The Trouble With Valentine's Day (13 page)

He turned and walked into the house without taking the bag. A chandelier made of elk horns shone overhead and slid crystal prisms down his wide shoulders and back to the behind of his jeans. He looked at her over his shoulder. “Come in and shut the door.”

Nine

“You live here alone?”

Rob tossed the towel on the back of his leather couch and finger-combed his hair. “Yeah.” She'd caught him just out of the shower. He wouldn't have even seen her standing by the door if he hadn't walked by and noticed her through the windows at the top of the stairs.

Kate set the bag of groceries on a coffee table as she moved past him across the great room. “Wow, I've never really seen the lake from this side,” she said as she looked out the floor-to-ceiling windows.

Rob glanced out at the patches of snow around the clear lake. In the summer, the water reflected the dense pine and took on an emerald green color. Tonight the quarter moon was just starting to rise over the jagged teeth of the Sawtooths, casting the mountains and lake in a light gray.

“Do you like it?” he asked as he ran his gaze down the back of Kate's coat and pants to the heels of those dominatrix boots of hers. No female, other than his mother, had ever been in his home. That Kate was even here felt a bit disconcerting—like watching the star from your favorite porn film step from the screen and into your living room. He'd been thinking about her so much it was embarrassing. Almost as if he were sixteen instead of thirty-six.

“It's gorgeous.” She pushed one side of her hair behind her ear. “When I visited Gospel when I was young, my grandmother used to take me to the public beach.” She pointed to her right, toward town. She leaned forward and placed her palm against the glass, her long fingers spread out and pressed flat. Her short, shiny nails pointed toward the ceiling. “I can see the marina over there.” She dropped her hand and looked over at him. “Oops. Sorry.” She frowned and turned toward him. “I got my handprint on your clean window.”

“That's okay. It'll give Mabel something to do when she cleans next week.” He folded his arms across his chest and rested his weight on one foot. His gaze took in her smooth, red hair resting against the thin column of her throat. He knew that the skin where her shoulder met her neck was as soft as it looked.

“Your house is beautiful, Rob,” she said, and it was the first time he could recall her using his name.

Of course, he'd
imagined
her using it. But in a context that would probably get his face slapped. Inviting her in had been a bad idea. Very bad. He should show her the door. Instead he heard himself say, “Do you want to see the rest of it?”

“Sure.”

Too late now. “You can leave your coat down here, if you'd like.” He didn't offer to help her. He'd pretty much learned his lesson about that the last time.

She shrugged out of her coat and laid it by the grocery sack. She walked toward him, and his gaze took in her sweater, which wrapped across her breast and closed with buckles on one side. Black leather buckles. The kind that wouldn't be that hard to open.
Don't think about the buckles
.

He turned, and she followed him upstairs. The first room they entered was filled with free weights and exercise equipment. In front of a wall of mirrors sat his treadmill and Nordic Track.

“Do you really use this stuff?” She pushed up her sleeves, exposing the delicate blue veins on the insides of her wrists.

“Most every day.” First he'd noticed her neck and now her wrists. He felt like a vampire.

“I joined a gym once.” She walked in the room and ran her hand over his weights. “The Golds on Flamingo Road. I paid a year's membership and went three months. I'm afraid I'm not dedicated to fitness.”

“Maybe you need someone to motivate you.” He watched her long fingers and hands slip across a row of chrome dumbbells. In his former life, he would have offered to motivate her.

“No, that's not my problem. I went with my friend Marilyn, and she's a StairMaster fiend. She tried to motivate me.” She shook her head. “But once my thighs start to burn, I just have to lie down. I'm kind of a wimp when it comes to pain.”

He laughed even though he wished she hadn't mentioned burning thighs. “Come on.” He led her back out to the open hallway that looked down at the entrance and great room. “That's my daughter's room,” he said and pointed to a closed door.

“How often does she visit?”

“Amelia's never visited me here. She lives in Seattle with her mother, but when the house was built, I had her room done for her.”

“How old is she?”

“Two.”

He pointed to another closed door. “That's a bathroom, but I don't think it's ever been used.” They moved past some sort of alcove with a couch he never sat on and a big plant he never watered. “You ever married?”

“No.”

“Ever get close?”

“A few times.” She laughed without humor. “Or at least I thought so. They didn't, though.”

“That's a problem.” They moved to the open door of his bedroom. The place where he'd pictured her naked. Tied to his bed or on her knees in the moonlight. He wondered if he should feel like a pig for thinking about her naked so much. He wondered if it counted since she didn't know, and he never planned to do anything about it. He leaned a shoulder into the door frame and shoved his hands into the front pockets of his Levi's. As he watched her move silently through his room, he wondered if he'd ever be able to separate the Kate looking out his bedroom window from the Kate who'd wanted to have sex with him the first night they met. He doubted it. The two were so interwoven in his brain that when he looked at her, it was always there.

“Is this your little girl?” she asked as she stopped in front of his entertainment center, cluttered with pictures of his daughter.

“Yeah. That's Amelia.”

She leaned in for a closer look. “She's cute. She looks like you.”

“My mother thinks so.”

Kate took a step back, and her gaze moved to his big-screen television. “Hockey must pay well.”

So, she did know a thing or two about him. It was no secret. Everyone in town knew. “It did, yes.”

“What team?”

“Ottawa Senators. New York Rangers. Florida Panthers. Detroit Red Wings. L.A. Kings, and the Seattle Chinooks.”

She looked across at him. “Sounds like you moved around a lot.”

“Yeah.” He didn't really like to talk about the past. It brought up too many questions he didn't want to answer. Too many memories he didn't like to think about.

The carpet muffled the sound of her boots as she walked toward him and stopped about a foot away. “Were you good?”

His gaze slid to her mouth. “What do you think?”

She tilted her head to one side as if she were studying him. “I think you were probably scary.”

“Do you watch hockey?”

“Just enough to know that if you were skating toward me, I'd get out of your way.” She bit her lip, and it slid through her teeth. “And I saw you take out the Worsleys.”

He chuckled. “Let's go downstairs,” he said before he gave in to the urge to bite her lip, too.

He pointed to two more closed doors. One bedroom was filled with his fly-tying gear. The other had boxes of his hockey stuff in it. They walked downstairs and through the house, past the dining room to the kitchen. On the granite countertops and steel gas range sat his sheets of cooling granola. He was addicted to the stuff, and he'd been making his own for several years. He'd just about perfected his honey almond crunch. When he'd played hockey, the guys had all given him a raft of shit about his granola, but they all secretly hit him up for some when no one else was around.

She stood next to the work island in the middle of the room and gazed up at the pots and pans hanging on the rack above her head. The recessed lighting cast her in a warm glow and shone in her red hair. “Who uses all these pots and pans?”

“Me.” He lived alone and had learned a long time ago how to cook for himself. Life on the road and eating in restaurants could get real old. “When I'm here.” He scooped up some granola and moved toward her. “Open up,” he said as he held his fingers in front of her mouth.

She looked skeptical, as if she might argue. “What's in it?”

“Oats, flaxseed, honey.” Or maybe she was just nervous. He liked to think he made her nervous.

“Did you know that a bee only produces one and a half teaspoons of honey during its lifetime?”

“That's fascinating. Now open up.”

Her gaze stared into his as she tilted her head back and opened her mouth. The tips of his fingers touched her lips. He dropped the granola into her mouth as if she were a bird, then he stepped back.

She chewed, then licked the corner of her mouth. “That's pretty good stuff.”

“I'm addicted to it.” He grabbed one of the cooking sheets and sat it on the island next to her. “Help yourself.”

“Are you sure you made it?”

“Of course. Who else?”

“I don't know, but you don't strike me as the type of guy who makes his own granola.”

It was on the tip of his tongue to ask her what she did think of him, but he supposed he already knew. She thought he drove a HUMMER to compensate for a small dick and impotence. “That's because you don't know me.”

“That's true.” She cocked her head to one side and studied him. “Can I ask you something?”

“Yeah, but I don't have to answer.”

“That's fair,” she said and crossed her arms beneath her breasts. “Why do you live in such a huge house when you're not even here that much?”

“I'm here from March to September. Well, when I'm not at the store, anyway.” Which didn't answer her question. Why had he built a big house? He shoved his hip into the counter next to her. “I guess because I've lived in big houses with pools and Jacuzzis and game rooms for most of my adult life. So, when it came time to build this one, I just went with what I was used to.”

“You have a game room, too?”

“Yeah. It's off the great room,” he said as she scooped up granola with her fingers and ate. “Maybe we can play pool sometime.”

She brushed her hands together as she swallowed. “Maybe, but I have to warn you, I don't lose on purpose to anyone.”

“What fun is there in that?”

“I saw you play the other night. I could beat you blindfolded and with one arm tied behind my back.”