The Trouble With Valentine's Day (11 page)

Other than the fact that he didn't like her but wanted to have sex with her? “I know she has a way of rubbing people the wrong way.”

“I have one of those at home,” Dillon chuckled. “Sometimes, bothersome women are the best kind.”

“I'm going to take your word for that,” Rob said as he pulled his car keys out of his coat pocket. “Stay out of trouble, Sheriff.”

“Wish I could, but it's only March, and summer's just around the corner.” Dillon shook his head and moved toward the drunks still lined up in front of the bar.

Rob walked to his HUMMER and drove the five miles to his house. He turned up his driveway, and the motion sensors tripped the lights as he went. When he'd had the house built, he'd had the lights put in as security measures. But as he'd quickly discovered, motion-detecting lights and wildlife didn't mix. There were a lot of nights he just turned the whole system off so he could get some sleep.

He pushed a button on the garage door opener clipped to his viser, then drove the HUMMER inside. The automatic door closed behind him. He'd had the four-thousand-square-foot house built the summer before. It had four bedrooms and bathrooms and was constructed of lake rock and big wooden timbers. He loved the cathedral ceiling and huge plate glass windows that overlooked the lake, but he didn't know what he'd been thinking, having such a big house built. Even when Amelia was old enough to visit him in Gospel, she wouldn't need so much room.

The light he'd left on over the range still burned. He turned it off and tossed his keys on the marble counter. The carpet on the stairs muffled his footsteps as he headed upstairs in the dark. He'd spent the past weekend in Seattle with his daughter. She'd learned three new words and had started stringing them together into sentences.

Rob took off his coat and tossed it on a chair next to the oak entertainment center that held one of his big-screen televisions. Moonlight poured in through the floor-to-ceiling windows and shone across him as he shucked off his clothes. Naked, he crawled into his bed.

The cool sheets touched his skin, and he pulled the heavy wool blankets and red-and-blue plaid comforter over him. His trip to Seattle had been an improvement over the last time. He and Louisa were getting along better than they had since he'd been shot. Rob wasn't sure how he felt about it, but she'd hinted at a reconciliation.

He placed an arm behind his head and looked up at the moonlight on his ceiling. He loved Amelia, and he wanted to be with her. He still had feelings for Louisa. He just didn't know what they were or if they were deep enough. He couldn't afford to make another mistake. Both he and Louisa were older. Wiser. More settled, or at least he knew
he
was. Maybe they wouldn't mess it up this time. Maybe they could make it work.

But when he closed his eyes, it wasn't thoughts of Louisa that kept him up for several more hours. It wasn't the picture of her long blonde hair that was stuck in his head. It wasn't the memory of her voice saying “Let me know if you need anything” that grabbed his insides and turned him hard. Or the thought of just exactly how many ways he wanted to prove to her that he was a man. A man capable of pleasing a woman. It wasn't the thought of his ex-wife who made his skin hot and the sheets suddenly too warm to bear. It wasn't the touch of Louisa's hands he craved on him.

It was Kate. It was the memory of her playing pool, spliced together with the vision of her layed out across the table like a gourmet meal. It was the hint of cleavage and flash of skin. A freeze frame of her looking up into his face as he held her back against his chest.

Alone within the darkness of his room, it was the woman who thought he was impotent that starred in his most X-rated fantasy.

Across town, Stanley Caldwell sat on the edge of his bed and looked inside the box he held in his hands. A half hour earlier he'd heard Katie return home, and he'd quietly shut his bedroom door.

In the box, he'd placed Melba's collection of Tom Jones records. A few of them were autographed. There were twenty-five of them in all. He knew because he'd just counted them.

It wasn't supposed to have been like this. He should have been the one to die first. Melba should have outlived him. It was too hard this way. Too hard for an old man like him to go on when his best friend and lover was no longer around. They'd raised children and grown old together. They'd grown fat and comfortable too. He missed her like he missed the other part of his soul. He couldn't just pack her away.

He reached inside the box and grabbed some of the albums. Then slowly he put them back. Grace Sutter had come over for a beer that night while Katie had been out playing pool. They'd laughed and talked about things they had in common. Like John Wayne movies and Tex Ritter Westerns. Glenn Miller and The Kingston Trio.

Now that Grace was gone, he felt guilty that he'd shared those memories with anyone other than his wife, Melba. Guilty that he'd boxed up her records. He'd thought he could just pack away a few of her things—nothing big—nothing like her housecoats and slippers. Just the small things that Katie had been nagging him about. He'd thought he could do it.

Stanley let go of the albums and set the box on the floor. He liked Grace. Aside from Melba, he liked her more than he'd liked any woman in a very long time. She wasn't pushy and she didn't gossip. Talking to her had been so easy, and her smile made him want to smile too.

With his foot, he pushed the box under his bed. There, he hadn't gotten rid of Melba's albums. He was just setting them somewhere else for a while. Somewhere out of sight, but not out of the house.

He turned off his light and crawled into bed. When he closed his eyes, he pictured Melba's face surrounded by her gray hair, and he relaxed. Grace Sutter was his friend. He liked her, but no one would ever take the place of his wife in his old, lonely heart.

Eight

The Monday after the Buckhorn brawl, a
bad chest cold forced Kate to stay home from work. She sat on the end of her bed, flipping through television stations, feeling extremely sorry for herself. Her body ached. She was so bored that she felt like screaming, but she couldn't because her chest hurt.

Instead of giving in to her mood, she dragged out the cable Internet connection that her grandmother had installed several years ago and her grandfather continued to pay for but never used. She took her laptop computer from the closet, and within an hour she was surfing the Internet, researching really exciting stuff like integrated software for retailers. Specifically, grocery stores. Perhaps if she got the names of a few consultants, more information, or even some brochures, she could show her grandfather that his life would be so much easier if he entered the new millennium. It was crazy not to use the technology that kept track of profit and inventory at the point of sale. It was just plain obstinate to refuse to even think about it.

She bookmarked several sites and sent for information, and because she was sick and bored silly, she did a little Internet shopping to brighten her mood. She bought panties and bras at Victoria's Secret. Sweaters and jeans from Neiman Marcus and Banana Republic. She bought shoes at Nordstrom, and she splurged on a silver cuff bracelet from Tiffany. When she was finished, she was a thousand dollars poorer, but she didn't feel better. She was still sick and still bored.

She lifted her hands to close her laptop, but a little voice inside her head stopped her.
It would be so easy,
it said. She knew the license plate number on Rob Sutter's vehicle, and with a few clicks of the mouse, she could have his Social Security number and birthday. Then she could see for herself if he'd told the truth about never being arrested.

No, that would be an invasion of his privacy . . . but she could do a google search. Rob had played professional hockey. He'd been a public figure. As long as what she discovered was public knowledge, then it really wasn't an invasion of privacy.

Before she could talk herself out of it, she clicked on the Internet and typed his name into the search engine. She was shocked when it pulled up more than forty thousand hits. Most of the hits were for sports sites that showed his head shot next to a list of his statistics. In some of the photos, he had his mustache. In others he did not. In the pictures without the Fu Manchu, his jaw looked more square. More masculine, which she would not have thought possible. In all the shots of him, his green eyes looked into the camera as if he were up to absolutely no good.

On the site hockeyfights.com, there was a picture of him with some guy in a headlock. He wore a navy blue jersey and a black helmet, and the article read:

Rob Sutter may seem like a thug, but he is highly specialized and has an important role—to make the other team think twice before they do something stupid like score a goal, make a pass, or breathe the wrong way.

She clicked on sites that had photos of him skating down the ice or shooting or sitting in the penalty box with cotton shoved up his nose.

She read an article he'd written about himself in 2003 for
The Hockey News.
“I am more than a punching bag,” it began, and he went on to list his goal and assist averages. Kate didn't know anything about hockey, but she assumed if his averages had been bad, he wouldn't have mentioned them. She read about his career highs, and she read the last
Sports Illustrated
article written about him. The glossy photograph showed him skating across the ice with a puck at the end of his hockey stick. The title read, “Female Fan Shoots NHL Enforcer.”

Kate sat up straighter, as if she'd been pulled up by strings. If she'd been shocked by the number of Internet hits, what she read next was stunning.

According to the article, Stephanie Andrews, of Denver, Colorado, shot him three times after he'd put an end to their affair. Two bullets had struck his chest, causing life-threatening injuries, while a third had shattered his knee, effectively putting an end to his career. Kate had suspected that his knee injury had ended his career, but she never would have guessed the reality in a million years.

Kate dug a little deeper and read more about the shooting and trial. She found quite a bit written about it in the
Seattle Times
archives. Her gaze scanned the daily reports of the two-week trial, and she read that Stephanie Andrews hadn't even been Rob's girlfriend. She'd been a groupie he'd picked up in a bar, then she'd turned stalker on him.

Stephanie had pleaded temporary insanity, but in the end, the jury hadn't bought the plea, and she'd received a twenty-year sentence, with ten fixed. Kate wondered what Rob thought about that. If he thought it was fair that the woman who'd tried to kill him could get out of prison in ten years, while he had to live with his injuries the rest of his life.

Kate skimmed the last article, but a quote near the end caught her eye—“. . . Mrs. Sutter has no comment.” She scrolled up a paragraph and read, “Louisa Sutter, and the couple's child, do not reside in the family home on Mercer Island. The
Times
tried to contact her for her reaction to the verdict. Her lawyer returned our call and stated that ‘Mrs. Sutter has no comment.' ”

Married
. He'd been married at the time of the shooting, and he'd had a child. Still had a child. Kate pushed her hair behind her ears. She was stunned and shocked, certainly, but she was also surprised at the deep disappointment she felt. In spite of herself, she was beginning to like him. He'd stepped up and pounded on the Worsleys on her behalf. Yeah, he'd had a little too much fun doing it, but if it hadn't been for him, she was certain she'd still be at the Buckhorn playing pool. Because one thing was for sure, the Worsleys wouldn't have let her leave until she'd lost, and Kate never lost on purpose at anything.

Kate closed the laptop and placed it on the closet shelf next to a box of Tom Jones memorabilia. Rob had cheated on his wife with a hockey groupie. Kate had been cheated on before, and she hated cheaters. Still, no one deserved to get shot or lose his career over it. No one deserved to die, and there was no mistaking the fact that Stephanie Andrews had been aiming to kill Rob.

Kate climbed beneath the pink frilly covers of the twin bed. The bedding she'd brought with her from Vegas was all queen sized, so she was stuck with lace and frills and, of course, Tom.

Getting shot by a groupie he'd picked up in a bar might explain why Rob had turned her down in the Duchin Lounge. It also explained why, despite her best efforts to dislike Rob, she was attracted to him.

She reached for a Kleenex and blew her nose. For whatever reason, if there was a man within a hundred miles who would break her heart and treat her bad, Kate was drawn to him.

She flung the Kleenex at the Tom Jones waste paper basket and missed. Rob was a cheater. He had commitment issues—had “bad bet” written all over him. He was every jerk she'd ever dated rolled into one gorgeous package. He'd smash her heart quicker than he used to smash heads.

Yeah, that might be cynical. And yeah, she was supposed to be working on her inner cynic, but it didn't make it any less true.

Kate was attracted to Rob, but she wasn't going to do anything about it. She was through with impossible men.

She laid her head on her pillow and closed her eyes. As Kate fell asleep, she thought about her life in Gospel. Sometimes she was so bored she thought she just might go as nutty as everyone else in town. But there was something to be said about the mundane. Something comforting in things that didn't change, like the monotony of shelving groceries and ordering produce.

Kate reminded herself of that sentiment two days later when she and her grandfather were having a discussion about how to cut some of the waste out of the business. Kate thought they should stop home deliveries or, at least, charge for them. Stanley wouldn't hear of it.

She wanted to put a tip jar next to the coffee machines to help fund the coffee the locals guzzled every morning. Stanley wouldn't consider that, either. She suggested stocking gourmet cheeses and pasta. Stuffed Italian olives and jalapeño jellies. He looked at her as if she were crazy.

“No one around here eats that fancy stuff.”

“Triangle Grocery stocks it,” she told him, referring to the other store in town.

“Exactly. If they stock it, why should I?”

They finally compromised on the sticker issue. No more stickers on items that were already marked. Her grandfather finally agreed with her that it was not only a waste of money but also a waste of time.

It was a small victory for Kate, but an important one. It proved to her that her grandfather wasn't completely unbending. He listened to her on some things. When the time came, he might be receptive to her ideas for updating the store's inventory and bookkeeping system. She might help his life get easier, after all. Things were looking up.

Or at least she thought they were until the door to the M&S opened and Rob breezed in looking slightly windblown. Over the stereo speakers, Tom belted out his version of Otis Redding's “Try A Little Tenderness.” She hadn't seen Rob since the night of the Buckhorn brawl, and despite all she'd learned of him since, the sight of him made her want to check her posture and reach for her lip gloss.

She stood behind a bin of oranges and grapefruit, and as if he sensed her gaze on him, he looked over at her from the end of aisle two. He wore a dark green hooded sweatshirt the same color as his eyes. He had a black-and-blue bruise on his jaw, a reminder of the night he'd taken on the Worsleys on her behalf.

“How are you?” he asked, his voice a little rough, as if he hadn't been using it a lot lately.

“I'm good.”

His lips parted as if he meant to say something more. Instead, his gaze slid to the two boys buying candy bars.

It was three-thirty in the afternoon and business was slow. The only other customers in the store were Adam Taber and Wally Aberdeen, and they were arguing over who was tougher, Spiderman or Wolverine. Rob grabbed Adam around the neck and rubbed his knuckles in the kid's hair.

“Are you going to work for me this summer?” he asked.

“Yeah.” Adam laughed and wiggled out of Rob's grasp. “Can Wally work too?”

While Rob pretended to think about it, Kate ran her gaze down his sweatshirt, over the brand name Rossignol printed on the front and down the sleeves, to his faded jeans. The seams were worn, and there was mud caked on the knees. “If you think he can handle it,” he said.