Free Fire Raiser by Melanie Rawn Page A

to lose you , ever—but it’s not the same. A man like that, he doesn’t think any other woman would ever want him.”
    She laughed. “You conceited son of a bitch!”
    “That’s not what I meant. Why don’t you astonish the world and just listen for a change? Thank you. This kind of guy, he’s always scared that somebody else is gonna look better to her than he does. That what he has with her isn’t enough to make her stay with him.”
    “But that makes him the controlling one.” She braked at the intersection of Highway 3 and Highway 8, and turned to stare at him.
    “It makes him create situations to test whether she still wants him enough to be suspicious. He flirts a little, passive-aggressive, nothing overt—just to make sure she still wants to own him.”
    “I don’t understand,” she said plaintively. “A man doesn’t trust that his wife loves him enough to stay with him, so he tries to make her jealous to prove to himself that she does love him? And this involves flirting with other women, so that his wife thinks other women want him, which makes her jealous—except that he doesn’t really think other women want him, which is why he has to reassure himself by flirting with other women so they will want him, thereby provoking his wife’s jealousy that proves other women want him even when he’s convinced they really don’t?”
    He was quiet for a moment. “Y’know, I didn’t completely follow all that.”
    “Neither did I,” she admitted. “And I’m the one who said it.” Somebody behind them honked, and she hastily shifted back into gear to make the turn. “So what was the point, again?”
    “That’s just it. I don’t see that there is a point.”
    “To what?” she asked, more confused than ever.
    “Jealousy. It’s all about possession, right? Ownership? The idea of anybody trying to own you —”
    “But I’m your wife.”
    “Because you chose to be. Holly, you made me a promise. I trust your promises. Jealous and possessive means suspicious and controlling to me—and I just don’t see the point. How do you control the thoughts in a person’s head? You can’t, so why bother trying? Do I go ballistic when you look at Jamey?”
    “He’s gay. Not a valid example.”
    “If you look at one guy, you’re gonna look at others.”
    “You look at women, too.” She snorted again. “If you didn’t, I’d have you hospitalized.”
    “Look, what are the classic questions? For the man, it’s Did you fuck him? But the question a woman asks—”
    “ Do you love her? Are we really still that primitive? Men dedicated to making sure their offspring are in fact theirs, and women manipulating a man’s emotional commitment so her children are provided for?”
    “What would be your first question, if you thought I was foolin’ around?”
    She thought for a moment. “Evan, I’m trying to imagine it, and I can’t. I mean I really can’t . You made me a promise, too. And I trust you.” She lobbed a whimsical smile at him. “Are we evolved, or just kidding ourselves?”
    “Do you really want to find out?”
    “No. But you’ve convinced me that the whole jealousy thing is fairly psychotic.”
    “That’s the way a lot of marriages work.” He paused, then shrugged. “My parents’, for one. Dad was the jealous one, always suspicious. He had good reason to be, of course. She always kept him on edge, just to prove what a catch she still was.”
    Holly shook her head. “I couldn’t live like that,” she stated, repressing a shudder. “Always suspicious, always distrustful—trying to control what you think and feel—”
    “Seems to work for some people.”
    “Does it?” she mused. “Partnership or power trip? I know not every-body’s lucky enough to have what we have, but—oh, hell, I don’t know. Maybe it’s that we actually like each other?”
    “Yeah, I guess I do kinda like you,” he teased. “But where’d a nice girl like you learn a term like