The Trouble With Valentine's Day

Fourteen

The mountain was out when Rob's flight landed at SEA-TAC. He rented a Lexus and called Louisa on his cell to let her know he was on his way to pick up Amelia. He tuned in a radio station and headed for Interstate 5.

He slid his Maui Jims on the bridge of his nose and adjusted the sun visor. The polarized lenses cut the glare of the morning sun, and Rob merged onto the interstate, only to get stuck in stop-and-go traffic headed into Seattle. He hadn't slept a whole lot the night before, and he'd downed a boatload of coffee on the flight. His brain was fuzzy, but he could recall with absolute clarity how the light in the grocery store had cut across Kate's naked breasts. Her breasts were firm and white with small pink nipples balanced perfectly in the center, like tight raspberries. He remembered how hard they'd been against his palms and tongue, and they'd tasted so good covered in whipped cream that he'd gone back for a second helping.

He recalled every detail of the night before. The touch of her soft skin beneath his hands and his struggle for control. He'd wanted to go slow, draw out the pleasure, while at the same time, he'd fought a battle within himself to just throw her down and get on with it.

In the end, he'd lost the fight. He'd grabbed her up, pushed her to the floor, and gone for it. He'd come so hard that he'd thought he was going to black out, but even as he'd felt every ripple and pulse of her orgasm, he'd known she deserved more from him. More than a quick one on the floor.

Rob flipped on his blinker and eased the Lexus in between a delivery van and a silver Canary. Pushing Kate to the floor hadn't been one of his better moves, but it might have been forgivable if he hadn't followed it by a bigger mistake. One that had kept him up last night feeding himself his own lunch. One that he wished he didn't recall with the same clarity with which he recalled everything else about the previous evening.

Without saying much more than a mumbled "I'll be right back," he'd gathered up his clothes and made his way to the bathroom. He'd dressed, and as he'd stood in front of the toilet, watching the condom swirl around and get sucked down the bowl, he'd freaked. Not because of the usual past issues, like what lie he was going to tell or how to get out of the room without a scene. No, he'd freaked because there had been a point in the evening when he hadn't given a damn about anything but getting Kate naked. It wasn't that he'd forgotten his past mistakes or the trouble it had caused. It was more that Kate made him not care. While he'd been with her, eating whipped cream from her breasts and thrusting deep inside where she was slick and tight around his cock, he hadn't given a damn. He'd wanted Kate, and nothing else had mattered. But after the fever had passed, his disregard for the consequences had freaked him out and he'd run like hell. But not before he'd kissed her on the forehead and committed the most spectacular fuck-up of the night.

He'd looked into her brown eyes and told her "thanks" like she'd just passed him the salt. Then he'd bolted out the back door.

Rob glanced at his watch and turned off the freeway at the Denny exit. It was ten o'clock in Gospel. If he called the M &S, he could catch Kate and try to explain or apologize or something. He reached for the cell phone hooked to his belt but returned his hand to the wheel. He'd deal with that problem when he got home-in person. Hell, maybe he hadn't even messed up. Maybe she wasn't all that upset. Maybe he'd imagined the look on her face when he'd told her thanks and kissed her head.

Right now, he had another problem to face. One that was very real.

He found a parking spot a few blocks from Louisa's condo, and by the time he knocked on her door, he'd pushed Kate to the back of his head. A problem he would deal with later.

Louisa's blonde hair was pulled back in a pony-tail, and she was dressed as if she were about to go out for a jog in tight black spandex. She was fit and toned and could probably crack a walnut on her ass. She hugged him and kissed his jaw, and he felt nothing. No stirring interest in the pit of his stomach. No desire to turn his face and kiss her lips. No pinch in his chest or tug at his heart. Nothing.

He found Amelia sitting in her highchair in the kitchen eating dry Cheerios on her tray. She held up her arms for him and said through a bright smile, "Daddy's here."

At the sight of his child his heart lifted in his chest. "Hey, baby girl." He nibbled a Cheerio stuck on her finger, and then he nibbled her neck. She laughed and shrieked and pulled his hair. "Ready to go?"

"What are you two doing today?" Louisa asked from the doorway.

"I'm not sure." He took Amelia from the chair. "Maybe we'll go see if the guys are in town," he said, referring to his old Chinook teammates. "Maybe we'll go skate, or if the sun stays out, get a kite and go to the park."

"I thought we could all go to the zoo tomorrow. She really likes the pygmy marmosets."

Rob looked over the top of Amelia's dark head at his former wife. He didn't love her and knew he would never love her again. He would have to tell her, but not now. Not while he held his daughter in his arms. "Sounds good."

Louisa smiled. "I'll pick you and Amelia up around noon tomorrow then."

Before he left town he knew she'd want to talk about getting back together, and he wasn't looking forward to the conversation. Maybe he'd invite her over to his loft in a few days, after he figured out exactly what he wanted to say. While Amelia napped, he'd make her see that a reconciliation wouldn't work. He'd figure out some way of telling her that he didn't love her without making her angry or hurting her feelings. Hell, he wasn't convinced she still loved him. More than likely, she was just falling back into the same old pattern of their past.

The next day Louisa showed up at the loft right on time. The weather held as they walked about the Woodland zoo, looking at water buffalo and tomato frogs. When Amelia fell asleep in her stroller at the coastal desert exhibit, she brought up the subject of getting back together. "Have you given any more thought to what we talked about on the phone the other night?"

He really didn't want to talk about it in public.

"I don't think this is the place to talk about it."

"I do." She looked up at him and shoved her hair behind her ears, revealing the three carat diamond earrings he'd given her the day she'd given birth to Amelia. "The answer is easy, Rob. Either you've thought about it or you haven't. Either you want to be a family with me and Amelia or you don't."

It was so typical of Louisa to push until she irritated him. Leaving him no choice, he said, "Yeah, I've thought about it. Amelia is the most important thing in my life. I love her and I would do anything for her." He could tell Louisa a kind lie, but the problem was, he didn't know any kind lies. "The thing is, I don't love you the way a man should love a woman he is thinking about living with. If we got back together, it would end as badly as it did last time."

Her brows drew together and he saw the hurt in her eyes before she turned to look at the penguins diving off rocks into the water. She started to cry, and he felt like an asshole. People walking by looked at him like he was an asshole, too, but he hadn't known what else to say. And now she was crying right in front of him and everyone else in the coastal desert exhibit. "I'm sorry."

"I guess I'd rather you told me the truth." She brushed her fingertips beneath her eyes, and her shoulders shook. Rob didn't know if he should hold her or stand back. He never knew what to do with a crying woman. Guilt churned in his stomach, and he tightened his grasp on the stroller's handle.

"Could you get me a tissue?" she asked between sobs.

"Where are they?"

She waved a hand toward the stroller. "Baby bag."

Rob squatted down and rummaged through the huge pink bag in the bottom of the stroller. He found a box of Kleenex and handed Louisa a few.

"Thank you." She wiped her eyes and her nose, but she kept her head down and wouldn't look at him. "Are you in love with someone else?"

Rob thought of Kate. He thought of her laughter and soft red hair. Of the way she made him feel, like he wanted to grab her and roll around with her. "No, I'm not in love with anyone else." It was the truth. He wasn't in love with Kate, but he liked a lot of things about her.

Somehow they got through the rest of the zoo with only a few more breakdowns. One in the tropical rainforest building, the other by the kangaroos. Louisa didn't mention a reconciliation again until he dropped Amelia off on his way to the airport for his return flight to Idaho.

"Since neither of us are in love with anyone else," she said, "maybe we can be friends. We'll start there and see where it goes." She stuck out her hand. "Friends?"

He took Louisa's hand as Amelia started to cry and cling to his neck. "Don't go, Daddy," she wailed.

"We can be friends, Lou. That'd be great," he said over Amelia's crying. He didn't add that he wasn't interested in seeing where it went. Right now, one crying female was enough, and he didn't think he could handle another scene like the one at the zoo. He kissed his daughter's cheek and pried her arms from his neck. He handed her over to Louisa, and she gave a bloodcurdling scream as if he'd just cut off her little arm or something.

"Go, Rob," Louisa said above the racket. "She's tired. She'll be fine."

With his heart throbbing painfully in his chest, he walked from the condo, hearing Amelia's pitiful wailing halfway to the elevator.

"Christ," he muttered and swallowed hard. He was Rob Sutter. For over a decade, he'd been one of the most feared players in the NFL. He'd been shot and lived to talk about it. He took a deep breath and punched a button for the elevator. If he didn't get a grip, he was going to start crying like a little girl.

Barely an hour after Rob returned home from Seattle, he hooked up the elementary school float and pulled it behind his HUMMER in the Easter parade. He looked for Kate as he passed the M &S, and he saw her standing with a cowboy from the Rocking T ranch. His name was Buddy something. Through the HUMMER windows, her gaze met his. Then her eyes got the squinty look he recognized, and she turned away. No smile. No wave. He got his answer. Yep, she was mad as hell.

After the parade, he went to Sutter Sports and tried to catch up on his work. He had over a thousand e-mails to read or delete. Of those thousand, about thirty were business related, and he had to respond. Forty boxes of inventory had arrived while he'd been away and needed to be processed.By eight that night, he'd gotten through half of what he needed to get done.

He was wiped out, but there was one more thing he had to do that couldn't wait. He reached for the telephone on his desk and dialed Stanley Caldwell's home number. No one picked up. Kate wasn't home, but he figured he knew where he could find her.

He stood and unbuttoned the cuffs of his black-and-green flannel shirt. He rolled up the sleeves and headed for the grange.

The trip took him about five minutes, and he could hear the thump of heavy bass and the twang of steel guitar as he pulled into the dirt parking lot. The door to the grange vibrated as he opened it and stepped inside.

Except for the bright lights shining on the stage and the bar at the other end, the inside was pitched in darkness. Rob ordered a beer from the bar then found a spot in front of a wall where it wasn't quite so dark. He wasn't sure, but it looked like tinfoil Easter eggs were hanging from the ceiling beams. Someone in a white bunny costume hopped around and handed out something from a basket. Rob placed a foot on the wall behind him. While his gaze scanned the crowd, searching for a certain redhead, a man with a head like a cue ball squeezed beside him.

"Hi," he said over the music. Rob glanced at him, at the words liza minnelli written in silvery glitter on the front of his sweatshirt. "I'm Tiffer Cladis. My mother may have mentioned me to you."

"Yeah, and I'm not gay." He returned his gaze to the crowd and spotted his mother and Stanley out on the dance floor.

"That's a shame. I've never been with a hockey player."

Rob raised his Budweiser to his lips. "That makes two of us."

"You're into women exclusively?"

"Yep, just women." Rob took a drink and spotted Kate over the bottom of the bottle. One of the Aberdeen twins had her out on the dance floor, two-stepping to some band's crappy rendition of Garth Brook's "Low Places." She had on a white shirt and some kind of pleated skirt. Red and really short. From halfway across the room, he watched her weave in and out of the crowd of dancers. He got a flash of leg, and desire curled in his stomach. "I'm into women in skirts," he said as he lowered the bottle.

"I could wear a skirt." Tiffer raised his beer. "I like to wear skirts."

Rob chuckled. "But you'd still have a dick and a five o'clock shadow."

"That's true."

Rob imagined Tiffer hadn't had an easy life. Especially living in a small town in Idaho. "Your mom tells me you're a female impersonator."

"Yeah. I do a very good Barbra."

"Is there a lot of demand for that in Boise?" The music ended and he watched Kate move from the dance floor to a small group of people that included the sheriff's wife. The light from the stage lit up the bottom half of her, and Rob could see that her skirt looked like a little kilt.

"No. That's why I work in an antique shop with my lover."

Rob had heard that Scottish men went commando beneath their kilts, and he wondered if Kate was keeping up with tradition. His gaze lowered down her long legs to those boots that kept him up at night. Literally. She placed the toe of one boot behind the heel of the other. She rocked her heel from side to side, enticing him. "Don't you think your lover might object to you propositioning other men?"

"No. He's married and has three children. He blends better than I do. Even when I try. Like tonight."

Rob looked at Tiffer's Liza sweatshirt and figured Tiffer might as well have had a neon sign with an arrow pointing at his head. If he really wanted to "blend," he should man-up. Scuff his white sneakers, chug his beer, and leave Liza at home.

"I date other people, too."

Rob returned his gaze to Kate. "Do you find anyone to date in Boise?"

"Actually, the gay population in Boise is bigger than you might think. There are several gay bars right in the heart of the city."

As Tiffer rattled on about the dating scene in Boise, Rob watched Kate. He'd come here to talk to her about the other night, but that wasn't all he wanted. Kate gave him something that had been missing in his life. Something that made her occupy his thoughts and order granola bars just to see her face. Something more than sex, although he wanted more of that too. And when he was through getting more, he was sure he'd want more of the same.

He took a drink of his beer and watched her laugh at something Shelly Aberdeen was saying. What he should have done was call her while he'd been in Seattle, but each time he'd reached for a phone, he'd stopped himself. The conversation he wanted to have with her should happen in person, and to be completely honest, he hadn't known what to say. He still didn't. "I'm sorry I pushed you to the floor and climbed on top of you," might be a good start, but not if she'd enjoyed herself as much as he'd enjoyed himself. Or as much as he'd thought she'd enjoyed herself. If he apologized, she might think he thought the sex had been bad, when it had really smoked. She was already mad at him, and if he… "Christ," he muttered-he was starting to think like a girl.

"Who do you keep staring at?"

He turned his attention to Tiffer. "Come on, I'll introduce you." He definitely should apologize for running out like he had. He'd start with that and see where it got him.

He moved through the crowd with Tiffer on his heels. They passed the Worsley brothers, who gave him evil glares until they spotted Tiffer. Then they put their heads together and pointed. It didn't take a genius to know what they were saying. Rob hoped they didn't make the mistake of saying it to his face. His mother and Stanley were in the crowded grange somewhere, and he didn't want his mother to see him mop the floor with the numb-nutted Worsleys.

Hope Taber looked up first and saw him. "Hey Rob," she said and moved to include him and Tiffer in their circle. "How's Adam working out at the sporting goods store?" she asked as the band tuned up for another song.

"Real good. He and Wally both." He stood next to Kate within an oblong pool of blue light that spilled from the dance floor. The sleeve of his flannel shirt brushed her arm. "Have you ladies met Regina's son, Tiffer?"

"Of course," Shelly said and reached for Tiffer's hand. "Your mother told me you were coming home for Easter. She's been excited for weeks."

"It's good to be back for a visit," he said, but he didn't sound very convincing. He glanced across Rob at Kate and looked her up and down. "Love the naughty highlander look."

"Thank you." She subjected Tiffer to the same up and down scrutiny. "Love your Liza sweatshirt."

The band struck up Tim McGraw's "Real Good Man," and Rob leaned closer to Kate. "I need to talk to you."

"Talk."

"On the dance floor."

She pasted on a phony smile and turned to look at him. Her voice was a tad too cheerful when she said, "Whatever you have to say to me, you can say it right here."

He wasn't buying the cheery crap for a second. He leaned in and spoke next to her ear. "Are you sure about that? 'Cause I was going to comment on how much I enjoyed eating whipped cream off your nipples."

Her mouth fell open, then snapped shut. "You wouldn't say that."

"Yeah, I would. Especially since the Worsley brothers are gearing up to tell everyone that Tiffer here is my boyfriend. Call it a preemptive strike just to prove I'm into girls." Her hair smelled like it had the other night. Kind of like spring flowers. "If you don't believe I'll do it, we could always bet again. I like betting with you."

"You don't play fair." She folded her arms across her chest. "You cheat."

"Guilty." He leaned back and looked into her face. "Shall we?" He didn't wait for her answer before taking her elbow. "Excuse us." He set his beer on a nearby table and moved with her to the middle of the dance floor. He placed his palm in the middle of her back and folded her hand in his. They both took a step forward at the same time, and her chest collided with his. Not that he minded. "Honey, I'm going to lead this one." They started again. She let him lead, but dancing with her was like holding on to a wooden cutout. "Relax," he said next to her temple.

"l am."

"No. You're moving like you have a stick up your butt."

"Charming." His hand slipped a little lower to the waist of her wool skirt. "Say what you have to say, but make it quick," she said.

"Are you wearing panties under that skirt?"

"Is that what you want to know?"

Well, it was one of the things he wanted to know. "Not if you don't want to tell me." He moved with her closer to the stage, and the bright lights slid through the deep reds of her hair. The music was too loud, so he waited until they moved away from the stage and into the deeper shadows of the dance floor. "I think I need to apologize, but I'm not sure exactly what I should apologize for." He pulled back and looked at her for some clue as to how to proceed. Women could twist things until a guy didn't know which end was up. He spun her around and brought her so close to his chest that her breasts brushed the front of his shirt.

"Are you waiting for me to tell you what you should apologize for?"

That might help. He shook his head. "No." But he was absolutely not going to admit that she'd scared the shit out of him. "I know you're mad about the other night." He looked down into her face, and she lowered her gaze to his shoulder. "I know that I had a great time, but I'm just not sure you did. You said you wanted me to make love to you, and I got kind of carried away. I'm afraid I might have been too rough and hurt you."

Her brows drew together. "You didn't hurt me."

"Oh, that's good." She wasn't mad about doing it on the floor. He was relieved and pulled her closer to his chest. Again he wondered if she was wearing panties under that kilt, but he knew better than to ask. "I'm sorry I ran out like I did."

She pushed away and put a few inches between them. "You're only saying you're sorry because you think I'm going to have sex with you again."

That wasn't the only reason. Although he'd been kind of hoping she'd be open to more than dancing in the grange. He'd been thinking along the lines of a mattress tango. "I was sorry about it the night I walked out of the grocery store."

"If that's true, you wouldn't have waited so long to talk to me about it. No, now that we've had sex, you think I should just have sex with you whenever you feel like it."

He might have taken a few punches to the head during his former career, but he wasn't idiot enough to confess that sex whenever he felt like it sounded like a damn good idea. "I've been out of town. True, I could have called, but I wanted to talk to you face-to-face."

The music stopped, and she pulled out of his embrace. "And now you have."

He grasped her arm to make sure she didn't run away. "Come home with me."

"Why?"

Why? He thought the answer was obvious. "So we can talk." Among other things. Like checking out what she was wearing under that skirt.

"And end up in your bed."

"I'd love to have you naked in my bed."

"Then afterward you can kiss me on the head and tell me thanks, as if I just bagged your groceries? I don't think so."

"Not one of my finer moves." He cleared his throat and scratched the side of his neck. "I'll make it up to you."

"No."

"Excuse me," Tiffer said as he joined them. "I'm hoping the tart in the tartan will dance with me."

Rob stepped back, expecting all hell to break loose. Instead she tossed her red hair and laughed.

"I'd love to dance with you," she said and took Tiffer's arm. They moved onto the dance floor, leaving a stunned Rob to watch from the sidelines.

He'd bet his left eyeball that if he'd called her a tart, she wouldn't have laughed about it. She would have gotten that squinty look in her eyes and called him a few choice names. Then she would have puckered up and given him a cold shoulder. Or in her case, colder shoulder.

He turned away and moved through the crowd toward the bar. Maybe he was wasting his time on Kate. She was uptight and mad most of the time. Sure he liked her, but at the moment he couldn't recall why.

"Hey there, Rob," Rose Lake called out. He stopped and watched her approach. Her blonde hair was like a shiny beacon in the dim lights of the grange. A genuine smile curved her mouth. Imagine that. An attractive woman who was actually glad to see him.

Kate was beautiful and sexy and smart, but she was not the only woman in town.