he'd given her the day she'd given birth to Amelia. 'The answer is easy, Rob. Either you've thought about it or you haven't. Either you want to be a family with me and Amelia or you don't.'
It was so typical of Louisa to push until she irritated him. Leaving him no choice, he said, 'Yeah, I've thought about it. Amelia is the most important thing in my life. I love her and I would do anything for her.' He could tell Louisa a kind lie, but the problem was, he didn't know any kind lies. 'The thing is, I don't love you the way a man should love a woman he is thinking about living with. If we got back together, it would end as badly as it did last time.'
Her brows drew together and he saw the hurt in her eyes before she turned to look at the penguins diving off rocks into the water. She started to cry, and he felt like an asshole. People walking by looked at him like he was an asshole, too, but he hadn't known what else to say. And now she was crying right in front of him and everyone else in the coastal desert exhibit. 'I'm sorry.'
'I guess I'd rather you told me the truth.' She brushed her fingertips beneath her eyes, and her shoulders shook. Rob didn't know if he should hold her or stand back. He never knew what to do with a crying woman. Guilt churned in his stomach, and he tightened his grasp on the stroller's handle.
'Could you get me a tissue?' she asked between sobs.
'Where are they?'
She waved a hand toward the stroller. 'Baby bag.'
Rob squatted down and rummaged through the huge pink bag in the bottom of the stroller. He found a box of Kleenex and handed Louisa a few.
'Thank you.' She wiped her eyes and her nose, but she kept her head down and wouldn't look at him. 'Are you in love with someone else?'
Rob thought of Kate. He thought of her laughter and soft red hair. Of the way she made him feel, like he wanted to grab her and roll around with her. 'No, I'm not in love with anyone else.' It was the truth. He wasn't in love with Kate, but he liked a lot of things about her.
Somehow they got through the rest of the zoo with only a few more breakdowns. One in the tropical rainforest building, the other by the kangaroos. Louisa didn't mention a reconciliation again until he dropped Amelia off on his way to the airport for his return flight to Idaho.
'Since neither of us are in love with anyone else,' she said, 'maybe we can be friends. We'll start there and see where it goes.' She stuck out her hand. 'Friends?'
He took Louisa's hand as Amelia started to cry and cling to his neck. 'Don't go, Daddy,' she wailed.
'We can be friends, Lou. That'd be great,' he said over Amelia's crying. He didn't add that he wasn't interested in seeing where it went. Right now, one crying female was enough, and he didn't think he could handle another scene like the one at the zoo. He kissed his daughter's cheek and pried her arms from his neck. He handed her over to Louisa, and she gave a bloodcurdling scream as if he'd just cut off her little arm or something.
'Go, Rob,' Louisa said above the racket. 'She's tired. She'll be fine.'
With his heart throbbing painfully in his chest, he walked from the condo, hearing Amelia's pitiful wailing halfway to the elevator.
'Christ,' he muttered and swallowed hard. He was Rob Sutter. For over a decade, he'd been one of the most feared players in the NFL. He'd been shot and lived to talk about it. He took a deep breath and punched a button for the elevator. If he didn't get a grip, he was going to start crying like a little girl.
Barely an hour after Rob returned home from Seattle, he hooked up the elementary school float and pulled it behind his HUMMER in the Easter parade. He looked for Kate as he passed the M &S, and he saw her standing with a cowboy from the Rocking T ranch. His name was Buddy something. Through the HUMMER windows, her gaze met his. Then her eyes got the squinty look he recognized, and she turned away. No smile. No wave. He got his answer. Yep, she was mad as hell.
After the parade, he went to Sutter Sports and tried to catch up on his work. He had over a thousand e-mails to read or delete. Of those thousand, about thirty were business related, and he had to respond. Forty boxes of inventory had arrived while he'd been away and needed to be processed.By eight that night, he'd gotten through half of what he needed to get done.
He was wiped out, but there was one more thing he had to do that couldn't wait. He reached for the telephone on his desk and dialed Stanley Caldwell's home number. No one picked up. Kate wasn't home, but he figured he knew where he could find her.
He stood and unbuttoned the cuffs of his black-and-green flannel shirt. He rolled up the sleeves and headed for the grange.
The trip took him about five minutes, and he could hear the thump of heavy bass and the twang of steel guitar as he pulled into the dirt parking lot. The door to the grange vibrated as he opened it and stepped inside.
Except for the bright lights shining on the stage and the bar at the other end, the inside was pitched in darkness. Rob ordered a beer from the bar then found a spot in front of a wall where it wasn't quite so dark. He wasn't sure, but it looked like tinfoil Easter eggs were hanging from the ceiling beams. Someone in a white bunny costume hopped around and handed out something from a basket. Rob placed a foot on the wall behind him. While his gaze scanned the crowd, searching for a certain redhead, a man with a head like a cue ball squeezed beside him.
'Hi,' he said over the music. Rob glanced at him, at the words liza minnelli written in silvery glitter on the front of his sweatshirt. 'I'm Tiffer Cladis. My mother may have mentioned me to you.'
'Yeah, and I'm not gay.' He returned his gaze to the crowd and spotted his mother and Stanley out on the dance floor.
'That's a shame. I've never been with a hockey player.'
Rob raised his Budweiser to his lips. 'That makes two of us.'
'You're into women exclusively?'
'Yep, just women.' Rob took a drink and spotted Kate over the bottom of the bottle. One of the Aberdeen twins had her out on the dance floor, two-stepping to some band's crappy rendition of Garth Brook's 'Low Places.' She had on a white shirt and some kind of pleated skirt. Red and really short. From halfway across the room, he watched her weave in and out of the crowd of dancers. He got a flash of leg, and desire curled in his stomach. 'I'm into women in skirts,' he said as he lowered the bottle.
'I could wear a skirt.' Tiffer raised his beer. 'I like to wear skirts.'
Rob chuckled. 'But you'd still have a dick and a five o'clock shadow.'
'That's true.'
Rob imagined Tiffer hadn't had an easy life. Especially living in a small town in Idaho. 'Your mom tells me you're a female impersonator.'
'Yeah. I do a very good Barbra.'
'Is there a lot of demand for that in Boise?' The music ended and he watched Kate move from the dance floor to a small group of people that included the sheriff's wife. The light from the stage lit up the bottom half of her, and Rob could see that her skirt looked like a little kilt.
'No. That's why I work in an antique shop with my lover.'
Rob had heard that Scottish men went commando beneath their kilts, and he wondered if Kate was keeping up with tradition. His gaze lowered down her long legs to those boots that kept him up at night. Literally. She placed the toe of one boot behind the heel of the other. She rocked her heel from side to side, enticing him. 'Don't you think your lover might object to you propositioning other men?'
'No. He's married and has three children. He blends better than I do. Even when I try. Like tonight.'
Rob looked at Tiffer's Liza sweatshirt and figured Tiffer might as well have had a neon sign with an arrow pointing at his head. If he really wanted to 'blend,' he should man-up. Scuff his white sneakers, chug his beer, and leave Liza at home.
'I date other people, too.'
Rob returned his gaze to Kate. 'Do you find anyone to date in Boise?'
'Actually, the gay population in Boise is bigger than you might think. There are several gay bars right in the heart of the city.'
As Tiffer rattled on about the dating scene in Boise, Rob watched Kate. He'd come here to talk to her about the other night, but that wasn't all he wanted. Kate gave him something that had been missing in his life. Something that made her occupy his thoughts and order granola bars just to see her face. Something more than sex, although
