Trouble With Valentine's Day

Two

By thirteen, Kate had become an infrequent visitor to Gospel, Idaho. As a kid, she'd loved hiking in the wilderness area and swimming in Fish Hook Lake. She'd loved helping out at the M&S Market, her grandparents' small grocery store. But once she'd entered her teen years, hanging out with her grandparents hadn't been cool any longer, and she'd only visited on rare occasions. span

The last time Kate had been in Gospel had been to attend her grandmother's funeral. Looking back, that trip had been a short, painful blur. This trip was less painful, but the moment she lay eyes on her grandfather, she knew there would be nothing short about her stay.

Stanley Caldwell owned a grocery store filled with food. He butchered fresh meat and bought fresh produce, yet he ate TV dinners every night. Swanson Hungry Man. Turkey or meat loaf.

He kept his house clean, but after two years, it was still cluttered with Tom Jones memorabilia,which Kate thought odd since her grandmother had been the Tom Jones fanatic, not her grandfather. In fact, he'd gone out of his way to indicate that her obsession was something he supported but did not share. Just as she had not shared his love of big game hunting.

Of the two, Melba Caldwell had been more devoted to Tom than Stanley had been to hunting. Every summer Kate's grandfather had driven her grandmother, like a pilgrim journeying to holy sites, to Las Vegas and the MGM Grand to worship with the faithful. And every year, instead of bits of paper or teaspoons of milk, Melba had carried an extra pair of panties in her handbag.

Kate had accompanied her grandmother to one of Tom's shows a number of years ago. Once had been enough. She'd been eighteen, and seeing her grandmother whip out a pair of red silkies and toss them on stage had scarred Kate for life. They'd sailed through the air like a kite and had wrapped around Tom's mic stand. Even now, after all these years, the mental picture of Tom wiping sweat from his brow with her grandmother's panties disturbed her and caused a deep groove in the center of her forehead.

Kate's grandmother had been gone for two years, but nothing of hers had been packed up and put away. Tom Jones chotchkes were everywhere. It was as if her grandfather kept the memory of her grandmother alive through sex bomb ashtrays, Delilah shot glasses and pussycat bobble heads. As if to lose those things would be to lose her completely.

He refused to hire more day help in the grocery store, even though he could certainly afford it. The Aberdeen twins and Jenny Plummer rotated the night shift. The store was closed on Sundays, and the only real difference was that now Kate worked with him at the M&S instead of Melba.

He was so old-fashioned that he still did the bookkeeping by hand in a big ledger. He kept track of his sales and inventory in different color-coordinated books just as he had since the 1960s. He absolutely refused to step into the twenty-first century and didn't own a computer. The only piece of modern office equipment he owned was a desk calculator.

If things didn't change, he was going to work himself into an early grave. Kate wondered if that was what he secretly hoped. She'd come to Gospel for a break, to get away from her life for a short while. One look into her grandfather's sad face and even sadder existence, and she'd known there was no way she could leave him until he was living again. Not just going through the motions.

She'd been in Gospel for two weeks now, but it had only taken her two days to see that Gospel really hadn't changed that much since she was a kid. There was a sameness about Gospel, a day-to-day predictability, that Kate was surprised to discover appealed to her. There was a certain peace in knowing your neighbors. And even though those neighbors were all locked and loaded, there was comfort in knowing they weren't likely to go on some wild killing spree.

At least not until spring. Like the black bears that roamed the wilderness area, the town pretty much hibernated during the winter months. Once the regular hunting season was over in the late fall, there wasn't a lot to do until the snow melted.

As far as Kate could tell, the townspeople had a love/hate relationship with tourists and were suspicious of anyone without an Idaho "famous potatoes" license plate bolted to their bumper. They had a distrust of California and felt a superiority over anyone not born and raised in Idaho.

After all these years, Gospel still had only two diners. At the Cozy Corner Cafe, the specials of the day were still fried chicken and chicken fried steak. The town had two grocery stores. The M&S was the smaller of the two, with only one checkout. On the outskirts of town, two different churches lined the same street. One nondenominational, the other Mormon. Gospel had five bars and four gun and tackle shops.

The only new business in town was a sporting goods store located in what had once been the pharmacy right across the parking lot from the M&S. The old log building had been refurbished and restored, and big gold letters spelled out SUTTER SPORTS just above the stained-glass fish in the huge front window. It had a green tin roof and awnings, and a Closed Until April sign hung on the double glass-and-brass doors.

According to Stanley, Sutter's didn't sell guns. No one knew why. This was Gospel after all, gun-nut capital of the world. A place where kids got their NRA membership cards before their driver's license. A place where all pickup trucks had gun racks and THEY CAN HAVE MY GUN WHEN THEY PRY IT FROM MY COLD DEAD FINGERS bumper stickers. People slept with handguns stuck in the headboards of their beds and stashed in panty drawers. And they took it as a matter of pride that no citizen of Gospel had been killed with a gun since the turn of the century, when two of the Hansen boys had shot it out over a whore named Frenchy.

Well, there had been that incident in ' 95 when the old sheriff of the town had taken his own life. But that didn't count since taking your own life really wasn't a punishable crime. And no one really liked to talk about that particular chapter of the town's history anyway.

Most everything inside the M&S Market was the same as Kate recalled from her childhood. The antlers of the twelve-point buck her grandfather had blown away in '79 were still on display above the old battered cash register. Around the commercial coffeemaker, conversation ranged from the mysterious owner of Sutter Sports, to Iona Osborn's hip replacement surgery.

"You can't weigh that much and not have hip problems," Ada Dover said as Kate punched the keys of the cash register, then hit Add with the side of her hand.

"Uh-huh," she responded as she set a can of cling peaches in a plastic grocery bag. Even the sounds inside the store were the same. From the back room, she could hear the whine of the meat slicer, and from the speakers overhead, Tom Jones sang about touching the green grass of home. Melba's presence was still everywhere in the M&S, from the horrible music to the velvet Tom painting hung in the back office. About the only thing that had really changed inside Melba Caldwell's store since her death was the stream of widows trolling for her husband, Stanley.

"Iona should have gone on Weight Watchers years ago. Have you ever tried Weight Watchers?"

Kate shook her head, and the end of her ponytail brushed the shoulders of her black shirt. Last week she'd substituted Tom Jones with Matchbox Twenty. But halfway into the second verse of "Disease," her grandfather had ejected her CD and plugged Tom back in. As Ada rambled and Tom crooned, Kate felt a slight brain bleed coming on.

"It really keeps my figure trim. And Fergie's too. Being that I'm Iona's good friend, I tried to get her to at least check out a few meetings over at the grange." Ada shook her head and her eyes narrowed. "She said she would, but she never did. If she'd listened to me, she'd have lost that weight huckity-buck and there would've been no need to have that hip replaced." What the heck was a huckity-buck? Fearing the answer, Kate pointed out instead, "It could be that Iona has a low metabolism." According to her grandfather, Ada Dover arrived every day around noon, coifed, decked, and doused in Emeraude. No doubt about it, she was looking to make Stanley Caldwell husband number three.

"She should buy one of those mountain bikes from over there at the sports store."

Now that Kate was here, her grandfather always found something to do in the back room to avoid Ada and the widow posse who had him in their sights. He also made her do the home deliveries the widows called in on a regular basis. Kate didn't appreciate it either. She didn't like getting pumped for information about her grandfather, and she had better things to do than listen to Myrtle Lake rattle on about the horrors of heel spurs. Better things—like giving herself a lobotomy. "Maybe Iona should just start out walking," Kate suggested as she rang up a box of Wheat Thins and placed it in the sack.

"Of course, even if Iona wanted to buy one of those bikes, she can't. The owner of that store is probably in the Carribean, sunning himself like a lizard. His mama is the nurse over there at the clinic. She's not from around here. Minnesota, I think. Tight-lipped as Tupperwear." Ada dug into her huge purse and pulled out her wallet. "I don't know why he opened his store in Gospel in the first place. He'd probably sell more bikes and what-nots in Sun Valley. He doesn't sell guns over there. Don't know why, but that's a Minnesotan for ya. Liberal and contrary."

Kate wondered what being a Minnesotan had to do with not selling guns or being contrary, but she was too busy fighting the shudder passing through her to ask. Sun Valley. The scene of the greatest humiliation of her life. The place where she'd gotten drunk and propositioned a man. The one time in her life when she'd managed to suppress her inhibitions and go for it, she'd been shot down by a man who'd practically run from the room to get away from her.

"He's handsome as sin but doesn't park his boots under anyone's bed. Everybody knows Dixie Howe's been trying her best to hook him, but he isn't interested. 'Course I don't blame him for avoiding Dixie. Dixie's got a gift for hair dye, but she's been rode hard and put away wet more often than Aunt Sally's mule."

"Maybe he doesn't like women," Kate said and hit Total. The guy in Sun Valley hadn't liked women. He'd been a misogynist. At least, that's what Kate liked to tell herself.

Ada

sucked in a breath. "Homosexual?"

No. As much as Kate would have liked to believe the jerk had been gay, and that's why he hadn't taken her up on her proposition, she really didn't think so. She was too good at reading people to miss those signs. No, he was just one of those men who liked to degrade women and make them feel really bad about themselves. That, or he had erectile dysfunction. Kate smiled, maybe both.

Ada

was silent a moment, then said, "Rock Hudson was gay, and that Rupert Everett fella too. Regina's son Tiffer is gay, but he isn't good-looking.He was in one of those gay pageants down in Boise. He sang "Don't Rain on My Parade," but of course he didn't win. Even drag queens have their standards." She pulled out a pen and began writing out a check. "Regina showed me the pictures. I swear, Tiffer in a wig and rouge looks just like his mama. And Regina looks more like Charles Nelson Riley than Barbra Streisand. Seems a waste and a shame if that Sutter fella is gay, though. But it would explain why he isn't married and never dates." Ada ripped out the check and handed it to Kate. "And Myrtle Lake's granddaughter, Rose, is after him, too. Rose is young and cute as they come, but he's never parked his boots under her bed neither."

Kate wondered how Ada knew so much about the owner of the sporting goods store. Kate could have found out the same information easily enough, but she was a licenced private investigator. Ada was the manager of The Sandman Motel and obviously a very busy body.

After Ada left the store, Kate locked the cash register and walked to the back. The room smelled of fresh meat and the bleach her grandfather always used to sanitize his equipment and cutting boards. At the far end of the room was the store's small bakery, where her grandmother had made cakes and cookies and homemade bread. The equipment was covered, and no one had used it in over two years.

Stanley

sat at a long white table, having finished packaging T-bone steaks in six blue Styrofoam trays and plastic wrap. On the wall above him hung the same meat-cutting charts that Kate remembered from her childhood. Other than the deserted bakery, it appeared as if nothing had changed in a few decades, but it had. Her grandfather was older and tired easily. Her grandmother was gone, and Kate didn't know why he didn't sell the store or hire someone to run it for him.

"Ada's gone," Kate said. "You can come out now."

Stanley Caldwell looked up, his brown eyes reflecting the dull sadness of his heart. "I wasn't hiding, Katie."

She folded her arms beneath her breasts and leaned a shoulder into boxes of paper products that needed to be carried into the storage room. He was the only person in the world who called her Katie, as if she were still a little girl. She continued to simply look at him until a slight smile lifted his white handlebar mustache.

"Well, maybe I was," he confessed as he stood; his potbelly pushed at the front of his bloody apron. "But that woman talks so much, she makes my head hurt." He untied his apron and tossed it on the worktable. "I just can't take a woman who talks too much. That's one thing I liked about your grandmother. She didn't talk just to hear her own voice."

Which wasn't entirely true. Melba had loved to gossip as much as anyone else in town. And it had taken Kate less than two weeks to discover that Gospel included gossip in their daily diet like it was a fifth member of the food groups. Meat. Vegetable. Bread. Dairy. All served alongside a healthy portion of "Vonda's youngest was caught smokin' behind the school."

"What about the woman who works for the sheriff? She seems nice and doesn't talk as much as Ada."

"That's Hazel." Stanley picked up the packages of T-bones, and Kate followed as he carried them through the store to the display case. The worn wood floor still creaked in the places Kate remembered as a child. The same Thanks for Shopping Here sign still hung above the door, and candy and gum were still sold on the first aisle. These days, though, the penny candy was ten cents and the owner's steps were slower, his shoulders more hunched, and his hands were gnarled.

"Hazel's an okay gal," her grandfather said as they stopped at the open refrigerated case. "But she isn't your grandmother."

The meat case had three decks and was split into four sections: chicken, beef, pork, and prepackaged, which her grandfather always called the "hanging meat." In Kate's sick mind, "hanging meat" had an entirely different connotation. She was from Vegas, where you could find Mr. Hanging Meat "dancing" at the Olympic Gardens five nights a week.

"Have you thought about retiring, Grandpa?" Kate asked as she straightened packages of Ballpark Franks. The subject had been on her mind, and she'd been waiting for the right moment to bring it up. "You should be having fun and taking it easy instead of cutting meat until your hands swell."

He shrugged one shoulder. "Your grandma and me used to talk about retiring. We were going to buy one of those motor homes and travel the country. Your mother's been nagging me about it, too, but I can't do it just yet."

"You could sleep as late as you wanted and not have to worry about getting Mrs. Hansen's lamb chops exactly an inch thick or running out of lettuce."

"I like providing the perfect cuts for people. I'm still good at it, and if I didn't have someplace to go every morning, I might never leave my bed."

Sadness tugged at Kate's heart, and together she and Stanley returned to the back room, where her grandfather showed her how to load the pricing gun with a roll of stickers. Every item got a sticker, even if the price was clearly marked by the manufacturer. She'd pointed out the redundancy, but he was too set in his ways to change. His dreams for the future had died with Kate's grandmother, and he hadn't replaced them.

The bell above the front door rang. "You go this time," Kate said through a smile. "It's probably another one of your women coming to flirt with you."

"I don't want women flirting with me," Stanley grumbled as he walked out of the room.

Want the attention or not, Stanley Caldwell was bachelor number one with the senior women in Gospel. Maybe it was time for him to stop hiding from his life. Maybe she could help him let go of old dreams and create new ones.

Kate opened a case of beets with a box knife and picked up the pricing gun. She'd never really been much of a dreamer. She was a doer. Instead of dreams, she had full-blown fantasies. But, as she'd learned recently, her fantasies were better left safely guarded in her mind, where they couldn't be crushed by rejection.

She was probably the only woman in history to be turned down in a bar, and she hadn't been able to work up a good fantasy in her head for two weeks now. No more badass biker dude tying her to the back of his hog. No more fantasy men at all. Not only had the jerk in Sun Valley humiliated her but he'd also killed her fantasy life.

She stuck a test sticker on the box flap, then went to work on the first row of cans. From the speakers bolted to the walk-in freezer, Tom Jones belted out a crappy rendition of "Honky Tonk Woman," which Kate figured was an abomination on so many different levels. One of which was that, at the moment, a song about a honky-tonk woman taking a man "upstairs for a ride" was her least favorite topic on the planet.

"Katie, come here," her grandfather called out to her.

Not since the twelfth grade, she thought as she finished putting stickers on the last row of cans, when her boyfriend had asked someone else to the prom, had Kate suffered such a mortifying blow to her self-esteem. She was long over it now, and she would get over what had happened in Sun Valley, too. At the moment, though, her only consolation was that she'd never have to lay eyes on the jerk from the Duchin Lounge again.

She moved from the back room toward her grandfather, who stood at the end of a produce bin talking to a man with his back to Kate. He wore a blue ski parka with black on the long sleeves. He held a half gallon of milk in one hand, and a box of granola was stuck under one arm. Messed brown hair brushed the collar of his coat, and he was taller than her grandfather's six-two height. He tipped his head back and laughed at something her grandfather said, then he turned, and his laughter died. Across the too short distance, his deep green gaze met hers, even more brilliant in the light of day. His brows lowered, and within the perfect frame of his Fu Manchu, his lips parted.

Kate's footsteps faltered and stopped. Everything within her seemed to stop, too. Except for her blood, which drained from her head and made her ears buzz. Her chest got tight, and just like the first time she'd seen him, she wondered if thinking about the man had conjured him up. Only this time, there were no warm tingles. No urge to flip her hair. Just that funny feeling in her head like she might faint.

At the moment, Kate wished she would just faint dead away and wake up somewhere, but she just wasn't that lucky. And while she stood there wishing she could faint, she was sure he was recalling every detail of the night she'd propositioned him. The night he'd made his rejection of her look like the easiest thing he'd ever done.

"This is Rob Sutter. He owns the sporting goods store where the old pharmacy used to be. Rob, this is my only granddaughter, Katie Hamilton. I don't believe you've met." That's what her grandfather was saying, but over the buzz in Kate's ears, and Tom Jones growling about the Honky Tonk Woman, she heard something else. Don't take it personal, but I don't fuck women I meet in bars, shot through her brain like a thousand pin pricks. The silence between them seemed to stretch forever as she waited for him to inform her grandfather that they had already met. To tell him his granddaughter was a drunk and a slut. The pricing gun fell from her hand and hit the floor with a thud.

He glanced across his shoulder at Stanley. "No. We haven't met," he said. When he returned his attention to Kate, the surprise she'd seen on his face was gone, replaced by a curious smile that turned up the corners of his mouth. "It's nice to meet you, Katie."

"It's Kate," she managed past the constriction in her chest. "Only my grandfather calls me Katie."

He stepped toward her and bent to pick up the pricing gun. The overhead light filtered through the hair on the top of his head and picked out the gold. The rasp of his jacket sleeve filled the silence between them. "How long have you been in town?" he asked, his voice as deep and smooth as she remembered, only this time it didn't pour through her like hot buttered rum.

He knew how long she'd been in town. What was he up to? "A couple of weeks."

"Then we just missed each other. I've been on a ski trip with my buddies the last couple of weeks."

She knew that, of course. And he knew that she knew it, too. But if he wanted to pretend they'd never met, that was more than fine with her. She looked down at his hand holding the sticker gun toward her. The brand name Arc'teryx was spelled out in white on the Velcro cuff that wrapped around his wrist.

"Thank you," she said as she took the sticker gun from him. The tips of her fingers inadvertently brushed his and she took a step backward, dropping her hand to her side. Her gaze slipped up the zipper closing the front of his coat.

"It's a real surprise to walk in here and see anyone but Stanley working," he said.

She blinked and stared into his green gaze. Nothing. Not a hint of mockery or a flicker of recognition. At first he'd looked surprised. Now nothing, and she couldn't tell if he was pretending or not. Was it possible that he didn't recognize her? No, that was probably just wishful thinking on her part. She'd never been that lucky.

"It's about time he got some help."

"Ah, yes," she murmured, distracted by her thoughts. She'd been drunk. He'd probably been drunk too. Perhaps the surprise she'd seen on his face a few moments ago had been nothing more than surprise at seeing someone besides her grandfather working in the M&S. Lord knew the rest of the town had been shocked to see her.

"She's come to help me out in the store." Stanley moved to stand beside her and patted her shoulder. "She's such a good girl."

Rob Sutter glanced at her grandfather, then slowly he returned his gaze to her. She waited for him to laugh or at least crack a smile. He didn't, and she relaxed a fraction. Maybe this Rob guy was a total boozer. Could she be that lucky? Some men beat their wives and shot up the house. When they woke up in jail, they didn't have a clue why they were incarcerated. They sat with their head in their hands and didn't remember a thing. Being a person who remembered everything, Kate had never believed in alcohol amnesia. Maybe she'd been wrong. Maybe the owner of the sporting goods store had it. Maybe he was a blind drunk.

Perhaps she should feel a bit irritated that she was so utterly forgettable. At the moment all she felt was a glimmer of hope that she'd lucked out and he was a raging alcoholic. Good girl, my ass. With his free hand, Rob Sutter unzipped his coat and shifted his weight to his left foot. Good girls didn't get wasted and pick up men in bars.

"How long do you plan to stay in Gospel?" he asked. The last time he'd seen her, she'd had her hair down. Smooth and shiny, like liquid fire. He liked it better down.

Color returned to her pale cheeks, and she tilted her head to one side. He could practically read her mind. She was wondering if he remembered her. "As long as my grandfather needs me." She turned her attention to Stanley. "I'm going to finish pricing the beets. If you need anything, holler."

As if Rob could forget her offer to show him her bare butt. As she walked away, Rob's gaze slid down the ponytail that hung below her shoulders, past the tight black shirt to her rounded behind in—black pants. No, he hadn't forgotten her. The image of her within the soft lighting of the Duchin Lounge had stayed with him long after he'd left the bar. That night he'd dreamed of soft auburn hair and eyes the color of rich earth. Of long legs and arms entwined with his. Of sex so intense, so real, that he'd just about climaxed in his sleep. That hadn't happened to him in a long time. A man didn't tend "a to forget a thing like that. At least not right away.

"I really don't need her help," Stanley said, "but it's nice to have her around, just the same."

Rob returned his gaze to the grocery store owner. He wasn't certain, but he thought he detected a light in Stanley's eyes when he spoke of his granddaughter. A little light that he'd never seen there before. He liked Stanley Caldwell, and he respected him, too. "Is she living with you?"

"Yeah. She pampers me, but I try not to get too used to it. She can't stay with me forever. She'll have to get back to her own life one of these days."

Rob grabbed an apple and moved toward the front counter. "Where's home?" he asked. He'd been living in Gospel long enough to know it didn't take much to get a person's life story, whether you were interested in hearing it or not. And in this particular case, he was mildly curious.

"Katie's from Las Vegas," Stanley answered as he moved behind the counter and rang up the milk, granola, and apple.

As Rob dug out his wallet, he wondered if Kate Hamilton was a dancer in one of the casinos. She was certainly tall enough. She had the breasts for those skimpy costumes, too. Back in his hell-raising days, she would have been just the sort of woman he would have gone for. Tall. Built. Easy.

"She's a private investigator," Stanley provided while he placed the box of granola in a plastic bag.

That announcement surprised Rob. Almost as much as when he'd turned around and seen her standing a few feet from him, looking as stunned as he'd felt.

He handed Stanley a ten. "She doesn't look like any investigators I've ever met," he said, and he'd known a few.

"That's what makes her so good," Stanley bragged. "Women talk to her because she's one of them, and men talk to her because we just can't resist a beautiful woman."

Rob had been doing a pretty good job of resisting women for a while now. Beautiful or otherwise. It wasn't easy, never that, but he'd thought he'd gotten over the worst of it. The constant craving—until a certain redhead had propositioned him. Walking away from Kate Hamilton had been one of the hardest things he'd done in a very long time.

He put the bills in his wallet and shoved it in his back pocket.

"Here's the key to your place," Stanley said and shut the cash drawer. "A couple of boxes from UPS came while you were gone. And yesterday, I picked your mail up off the floor for ya."

"You didn't have to do that." Rob took the key to his store and put it back on his key ring. Before he'd left for his ski trip, Stanley had offered to accept freight for him. "I appreciate it, though. I made you something for your trouble." He unzipped the breast pocket on the inside of his jacket and pulled out a fishing fly. "This is a bead-head nymph I tied just before I left. Rainbows can't resist these guys."

Stanley took it and held it up to the light. The ends of his handlebar mustache lifted up. "It's a beauty, but you know I don't fly-fish."

"Not yet," he said and grabbed his bag of groceries. "But I'm planning your intervention." He headed for the door. "See ya, Stanley."

"See ya. Tell your mother I said hello."

"Will do," Rob said and walked from the store.

The midmorning sun bounced off snow banks and blinded him with white, stabbing rays. With his free hand, he dug around in the pocket of his heavy coat for his sunglasses. He shoved the Revos on the bridge of his nose, and instantly the deep blue polarized lenses eliminated the glare.

He'd parked his black HUMMER in the first slot, and he slid easily into the front seat. He didn't care what anyone thought about his HUMMER. Not his mother and certainly not environmentalists. He liked the leg room and the shoulder room too. He didn't feel so huge in the HUMMER. Cramped. Like he took up too much space. He liked the storage capacity and the fact that it plowed through snow and climbed over rocks with grit and spit and enough pure muscle to spare. And yeah, he liked the fact that he could climb over the top of the other cars on the road if he had to.

He fired up the vehicle and reached into the grocery bag to pull out the apple. He took a bite and put the SUV in reverse. From within the M&S, he caught a glimpse of red ponytail and black shirt.

Her name was Kate, and the night he'd walked out of the Duchin Lounge, he never thought he'd see her again. Not in a million years, but here she was, living in Gospel. Stanley Caldwell's granddaughter was working right across the parking lot from Rob, pricing cans and looking better than he remembered—and what he'd remembered had been pretty damn good.

Rob shoved the HUMMER into gear and drove around to the back of his store. She hadn't been pleased to see him. Not that he could blame her. He could have let her down easier that night. A lot easier, but being propositioned had pissed him off. It had reminded him of a time in his life when he would have taken her up on the offer. When he wouldn't have even hesitated before he kissed her mouth and tangled his fingers in her hair. A time when he would have stared into her liquid brown eyes as he had sex with her all night long. A time in his life when women had been within easy reach and he'd never gone without.

Back then, his life had been fast and furious. Full tilt. Balls to the walls. Everything he'd ever expected and could ever want. Yeah, he'd been blindsided and slammed in the corners more times than he could count. He'd made mistakes. Done things he wasn't proud of, but he'd loved his life. Every damn minute of it.

Right up to the second it had been blown all to hell.