Charlotte stared at me. "You believe him."
I nodded. "I got him out on bail. He's waiting to see you outside."
Her eyes went even wider, then she smiled, and it was beautiful. It was one of those smiles that made you feel warm down to your toes. Charlotte was like that. When she was happy, everyone around her was happy. When she wasn't happy ... well, that spilled over, too.
She yelled in my ear, "Let's go see Richard."
I turned to go through the crowd and heard a gasp. I turned to see Betty Schaffer wearing the dripping remnants of a beer. Betty slapped Charlotte. Charlotte returned the favor but with a closed fist.
Betty was suddenly on her butt in the floor, blinking up at us.
The bouncers moved in, as Charlotte moved in to finish the job. I threw Charlotte over my shoulder. She weighed more than she looked like she did, and she was struggling. Unlike most women, she was good at struggling. I didn't want to hurt Charlotte, but she wasn't returning the favor. She kicked me in the knee and I dumped her onto the floor hard.
She lay there for a second, breath knocked out of her, staring up at me. Daniel moved forward to help her up, and I stopped him with a hand on his chest. "No."
The band had fallen silent with a last twangy guitar string. Into the sudden silence, my voice sounded loud, "You can walk out of here on your own, or you can be carried out unconscious, Charlotte. Your choice, but you are leaving."
I went down on one knee, carefully, because Charlotte didn't fight like a girl. I lowered my voice for her ears alone. "Richard will come in here in just a few minutes to see what's wrong. If he gets near her again, the local cops will revoke his bail and lock him up again." It was only partially true. Legally, he had every right to enter the bar, but I was betting that Charlotte didn't know that. Most law-abiding citizens wouldn't have.
Charlotte looked at me for a second longer, then offered me a hand. I helped her stand, still cautious. She had a hell of a temper once it got started. Admittedly, it took a lot to get her this mad, but once she reached it, it was every man for himself.
She let me help her to her feet without trying to slug me. An improvement. We made our way through the crowd with Daniel and Jason trailing behind us. No one crowded us as we went for the door. They stared, but didn't crowd.
The bouncer at the door said, "She doesn't come back in here."
Charlotte opened her mouth to say something, and I gripped her shoulder. "Don't worry. She won't."
He looked at Charlotte but nodded.
I let her get about three good steps ahead of me as we reached the parking lot. Call it an instinct. She whirled, and I think would have hit me, but I was out of reach. She stared at me with those big honey-brown eyes, made somehow paler by the halogen lamps. "Don't you ever lay hands on me again," she said.
"Behave like Richard's mother and not his outraged girlfriend, and I won't."
"How dare you!" she said. She moved closer. I moved away. I didn't really want to have a fistfight in the parking lot of a bar with Richard's mother.
"If anyone should be trying to beat the shit out of Ms. Peroxide Blond, it should be me."
That stopped her cold. She stood straight and looked at me. I could almost see her sanity returning. "But you aren't dating him anymore. Why should you care?"
"That is the sixty-four thousand dollar question, isn't it?" I said.
Charlotte smiled suddenly. "I knew you couldn't resist my boy. No one could."
"If he keeps dating everything in sight, I might."
She frowned. "I can't believe he ever dated that thing," she said.
We both turned and watched Richard walk towards us. There were nearly identical looks on our faces. We disapproved of Ms. Schaffer -- a lot.
Her first words were, "I cannot believe you dated that woman. She is a whore."
Richard looked embarrassed, more than I'd gotten from him. "I know what she is."
"Did you have sex with her?"
"Mother!"
"Don't you motherme, Richard Alaric Zeeman."