The Trouble With Valentine's Day (7 page)

Good grief! She was rambling inside her own head. “It's nice to meet you, Grace.” She took a few steps back before her rambling could make its way out of her mouth. “I'm going to finish stacking the paper towels,” she said and took off for aisle three. Why should she care what Rob Sutter's mother thought of her? Grace had raised a rude and obnoxious son. She obviously wasn't perfect either.

Just as Kate picked up a roll of Bounty and set it on the top shelf, Grace walked down aisle two, Regina following on her heels.

“I need to talk to you, Grace.”

“I really don't have time to chat. I'm just here long enough to get some sugar cubes for the clinic,” Grace said.

“It won't take but a minute,” Regina insisted as the two women stopped on the other side of the row of paper towels. “I was at the Cozy Corner just yesterday, having the lunch special, and Iona told me that your son Rob is gay.”

Kate moved her head slightly to the left, and between the rows, she watched Grace's eyes widen and her lips part. “Well, I don't think—”

“Now the reason I bring it up,” Regina interrupted, “is because my son Tiffer is coming up for the Easter weekend. I don't know if you've heard, but Tiffer is a female impersonator down in Boise.” Even Kate had heard that, but she couldn't recall when and where. “Tiffer doesn't have a partner right now, and I thought that if perhaps Rob is single, we should introduce the two of them.”

Grace fingered her coat collar. “Well, I don't believe Robert is gay.”

Kate didn't believe so either, and she wondered who'd started the rumor and why anyone would believe it. Not that she felt bad for “Robert.”

“Sometimes us mothers are the last to know,” Regina assured the other woman.

“He's thirty-six.” A frown pulled Grace's brows together. “I think I'd know by now.”

“Being a hockey player, I can understand him wanting to keep quiet about his sexuality.”

“He doesn't play hockey anymore.”

“Maybe he's still in the closet. Some men never come out.”

Hockey player
? Kate had heard quite a bit of gossip about Rob, but no one had mentioned that he'd played hockey. Although it did explain the knee injury he'd complained about the first night they'd met. It also explained his nasty temperament.

“I assure you, Regina, my son likes women.”

The bell above the door rang, and all eyes turned to the man in question as he walked inside and stamped snow from his boots. He pulled off his cap and shoved it in his coat pocket. His cheeks were red, and his green eyes shone. The overhead light bounced off his silver ring as he combed his fingers through the side of his hair. Somehow, he managed to look big and bad and boyish all at the same time.

Regina leaned in close and said just above a whisper, “You be sure and talk it over with him. Tell him Tiffer's a good catch.”

The corners of Grace's lips slid up. “Oh, you can be sure I'll tell him.”

Five

“Regina Cladis wants to set you up with
her son Tiffer.”

Rob reached for the door handle of his mother's Bronco and opened it. In one part of his brain, he knew his mother was talking, but he wasn't paying attention to her. His thoughts were on Kate Hamilton and their conversation. Not only had she wrongly believed he didn't recall the night she'd propositioned him but she also didn't seem to want to talk about it. Not that he blamed her, but he'd tried to give her some good advice about picking up men in bars anyway. He'd tried to joke with her, too. She obviously had no sense of humor.

“Regina thinks you're in the closet.”

That got his attention, and he glanced over his shoulder at his mother. “What?”

“Apparently Tiffer's taking a break from his career as a female impersonator just long enough to come home for an Easter visit. Regina thinks he's a good catch.”

Rob frowned. “What does that have to do with me?”

Grace ducked beneath his arm and tossed her grocery bag on the passenger seat. “Regina just told me that Iona is telling everyone at the Cozy Corner that you're gay.”

It wasn't the first time he'd heard the rumor, but he hadn't given it much thought. He'd hoped that his denial had put out the fire. He should have known better.

With one foot inside the car, Grace paused and looked up into Rob's face. “Of course if it's true, there's nothing wrong with it. You're my son, and I'll support you no matter who you love.”

Rob sighed. “For God's sake, Mom, you know I'm not gay.”

She smiled. “I know. What do you think we should do about the rumor?”

Rob glanced up at the gray clouds and let out a breath as he thought about the ramifications. In a big city the rumor probably wouldn't matter. In a town the size of Gospel, it might hurt his business. If that happened, he'd have to close Sutter Sports and move away, which he didn't want to do. “I don't know,” he said and returned his gaze to his mother. He felt a bit helpless, but short of grabbing a woman and doing her on Main Street, there wasn't anything he could do.

“Do you think maybe Harvey Middleton started the rumor to hurt your business?”

“No.” He didn't think the owner of Sawtooth Gun and Tackle would spread rumors. Harvey was a good guy and had more business than he could handle.

“Then who do you think started it?”

He shook his head. “I don't know the answer to that. Why would anyone believe it anyway?”

The question was rhetorical, but Grace thought about it nonetheless. “Maybe because you don't date anymore.”

Rob didn't want to talk about dating with his mother, not only because they'd had the conversation before but also because talking about dating inevitably made him think of sex. Lack of sex was his real problem, and that was definitely something a man didn't want to discuss with his mother.

“You don't date either,” he pointed out and looked over at the doors to the M&S. There was no sign of a certain smart-ass redhead inside.
Don't flatter yourself. I don't wonder about you at all
, she'd told him.
Let alone the size of your package
. Which didn't seem quite fair, since he'd been giving a lot of thought lately to that tattoo she supposedly had on her rear end.

“I've been thinking that it's time for us both to start dating again.”

He turned back to his mother. “Is there someone you're interested in seeing?” he asked, half joking. Since the death of his father in 1980, he wasn't aware of his mother dating very much.

She shook her head and sat down in her car. “No. Not really. I just thought maybe we both need to get out a little more. Maybe get more out of life than work.”

“My life is fine.”

She gave him that “you can lie to yourself, but you can't lie to your mother” look and reached for the door handle. “I'm reading my new poem tonight at the grange. You should stop by.”

Oh, hell no
. “I'm leaving this weekend to visit Amelia,” was the best he could come up with on the spur of the moment. It was lame, but it was also the truth.

Grace shut the door and started the car. “That's not for three days,” she said as she rolled down the window.

He'd read his mother's poetry, and even though he was no great judge of good writing, he knew hers was bad.

Real bad.

“I'm opening the store in two weeks, and I have tons to do to get ready.” Which was also true but was just as lame as his first excuse.

“Fine. I bought Amelia a little something. Come by the house before you leave town.”

He'd hurt her feelings, but he'd rather get puck shot in the nuts than go to a poetry reading. “I really can't make it tonight.”

“I heard you.” She put the SUV into reverse and said, as she backed out, “If you change your mind, it starts at seven.”

Rob stood in the empty parking space and watched his mother drive away. He was thirty-six. A grown man. At one time in his life, he'd slammed hockey players against the boards and fed them their lunch. He'd been the most feared player in the NHL and had led the league in penalty minutes. They'd nicknamed him the Hammer, in tribute to the original Hammer, Dave Schultz.

And tonight he was going to a group social that he knew consisted of old women so he could hear his mother's poetry. He only prayed this one wouldn't be as bad as her poem about nut-hungry squirrels.

The Gospel poetry social started right at seven with a discussion about binding the group's poems and selling them at this summer's Rocky Mountain Oyster Feed and Toilet Toss. This year's social director, Ada Dover, stood at a pulpit in the front of the grange conducting business.

Chairs had been set up inside the long room. There were about twenty-five ladies . . . and Rob. He'd purposely come in a half hour late and sat in the empty back row by the door. When the time came, he figured he could make a quick getaway.

“We can't afford a booth,” someone pointed out.

From several chairs up, he saw his mother raise her hand. “We can sell them in the Mountain Momma Crafters' booth. Most of us belong to the Mountain Momma Crafters anyway.”

“I bet the poems will sell faster than last year's Kleenex cozies.”

Rob pushed up the sleeves of his ribbed gray sweater and wondered if a Kleenex cozy was like those knitted things his grandmother used to put on her extra roll of toilet paper. If he remembered right, hers had lots of lace and a doll's head stuck on the top.

The back door by his right shoulder opened and he glanced up to see Stanley Caldwell, looking like he'd come for a root canal. Along with the fridge night air, his granddaughter blew in behind him, looking even less pleased than her grandfather. Stanley spotted Rob and moved toward him. “Do you mind if we sit next to you?” Stanley asked.

Rob glanced up past Stanley to Kate, at her hair curling about the shoulder of her peacoat and her glossy pink lips. Her attention was directed at Ada, and she was doing a good job of pretending he didn't exist. “Not at all,” he answered as he stood.

Stanley moved to the third seat and stopped, leaving the seat next to Rob free. Kate gave her grandfather a hard stare as she stepped past Rob. The shoulder of her coat stirred the air an inch in front of Rob's sweater as she brushed by him. Her white cheeks were pink from the cold, and the scent of her cool skin filled his chest.

For one brief instant, her gaze met his, and the wealth of her dislike for him filled her rich brown eyes. Her obvious feelings toward him should have mattered, but they didn't. For some reason that he couldn't begin to comprehend, he was attracted to Kate Hamilton more than he had been to any other woman in a long time. He didn't kid himself. It was sex. Nothing more and competently understandable, given the way they'd met. He didn't feel bad about his purely sexual attraction. Not that he would have anyway. Every time he saw her, he saw the woman who'd propositioned him. The woman who'd wanted to show him her bare ass.

They took their seats and Stanley leaned across his granddaughter to say, “Never thought I'd see you here.”

Rob turned his attention from Kate to her grandfather. “My mother's reading her poem tonight. I didn't have a choice. What's your excuse?”

“Katie blew my alibi and Regina's been calling all day, threatening to pick me up and drive me here herself.” He pointed to Kate. “I made Katie come 'cause it's all her fault.”

Kate folded her arms beneath her breasts and her lips pursed a little, but she didn't say anything.

Stanley shrugged out of his shearling jacket and laid it across his lap. “Have I missed anything?”

Rob shook his head. “No.”

“Damn.”

Stanley sat back, and Rob took another long look at Kate, starting at the top of her hair. She was clearly irked, but he didn't care. He'd always been a big fan of true redheads, and looking at Kate's hair was like staring into a fire. One of the first things he'd noticed about her the night they'd met in the Duchin Lounge besides her smooth white skin and big brown eyes had been her hair.

Tonight she appeared cool and composed, but the longer he studied her, the more her full lips pulled into an irritated frown. Her arms remained folded across her wool coat, and her long legs were crossed at her knees and seemed to stretch out forever in front of her. She wore black pants and spiky-heeled boots. The kind that most likely came with a matching whip and paddle. Damn was right.

“If I can have everyone's attention,” Ada Dover spoke from the pulpit, drawing Rob's gaze to the front of the room. “I'd like to welcome everyone to this month's social. Especially the first-timers in the back row.” Stanley cringed while Rob and Kate sank a little lower in their chairs, but both were too tall to disappear completely.

“As everyone knows, this is poetry night. Quite a few of us have brought something to read. After everyone has a chance to share, we'll begin the social portion of the evening.” She glanced down at her notes, then continued, “I'll be the first to share, followed by Regina Cladis.”

As Ada launched into a long poem she'd written about her dog, Snicker, Kate's cool composure showed one more sign of cracking. It started with a slightly annoyed sway of her right foot, but after several minutes of Snicker, the little sway worked up to an agitated little kick.