The Trouble With Valentine's Day

by Rachel Gibson

  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 eith
er 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.