The Calamity Janes. Sherryl Woods

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      “Don’t tell me what I saw!” Donny Carter shouted, weaving in place in front of his wife. “You were flirting with Russell. The man’s hands were all over you.”

      The sound of Donny’s voice carried across the dance floor to where Emma sat with her friends. This was Donny’s second outburst of the evening, and their former classmate was threatening to get out of hand. He was clearly drunker now…and angrier.

      “I see Donny’s still getting sloshed at the slightest provocation,” Emma said to her friends. “I thought his beer-drinking days would be over by now.”

      “They’re not,” Karen said tersely.

      “And he’s still taking out his bad temper on Sue Ellen,” Cassie added. “They’ve been at it all weekend. Not that the Carters’ battles are anything new. My mother says their neighbors are constantly calling the sheriff over there to break up fights. And Sue Ellen’s been to the hospital twice in the past few months.”

      Emma felt her stomach clench. Donny and Sue Ellen had always had a volatile romance. She’d hoped that would change with maturity, but obviously it hadn’t. If anything, it was even worse than she’d suspected when she’d witnessed the earlier incident. She’d recognized all the signs of an abusive relationship, but she’d been praying it was mostly verbal. Cassie’s information suggested otherwise.

      “Why doesn’t she leave him?” Lauren asked, viewing the scene with indignation. “She shouldn’t have to take that kind of treatment from her own husband.”

      “She says she loves him, that it’s her fault for upsetting him,” Karen said, her worried gaze on the arguing couple. “I guarantee you, if you were to walk over there right now, she’d be apologizing all over the place for saying hello to Russell—which by the way, is all she did. I was standing right there with her earlier. But you’d never persuade her husband of the truth. Donny is jealous and possessive when he’s sober. Drunk, he’s even worse. He’s downright mean.”

      A few minutes later, as the argument escalated again, Emma saw the sheriff intervene, settling Donny down by escorting him outside for a chat. Donny went along with Ryan Taylor docilely enough. As they exited, Emma noticed that Ford Hamilton was observing the scene with interest.

      “I hope he doesn’t intend to report that little drama in next week’s paper,” she murmured, half to herself.

      “I don’t think Ford would do that,” Karen said.

      “He’s a journalist, isn’t he? It’s his job to muckrake whenever the opportunity arises,” Emma replied, leaving little doubt of the contempt in which she held Ford Hamilton’s profession.

      “Maybe in the city, but not here,” Cassie said. “Mom likes Ford. She met him when he came into the hair salon one day when she was there and asked if Sara Ruth cut men’s hair.”

      Despite herself, Emma bit back a grin. The Twist and Curl had been strictly a women’s domain for two generations. “Oh, my. How did that go over?”

      “Actually, after the initial shock, he charmed everyone in the room,” Cassie reported. “Mom’s been thinking of inviting him over for Sunday dinner. He’s a bachelor. She’s worried he might be lonely.”

      “A little young for your mom, though, isn’t he?”

      “Very funny,” Cassie said. “She’s just being neighborly.”

      Emma turned another speculative look on the journalist. Maybe she’d judged him too harshly earlier, but she knew the type. There was no mistaking the arrogance in his stance. What she’d at first dismissed as idle curiosity was clearly the far more dangerous nosiness of a professional snoop.

      Over the years Emma had had more than her share of run-ins with reporters. She didn’t have much use for them as a breed. Most of them managed to get their facts straight, but in her view they had the sensitivity and discretion of a runaway bulldozer. That alone would have been enough for her to give the press a wide berth, but there had been one incident that had come close to destroying her career with a little help from Kit. Hell would freeze over before she gave another reporter any assistance on a story, even if the story itself was as well-intentioned as the one Ford had described to her earlier.

      “Didn’t СКАЧАТЬ