The Trouble With Valentine's Day

by Rachel Gibson

  "You have a game room, too?"

  "Yeah. It's off the great room," he said as she scooped up granola with her fingers and ate. "Maybe we can play pool sometime."

  She brushed her hands together as she swallowed. "Maybe, but I have to warn you, I don't lose on purpose to anyone."

  "What fun is there in that?"

  "I saw you play the other night. I could beat you blindfolded and with one arm tied behind my back."

  "Trash talker," he said through a smile. "I'd like to see you try and kick my ass."

  "Oh, I don't know if I'd kick your ass. You're not that bad." She laughed. "I'd spank you real good, though."

  It was a hell of a deal to have the woman you fantasized about stand in front of you and talk about spanking.

  She took another bite of his granola and swallowed. "Which tends to get me in trouble with me who have fragile egos." She looked at him through serious brown eyes and said, "I wanted to tell you that I'm sorry about what I said in the sheriff Blazer the other night."

  He thought a moment. "About you thinking must have been arrested before?"

  "No. The erectile dysfunction crack."

  "Ahh… that."

  "I was kinda joking, but you didn't see the humor, so…" She paused, dipped her chin, and looked into his eyes. "I'm sorry about that. It was insensitive."

  He stared at her for a few moments, then his brows shot up his forehead. "For the love of Christ." She really didn't think he could get it up. If she cared to glance down at his button fly, she would see that she was wrong about that.

  "Sometimes I think I'm funny and I'm not, and I put my foot in my mouth."

  He grasped her shoulders and pulled her against his chest. His breath left his lungs, and he looked into her startled gaze. He lowered his mouth to hers. He wanted to teach her a lesson. To show her he was a fully functioning man. He tried to go slow. God help him he did, but it had been so long. The instant his lips touched hers, he was gone. Like a match to gasoline, it rushed across his skin and he was consumed with his burning desire for her.

  He took advantage of her gasp and swept his tongue inside her warm, wet mouth. A shudder moved down his spine, and his muscles shook. While he wanted to absorb her into his flesh, to eat her up with one bite, she stood completely still within his grasp, neither protesting nor participating. He had to let her go, but just as he was about to end it, her tongue touched his, and there was no stopping him.

  Her wet, warm mouth tasted so good. Like honey and sex and everything missing in his life. Her hands moved to his shoulders and her fingers squeezed his muscles through the thin cotton of his shirt. She smelled like flowers and warm woman and all the things he'd been denying himself. He soaked it all in. The taste of her mouth and the warm touch of her hands. The scent of her skin. The desire rushing across his skin spread down his back and between his legs, squeezing his testicles and burning him alive. And he wanted it. He wanted to feel it again. All of it. For the first time in a very long time, he didn't try and control it or shove it away. He let lust grab ahold of his insides even as it pounded the air around him. He shoved his fingers into the sides of her hair and cupped her face. His hands shook as he barely controlled the urge to unbuckle her sweater and fill his palms with her heavy breasts.

  Her slick tongue touched his and mated, and he could feel her pulse beating beneath his thumb. Their mouths opened and closed as he fed her kisses. The woman he held in his hands was every bit as turned on as he was.

  But he had to stop. He didn't know her well enough to know for certain she wouldn't turn psycho on him. He didn't think she was crazy, but she wasn't worth the risk. No woman was. There was one thing he had to do before he let her go.

  He took her hand from his shoulder and slipped it down the front of his chest. The warmth of her touch heated his skin through his T-shirt. His hand pressed hard against the back of hers, flattening her palm against his hard muscles. Then he slid her hand down. Slowly down his sternum and abdomen. And it was torture. Slow torture that was so sweet he ached. He moved her hand lower across his hard belly to the waistband of his jeans.

  A rough moan escaped his throat, and he pulled back just far enough to look into her face. His gaze stared into hers, watching her liquid brown eyes as he slid her hand down his button fly and pressed her palm against his erection. He locked his knees to keep from falling. He was extremely hard, and a dull throb pulled at his testicles and tugged at his gut.

  "I think that should answer any further questions," he said, his voice thick with lust.

  Kate licked her lips. "What?"

  "I can get it up." Then he did one of the most difficult things he'd done in a very long time. With his body urging him to throw her down and get medieval, he dropped her hand and stepped back. "Anything else you want to know?"

  She shook her head, and her eyes began to clear. "No. I don't… I…" Her cheeks turned a bright red, and she pressed her fingers to her bottom lip, as if it was numb. "I better… go." She pointed toward the other room. Then she turned and walked from the kitchen. Her boot heels beat a rapid tap-tap on the hardwood floors as she went.

  Anger and frustration and regret pulled him in three different directions. One told him she deserved it. The other urged him to jump her bones, while the other told him he'd been an ass and he should chase after her and apologize. He heard the door close, and he shut his eyes and pressed his palm hard against his erection.

  Damn.

  The sound of her SUV reached him inside the house, and he glanced out the kitchen window as she shot down his driveway, his security lights chasing after her. He was so turned on he felt like he was going to burst. Or smash something with his fists. There had to be more to his life than this. More than living out here alone in his big empty house, dreaming and fantasizing about a woman with red hair and deep brown eyes. This was no way to live.

  He took a deep breath and let it out slowly. He was thirty-six. He wanted more.

  The telephone rang, and he took a deep breath. He glanced at the Seattle number on the caller ID and picked up the cordless receiver on the fourth ring.

  "Hey Louisa," he said and walked from the kitchen.

  "I thought you were going to call us tonight."

  "It's early." The hardwood was cool beneath his feet as he moved through the house, past the big stone fireplace, to the windows that looked out onto the lake. "Where's Amelia?"

  "Right here."

  "Put her on." There was a pause, and his two-year-old daughter got on the line.

  "Hello," she said in her tiny voice that made his chest get tight. She was one of the things that he wanted a lot more of in his life.

  "Hey baby girl. What are you doing?"

  "Wiggles."

  "Are you watching your Wiggles show?"

  There was lots of breathing, then she said, "Yeah."

  "Did you have dinner yet?"

  "Yeah."

  "What did you eat?"

  "I ate noodles."

  He smiled. Noodles were her favorite and could mean she'd had anything from spaghetti to chicken soup. Lord, he missed her, and it was times like this when, for a few brief moments, he thought of selling the store and moving back to Seattle. But ultimately he knew that he could not. He didn't belong there anymore. "I love you."

  "Love you," she repeated back to him.

  Louisa got back on the telephone. "Are you still planning on coming to Seattle for Easter?" she asked.

  "I'll fly in the prior Wednesday, but I have to be back here the Saturday before."

  "Why? I thought we could shop for Amelia's basket and give it to her Easter morning. I thought we could spend the holiday together as a family."

  There it was. The first tentative thread. Reaching across the distance to wrap around him. Drawing him in like always. She wanted to reconcile. He still wasn't sure that's what he wanted. He couldn't live in Seattle. She didn't want to live in Gospel. And even if she did, he wasn't even sure Louisa was "the more" he wanted f
or his life.

  "I have commitments here that Saturday, and it doesn't make sense to turn right around again and head back to Seattle." The Saturday before Easter, the town was having a parade, and he'd agreed to pull the elementary school's float with his HUMMER. "Amelia doesn't care if I'm there three days before Easter, on Easter, or three days after. It's all the same to her."

  There was a long pause, and then she said, "Oh. That's okay, I guess." Which meant it wasn't okay at all. "How long did you say you were staying this time?"

  "Three days."

  Another long pause. "Short trip."

  He looked out at the lake and the lights of Gospel. "I'm teaching some fly-tying classes that start the Monday after Easter," he explained, although he knew she wouldn't understand. "But I'll be there for my regular weekend."

  "Perhaps you can stay here with us this time."

  He rested his forehead against the window and closed his eyes. It would be so easy. So easy to take her up on what she offered. He knew her. He knew her mind and body. He knew how she liked to be touched, and she knew just how to touch him. He knew she wouldn't leave two hundred messages on his answering machine and travel hundreds of miles to confront him with a gun.

  She was the mother of his child, and it would be easy to lose himself in her, for just one night. But there would be a price. Whether you paid in emotion or flesh, sex was never free. "I don't think that's a good idea, Lou."

  "Why?" she asked.

  Because you'll want more than I can give, he thought. Because the sex was good between us, but everything else was lousy. Because there are worse things than loneliness. "Let's just leave it alone." He wasn't any good at relationships. Not with her or anyone else. The scars on his body reminded him of that every day. "I gotta go," he said. "I'll call you next week."

  "I love you, Rob."

  "Love you, too," he said even though he knew it wasn't the right kind of love. Perhaps it never had been.

  He pressed disconnect and straightened. A smudge on the glass caught his attention, and he raised his hand and placed it against Kate's palm print. The print was cool to the touch, unlike the woman who'd left it there.

  Kate Hamilton was anything but cold. Everything about her was hot. The look in her eyes after he'd soul-kissed her. Her response to him. Her temper. The way she'd torn out of his house like she was on fire. The next time he saw Kate, he fully expected her to hit him with her white-hot anger.

  He probably deserved it. He probably should apologize. Too bad he wasn't sorry.

  Kate pulled her CRV into her grandfather's detached garage and cut the engine. The door squeaked as it rolled closed in the old metal track. She stared straight ahead at several boxes sitting on her grandfather's workbench.

  Rob Sutter had kissed her, and she was still in shock.

  Her hands fell from the steering wheel to her lap. Kiss seemed too mild a word. Consumed. He'd consumed her. Overpowered her resistance.

  She touched her fingers to her bottom lip, where it was a little tender from his soul patch. She was thirty-four, and she didn't think she'd ever been kissed like that in her life. One second she'd just been standing there eating granola and talking, and in the next, his mouth had been on hers. One second the air around her had seemed normal, and in the next, it had turned thick with passion and need and lust. It had pressed in on her in hot, beating waves, and all she'd been able to do was grab onto him for dear life.

  She'd held onto his big shoulders, and when he'd taken her hand and pushed it down his chest, she hadn't had a thought in her head other than the feel of hard, defined muscles and flat, corded belly. He'd scrambled her brains and sucked out her will to say no. Then he'd pressed her hand against his erection. She should have been appalled. Outraged that a man whom she hardly knew had done that. Right now, sitting in her grandfather's garage, she was outraged, but at the time, the only thought that had slid through her brain was, I guess he can get it up. Followed closely by, Mmm, he's big all over.

  Kate grabbed her keys and reached for her purse. While she'd been melting all over him, he'd only kissed her to make a point. He could definitely get it up. While she'd been all light-headed and brain dead, he'd made a second point. He still didn't want her. Not only did she feel outraged, she felt rejected, too. Again. She hadn't learned her lesson the first time.

  Kate walked from the garage, across the side of the yard and into the house. There was a bowl and spoon in the sink, and Kate dropped her backpack by two empty boxes on the kitchen table. She moved through the living room and took a peek into her grandfather's room. He lay very still beneath a faded patchwork quilt her grandmother had made years ago from scraps of her children's clothes. Above the bed, the shoulders, neck, and head of an antelope her grandfather had shot back in 1979 stuck out of the wall like it was jumping through the Sheetrock. His hands were folded across his chest and he stared up at the ceiling. He looked dead.

  Kate rushed to the side of his bed. "Grandpa!"

  He turned his head and looked at her though runny, bloodshot eyes. "Did you get Rob his flax-seed?"

  "Yes." She stopped by the nightstand and pressed a hand to her beating heart. "You scared me to death. How are you feeling?"

  "Pretty good, now. Grace stopped by."

  "I know, she said she would." She noticed the Nyquil and aspirin on the stand next to the pussycat alarm clock. Its cute little pussycat eyes winked on the half minute. "Have you eaten dinner?"

  "Grace made me soup." He looked back up at the ceiling. "It was pretty good. Homemade chicken noodle. You can tell a good woman by her soup."

  Kate thought it probably took a little bit more than soup. "Do you need anything?" she asked as she shrugged out of her coat.

  "Yes, I need you to do something for me."

  "What?"

  "I've got some empty boxes out for you to put some of your grandmother's things in." A horrible cough racked his chest, then he added, "I thought you should take anything you might want."

  This was news. Big news. Kate wondered what had happened to bring it about, but she didn't ask, in case he changed his mind. "Okay. Anything else?"

  "Turn out the light."

  She flipped the switch and moved back into the kitchen. She took the bowl and spoon from the sink and placed them in the dishwasher. As she added soap, she wondered how a nice woman like Grace could have raised a man like Rob. How a "good woman" who made a sick old man soup could raise a man who just grabbed unsuspecting women and kissed the breath right out of them. A man who could kiss like that, get that turned on, and not try and take things further. That wasn't natural.

  She started the dishwasher and glanced about the kitchen. She didn't know where to start. What was she going to do with a house full of Tom Jones stuff? Rent a shed and store it the rest of her life?

  Her gaze fell on the set of Tom decorative plates held in a rack by the table, and her thoughts returned to the kiss Rob had planted on her. What kind of man grabbed a woman's hand and shoved it on his erection? She got a stack of newspapers by the back door and set them on the table. Unfortunately she knew the answer to her last question. The kind of man who wanted to prove he didn't have a problem getting it up. In the calmer part of her brain, she could even kind of, sort of, understand why he'd done it. But what she didn't understand was what kind of man got that hard and pushed a woman away? She'd never known a man that sexually turned-on who didn't think she should drop to her knees and do something about it.

  Whatever his reason, it didn't matter. She should have been the one to stop things before they'd gotten to that point. She should have been the one to step back. The one in control. He should have been the one left dazed and mortified.

  She told herself that at some point she would have stopped him. That before their clothes hit the ground, she would have grabbed her bag and gone home. That's what she told herself. Problem was, she wasn't all that convincing. Not even to herself.

  Kate wrapped a plate in paper and set it in the box. Rob
Sutter was a cheater and a bad emotional risk. He was rarely nice, and most often a jerk, which explained her inexplicable attraction to him.

  He'd humiliated her twice now. Two times he'd left her embarrassed by her own behavior and stunned by his rejection. That was two times too many.

  There couldn't and wouldn't be a third.

  Ten

  Stanley read over his poem one last time. It had taken him three days to write it, crossing out one word, substituting another, and he still wasn't sure he'd expressed himself right. The poem ended with the word reimburse, which was, admittedly, stupid.

  He knew Grace liked poetry, and he wanted to tell her how much he appreciated her looking in on him. He wanted to tell her he thought she was a good nurse, but he hadn't been able to think up a good word to rhyme with nurse-hearse and purse just didn't do it.

  He folded the poem and placed it in an envelope. He'd been out of commission with the bad chest cold for four days, and Grace had stopped by every morning before work and every night after just to check up on him. She'd taken his pulse and listened to his lungs. She talked about Rob and he talked about Katie. She always left him soup. She was a good woman.

  He placed a stamp in the corner, then glanced out of the office. Katie was in front with the Frito-Lay salesman, probably getting suckered into stocking the "Natural and Organic" products, which was a bunch of hokum as far as Stanley was concerned.

  He hurriedly wrote Grace's address and stuck the envelope under a stack of outgoing mail. A pile of pamphlets sat on his desk, and he opened a drawer and dumped them inside. He knew his granddaughter wanted him to think about upgrading his cash register and bookkeeping system. He wasn't interested. He was seventy-one and too old to change the way he'd been doing business for more than forty years. If his wife hadn't died, he'd be retired by now, spending his retirement fund on travel or some other type of recreation, not on some integrated accounting system.