The 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.

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 pony-tail 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.

Three

Rob opened the back door to Sutter Sports and pushed his sunglasses to the top of his head. He took the stairs up to his office and bit into his apple. The sharp crunch joined the sound of his footsteps, and he wiped the back of his hand across his mouth. He flipped on the light switch with his elbow and headed toward the open end of the loft, which looked down into the dark store below.

A tandem canoe and nine-foot kayak were suspended from the ceiling beams and cast shadows across a row of mountain bikes. With Sun Valley sixty miles away, and several gun and tackle stores within the city limits of Gospel, Surfer's didn't sell winter sporting goods. Instead he concentrated on summer recreational equipment, and last summer he'd made a nice profit off the rental side of the business.

The temperature in the building was sixty-five and felt warm in comparison to the biting chill outside. He'd lived in every time zone and climate in North America. From Ottawa to Florida, Detroit to Seattle, and several stops in between, Rob Sutter had been there and done that.

He'd always preferred the four distinct seasons of the Northwest. Always enjoyed the radical change in temperature and scenery. Always loved the raw, in-your-face wilderness. And there weren't many places more raw or in-your-face than the Idaho Sawtooths. His mother had lived in Gospel for nine years now. He'd lived here not quite two. It felt like home, more than any other place he'd lived.

Rob turned away and headed for his desk in the middle of the large room. A carton of Diamond-back fly rods and a box of T-shirts with his store's name and logo on the front leaned against his workbench on the far side of the room. His vise and magnifier competed for space with intricate tools, spools of thread, tinsel, and wire.

On top of Rob's desk, Stanley Caldwell had neatly stacked his mail. Rob had liked Stanley the moment he'd met him a year ago. The old guy was hardworking and honest, two qualities Rob respected most in a man. When Stanley had offered to "look after" the sporting goods store while Rob was out of town, Rob hadn't thought twice before he'd handed over the key.

Rob took one last bite of his apple and tossed the core into the garbage can. He sat on the corner of his desk and kept one foot planted on the floor. Beside the mail sat the latest issue of The Hockey News. On the cover, Derian Hatcher and Tie Domi duked it out. Rob hadn't seen the game, but he'd heard that the Dominator had gotten the better of Hatcher.

He picked up the magazine and thumbed through it, past the ads and articles, to the game stats in the back. His gaze skimmed the columns, then stopped halfway down the page. One month to the play-offs and the Seattle Chinooks were still looking good. The team was healthy. The goalie, Luc Martineau, was in his zone and veteran sniper Pierre Dion was on fire, with fifty-two goals and twenty-seven assists.

The last year Rob had played for the Chinooks, they'd made it to the third round of the play-offs before the Avalanche had narrowly defeated them by one goal. It was the closest Rob had come to getting his name inscribed on Lord Stanley's cup. He'd been bummed about it, but he'd figured there'd always be next season. Life had been good.

Earlier that same year, his girlfriend, Louisa, had given him a child. A six pound, green-eyed, beautiful baby girl. He'd been there at her birth, and they'd named her Amelia. The baby had brought him and Louisa closer, and a month after Amelia's birth, he and Lou had gotten married in Las Vegas in between road games.

Before the baby, the two of them had been together off and on for three years, but they'd never been able to make it work for more than a few months at a time. They'd fought and made up, broken up and gotten back together so many times that Rob had lost count. Almost always over the same issues-her insane jealousy and his infidelity. She'd accuse him of cheating when he wasn't. Then he would cheat and again they'd break up only to get back together a few months later. It had been a vicious circle, but one each had vowed to stop once they were married. Now that they had a baby and were a family, they were determined to make it work.

They'd made it five months until the first major blowup.

It was the night he'd gone out with the guys and come home late, and Louisa had been waiting up for him. He'd spent most of the night playing bad pool and decent darts in winger Bruce Fish's game room. Fishy was a damn good hockey player, but he was also a notorious womanizer. Louisa had flipped out and refused to believe that they hadn't been at a strip club getting lap dances and worse. She'd accused Rob of cheating with a stripper and stinking of cigarettes. That had set him off. He didn't have sex with strippers anymore and hadn't for a few years. He'd smelled like cigars, not cigarettes, and he hadn't cheated with anyone. For over five months he'd been a damned saint, and instead of yelling at him, she should have been taking him to bed and rewarding his good behavior. Instead, they'd slipped back into their past behavior of fighting. In the end, both agreed that Rob should leave. Neither wanted Amelia exposed to their contentious relationship.

By the beginning of hockey season that October, Rob was living on Mercer Island. Louisa and the baby were still living in their condo in the city, but she and Rob were getting along again. They were talking about a reconciliation because neither wanted a divorce. Still, they didn't want to rush things and decided to take it slow.

He'd just signed a four-million-dollar contract with the Chinooks. He was healthy, happier than he'd been in a while, and was looking forward to a kick-ass future.

Then he fucked up big time.

The first month into the regular hockey season, the Chinooks hit the road for a nine-day, five-game grind. Their first stop was Colorado and the team that had put an end to their chances at the cup the prior season. The Chinooks were fired up and ready for another run at it. Ready for another go in the Pepsi Center.

But that night in Denver, the Chinooks couldn't seem to get their game together, and in the third frame the Avalanche was up by one with twenty-five shots on goal. What no one talked about, what no one even dared to whisper out loud, was that losing their first road game by one point to the Avalanche once again could jinx the rest of the season. Something had to change-fast. Something had to happen to knock Colorado off their game. To slow them down. Someone had to fix the situation and create a little chaos.

That someone was Rob.

Coach Nystrom gave him the signal from the bench, and as Avalanche Peter Forsberg skated across center ice, Rob charged him and knocked him on his ass. Rob received a minor penalty, and as he served out his three minutes kicking back in the sin bin, Chinook's sniper, Pierre Dion, shot from the point and scored.

Game on.

Five minutes later, Rob was back at work. He checked Teemu Selanne in the corner and gave him a glove rub for good measure. Denver defender Adam Foote joined the action along the boards, and while the Denver fans cheered on their man, Rob and Adam dropped gloves and had a go. Rob had two inches and thirty pounds on the Denver player, but Adam made up for it with incredible balance and a right uppercut. By the time the referees stopped the fight, Rob could feel his left eye swelling, and blood streamed from a cut on Adam's forehead.

Rob put ice on his knuckles and once again kicked back in the penalty box. This time for five minutes. The fight had been a good one. He respected Foote for standing up for himself and his team. What few people outside of hockey understood was that fighting was an integral part of the game. Like puck handling and scoring.

Fighting was also a part of Rob's job description. At 6'3" and two hundred and thirty pounds, he was good at it too. But he was much more than an enforcer. More valuable to the team than just the guy who burst the other team's bubble while racking up penalty minutes. It wasn't uncommon for him to put up twenty goals and thirty assists in one season. Impressive stats for a guy who was known mostly for his solid right hook and lethal haymakers.

When the final whistle blew that night in Denver, the game ended in a respectable tie. Afterward some of the guys celebrated in the hotel bar, and after a quick call to Louisa and Amelia, Rob celebrated with his teammates. A few beers later, he struck up a conversation with a woman sitting alone. She wasn't a puck bunny. After twenty years in the NHL, he could identify a hockey groupie a mile away. She had short blonde hair and blue eyes. They talked about the weather, the slow hotel service, and the black eye he'd gotten from fighting with Foote.

She was nice enough looking, but in an uptight schoolteacher way. She really didn't pique his interest… until she leaned across the table and put her hand on his arm. "Poor baby," she said. "Should I kiss it all better?"

Rob knew exactly what she was really asking, and he was about to laugh it off when she added, "Should I start with your face and work my way down?" Then the woman who looked like an uptight schoolteacher proceeded to tell him all the naughty things she wanted to do. She followed that up by telling him all the things she wanted him to do to her.

She invited him up to her room, and looking back on it, he was a little embarrassed that he hadn't even hesitated all that much. He followed her to her room and had sex with her for several hours. He'd had a good time, and she'd had three good times. The next morning he caught a flight to Dallas with the rest of the team.

Like all other sports, hockey had its share of players who indulged in road sex. Rob was one of them. Why not? Women wanted to be with him because he was a hockey player. He wanted to be with them because he liked no-strings sex. They both got what they wanted.

When it came to road sex, management looked the other way. A lot of wives and girlfriends looked the other way, too. Louisa wasn't one of them, and for the first time, he felt the weight of what he'd done.

Yeah, he'd always felt bad when he'd cheated before, but he'd always told himself that it didn't count because he and Louisa were either broken up or not married. He couldn't say that now. When he'd taken his wedding vows, he'd meant them. It didn't matter that he and his wife weren't living together. He'd betrayed Louisa, and he'd failed himself. He'd messed up, had risked losing his family for a piece of ass that meant nothing. He'd been married nine months now. His life wasn't perfect, but it was better than it had been in a while. He didn't know why he'd risked it. It wasn't as if he'd been extremely horny or even looking to hook up. So why?

There wasn't an answer, and he told himself to forget about it. It was over. Done. It would never happen again. He meant it, too.

When the plane landed in Dallas, he'd managed to put the blonde with the blue eyes out of his mind. He never would have even remembered the woman's name if she hadn't somehow gotten his home telephone number. By the time he returned to Seattle, Stephanie Andrews had left more than two hundred messages on his answering machine. Rob didn't know which was more disturbing, the volatile messages themselves, or the sheer volume of them.

Although it was no secret, she'd discovered he was married, and she accused him of using her. "You can't use me and throw me away," she began each message. She screamed and raged, then cried hysterically, as she told him how much she loved him. Then she always begged him to call her back.

He never did. Instead, he changed his number. He destroyed the tapes and thanked God Louisa hadn't heard the messages and would never need to know about them.

He never would have remembered Stephanie's face if she hadn't found out where he lived and been waiting for him one night after he returned home from a Thanksgiving charity auction at the Space Needle. Like a lot of nights in Seattle, a thick misty rain clogged the black sky and smeared his windshield. He didn't see Stephanie as he drove his BMW into the garage, but when he stepped from his car, she walked inside and called out his name.

"I will not be used, Rob," she said, her voice raising above the sound of the door slowly closing behind her.

Rob turned and looked at her beneath the light of the garage. The smooth blonde hair he remembered hung in soggy chunks at her shoulder, as if she'd been standing outdoors for a while. Her eyes were a little too wide, and the soft line of her jaw was brittle, like she was about to shatter into a million pieces. Rob reached for his cell phone and dialed as he moved backward toward the door. "What are you doing here?"

"You can't use me and throw me away as if I am nothing. Men can't use women and get away with it. You have to be stopped. You have to pay."

Instead of boiling a rabbit or pouring acid on his car, she pulled out a.22 Beretta and emptied the clip. One round hit his right knee, two bullets hit his chest, the others lodged in the door by his head. He'd almost died on the way to the hospital from his injuries and blood loss. He spent four weeks in Northwest Hospital and another three months in physical therapy.

He had a scar that ran from his navel to his sternum and a titanium knee. But he'd survived. She hadn't killed him. She hadn't ended his life. Just his career.

Louisa didn't even come to see him in the hospital, and she refused to let Amelia visit. Instead, she served him with divorce papers. Not that he blamed her. By the time he was through with therapy, they'd hammered out visitation, and he was allowed to visit Amelia at the condo. He saw his baby on weekends, but after a short time it became clear to him that he had to get out of town.

He'd always been strong and healthy, ready to take names and kick ass, but suddenly finding himself weak and reliant on others had kicked his ass. He fell into a depression that he fought against and denied. Depression was for wussies and women, not Rob Sutter. He might not be able to walk without help, but he wasn't a weeny.

He moved to Gospel so his mother could help him with his rehabilitation. After a few months, he realized that he felt like a weight had been lifted. One he'd been refusing to acknowledge. Living in Seattle had been a constant reminder of everything he'd lost. In Gospel, he felt like he could breathe again.

He opened the sporting goods store to take his mind off his troubled past and because he needed something to do. He'd always loved camping and fly-fishing, and he'd figured it would make a good business move. What he discovered was that he really enjoyed selling camping and fishing equipment, bicycles and street hockey gear. He had a stock account that allowed him to take the winter off. He and Louisa were getting along once again. After he'd sold his house on Mercer Island, he'd bought a loft in Seattle. Once a month he flew to Washington and spent time with Amelia there. She'd just turned two and was always happy to see him.

The trial of Stephanie Andrews had ended within a few short weeks. She'd received twenty years, ten fixed. Rob hadn't been there at the sentencing. He'd been fishing in the Wood River, whipping his Chamois Nymph across the surface of the water. Feeling the rush and pull of the current.

Rob picked the mail off his desk and walked toward the door. He turned off the lights and headed down the stairs. He'd never been the kind of guy to overanalyze his life. If the answer didn't come easy, he forgot about the question and moved on. But getting shot forced a man to take a good hard look at himself. Waking up with tubes stuck in your chest and with your leg immobilized gave you plenty of time with nothing to do but think about how your life got so screwed up. The easy answer was that Rob had been stupid and had had sex with a crazy woman. The harder answer was the why.

With his mail in one hand, he locked the store behind him. He shoved his sunglasses on the bridge of his nose and headed for the HUMMER. Once inside, he tossed his mail on the passenger seat beside his groceries and fired up the vehicle. He still didn't know the answer to the last question, but he figured it didn't matter now. Whatever the answer, he'd learned the lesson the hard way. He was a poor judge of women, and when it came to relationships, he was a bad bet. His marriage had been painful, the divorce an inevitable slam to the ice. That's all he needed to know to avoid a repeat of his past.

He would like a girlfriend, though. A girlfriend in the sense of a girl who was a friend. A friend who came over to his house and had sex with him a couple of times a week. Someone who just wanted to have a good time and ride him like a hobbyhorse. Someone not crazy. But there was the rub. Stephanie Andrews hadn't looked crazy-not until she'd shown up in Seattle with a grudge and a gun.

Rob hadn't had sex since he'd been shot. Not that he wasn't able or had lost his desire. It was just that every time he saw a woman he was interested in, and who seemed interested in him, a little voice inside his head always put a stop to it before it even got started. Is she worth dying for? it asked. Is she worth your life?

The answer was always no.

As he pulled out of the parking lot, he glanced in the rearview mirror at the M &S Market. Not even with a gorgeous redhead with long legs and a nice ass.

Across the street, Rob stopped at the self-serve Chevron and pumped gas in the HUMMER. He leaned his hip into the side of the car and prepared for a long wait. Once again his gaze was pulled to the front of the grocery store. Whoever had come up with the maxim that the more you went without sex, the less you wanted it, was a moron. He might not think about sex all the time, but when he did, he still wanted it.

A Toyota pickup pulled in behind Rob, and a short blonde got out and made her way toward him. Her name was Rose Lake. She was twenty-eight and built like a little Barbie doll. In the summer she liked to wear tank tops without a bra. Yeah, he'd noticed. Just because he didn't have sex didn't mean he wasn't a guy. Today she wore tight Wranglers and a jean jacket with that fake white fur on the inside. Her cheeks were pink from the cold.

"Hey there," she greeted as she stopped in front of him.

"Hey, Rose. How're things?"

"Good. I heard you were back."

Rob pushed his sunglasses to the top of his head. "Yeah, I got back last night."

"Where'd you go?"

" skiing with friends."

Rose tilted her chin and looked up at him out of the corners of her light blue eyes. "What are you doing now?"

He recognized the invitation, and he shoved his fingers into the front pockets of his Levi's. "Pumping gas in the HUMMER."

Yeah, she was cute, and he'd been tempted more than once to take what she was offering. "What about when you leave here?" she asked.

He was tempted even now. "I've got a lot of work to do before I open the store in a few weeks."

She reached out and tugged at the front of his coat. "I could help you out."

But not enough to drown out the warnings in his head. "Thanks, but it's the sort of paperwork I have to do myself." Still, there was nothing wrong with chatting up a pretty girl while filling his HUMMER with fuel. "Anything interesting happen while I was gone?"

"Emmett Barnes got arrested for drunk and disorderly, but that's not anything new or interesting. The Spuds and Suds got a health code violation, but that's nothing new either."

He pulled his hand from his pocket and reached for his sunglasses.

"Oh, and I heard you're gay."

The pump shut off, and his hand stopped in midair. "What?"

"My mom was at the Curl Up & Dye this morning getting her roots done, and she heard Eden Hansen telling Dixie Howe that you're gay."

He dropped his hand. "The owner of Hansen's Emporium said that?"

Rose nodded. "Yeah. I don't know where she heard it."

Why would Eden say he was gay? It didn't make sense. He didn't dress like a gay guy, and there wasn't a rainbow sticker on his HUMMER. He didn't like to decorate or listen to Cher. He didn't give a crap if his socks matched; as long as they were clean, that's all that mattered. And the only hair care product he owned was a bottle of shampoo. "I'm not gay."

"I didn't think so. I'm usually pretty good at sensing something like that, and I never got the gay vibe from you."

Rob removed the gas nozzle and shoved it in the pump. Not that it mattered, he told himself. There was nothing wrong with being homosexual. He had a few friends in the NHL who were gay. He just didn't happen to be one of them. To him, it was just a matter of sexual preference, and Rob loved women. He loved everything about them. He loved the scent of their skin and their warm, wet mouths beneath his. He loved the heated look in their eyes as he seduced them out of their panties. He loved their soft, eager hands on his body. He loved the push and pull, give and take of hot sex. He loved it fast and he loved to take his time. He loved everything about it.

Rob clenched his jaws and screwed on the gas cap. "See ya around, Rose," he said, then opened the door to his vehicle.

In the beginning it had been extremely difficult to go without sex, but he'd kept himself active and busy. When a sexual thought had popped into his head, he'd just thought of something else. If that hadn't worked, he'd tied flies, losing himself in nymphs and tung head zug bugs. He'd concentrate on mastering the perfect wrap, and eventually going without had got easier. Through force of will, and over a thousand flies later, he'd gained command of his body.

Until recently. Until a certain redhead had brushed her fingers across his arm and sent a bolt of desire straight to his groin, reminding him of everything he'd given up.

It wasn't like she'd been the first woman to offer him a good time. He knew women in Seattle and women right here in Gospel who were up for some bed action. She just tempted him more than he'd been tempted in a while, and he didn't know why. But like all the questions in his head for which there were no answers, he didn't have to know why.

The only thing he knew for certain was that that kind of temptation wasn't good for his peace of mind. It was best to steer clear of Kate Hamilton. Best if he stayed on his side of the parking lot. Best to get her completely out of his head.

And the best way to do that was with a seven-foot bamboo rod and an eight-ounce reel, a box of his favorite midges and nymphs, and a river filled with hungry trout.

He drove home and grabbed his rod and reel and waders, then headed to the Big Wood River and the spot just below the River Run Bridge where the big trout fed without fear in the winter. Where only the most dedicated fly fisherman stood knee deep in water so cold it forced its way through Gore-Tex, pile, and neoprene. Where only the hard-core walked cautiously across the frozen ice, stacked like blue cards against the river's steep banks. Where only the obsessed walked into the river and froze their balls off for a chance to battle a twelve-inch rainbow.

Only when he heard the sound of the river tripping over rocks, the swish of his line whipping back and forth, and the steady clicking of his reel could Rob begin to feel the tension ease between his shoulders.

Only when the sight of his favorite nymph kissed the perfect spot at just the edge of a deep pool did his mind finally clear.

Only then did he find the peace he needed to calm the struggle within him. Only then did the loneliness ease. Only then did everything seem right again in Rob Sutter's world.