the sheriff immediately and had hired Adam to help out in the store. The eleven-year-old had done a good job sweeping up and emptying the trash. 'What's Adam up to these days?' he asked as he rubbed his wrists.
'No good. He can't wait to knock the hell out of the trout population this summer.'
'Tell him to stop by the store and I'll put him to work again.'
'He'd like that.' Dillon pushed up the brim of his cowboy hat. 'How much have you had to drink, Rob?'
'I was on my second beer.'
The radio clipped to Dillon's shoulder squawked, and he reached up to turn it down. 'What do you know about Stanley's granddaughter?' he asked as Kate's SUV pulled onto the road from the parking lot.
Other than the fact that he didn't like her but wanted to have sex with her? 'I know she has a way of rubbing people the wrong way.'
'I have one of those at home,' Dillon chuckled. 'Sometimes, bothersome women are the best kind.'
'I'm going to take your word for that,' Rob said as he pulled his car keys out of his coat pocket. 'Stay out of trouble, Sheriff.'
'Wish I could, but it's only March, and summer's just around the corner.' Dillon shook his head and moved toward the drunks still lined up in front of the bar.
Rob walked to his HUMMER and drove the five miles to his house. He turned up his driveway, and the motion sensors tripped the lights as he went. When he'd had the house built, he'd had the lights put in as security measures. But as he'd quickly discovered, motion-detecting lights and wildlife didn't mix. There were a lot of nights he just turned the whole system off so he could get some sleep.
He pushed a button on the garage door opener clipped to his viser, then drove the HUMMER inside. The automatic door closed behind him. He'd had the four-thousand-square-foot house built the summer before. It had four bedrooms and bathrooms and was constructed of lake rock and big wooden timbers. He loved the cathedral ceiling and huge plate glass windows that overlooked the lake, but he didn't know what he'd been thinking, having such a big house built. Even when Amelia was old enough to visit him in Gospel, she wouldn't need so much room.
The light he'd left on over the range still burned. He turned it off and tossed his keys on the marble counter. The carpet on the stairs muffled his footsteps as he headed upstairs in the dark. He'd spent the past weekend in Seattle with his daughter. She'd learned three new words and had started stringing them together into sentences.
Rob took off his coat and tossed it on a chair next to the oak entertainment center that held one of his big- screen televisions. Moonlight poured in through the floor-to-ceiling windows and shone across him as he shucked off his clothes. Naked, he crawled into his bed.
The cool sheets touched his skin, and he pulled the heavy wool blankets and red-and-blue plaid comforter over him. His trip to Seattle had been an improvement over the last time. He and Louisa were getting along better than they had since he'd been shot. Rob wasn't sure how he felt about it, but she'd hinted at a reconciliation.
He placed an arm behind his head and looked up at the moonlight on his ceiling. He loved Amelia, and he wanted to be with her. He still had feelings for Louisa. He just didn't know what they were or if they were deep enough. He couldn't afford to make another mistake. Both he and Louisa were older. Wiser. More settled, or at least he knew
But when he closed his eyes, it wasn't thoughts of Louisa that kept him up for several more hours. It wasn't the picture of her long blonde hair that was stuck in his head. It wasn't the memory of her voice saying 'Let me know if you need anything' that grabbed his insides and turned him hard. Or the thought of just exactly how many ways he wanted to prove to her that he was a man. A man capable of pleasing a woman. It wasn't the thought of his ex- wife who made his skin hot and the sheets suddenly too warm to bear. It wasn't the touch of Louisa's hands he craved on him.
It was Kate. It was the memory of her playing pool, spliced together with the vision of her layed out across the table like a gourmet meal. It was the hint of cleavage and flash of skin. A freeze frame of her looking up into his face as he held her back against his chest.
Alone within the darkness of his room, it was the woman who thought he was impotent that starred in his most X-rated fantasy.
Across town, Stanley Caldwell sat on the edge of his bed and looked inside the box he held in his hands. A half hour earlier he'd heard Katie return home, and he'd quietly shut his bedroom door.
In the box, he'd placed Melba's collection of Tom Jones records. A few of them were autographed. There were twenty-five of them in all. He knew because he'd just counted them.
It wasn't supposed to have been like this. He should have been the one to die first. Melba should have outlived him. It was too hard this way. Too hard for an old man like him to go on when his best friend and lover was no longer around. They'd raised children and grown old together. They'd grown fat and comfortable too. He missed her like he missed the other part of his soul. He couldn't just pack her away.
He reached inside the box and grabbed some of the albums. Then slowly he put them back. Grace Sutter had come over for a beer that night while Katie had been out playing pool. They'd laughed and talked about things they had in common. Like John Wayne movies and Tex Ritter Westerns. Glenn Miller and The Kingston Trio.
Now that Grace was gone, he felt guilty that he'd shared those memories with anyone other than his wife, Melba. Guilty that he'd boxed up her records. He'd thought he could just pack away a few of her things-nothing big-nothing like her housecoats and slippers. Just the small things that Katie had been nagging him about. He'd thought he could do it.
Stanley let go of the albums and set the box on the floor. He liked Grace. Aside from Melba, he liked her more than he'd liked any woman in a very long time. She wasn't pushy and she didn't gossip. Talking to her had been so easy, and her smile made him want to smile too.
With his foot, he pushed the box under his bed. There, he hadn't gotten rid of Melba's albums. He was just setting them somewhere else for a while. Somewhere out of sight, but not out of the house.
He turned off his light and crawled into bed. When he closed his eyes, he pictured Melba's face surrounded by her gray hair, and he relaxed. Grace Sutter was his friend. He liked her, but no one would ever take the place of his wife in his old, lonely heart.
Eight
The Monday after the Buckhorn brawl, a bad chest cold forced Kate to stay home from work. She sat on the end of her bed, flipping through television stations, feeling extremely sorry for herself. Her body ached. She was so bored that she felt like screaming, but she couldn't because her chest hurt.
Instead of giving in to her mood, she dragged out the cable Internet connection that her grandmother had installed several years ago and her grandfather continued to pay for but never used. She took her laptop computer from the closet, and within an hour she was surfing the Internet, researching really exciting stuff like integrated software for retailers. Specifically, grocery stores. Perhaps if she got the names of a few consultants, more information, or even some brochures, she could show her grandfather that his life would be so much easier if he entered the new millennium. It was crazy not to use the technology that kept track of profit and inventory at the point of sale. It was just plain obstinate to refuse to even think about it.
She bookmarked several sites and sent for information, and because she was sick and bored silly, she did a little Internet shopping to brighten her mood. She bought panties and bras at Victoria's Secret. Sweaters and jeans from Neiman Marcus and Banana Republic. She bought shoes at Nordstrom, and she splurged on a silver cuff bracelet from Tiffany. When she was finished, she was a thousand dollars poorer, but she didn't feel better. She was still sick and still bored.
She lifted her hands to close her laptop, but a little voice inside her head stopped her.
No, that would be an invasion of his privacy… but she could do a google search. Rob had played professional
