The Trouble With Valentine's Day (24 page)

“Do you honestly believe that?”

He turned his attention to the road as he stepped on the gas. “Honestly? No, but I figured you might believe it and not worry so much.”

She was absolutely not going to let him charm her. “Aren't you worried?”

“If I wasn't concerned, I wouldn't be driving around at,” he paused and read the digital clock within the navigation system, “at twelve fifty-two. I'd only been asleep about half an hour when you called.”

She turned and looked out her passenger window as they passed the Texaco and the courthouse. She wondered what had kept Rob up so late. The unwanted memory of him leaving the grange with Rose forced its way into her head. Yesterday, she'd seen him outside his store chatting it up with Dixie Howe. The woman had given him a hug before she'd left, and Kate wondered if he'd been up till midnight with one or the other. Given his past, probably both.

“I went to church with my mother Sunday, and afterward she did finally mention that she had feelings for Stanley. I'm sure that wherever they are, they're okay.”

Kate wasn't convinced. She turned her head and looked at him. “You went to church?”

“Sure.” He glanced at her. “It was Easter Sunday.”

“And lightning didn't strike?”

“Ha-ha. You're a regular laugh riot.” He returned his attention to the road. “I noticed you weren't there.”

She tried not to put any significance in his last sentence. So, he'd noticed she hadn't been in church. Of course he'd noticed. It was a small congregation. “I'd done a little too much sinning the night before with Tiffer Cladis?”

“Couldn't have been the good kind of sinning, since he's gay.”

No, she'd reserved that kind of sinning for the man across the HUMMER, and look how that had turned out. Which should probably tell her that she should give up sin altogether. “I ended up at his mother's, tossing back hairy sluts all night and listening to Tiffer's Stephen Sondheim collection. Regina had to take me home around three.”

“What's in a hairy slut?”

“Rum, Triple Sec, pineapple juice. It's Tiffer's favorite drink.”

“I could have guessed that.” Rob pulled the vehicle into Grace's driveway. There were no lights on and no sign of Stanley's truck. Old oak trees and pine all but blocked the weak light of the moon.

“He's not here,” she said.

Rob turned off the HUMMER, and the two of them walked toward the side of the garage. “I can't see a thing,” Kate complained. Rob stopped, and she ran into his back. “Sorry.” He took her hand and shoved the tips of her fingers down the back of his jeans.

“What are you doing?” she yelped and pulled her hand free. “You pervert.”

“I'm giving you something to hang on to.”

“Your butt?”

“No. My belt.” He took her hand again and held it instead of shoving her fingers down the back of his pants again. “Get your mind out of the gutter, Kate. I'm not perverted enough to stick your hand down my pants.” He pulled her along a few steps before he added, “Not while your grandfather's missing, and not unless you ask real nice.”

The press of his warm palm against hers heated up more than her hand. She felt it in her chest and stomach. “Don't worry. I'm not going to ask.”

“You might.”

“You wanna bet? No. Forget I asked that.”

His soft laughter was drowned out by the squeak of the garage door as he opened it. He flipped on the light and looked inside. “His truck's parked next to her Blazer,” he said and turned to face Kate. The garage light lit him up from behind, kind of like a saint.

She pulled her hand free and stuck it in her coat pocket. Rob Sutter was no saint. He was too good at sinning. “Do you think they're in the house?”

“Yes.”

“What can they be doing? The lights are out.”

He rocked back on his heels, and the light from the garage poured over the shoulders of his dark blue coat and lit up the side of his face. He raised a brow.

It took her several seconds to understand the significance of his cocked eyebrow. “Gross! He's seventy. He'll have a heart attack.”

“My mom's a nurse, she'll thump him back to life.”

Kate sucked in a breath. “Aren't you even a little freaked out about them doing”—she pointed to the back door—“that, in there?”

“First of all, my mind isn't going to go down that path. And second, I'm glad my mother's found someone.”

“Well, I'm glad too. That my grandfather has found someone, I mean.” But was she? “Do you have a key, or should we knock?”

“Neither.”

“What? Neither?”

Rob turned off the light and shut the garage door. “I'm not going to bust in on my mother.” He took Kate's hand and headed back to the HUMMER. “I doubt you would have appreciated Stanley busting in on us the other night while we were doing the wild thing in the condom aisle.”

“I don't want to talk about that. It was a mistake. It shouldn't have happened.” Especially since she was fairly certain he was seeing other women now.

“I'm getting really tired of what we can and can't talk about. We can't talk about the night we met. We can't talk about the first night I kissed you. We can't talk about the night we had sex. That's bullshit, Kate.” They stopped by the passenger side of the HUMMER, and Kate reached for the door handle. “Some mistakes were made the other night. I'll give you that.” He planted his hand on the window and kept the door closed. “Maybe it shouldn't have happened
the way
it did, but it was going to happen. And you know what? I'm really not sorry about the way it happened. I had a hell of a good time. Sooner or later, we were going to have sex. It was inevitable.”

“I don't know if it was inevitable, but what I do know is that each time you make me feel good, you turn around and make me feel like shit.”

“Maybe you're looking for something to get pissed off about.”

Was she? No.

He opened the door. “I said I was sorry for kissing you on the head and saying thanks. Don't you think it's time to get over it?”

Over it?
She crawled into the car and looked at his inky black outline. “It's only been a week.”

“A week's a long time to walk around mad,” he said and shut the door.

On the drive home, neither spoke. Kate stared out her window and wondered if Rob was right. Did she look for reasons to be angry? No, she didn't think so.

Rob pulled the HUMMER into Stanley's driveway and walked her to the door. “Thanks for coming over here and helping me look for my grandfather,” she said as she stood on the top step and turned to face him.

“Any time.” The light on the house shone down on him, and she saw his face clearly for the first time that evening. A lock of brown hair fell across his forehead and touched his brow. She looked into his green eyes looking back at her. Then his gaze lowered to her mouth. “Good night, Kate.”

“Good night.”

He brushed his fingers across her jaw, and she thought he might kiss her. Instead he turned and walked down the sidewalk. As she watched him move away from the light of the house, she felt an irritating little tug of disappointment.

He walked in front of the HUMMER and looked back at her. He raised his hand in an abbreviated wave, and she got that feeling again. The dangerous one that said maybe he wasn't such a bad guy. He'd apologized twice now for running out on her the other night with nothing more than a hasty thanks. He'd gotten out of bed in the middle of the night to help her search for Stanley.

Kate watched him pull out of the driveway before she walked into the house. Even if he wasn't such a bad guy, he wasn't the guy for her. She was tired of relationships that ended in a broken heart. And Rob Sutter was a smooth-talking heartbreak, just waiting to happen.

She hung her coat by the back door and had just finished putting on her pink-and-white-striped flannel pajamas and brushing her teeth when she heard her grandfather's truck. She moved to the dark doorway of the kitchen and waited. Her grandfather entered as quietly as possible, then he turned and slowly closed the back door.

Kate flipped on the light, and her grandfather spun around on the heels of his wingtips. He froze like a kid sneaking home after curfew.

“I didn't think you'd still be up,” he said as color rose up his neck to his cheeks.

She folded her arms beneath her breasts. “I was worried you'd been wrecked in a ditch.”

“I was with Grace.”

She didn't bother mentioning that she already knew where he'd been. “You could have called. The last time I talked to you was this morning when you left for Boise.”

“I'm sorry you were worried, Katie.” He took off his coat and hung it by the back door. “I've asked Grace to marry me.”

Kate dropped her hands to her sides. “What?”

“I've asked Grace to marry me. She said yes.”

“But . . .” Kate stared at him, sure she'd misunderstood. Married? People didn't get married after one night in the sack. That was afterglow. Not lasting love. “But Granddad . . . just because you have sex with someone doesn't mean you have to get married. It's the twenty-first century, for God's sake. Don't be so old-fashioned.”

He slowly turned and looked at her. “I may be old-fashioned to you, but I am an honorable man. I would never disrespect a woman. I would hope that a woman I cared about would expect me to be honorable. That's what's wrong with your generation, Katherine. You reduce sex to fornication.”

Katherine?
She moved toward him. “I'm sorry. It just seems sudden.”

“My feelings for Grace started the night I heard her poetry at the grange and have gotten deeper ever since.”

“Don't you think you should date for a while first?” She'd never had a marriage proposal, and she'd dated men for as long as three years.

“Katie, I'm in my seventies. I don't exactly have a lot of time to mess around with dating.” He patted her on the shoulder as he moved past. “When two people are in love, why wait?”

Kate could think of a lot of reasons. She kept them to herself. If Grace made her grandfather happy, then what kind of granddaughter would she be if she rained on his parade? She just hoped he knew what he was doing. “And you are positive this is what you want? And you're not just feeling—you know—afterglow?”

“This is what I want. I want a woman who is worth more to me than”—he paused and his cheeks turned pink again—“afterglow.” He shook his head. “You are worth more than that too, Katie. You are worth everything a man can give you.”

Now it was her turn to get red-faced. “I know.” But knowing it in her head and not getting “afterglow” until she got a marriage proposal were two different things. That pony was already before the cart. Or was it that the pony was already out of the gate? Or was it that the pony was giving the milk for free? She wasn't sure.

There were a few things she did know for sure, though. There was no way the pony was going back in the gate. Not when the pony was thirty-four and really liked pulling the milk cart. But her grandfather was right. She deserved more than relationships that went nowhere. Which left her in the same quandary she'd been in the day she'd arrived in Gospel.

Sixteen

“What kind of bread you selling today?”

“Focaccia.”

Ada Dover scrunched up her nose and leaned in for a closer look. Her hair was perfectly sculpted, and the scent of Emeraude engulfed her like a toxic cloud. “It's weird.”

“It's very good.”

“Still looks weird.”

“It has fresh thyme and scallions, Niçoise olives and Parmesan cheese. Would you like to try a sample?”

“I think I better.”

Kate bit the inside of her lip to keep from laughing as she cut a piece of bread and handed it to Ada. Ada's brows lowered as she chewed. “Yep, I better have a loaf of that,” she said.

“Would you like some jalapeño jelly to go with your bread?”

“No. Same as yesterday when you asked.”

Kate moved from the bread aisle and walked behind the counter. “I'm going to keep asking until you say yes.”

“Well, don't get your heart too set on it. I've liked your bread and some of that fancy cheese, but I just don't see myself warming up to jelly made with jalapeños.” Ada set her purse on the counter and pulled out her wallet. “How's your granddad?”

You've wasted your Emeraude,
Kate thought as she rang up the bread.
He's off the market.
“He's at home today taking it easy.”

“Is somethin' wrong with him? His joints acting up? He should get some glucosamine. That'll heal him huckety-buck.”

“No. He's just taking the morning off.”
To recover from his wild night.
“He said he'd be in around noon.”

Ada handed Kate a five, and Kate handed her back her change. “Are you coming to the poetry reading tomorrow night?”

“Oh, I don't know.” Kate's mind raced to think up an excuse. “I think I'll be too busy getting bread ready for the next day,” was the best she could do.

“Too bad. You'll miss my new and revised poem about Snickers.”

Kate smiled. “Yeah, that is too bad.”

Ada put her change away and picked up her bread. “Well, I'll tell ya what. I'll bring over a copy tomorrow afternoon, special for you, so you can read and enjoy it.”

“Really?” Kate forced her smile to stay in place. “That would be great.”

After Ada left, Kate restocked the “ethnic food” aisle, which consisted of refried beans, salsa, and canned chilies. At noon, Stanley arrived, as he'd said he would. His smile curved up the corners of his mustache, and he hummed what sounded like the
William Tell Overture
all day. Not “What's New Pussy Cat” or “Delilah,” but classical music like Grace listened to.

He had it bad.

At three, Rob called with a delivery for across the parking lot. Kate didn't balk at his laziness this time since she figured he probably wanted to talk over the latest news with her.

As Kate left the grocery store, dull gray clouds hung over the wilderness area, threatening rain. A strong breeze played with the ties that closed her cuffs and secured the front of her cream-colored blouse. She wore a peach flared skirt and cream pumps with ankle straps. Wind whipped her hair as she glanced in the bag and smiled. Four granola bars and a bottle of passion fruit juice. Some people were so predictable.

Inside Sutter Sports, a man and his son looked at a row of mountain bikes while a woman leaned her elbows on the checkout counter. She'd squeezed herself into a tight pair of Wranglers, and her behind was pointed at Kate. Rob stood on the other side of the counter, chatting and tapping a pen on the cash register. He wore a dark green polo with the store's fish logo on the breast pocket, and when he looked up, a smile curved his lips.

“Babe,” he said, “I'm so glad you finally got here.”

Babe?
Either he was really, really hungry, or he was talking to someone else. Kate glanced over her shoulder as she walked toward him. There was no one behind her, and she turned back as Rob came out from behind the counter and moved to her. She was about to ask him if he'd been eating paint chips when he stunned her even more. He wrapped her in a big hug that lifted the heels of her shoes off the floor. The scent of his sandalwood soap filled her lungs and her stomach got a little light, like she'd swallowed some air.

“Pretend to be my girlfriend,” he said next to her ear.

Kate glanced behind him as Dixie Howe straightened and turned around. She'd somehow managed to squeeze her breasts into a little midriff top that was more suited for the beach than an overcast day in April. More suited for someone half her age, too.

“What's it worth?”

“I'll give you ten bucks.”

“Forget it.”

“I'll tell everyone I know that your jalapeño jelly is great and to scoot on over to the M&S and pick up a jar before it's all gone.”

She smiled and leaned back far enough to look into those eyes of his surrounded by thick, dark lashes. She placed her free hand on the side of his smooth face and planted a loud kiss on his mouth. His soul patch scratched her chin, and she pulled back and smiled. “Is it me you're glad to see or my granola bars?”

He laughed and set her back on her heels. “Both.” One of his hands slid down her spine and rested on the curve of her behind. She gave him a hard look, and he gave her a heart-stopping grin in return. “I'm sure you've met Dixie,” he said and turned to face the other woman. He did not, however, remove his hand.

“Yes,” Kate answered. “Dixie comes into the M&S. How are you?”

“I'm good.” Dixie looked Kate over and shrugged, as if she didn't see the attraction. “Well, I'm going to head out, Rob. If you change your mind, you let me know.”

“See ya.”

“Change your mind about what?” Kate asked in a hushed voice as soon as the front doors shut behind Dixie.

He glanced at the man and his son looking at bikes, then slid his hand from her behind to her waist. Once again he pulled her close. His Fu Manchu tickled her temple when he spoke close to her ear. “Her version of the sexual pretzel.”

“And you're not interested?”

“No. She's . . . too available to everyone in town.”

“And she has those scary fake boobs.”

There was a long, silent pause before he said, “Yeah, that, too.” He dropped his hand and took the grocery bag from her. “Passion fruit. I thought I told Stanley kiwi.” He shrugged. “Want some?”

“No. It's too sweet. I have to be in the right mood for passion fruit.”

“That's the difference between men and women. Women have to be in the right mood. Men are always in the mood for a little passion fruit.”

“Women need a reason. Men just need a place?”

He popped the top. “You know it, babe.”

“Dixie's gone. You can stop calling me babe.”

He just gave her another grin and turned toward the man and his son. “That Heckler is a nice bike,” he said and moved toward them. He took a drink of his passion fruit. “Lightweight and can take a lot of punishment.”

“A thousand dollars is a little steep,” the father said with a shake of his head.

“How much do you want to spend?”

“I can't afford anything more than three hundred.”

“I just got in a Mongoose for two-fifty-nine.” Rob pointed toward the back with his bottle. “I'll show it to you.” The three of them moved past the helmets, and he looked at Kate across his shoulder. “Can you stick around? I need to talk to you.”

Since she was curious and wanted to know what he thought of his mother's impending wedding, she decided she could “stick around” for a few minutes. “Sure.” While she waited, she cruised the store, looking at everything from one-man tents to fly-tying equipment. In one aisle, she pulled on some fingerless gloves and looked at Road Dog headbands and bandanas. She took off the gloves and moved to the checkout counter, where she tried on Oakley sunglasses.

As she tried on her third pair, Rob walked from the back room beside the little boy and his dad. “I can have that ready for you tomorrow,” he said. By the front door, the two men shook hands, and Kate turned her attention to a small mirror on the sunglasses case. She turned her head from one side to the other and couldn't determine if she looked good or like a bug.

“Do you want to learn to fly-fish?” Rob asked as he moved across the wooden floor toward her.

She glanced over at him through a pair of blue-and-red iridium lenses, and the hundred-and-fifty-dollar price tag hung from the bridge of the sunglasses and jabbed her nose. His mother was marrying her grandfather, and that's what he wanted to talk about? “Today?” She took off the Oakleys and put them back in the case. Surely he'd heard the news by now. If he hadn't, it wasn't her place to tell him. It was his mother's.

“Sunday.” He set his empty bottle next to her. “Both stores will be closed on Sunday. I'll bet you look hot in hip waders.”

She lifted a brow. “Hot?”

He chose a pair of tortoise-framed Brinkos from the case, and the tips of his fingers brushed the sides of her face as he slowly placed them on the bridge of her nose. “Sexy.”

Kate looked at him through gold lenses, and her voice took on that embarrassing breathy quality that his nearness sometimes brought on. “I'd look ridiculous.”

“Will you go with me?”

She shook her head. “If I want fish, I'll just walk to the meat cooler at the M&S.”

“It's catch and release.” He took the glasses from her face and looked away long enough to place them back in the case. “I'll pick you up at six.”

“In the evening?”

“In the morning.”

“That's my only day to sleep in.”

“I'll make it worth your while.” He slid another pair of glasses on her face and brushed the backs of his fingers across her cheek and down the side of her neck. His touch was like magic, sending his incredible sexual energy dancing across her skin.

She looked at him through the dark lenses, and her breath got stuck in her chest somewhere around her heart. “How?”

“I'll let you use my second favorite rod.”

“Why can't I use your favorite rod?”