The Trouble With Valentine's Day

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 either 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.