The Trouble With Valentine's Day (12 page)

“I can handle it,” Wally assured him.

“Good. I might have something for you two next month.” The three of them did some sort of male ritualistic high-five knuckle-smashing thing before Rob walked toward the front counter, where her grandfather stood refilling racks of cigarettes.

“How's your mother?” Stanley asked him.

“Great. I was just at her house digging up some old dead rosebushes.”

“Well, tell her I said hello.”

“Will do.” Rob leaned a hip into the counter and crossed one booted foot over the other. “Can you get me some flaxseed?” he asked.

Flaxseed
? Kate placed a few oranges in the bin, then pretended a sudden interest in apples, but her thoughts were not on produce. She was thinking about Rob and wondering if he thought much about his past. She wondered if he missed playing hockey or worried much about the day Stephanie Andrews would get out of jail. She knew she'd worry about that. She wondered if he'd learned a lesson about cheating, and she wondered if his child was a boy or a girl.

She grabbed the empty orange crate and carried it behind the counter toward the doors to the back room. On her way, she glanced at Rob out of the corners of her eyes. At the bruise on his jaw and the mustache framing his lips.

“And I need dried currants,” he told Stanley as his gaze followed Kate until she disappeared in the back room.

The door to the alley was to Kate's left, and she grabbed several more boxes before walking outside. She also wondered if Rob believed her about not starting that rumor about him. He'd never said one way or the other. The conversation had pretty much ended when she'd mentioned possible erectile dysfunction.

She tossed the boxes into the Dumpster and shut the lid. She'd been half-joking, but he'd acted so appalled that she had to wonder if she hadn't hit a raw nerve. Since the first night they'd met, she'd been telling herself that he was impotent, but if she was honest, she really hadn't believed it. Not until he'd freaked out and protested so loudly. Now she had to wonder if getting shot had damaged him mentally or physically in that department.

The sound of her grandfather's laughter reached Kate as she moved into the back room and shut the door behind her. If Rob did have a problem down below, than she felt truly bad for joking about it. She wasn't usually a mean person. Sometimes she was sort of insensitive, but she didn't purposely hurt people.

Wait.
She stopped in her tracks right next to her grandfather's shiny meat grinder. She felt bad for Rob? How had that happened?

She leaned her behind against the chrome worktable and put the heel of her hand to her forehead. She didn't want to feel bad for Rob. Feeling bad could lead her further down the path of actually liking him. Liking him would lead her straight to humiliation and rejection. She was supposed to be avoiding men who'd use her and treat her bad.

Rob Sutter was the poster boy of bad.

“Katie,” her grandfather said as he walked into the back room. “I have a delivery for you.”

“Who?”

“Hazel Avery. She's got that bad cold you had a few days ago.”

“Why didn't she call it into Crum's Pharmacy? They deliver too.” She held up a hand before he could answer. “Forget it. I know why. You're cuter than Fred Crum.”

Stanley's cheeks turned pink, and he held out a bag containing a bottle of Nyquil and a box of Theraflu. “Thanks,” he said.

“Is Rob still out front?”

“He left, but I think he just went across the parking lot. You can catch him if you hurry.”

Kate shoved her arms into her coat and grabbed her purse. Ever since the night of the fight at the Buckhorn, her grandfather was trying even harder to push her in Rob's direction. “I'll catch him some other time.” She hung her purse over her shoulder and pulled her hair from the back of her coat. “This shouldn't take long,” she said as she took the sack from her grandfather. At least she hoped it didn't take long. Last time she'd made a delivery had been to the Fernwoods over on Tamarack. They'd invited her in, then cracked open a baby book and shown her about a hundred photographs of their new grandbaby. They'd tried to feed her pie, and they'd forced her to listen to stories about their daughter, Paris, and her husband, Myron, better known to the world of professional midget wrestling as Myron the Masher. Apparently Myron was making quite a name for himself in Mexico with his latest trademark move, The Swirly.

Which, Kate figured as she walked out of the M&S and into the bright afternoon sun, was way more info than she needed to know about the Fernwoods' son-in-law. She moved down the sidewalk toward her Honda CRV and looked across the parking lot. Rob was out front of Sutter Sports, still wearing the same green sweatshirt and jeans he'd had on earlier. The only difference was that he'd put on a pair of black sunglasses with blue lenses.

Before she thought better of it, she stepped off the curb and moved across the asphalt lot. Yeah, he was the president of the “bad relationship bet” club, but he'd also been the only man in the Buckhorn bar who'd stepped up to help her out. She wasn't sure he knew how truly grateful she was.

As she got closer, she watched him stick an ax under one arm and pull on a pair of brown leather work gloves. Then before her eyes, he turned and swung the ax at one of the four-foot evergreens growing in twin planters next to the front doors. Two swings and the tree lay on the ground at his feet.

“Hello,” she called out to him as she stepped up onto the curb.

He glanced back over his shoulder at her and straightened.

“What? Are you in desperate need of firewood?” she asked as she stopped in front of the dead tree.

“Stand back a little bit,” he said and swung at the other tree. It fell on the ground next to its twin.

“I've always hated those things,” he said as he turned toward her. He held up the ax, and the wooden handle slid through his gloved hand and stopped at the heavy steal head. “They look like they belong at the Four Seasons, not a sporting goods store in the Idaho Sawtooths.”

“Are you going to replace them?”

“I was thinking about maybe getting some of those tall weeds.” He bit one fingertip of his gloves and pulled it off.

“You mean like pampas grass or maidenhair?”

He shoved the glove in the front pocket of his sweatshirt. “Yeah, probably. I have some of that stuff growing in my yard, and I like it.” He took off his sunglasses and shoved them in the pocket, too. The sun shone bright, and lines appeared in the corners of his green eyes looking back at her. He kicked one of the trees with the toe of his boot. “Those had to die.”

“It's probably a good thing you don't sell guns.”

He smiled and, for some appalling reason, a little tingle settled in her stomach. She glanced away from his mouth to the destruction at her feet.

“No,” he said. “No guns.”

She certainly understood why he didn't sell guns. “Wow, I'm surprised they let you live around here.”

“I'm not anti-gun. I just don't have a need for them.”

She glanced up at the striped awning overhead. “When are you opening?”

“April first. A week from tomorrow.”

He didn't elaborate, and an awkward silence stretched between them. She couldn't help but wonder if he was recalling the night she'd made a fool out of herself. Or the night he'd had to rescue her from the Buckhorn. She folded her arms across her chest, and Ada's bag of cold remedies swung and bumped her thigh.

“How's your jaw?” she asked as she glanced at the side of his face. “Does it hurt?”

“No.”

“Good. If you hadn't stepped in when you did, I'm certain I'd still be at the Buckhorn playing pool.”

“The Worsleys are idiots.”

“I think you called them numb nuts.”

He chuckled. “They're that too.”

“Well, thanks again for helping me out.”

“Don't mention it.” He tapped the ax handle against his leg as if he were impatient to get rid of her.

She took a step back. “See ya around.”

He bent and picked up the trunk of one evergreen. “Yeah.”

While she felt little tingles, he clearly felt nothing. It was embarrassing. She turned and started for her car. But his lack of interest wasn't exactly a news update—which was just as well. She wasn't in town to date—especially men like Rob. She was here to help her grandfather.

The following Friday she helped him out in a way that changed his life.

She'd inadvertently given her grandfather her cold, and he was forced to stay home in bed. Before Kate left for work, she spoke to Grace Sutter about bringing him into the clinic. Grace didn't believe it was necessary, but she promised to look in on him on her lunch break and after she closed up for the day.

The first thing Kate did when she got to the M&S that morning was to pull Tom Jones out of the CD player and plug in Alicia Keys. She followed Alica up with Sarah McLachlan and Dido. It was definitely kick-butt girl day.

At one o'clock that afternoon, she called a gourmet food wholesaler down in Boise and ordered olives, jalapeño jelly, and wafer thin crackers. She thought it best to start out small, and if those items sold, her grandfather would have to agree with some of her other ideas.

At five, the Aberdeen twins came to work, and Kate changed out the tills. She counted the money, recorded the amounts in her grandfather's ledgers, and put the money in the safe until the next morning. The telephone rang just as she was about to leave the office at six. It was her grandfather, and he wanted her to do two things for him. “Grab the books,” which she'd already done, and make one delivery on her way home.

“Rob's special order came in yesterday,” he said between coughing fits. “Take it out to his place.”

Kate glanced down at her beige wraparound blouse that closed with three leather buckles at one side, and she brushed dust from her left breast. “I'll call him, and he can come get it tomorrow.” She didn't want to see Rob. It had been a long, exhausting day and she just wanted to go home, get out of her black twill pants and leather boots. “I'm sure he doesn't need whatever it is tonight.”

“Katie,” her grandfather sighed. “The M&S has stayed in business all these years because our customers depend on us.”

She'd heard it a hundred times before, so she grabbed a pen. “Give me the address.”

Five minutes later she was driving around the left end of Fish Hook Lake. The sun was about to set behind the sharp granite peaks, throwing jagged shadows across the landscape and into the cold bluish-green lake. Kate glanced at the directions propped up behind her gearshift and took a left up a long drive with a split-pole fence. She could barely see the roof of a house, but motion sensor lights turned on like a runway, so she figured she was headed the right way. Then the house seemed to rise up in front of her, huge and imposing within the gray darkness of the setting sun.

The house was made of lake rock and logs, and the huge windows reflected towering pine and clumps of shaded snow. “Pa rum pum pum pum,” she whispered. It looked more like a hotel than a private home. She pulled her Honda to a stop in front of the four-car garage and grabbed Rob's grocery bag off the passenger seat. She'd never given any thought to where he might live, but even if she had, this wouldn't have been it.

She checked the address her grandfather had given her against the numbers on the house. Professional hockey must have been very good to Rob.

She got out of her car and hung her leather backpack over one shoulder. The heels of her boots echoed across the concrete and stone as she moved up the wide porch to the double front doors.

With the grocery bag hanging off one arm, she raised her hand and knocked. The light above her head wasn't on, and there didn't appear to be any lights on in the house. After several moments, Kate set the bag by the front door and opened her purse. She dug around for a piece of paper and found an old grocery list, a bank deposit receipt, and a paper gum wrapper that smelled like mint. She pulled the wrapper out along with a pen and used the door to write against.

About halfway through the note, the light above her head flipped on and one side of the doors flew open. Kate stumbled and almost did a header into Rob's chest.

“What are you doing?” he asked.

She grabbed hold of the other door to keep from falling. “I'm delivering your groceries.” She looked up past his bare feet and jeans to an old, worn T-shirt. Blue, she believed, and stretched out of shape.

“You didn't have to do that.”

He had a white towel around his neck, and he lifted one end to dry his wet hair. The loose sleeve of his shirt slipped down the hard mounds of his muscles to the dark hair nestled in his armpit. His snake tattoo circled his thick biceps, and something warm and delicious slid into her stomach. “My grandfather said . . .” She frowned and shoved the bag toward him. “Never mind.”