Trouble With Valentine's Day

Twelve

The sun was out, and site didn't bother throwing her coat over her lime green beb sweater and black jeans. On her way across the parking lot she glanced in the plastic grocery bag and discovered a Paper Mate mechanical pencil some Krazy Glue, and three granola bars. She'c never been inside the sports store, and a set of bells hanging on one side of the double doors announced her arrival. span

Her first impression was of dark varnished wood and forest green wainscoting. Canoes and kayaks were suspended from the ceiling, and a row of mountain bikes were lined up in front of several aisles of fishing poles and camping equipment. She glanced around for the owner of the store, but she seemed to be the only person around.

"Kate."

She looked up past a wall of hiking gear to the loft. Rob stood looking down at her, his hands gripping the half wall that extended across the loft and down the stairs.

"Could you bring that up here, please?"

The sound of her shoes on the hardwood echoed off the walls. He watched her progress as she climbed up the stairs and entered the loft. An oak desk sat in the center with a flat-screen monitor and keyboard on it. Stacks of papers and folders and magazines cluttered the top of the desk.

"Finally. Lunch," he said as he walked toward her wearing a pair of jeans and a deep beige chamois shirt with the sleeves rolled up his arms. He reached for the sack, and the sleeves slid up his forearms, the color of the shirt closely matching the deeper shades of his tattoo.

"I didn't see a snake when I was at your house," she said as she handed him the grocery bag.

He looked into the sack, then returned his gaze to hers. "I had to sell Chloe back to the breeder once Amelia came home from the hospital. Couldn't keep a six-pound baby in the same apartment as a python."

"No. I guess not." And because she was dying to know, she asked, "How long were you married?"

He moved to the far corner of the room and, for the first time since she met him, she watched the way he walked. "From beginning to end, a little over a year." His long, graceful strides showed no lingering sign of injury. He moved as easily as if he'd never been hit with a.22, and his knee shattered. He set the bag on a scarred workbench crowded with feathers and thread.

"Short marriage."

"We'd been together off and on for about four years. We never should have married, but Louisa got pregnant so we gave it a try." He took the mechanical pencil and glue out of the bag and set them on the workbench. "Come over here. I want to show you something."

Kate didn't think cheating was giving a marriage much of a try, but she really didn't want to pass judgment when she didn't know anything about the relationship. Or maybe she was rationalizing his behavior because he looked incredibly hot today.

She moved across the room and stopped next to him. He was bent at the waist, inspecting something through a magnifier clamped to the front of a small vise about the size of a medium, needleless syringe. "I just finished this elk wing caddis. Trout in the Big Wood River won't be able to resist it. Isn't it beautiful?"

She knew it was a fly. The kind you fished with, but beautiful? No. The silver Tiffany cuff she'd just gotten in the mail was beautiful. "What's it made of?"

He reached out to adjust the gooseneck lamp and shone the light directly on it. "The body is dubbed fur and the wings are elk hair."

She had no idea what dubbed fur was. "Real elk hair?"

"Yep." Why? "Where do you get real elk hair?" She placed her hands on her knees and leaned in for a closer look.

"Usually I buy it, but this particular elk hair came off of Lewis Plummer's six-point buck last fall."

She turned her head and looked at him. His face was a few inches from hers, close enough to see the different shades of green in his eyes. "Yuck," she said, but the word came out kind of low and lacked conviction. "Can't you get fake hair?"

He shook his head. "I only use organic materials." His gaze continued to stare into hers as he asked, "Do you want to see my yellow humpy? It's a beauty."

His habit of inserting sexual innuendo was really juvenile. "Gee, Rob, I don't know. Does it require you dropping your pants?"

His brows drew together, then he chuckled, a soft caress of a sound that touched her cheek. "You have a dirty mind, Kate." He ran his gaze over her face. "But I happen to like that in a woman." The shoulder of his chamois shirt brushed her shoulder as he placed a palm on his workbench and leaned past her.

Kate straightened and watched him open one of four wooden boxes about the size of a makeup case. Several levels folded out like stepladders, revealing hundreds of flies. "It should be right here," he said as he lightly sifted through them with his fingertips. He shut the case, then opened a drawer in the bench. "Ahh, here it is." He stood up straight, took Kate's hand in his, and set a brown-and-beige fuzzy fly in her palm. Coarse hair stuck out around the eye of the hook like bushing. The hair continued down the shank wrapped in yellow thread, and shot out the end like a little tail.

"Humpy is the style," he explained as he touched the fly. The tip of his finger brushed her life line and scattered her nerves.

"This is your humpy?"

"Yeah. The dark hair is grizzly and the lighter yellow hair is yearling elk. I spent most of the winter getting this one just right."

Okay, maybe she'd been wrong about the sexual innuendo this time, but she didn't dwell on it because the insides of her elbows started to do the odd tingling his touch always seemed to inspire. And this time her stomach got a little light, too. She swallowed hard and told herself not to be ridiculous. This was not the man she should get all weak over. He had heartache written all over him. And yeah, she was supposed to be working on her pessimism, but that didn't mean Rob wasn't a heartbreaker.

While her sensible head fought for control of her foolish body, Rob seemed oblivious to the chaos he caused. He also seemed so pleased with the fly that she didn't have the heart to tell him that grizzly and elk hair was gross. "Have you been tying flies long?"

"Oh yeah." His gaze traveled up her arm to her lips, then finally her eyes. "My dad taught me when I was a kid." He took the yellow humpy from her and replaced it with a fly that looked like a little mouse. "This is a muskrat. The trout in the Big Wood won't go for this, it's more for bass and pike."

With her hand still cupped in his, she looked down at the incredibly real-looking rodent. "Don't tell me that's a real ear?"

He chuckled. "No. It's leather." Thank God. She glanced back up past the little white scar on his chin, over his nose with the slight bump she'd noticed the first night she'd seen him, and into his eyes. "You made this too?"

"Yeah. It took me awhile to shave the hair perfect."

She didn't know which surprised her more, that a former hockey player with big hands could tie something so intricate, or that he was interested in tying flies at all. Or perhaps it was the fact that they were actually having a real conversation. Like real adults. "This is nice, Rob."

"I have over a thousand."

"Wow, that's a lot."

His gaze dropped to her lips. "Tying helps me take my mind off things."

"What things?"

Without taking his eyes from her mouth, he shook his head. "Don't ask."

"Why?"

"It's one of those things I'd have to show you?" His gaze returned to hers and his voice lowered. "Do you want me to show you, Kate?"

The way he said her name, all smooth and rough at the same time, as if he were making love to her, made her throat go dry. She swallowed hard, but he didn't wait for an answer. He slid his hand up her arm to her shoulder and the side of her neck. His fingers combed through her hair from underneath, and he held the back of her head in his hand. Slowly he pulled her to him, and she did not resist, sucked in by the sexual promise in his green eyes.

"I thought we were just going to be friends," she managed before she lost her mind completely.

"We both knew that wasn't going to last long." He lowered his mouth to hers, and she turned her face at the last moment. His lips touched her cheek, and he kissed his way to the side of her throat.

"But it was your idea."

"I have a better one." She felt his hot open mouth just below her ear. "Do you wanna hear what it is?"

She placed a hand on his shoulder and shook her head.

He told her anyway. "I think we should make out like teenagers. Just rub up against each other and see what happens next."

Kate knew what would happen next, and a traitorous side of her wanted that too. The traitorous side that wanted to forget. Forget that she was better off not liking him. Forget that he was a bad risk and get on with kissing and rubbing and other things. A side of her that hadn't felt this good in a long time, but she was stronger than her traitorous side. "This is a bad idea."

He chuckled against her jaw, and a shivery warmth slid down her neck. "There's a part of me that thinks it's a very good idea."

She was afraid she knew what part he was talking about. The part of him she'd felt a few days ago.

"I want to feel you up like we're sixteen in the backseat of a car. On the outside of your clothes," he said just above a whisper. "Touch you all over, then slide my hands up under your shirt." But he didn't touch her with his hands. Instead he pulled her head back and slid his open mouth to the hollow of her throat. "Mmm, you taste good right here. Your skin is like dessert."

Kate closed her eyes as he gently sucked her flesh into his hot, wet mouth. She liked dessert. Dessert was a good thing, and this man was very good at making her want to be his dessert. Very good at waking desire in every cell in her body. His every breath against her skin whispered his hunger and need, and her body responded. Her breasts tightened and her nipples got hard. She locked her knees to keep from sliding to the floor. He was very good at making her want him back, of forgetting that she had to stop him. "You have to stop now," she said and opened her eyes. The mouse fly fell from her free hand, and she placed her palms on his chest. She couldn't quite force herself to step from his embrace. Not yet.

"I will. Eventually." His free hand slid around the small of her back, and he pulled her against him. Tight. He was hard against her lower abdomen, and desire pooled between her legs. He pressed his forehead to hers. "Tell me you're not crazy."

"What?"

"You're not crazy, are you, Kate?"

At the moment, she felt kind of crazy. Mixed up. Desire warring with common sense. "No."

"Stalked, harassed, or shot anyone?"

He wanted to know that she wasn't another Stephanie Andrews. A psycho who'd stalk him with a.22 after "good sex." The desire fogging her brain cleared enough for her to step from his embrace. "I googled you the other night."

His brows lowered, and he shook his head as if trying to clear his mind. "You what me?"

"I looked you up on the Internet."

"Ahh." He turned away as if she'd just thrown cold water on him. "Did you read all the juicy details of my past?"

"I don't know if I read all of them, but I understand now why you turned me down that first night in Sun Valley."

He moved to the workbench and dumped out the grocery sack. With his broad back to her, he picked up the pencil and tore open the package. "Getting shot tends to discourage a guy from having a one-night stand." He pulled out the pencil and tossed the package on the desk. "It also gets a guy divorced. Although I think that was probably doomed to fail before it even started."

Kate walked toward him. "Did you love her?"

"Stephanie Andrews?" He looked across his shoulder at her. "Hell no!"

Kate had never understood how a man could love his wife yet cheat on her. "I meant your wife."

He nodded as he took the pencil apart. "Yeah, I loved her. Trouble was, I didn't like her most of the time. She didn't like me either. We really only got along when we were in bed, and that wasn't all that often. Either I was on the road or we were fighting."

Kate had never loved someone but not liked them. No, her problem was that she loved men who didn't love her enough.

"Still, I would have preferred a different end to my marriage." He removed the spring and lead from the pencil, then set them aside. "My career, too."

"More dignified?"

"Dignified? Yeah, that's a good word. Getting shot takes away your dignity. You wake up in a hospital bed with tubes stuck in your stomach and… other places. You're weak and helpless and everything about it sucks."

Kate imagined that to any man, being weak and helpless would be hard. But to a guy like Rob, used to hammering opponents into submission, it must have been extremely difficult.

"Then when you finally do get on your feet again, your whole life is different. No job. No wife. No nothing, except the sordid details on the Internet for everyone to read." He pulled a sewing needle from a package and snipped off the eye. "No love life either."

She didn't think he was talking about the falling-in-love kind of love life. She knew firsthand, so to speak, that he was physically capable of having sex. He wasn't married, although that obviously hadn't hampered him in the past. "How long since you've had a love life?"

He looked at her. "Are you asking how long it's been since I've had sex?"

They both knew she was, so why deny it? "Yeah."

One corner of his mouth turned down in a frown. "Never mind."

"Six months?"

He turned away.

"One year?" She knew from interviewing a lot of people over the years that most often the answer was found in what wasn't said.

"Drop it, Kate."

"Two years?"

He set down the needle and turned to face her. "You seem awfully interested in my sex life."

"You brought it up." She shrugged. "And I don't know if I'm 'awfully interested.' I'd call it a mild curiosity."

"What exactly are you curious about?" He took a step toward her. "How long it's been? Or how good it would be between us?" His lids lowered a fraction over his eyes. "I gotta admit that I'm curious about that myself."

She took a step back. "You and I having sex together is a very bad idea."

"You've already said that." He took a step forward.

She stuck her hand out like a traffic cop. "Stop. We can't have sex."

"Sure we can. We're both over twenty-one and neither of us is crazy. I want you and I know you want me. You wanted me the first night we met, and I'm thinking I was an idiot not to drag you up to my room."

There were several very good reasons that had nothing to do with age. One of which she gave. "That's why I can't have sex with you."

He took a determined step toward her, and her palm flattened against the front of his shirt. "Are you still mad that I didn't drag you up to my room?"

She shook her head and her hair brushed her shoulders. "I can't have sex with you because I know you now."

"But you could have sex with me when you didn't know me?" He grabbed her wrist. "That doesn't make sense."

"Yes it does." She looked into his eyes and tried to explain. "That night in Sun Valley, you were supposed to be part of my fantasy. My fantasy of picking up a stranger in a bar. I was supposed to use and abuse you and kick you out."

"You still can."

"No. You're real now." She tried to pull free, but he didn't let go. "You killed all my fantasies."

"I'll give you a new fantasy. God knows I have hundreds." He raised her hand to his mouth. "Do you want to hear one?" he asked against her palm, but he didn't wait for her answer. "My favorite involves you wearing your black dominatrix boots."

She stopped trying to pull away. He fantasized about her? No man had ever admitted that he fantasized about her. Her. Kate Hamilton and her size ten boots. She felt herself weaken. Almost give in. She should leave. Run away. Fast. And she would. But she hadn't been able to work up a good fantasy of her own for a while now. It seemed only right that he should share his. "What else am I wearing?"

"Nothing."

"What are you wearing?"

"A hard-on and a smile."

She didn't know if she should laugh or pretend outrage. He looked serious except for the teasing laugh lines at the corners of his eyes. "Where does the fantasy take place?"

"In my bed." He placed her palm on the side of his neck and slid his hand to her waist. "On my pool table." He pulled her so close that her breasts touched the front of his shirt. "My car." The teasing lines at the corners of his eyes disappeared by the time he added, "Right here. Anywhere I happen to be standing," he lowered his mouth and said just above her lips.

"You star in every one of my fantasies." He kissed her, a gentle caress of lips and tongue in stark contrast to the hard, fast beating of her heart.

Kate slipped her hand to the back of his neck and leaned into him, the weight of her breasts pressed into his chest. Her nipples tightened. She wanted this. This hot liquid pumping through her veins and pooling between her legs. Making her feel wanted and needed, her skin buzzing with sexual need. It was wrong. He was bad for her. But… it had been a long time since a man had wanted her anywhere he happened to be standing. A long time since she'd felt the heavy pull of desire take over and shut out the pessimist in her head.

She fed him a deep, hot kiss that had him groaning into her mouth. He tasted a little of granola, of need and sex. He cupped her breast through her sweater, and she arched against his rock-hard penis, feeling the heavy length of him pressed into her lower abdomen.

His free hand grabbed her behind, and he pulled her up onto her toes. He pushed himself against the apex of her thighs as his thumb brushed across her hard nipples. Back and forth, an unhurried rhythm in perfect time to his erection he rubbed against her crotch. A maddening, frustrated, moan escaped her throat as she threaded her fingers in the back of his hair.

The ringing of the bells on the door barely penetrated the sounds of heavy breathing in the loft.

"Mr. Sutter?"

Rob straightened, and his hand dropped from her behind. He looked toward the front of the store as the sound of two young voices rose from below.

"Are you here?"

"Shit." Rob removed his other hand from Kate's breast and looked at his watch. "I forgot I told those two boys to come on by." He returned his attention to Kate. His gaze filled with lust and hunger. "Give me a few minutes, and I'll be right down," he called out, his voice rough.

"Okay."

"Stay here and wait for me, Kate. I won't be gone long."

She took a deep breath, and her sanity partially returned. At least enough to allow her to take a step back. "No."

He reached for her, but she moved, and his hand grasped empty air. She kept on moving before he could touch her and make her change her mind. Before he could make her forget that he was just heartache number twenty-six. The latest on the long list of men that were bad for her. That wasn't her inner pessimist talking, either. It was the truth.

Just before she reached the doorway he called out, "You can't say no forever, Kate Hamilton. Someday I'm going to make you say yes."

She didn't dare stop. She moved down the stairs and through the store. With her hand on the front door handle, she paused and looked back over her shoulder. He stood in the loft, his hands gripping the railing.

"Someday real soon," he said.

Rob whistled to "Sex Type Thing" as he twisted hare's mask dubbing and tan thread into a long thin strand. He attached the bobbin to one end, then wound the dubbing around the shank of a three-inch hook clamped in a vise. Several fluffy strands of dubbing landed on the knee of his jeans, then drifted to the toe of his white sock.

As Scott Weiland sang about being a man who could give a woman something she wouldn't forget, a smile lifted the corners of Rob's mouth. Kate didn't think sex was a good idea, but she was just plain wrong. That afternoon, he'd given her fair warning that he was going to make her change her mind. He'd been serious. He was going to give her something she wouldn't forget.

He wound the thread and dubbing to the eye of the hook, then spun the bobbin and loosened the stand. During a pause in the music, the clock on the mantel in his living room downstairs chimed ten times. He wanted Kate. She wanted him. She wasn't crazy. It was inevitable.

Both times he'd kissed her, she'd kissed him back like she was never going to stop. Earlier, she'd melted against him, so hot his hair had about caught fire. He'd touched her breast and thrust his hard-on into her, and if those boys hadn't come into the store, he would have had her naked and up against the wall before she'd known what hit her.

The bobbin swayed as he stripped the excess dubbing from the thread. He turned in his chair and selected a gold-and-black hackle feather from his assorted trays of feathers and fur. He stripped the barbs, then secured the stem to the hook shank with three tight wraps of his thread.

Other than wanting Kate on her back and in his bed, he didn't know how he felt about her. She was stubborn and competitive and had a smart mouth, but he didn't mind those qualities in a woman.

He clamped a pair of hackle pliers on the tip of the feather and wound it toward the bend in the hook. By rote, his hands passed the pliers back and forth as he wound the feather over and under the shank.

Kate was competent and believed she could damn well take care of herself. Some men didn't like that about her, but he didn't mind those qualities either. In fact, he didn't care for clinging, needy women.

At the bend in the hook, he tied down the hackle feather with wire, then wound it up the shank toward the eye. Kate was smart and beautiful and sexy. Most important, she wasn't a psycho.

The cordless telephone sitting next to his elbow rang. He glanced at the caller ID and hit the mute on his stereo. He pressed the connect button on the phone and said, "Hey, Lou. What's up?"

"Well, I've been thinking," his ex-wife began.

"About?"

"About our conversation the other night, and I didn't want you to think I was mad about Easter."

He released the pliers and set them on the workbench. "Amelia is young enough that she won't remember, and besides, it's not your weekend anyway."

A suddenly reasonable Louisa worried him. "Are you dating someone?" The last time she'd been this pleasant had been the time she'd been in love with a Boeing executive. She'd wanted Rob to stay with the baby while she flew off to Cancun with her new man, which he'd been happy to do. Her relationship with the exec had ended last fall, before she'd started dropping hints of a reconciliation.

"No," she answered. "I'm not dating anymore."

Rob stood and moved his head from side to side. "Why not?"

"Because I think you and I should give our relationship another try. We're older and wiser now. We have Amelia's future to think about."

There it was. Right out in the open now, and he could no longer ignore it. "Why are you bringing this up now, over the phone? I'm going to be there in a few days."

"I didn't want to hit you with it when you walked in the door. I wanted you to think about it before you got here." She took a deep breath and let it out. "We can make it work this time, Rob."

He walked from the room and turned off the light behind him. "We talked about this when I moved to Gospel. You wouldn't be happy living here, and I'm not happy living in Seattle."

"We can work something out."

He entered his bedroom and walked past the entertainment center to the big window. "You'd hate it here. No Nordstrom, or jazz clubs, or dinner at The Four Seasons." He looked out at the dark shores of Fish Hook Lake and added, "The closest movie theater is an hour away."

Silence stretched across the distance and he didn't think there was anything she could say to make him consider a reconciliation. They'd screwed it up too many times in the past. "Amelia misses you."

Except that. He closed his eyes and leaned his forehead against the cool glass, "What's she doing?"

"She's asleep."

He hadn't been there to put her to bed. He loved when she fell asleep in his arms and he carried her to the crib he'd converted into a little bed. Guilt ate him up inside, but he reminded himself that he would miss putting her to bed every night even if he lived full time in his loft in Seattle.

"I think we can work it out and be a family. Will you think about it?"

A family. They'd never really been a family. He loved his daughter, and at one time, he'd loved Louisa. The idea of a happy family life held a lot of appeal for him. He was often lonely, but the key word was happy. Could he and Louisa be happy together? He didn't know. "I'll think about it," he said.

After he pressed disconnect, he tossed the phone on a chair to his left. He scrubbed his face with his hands and looked out at the lake. The wind had picked up in the last few hours and blew black ripples across the surface.

He thought of his ex-wife, pictured her gorgeous face and killer body. At one time she'd seemed like the ideal woman. The perfect balance of natural beauty and expensive grooming. And she wanted to try and live together again. Problem was, when he was around her gorgeous face and killer body, there was no urgency to grab her up and bury his nose in her neck. There was no twist and pull of desire that made him want to run his hands all over her.

Kate made him feel those things. He wanted her like a man should want a woman. She made him feel the biting, animalistic urge to pick her up, throw her down, and get on with it. The kind of urge that a man should feel for an ex-wife he was thinking about getting back together with. But was desire, or lack of desire, a reason to reject the notion out of hand? Wasn't there more to a good relationship than sex? When he and Louisa had been married, the sex had been good but everything else had pretty much sucked. So if everything but the sex was good in a relationship, could it work?

The more Rob thought about it, the more confused he got. His temples began to pound, and the longer he let it all tumble around in his mind, the bigger his headache got until he could hardly think at all.

There was only thing he was real clear about. Until he got it all sorted out in his own mind, he'd have to resist Kate Hamilton.

He'd learned his lesson about talking reconciliation with one woman while having sex with another. He'd been there and done that, and he didn't need that kind of trouble.