"Erectile dysfunction, yes. Gay?" She shook her head. "No."
He stilled. "You don't think I can get it up? I can get it up plenty!" He hadn't meant to yell, but Christ almighty, just because he hadn't been using his hard-ons lately didn't mean he wasn't capable.
"If you say so."
God, she'd done it again in a matter of minutes. Just when he was starting to think she wasn't so bad, she pissed him off. Just when he was thinking about kissing her, she told him he had erectile dysfunction. If they hadn't been cuffed, he would have grabbed her hand and shoved it on his dick just to prove her wrong. She'd feel for herself that he functioned just fine.
The car door opened and Sheriff Dillon Taber stood in the opening. "Come on out, you two."
Rob didn't hesitate before sliding out of the vehicle. He wanted to be as far away from Kate as possible. "Erectile dysfunction," he scoffed.
"Did you say something, Sutter?" the sheriff asked.
He frowned. "No."
Kate moved from the Blazer and stood beside Rob within the head beams of a police cruiser. "Peirce swears you never touched him," Dillon informed Kate as he moved behind her to take off her cuffs. "He says he must have tripped because there's no way a girl knocked him out." She turned and rubbed her wrists. "But I'm going to give you some advice which I'm sure you'll ignore," the sheriff continued as he shoved the cuffs in a leather case hooked to his belt. "Stay away from anyone with the last name of Worsley." He thought a minute, then added, "And while you're at it, go ahead and steer clear of Emmett Barnes and Hayden Dean."
"I plan to stay clear of the bars around here," she said as she grabbed her leather backpack off the hood of the Blazer.
"That's probably wise. How much did you have to drink tonight?"
"About half a beer."
"Then you're free to go. Drive careful, Ms. Hamilton."
"I will. Thanks," she said and walked away. For one brief second, a flash of light caught in her hair. Then she was gone.
Dillon moved behind Rob and removed his cuffs. "Several people have confirmed that Tuttle Worsley swung first," the sheriff said as he released the cuffs from Rob's wrists. "You're free to go."
Rob had first met Dillon last summer when he and his son Adam had signed up for fly-fishing lessons. He'd liked 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 shoul
der 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.