The Trouble With Valentine's Day (19 page)

“I will. Eventually.” His free hand slid around the small of her back, and he pulled her against him. Tight. He was hard against her lower abdomen, and desire pooled between her legs. He pressed his forehead to hers. “Tell me you're not crazy.”

“What?”

“You're not crazy, are you, Kate?”

At the moment, she felt kind of crazy. Mixed up. Desire warring with common sense. “No.”

“Stalked, harassed, or shot anyone?”

He wanted to know that she wasn't another Stephanie Andrews. A psycho who'd stalk him with a .22 after “good sex.” The desire fogging her brain cleared enough for her to step from his embrace. “I googled you the other night.”

His brows lowered, and he shook his head as if trying to clear his mind. “You what me?”

“I looked you up on the Internet.”

“Ahh.” He turned away as if she'd just thrown cold water on him. “Did you read all the juicy details of my past?”

“I don't know if I read all of them, but I understand now why you turned me down that first night in Sun Valley.”

He moved to the workbench and dumped out the grocery sack. With his broad back to her, he picked up the pencil and tore open the package. “Getting shot tends to discourage a guy from having a one-night stand.” He pulled out the pencil and tossed the package on the desk. “It also gets a guy divorced. Although I think that was probably doomed to fail before it even started.”

Kate walked toward him. “Did you love her?”

“Stephanie Andrews?” He looked across his shoulder at her. “Hell no!”

Kate had never understood how a man could love his wife yet cheat on her. “I meant your wife.”

He nodded as he took the pencil apart. “Yeah, I loved her. Trouble was, I didn't like her most of the time. She didn't like me either. We really only got along when we were in bed, and that wasn't all that often. Either I was on the road or we were fighting.”

Kate had never loved someone but not liked them. No, her problem was that she loved men who didn't love her enough.

“Still, I would have preferred a different end to my marriage.” He removed the spring and lead from the pencil, then set them aside. “My career, too.”

“More dignified?”

“Dignified? Yeah, that's a good word. Getting shot takes away your dignity. You wake up in a hospital bed with tubes stuck in your stomach and . . . other places. You're weak and helpless and everything about it sucks.”

Kate imagined that to any man, being weak and helpless would be hard. But to a guy like Rob, used to hammering opponents into submission, it must have been extremely difficult.

“Then when you finally do get on your feet again, your whole life is different. No job. No wife. No nothing, except the sordid details on the Internet for everyone to read.” He pulled a sewing needle from a package and snipped off the eye. “No love life either.”

She didn't think he was talking about the falling-in-love kind of love life. She knew firsthand, so to speak, that he was physically capable of having sex. He wasn't married, although that obviously hadn't hampered him in the past. “How long since you've had a love life?”

He looked at her. “Are you asking how long it's been since I've had sex?”

They both knew she was, so why deny it? “Yeah.”

One corner of his mouth turned down in a frown. “Never mind.”

“Six months?”

He turned away.

“One year?” She knew from interviewing a lot of people over the years that most often the answer was found in what wasn't said.

“Drop it, Kate.”

“Two years?”

He set down the needle and turned to face her. “You seem awfully interested in my sex life.”

“You brought it up.” She shrugged. “And I don't know if I'm ‘awfully interested.' I'd call it a mild curiosity.”

“What exactly are you curious about?” He took a step toward her. “How long it's been? Or how good it would be between us?” His lids lowered a fraction over his eyes. “I gotta admit that I'm curious about that myself.”

She took a step back. “You and I having sex together is a very bad idea.”

“You've already said that.” He took a step forward.

She stuck her hand out like a traffic cop. “Stop. We can't have sex.”

“Sure we
can
. We're both over twenty-one and neither of us is crazy. I want you and I know you want me. You wanted me the first night we met, and I'm thinking I was an idiot not to drag you up to my room.”

There were several very good reasons that had nothing to do with age. One of which she gave. “That's why I can't have sex with you.”

He took a determined step toward her, and her palm flattened against the front of his shirt. “Are you still mad that I didn't drag you up to my room?”

She shook her head and her hair brushed her shoulders. “I can't have sex with you because I know you now.”

“But you could have sex with me when you didn't know me?” He grabbed her wrist. “That doesn't make sense.”

“Yes it does.” She looked into his eyes and tried to explain. “That night in Sun Valley, you were supposed to be part of my fantasy. My fantasy of picking up a stranger in a bar. I was supposed to use and abuse you and kick you out.”

“You still can.”

“No. You're real now.” She tried to pull free, but he didn't let go. “You killed all my fantasies.”

“I'll give you a new fantasy. God knows I have hundreds.” He raised her hand to his mouth. “Do you want to hear one?” he asked against her palm, but he didn't wait for her answer. “My favorite involves you wearing your black dominatrix boots.”

She stopped trying to pull away. He fantasized about her? No man had ever admitted that he fantasized about her. Her. Kate Hamilton and her size ten boots. She felt herself weaken. Almost give in. She should leave. Run away. Fast. And she would. But she hadn't been able to work up a good fantasy of her own for a while now. It seemed only right that he should share his. “What else am I wearing?”

“Nothing.”

“What are you wearing?”

“A hard-on and a smile.”

She didn't know if she should laugh or pretend outrage. He looked serious except for the teasing laugh lines at the corners of his eyes. “Where does the fantasy take place?”

“In my bed.” He placed her palm on the side of his neck and slid his hand to her waist. “On my pool table.” He pulled her so close that her breasts touched the front of his shirt. “My car.” The teasing lines at the corners of his eyes disappeared by the time he added, “Right here. Anywhere I happen to be standing,” he lowered his mouth and said just above her lips.

“You star in every one of my fantasies.” He kissed her, a gentle caress of lips and tongue in stark contrast to the hard, fast beating of her heart.

Kate slipped her hand to the back of his neck and leaned into him, the weight of her breasts pressed into his chest. Her nipples tightened. She wanted this. This hot liquid pumping through her veins and pooling between her legs. Making her feel wanted and needed, her skin buzzing with sexual need. It was wrong. He was bad for her. But . . . it had been a long time since a man had wanted her anywhere he happened to be standing. A long time since she'd felt the heavy pull of desire take over and shut out the pessimist in her head.

She fed him a deep, hot kiss that had him groaning into her mouth. He tasted a little of granola, of need and sex. He cupped her breast through her sweater, and she arched against his rock-hard penis, feeling the heavy length of him pressed into her lower abdomen.

His free hand grabbed her behind, and he pulled her up onto her toes. He pushed himself against the apex of her thighs as his thumb brushed across her hard nipples. Back and forth, an unhurried rhythm in perfect time to his erection he rubbed against her crotch. A maddening, frustrated, moan escaped her throat as she threaded her fingers in the back of his hair.

The ringing of the bells on the door barely penetrated the sounds of heavy breathing in the loft.

“Mr. Sutter?”

Rob straightened, and his hand dropped from her behind. He looked toward the front of the store as the sound of two young voices rose from below.

“Are you here?”

“Shit.” Rob removed his other hand from Kate's breast and looked at his watch. “I forgot I told those two boys to come on by.” He returned his attention to Kate. His gaze filled with lust and hunger. “Give me a few minutes, and I'll be right down,” he called out, his voice rough.

“Okay.”

“Stay here and wait for me, Kate. I won't be gone long.”

She took a deep breath, and her sanity partially returned. At least enough to allow her to take a step back. “No.”

He reached for her, but she moved, and his hand grasped empty air. She kept on moving before he could touch her and make her change her mind. Before he could make her forget that he was just heartache number twenty-six. The latest on the long list of men that were bad for her. That wasn't her inner pessimist talking, either. It was the truth.

Just before she reached the doorway he called out, “You can't say no forever, Kate Hamilton. Someday I'm going to make you say yes.”

She didn't dare stop. She moved down the stairs and through the store. With her hand on the front door handle, she paused and looked back over her shoulder. He stood in the loft, his hands gripping the railing.

“Someday real soon,” he said.

Rob whistled to “Sex Type Thing” as he twisted hare's mask dubbing and tan thread into a long thin strand. He attached the bobbin to one end, then wound the dubbing around the shank of a three-inch hook clamped in a vise. Several fluffy strands of dubbing landed on the knee of his jeans, then drifted to the toe of his white sock.

As Scott Weiland sang about being a man who could give a woman something she wouldn't forget, a smile lifted the corners of Rob's mouth. Kate didn't think sex was a good idea, but she was just plain wrong. That afternoon, he'd given her fair warning that he was going to make her change her mind. He'd been serious. He was going to give her something she wouldn't forget.

He wound the thread and dubbing to the eye of the hook, then spun the bobbin and loosened the stand. During a pause in the music, the clock on the mantel in his living room downstairs chimed ten times. He wanted Kate. She wanted him. She wasn't crazy. It was inevitable.

Both times he'd kissed her, she'd kissed him back like she was never going to stop. Earlier, she'd melted against him, so hot his hair had about caught fire. He'd touched her breast and thrust his hard-on into her, and if those boys hadn't come into the store, he would have had her naked and up against the wall before she'd known what hit her.

The bobbin swayed as he stripped the excess dubbing from the thread. He turned in his chair and selected a gold-and-black hackle feather from his assorted trays of feathers and fur. He stripped the barbs, then secured the stem to the hook shank with three tight wraps of his thread.

Other than wanting Kate on her back and in his bed, he didn't know how he felt about her. She was stubborn and competitive and had a smart mouth, but he didn't mind those qualities in a woman.

He clamped a pair of hackle pliers on the tip of the feather and wound it toward the bend in the hook. By rote, his hands passed the pliers back and forth as he wound the feather over and under the shank.

Kate was competent and believed she could damn well take care of herself. Some men didn't like that about her, but he didn't mind those qualities either. In fact, he didn't care for clinging, needy women.

At the bend in the hook, he tied down the hackle feather with wire, then wound it up the shank toward the eye. Kate was smart and beautiful and sexy. Most important, she wasn't a psycho.

The cordless telephone sitting next to his elbow rang. He glanced at the caller ID and hit the mute on his stereo. He pressed the connect button on the phone and said, “Hey, Lou. What's up?”

“Well, I've been thinking,” his ex-wife began.

“About?”

“About our conversation the other night, and I didn't want you to think I was mad about Easter.”

He released the pliers and set them on the workbench. “Amelia is young enough that she won't remember, and besides, it's not your weekend anyway.”

A suddenly reasonable Louisa worried him. “Are you dating someone?” The last time she'd been this pleasant had been the time she'd been in love with a Boeing executive. She'd wanted Rob to stay with the baby while she flew off to Cancun with her new man, which he'd been happy to do. Her relationship with the exec had ended last fall, before she'd started dropping hints of a reconciliation.

“No,” she answered. “I'm not dating anymore.”

Rob stood and moved his head from side to side. “Why not?”