

  “What about last night? If I haven’t broken any laws—”

  “Would you stop yammering about that? I have some things to tell you about going to nightclubs.”

  “I’ll have you know I’m an adult and can go to any nightclub I want. What’s more, I’m going to, so you can—”

  “Would you shut up for a minute!” he yelled. “I’m not telling you not to go; I’m just trying to tell you some things to watch out for!”

  She sat silently for a moment. “I’m sorry,” she finally said. “You just make me feel defensive. Maybe it’s because you’re the chief of police.”

  “Well, stop it, and listen to me. With what you’ve done to your hair and the way you’re dressing, men are going to come on to you.”

  “Yes,” she said with satisfaction. “They did.”

  He sighed. “Did you know any of them?”

  “No, of course not.”

  “Then you can’t trust them.”

  “Well, I wasn’t about to go home with any of them or anything, and I had my own car, so no one could drive me home—”

  He interrupted. “Have you ever heard of date-rape drugs?”

  That silenced her. Shocked, she stared at him. “You mean . . . those men—”

  “I don’t know, and you don’t either. That’s my point. When you go out like that, don’t let anyone bring you a drink except the waitress. Better yet, go to the bar and get your own. Don’t leave your drink on the table while you dance, or go to the bathroom, or for any reason. If you do, then don’t drink out of it again. Order a fresh one.”

  “Wh-what would it taste like? If someone doctored my drink, I mean.”

  “you couldn’t taste it, not mixed in a drink.”

  “My goodness.” She putter hands in her lap, upset to think that one of those nice men she’d danced with the night before might have deliberately drugged her so they could take her some place and have sex with her while she was unconscious. “Then—how would I tell?”

  “Generally, you can’t. By the time you start feeling the effects, you aren’t thinking straight. It’s better to always go to a club with a friend, so you can look out for each other. If one of you starts acting sleepy or dizzy, then the best thing to do is get to an emergency room. And for God’s sake, don’t let any of the men you’ve met drive you anywhere.”

  Dismayed, Daisy tried to think of a friend who would go with her to nightclubs. None sprang to mind; not that she didn’t have friends, but they were all married with families, and going out to a nightclub without their husbands so she could meet men just wasn’t the type of thing any of them would do. Her mother and Aunt Jo were both single, but. . . no, that didn’t bear thinking about.

  “There are several date-rape drugs,” he continued. “You’ve probably heard of Rohypnol, but the one that really has cops concerned is GHB.”

  “What’s that?” She’d never heard of it.

  He gave her a grim smile. “Floor stripper mixed with drain cleaner.”

  “Oh, my God!” Aghast, she stared at him. “That would kill you!”

  “In a large enough amount, yeah. And it doesn’t take all that much, sometimes, because you never know how hard it�€