“I was backing out of a parking space at the county courthouse and she came flying around the corner and hit the back end of my truck.” He was almost snarling. “Then she gets out, cussing a blue streak, and says it’s my fault! She was the one speeding!”

Michelle almost bit her tongue off trying not to say what she was thinking.

“So your husband—” he nodded to Minette “—comes down the courthouse steps and she’s just charming to him, almost in tears over her poor car, that I hit!” He made a face. “I get hit with a citation for some goldarned thing, and my insurance company has to fix her car and my rates go up.”

“Was that before or after you called her a broom-riding witch and indicated that she didn’t come from Wyoming at all, but by way of Kansas...?”

“Sure, her and the flying monkeys,” he muttered.

Michelle couldn’t keep from laughing. “I’m sorry,” she defended herself. “It was the flying monkey bit...” She burst out laughing again.

“Anyway, I politely asked her which way she was going and if she was coming back to town, so I could park my truck somewhere while she was on the road. Set her off again. Then she started cussing me in French. I guess she thought some dumb country hick like me wouldn’t understand her.”

“What did you do?” Michelle asked.

He shrugged. “Gave it back to her in fluent and formal French. That made her madder, so she switched to Farsi.” He grinned. “I’m also fluent in that, and I know the slang. She called on the sheriff to arrest me for obscenity, but he said he didn’t speak whatever language we were using so he couldn’t arrest me.” He smiled blithely. “I like your husband,” he told Minette. “He was nice about it, but he sent her on her way. Her parting shot, also in Farsi, was that no woman in North America would be stupid enough to marry a man like me. She said she’d rather remain single forever than to even consider dating someone like me.”

“What did you say to her then?” Michelle wanted to know.

“Oh, I thanked her.”

“What?” Minette burst out.

He shrugged. “I said that burly masculine women didn’t appeal to me whatsoever, and that I’d like a nice wife who could cook and have babies.”

“And?” Minette persisted.

“And she said I wanted a malleable female I could chain to the bed.” He shook his head.

“What did you say about that?”

“I said it would be too much trouble to get the stove in there.”

Michelle almost doubled up laughing. She could picture Sara trying to tie this man up in knots and failing miserably. She wondered if she dared repeat the conversation when she got home.