Thirteen
Instead of bread, the next morning Kate made something different. It was five days before Easter, so she baked cupcakes and topped them with a thick layer of white frosting. She dyed coconut green for grass and placed tiny hummingbird candy eggs in the coconut grass. As she stuck pipe cleaners in the cupcakes to look like little handles, her thoughts turned to Rob, where they'd been stuck since yesterday.
His threat worried her. Not on a physical level. She didn't believe for a second that Rob would force her to do anything. She was worried about her attraction to him-worried that if he whispered her skin was like dessert, and that he fantasized about her, she'd get all weak and brain dead-again.
She knew Rob. She'd dated men just like him. She didn't want yet another bad relationship, but there was a part of her that tended to forget all of that when she was alone with him. The next time he called for a delivery, her grandfather would have to make it.
Kate placed the last tiny egg on the last cupcake and took a step back to view her work. 'Martha Stewart, wherever you are, eat your heart out.' By noon, she'd sold all five dozen and had orders for five dozen more.
At two, while Stanley sat in the back office working on a poem, Regina Cladis came in for a rump roast, a bag of baby carrots, and some red potatoes. 'Tiffer's home for a visit, and he loves my roast.'
'How long will he be staying?' Kate asked as she rang up the meat and placed it in a bag.
'Until the Monday after Easter,' she answered and dug around in her big purse.
'Perhaps you and Tiffer might enjoy a bit of jalapeno jelly.'
Regina looked up and pushed her heavy glasses up the bridge of her short nose. 'Jalapeno what?'
'Jalapefio jelly. It's very good served with cream cheese and spread over crackers. Or you can spread it on bagels.'
'No thanks. I don't eat bagels, and that jelly sounds horrible.'
'I don't understand why no one in this town will try it.' Kate sighed and rang up the carrots.
'We like our jelly made with fruit,' Regina explained. 'When I first moved here from out of town, I had a hard time fitting in, too. I was treated like an outsider, just like you.'
Kate wasn't aware that she was being treated like an outsider. 'Really?'
'Yes. Myrtle Lake and me applied for the same job at the library, and when I got it instead of her, there was a big dust up because I wasn't a local. People were all bent out of shape and wouldn't come into the library.'
'Where did you live?'
'I was born and raised in Challis.'
Challis sounded familiar. 'Where's that?'
'About forty miles north.'
Kate pointed out what she thought was the obvious. 'But that's local.'
Regina shook her head and said with an absolutely straight face, 'No. It's in the next county.'
Kate was about to ask why a city forty miles north wasn't considered local, but she stopped herself. It was best not to ask too many questions. Especially since you'd get the answers. And the answers were usually followed by a tightening of Kate's forehead and a tick in her left eye. The tightening could cause wrinkles, the tick a tumor, and Kate didn't need to borrow that kind of trouble.
'Folks did eventually warm up to me though, and they will you. Shoot, Sheriff Taber married a gal from California. If the town can get over that travesty, they'll accept Stanley's granddaughter being from Vegas. 'Course we all go to Sin City occasionally to gamble and see the shows. So that's an easier pill to swallow.'
'What's wrong with California?' Kate asked before she thought better of it.
'Filled with hippies, potheads, and vegetarians,' Regina answered with equal disdain. ' 'Course now that Arnold is governor, he'll have that state turned around faster than you can say 'I'll be back.' He has a house in Sun Valley, you know.'
'Yes, I know.' Kate's forehead tightened as she hit Total. Wisely, she didn't ask any more questions.
Rob stuck a folder stuffed with invoices and price quotes under one arm and headed home for the evening. A full moon and an eighty-watt bulb lit up the small lot in back of Sutter Sports. It was a quarter past eleven, and he'd spent the five hours since closing putting together a special rental package for a Boy Scout group planning a camping trip the first week in June. He was leaving in the morning for Seattle, and he wanted the packages finished before he left so he could devote his full attention to his daughter.
He still hadn't figured out what he was going to say to Louisa about a reconciliation. He'd pushed it to the back of his brain, concentrating instead on getting his work done. His work was done now, but he still didn't want to think about it. Maybe it was best to wait and see how he felt once he was in Seattle.
He locked the store behind him and jumped into his HUMMER. The store had been open for the season less than a week, and the rental side of the business was already keeping him extremely busy.
As he drove around the side of the building, he noticed that a light was on deep inside the M &S. More than just the light Stanley always left burning in the corner near the produce. Rob pulled around the back of the grocery store and shut off the vehicle. He got out of the HUMMER and pounded three times on the solid wood door.
He rocked back on his heels and wondered what he was doing. It was late, and he still had a ton to do before he left in the morning.
A few moments passed before Kate called out from behind the closed door. 'Who is it?'
'Rob. What are you doing here so late?'
The dead bolt clicked, and she stuck her head out. The light from inside lit her from behind, shifting through her beautiful red hair and surrounding her in a soft glow. Suddenly he knew why he'd come. 'I'm working,' she answered. 'What are you doing out here so late?'
No matter how hard he tried or what was going on in his life, he couldn't seem to stay away from her. She drew him in like a ship to a bright shiny beacon. 'I'm just leaving work.' The scent of warm cake escaped the building, and he didn't know which made him more hungry-the sight of Kate or the smell of cake. 'Are you baking something?'
'Yes.' She opened the door wider and stood before him in a white T-shirt with a pair of red dice on her breasts and the words Feeling Lucky? over the top in black. A brown belt was threaded through the loops of a pair of tight jeans. 'I'm baking seven dozen cupcakes for tomorrow.'
Without a doubt, Kate was definitely better than cake. She didn't invite him in, but she didn't protest when he moved past her into the back of the store. He walked by a meat slicer and grinder toward the bakery tucked in the corner of the large room. A few dozen white cupcakes sat on a stainless steel table a few feet from the duo commercial ovens. He told himself that he wouldn't stay long.
Instead of the usual Tom Jones pouring through the speakers, a female voice sang about not missing someone once she got to Jackson. Rob didn't recognize the song, but he really wasn't into chick music. Especially the folksy angsty stuff that was always about the same three issues: love, broken hearts, asshole men.
'I hear you're pulling the elementary school's float in the Easter parade this Saturday,' she said as she shut and locked the door behind her. 'How'd you get roped into that one?'
Rob turned and watched her walk to him. He purposely kept his gaze off those dice on her breasts and on the relative safety of her hair. It hung loose about her shoulders and shimmered deep red and gold beneath the long tubes of fluorescent lighting. Just yesterday he'd held her hair in his hands while he'd kissed her throat, and he knew her hair was as soft as it looked. 'The principal asked me.'
She opened a cabinet and stretched to reach something on the top shelf. Rob's gaze ran down her long body to her feet in a pair of Tasmanian Devil slippers. 'You're easy,' she said and pulled down a box of Ziploc freezer bags.
'Where're your shoes?'
She looked down, then back up. 'At home. These are more comfy.' She set the box next to an industrial mixer. 'I think my grandfather is getting serious about your mother.'
He knew his mother liked Stanley, but she'd never mentioned that she cared for him more than as a friend. 'What makes you think it's getting serious?'
