"Well, tell her I said hello."
"Will do." Rob leaned a hip into the counter and crossed one booted foot over the other. "Can you get me some flaxseed?" he asked.
Flaxseed? Kate placed a few oranges in the bin, then pretended a sudden interest in apples, but her thoughts were not on produce. She was thinking about Rob and wondering if he thought much about his past. She wondered if he missed playing hockey or worried much about the day Stephanie Andrews would get out of jail. She knew she'd worry about that. She wondered if he'd learned a lesson about cheating, and she wondered if his child was a boy or a girl.
She grabbed the empty orange crate and carried it behind the counter toward the doors to the back room. On her way, she glanced at Rob out of the corners of her eyes. At the bruise on his jaw and the mustache framing his lips.
"And I need dried currants," he told Stanley as his gaze followed Kate until she disappeared in the back room.
The door to the alley was to Kate's left, and she grabbed several more boxes before walking outside. She also wondered if Rob believed her about not starting that rumor about him. He'd never said one way or the other. The conversation had pretty much ended when she'd mentioned possible erectile dysfunction.
She tossed the boxes into the Dumpster and shut the lid. She'd been half-joking, but he'd acted so appalled that she had to wonder if she hadn't hit a raw nerve. Since the first night they'd met, she'd been telling herself that he was impotent, but if she was honest, she really hadn't believed it. Not until he'd freaked out and protested so loudly. Now she had to wonder if getting shot had damaged him mentally or physically in that department.
; The sound of her grandfather's laughter reached Kate as she moved into the back room and shut the door behind her. If Rob did have a problem down below, than she felt truly bad for joking about it. She wasn't usually a mean person. Sometimes she was sort of insensitive, but she didn't purposely hurt people.
Wait. She stopped in her tracks right next to her grandfather's shiny meat grinder. She felt bad for Rob? How had that happened?
She leaned her behind against the chrome work-table and put the heel of her hand to her forehead. She didn't want to feel bad for Rob. Feeling bad could lead her further down the path of actually liking him. Liking him would lead her straight to humiliation and rejection. She was supposed to be avoiding men who'd use her and treat her bad.
Rob Sutter was the poster boy of bad.
"Katie," her grandfather said as he walked into the back room. "I have a delivery for you."
"Who?"
"Hazel Avery. She's got that bad cold you had a few days ago."
"Why didn't she call it into Crum's Pharmacy? They deliver too." She held up a hand before he could answer. "Forget it. I know why. You're cuter than Fred Crum."
Stanley's cheeks turned pink, and he held out a bag containing a bottle of Nyquil and a box of Theraflu. "Thanks," he said.
"Is Rob still out front?"
"He left, but I think he just went across the parking lot. You can catch him if you hurry."
Kate shoved her arms into her coat and grabbed her purse. Ever since the night of the fight at the Buckhorn, her grandfather was trying even harder to push her in Rob's direction. "I'll catch him some other time." She hung her purse over her shoulder and pulled her hair from the back of her coat. "This shouldn't take long," she said as she took the sack from her grandfather. At least she hoped it didn't take long. Last time she'd made a delivery had been to the Fernwoods over on Tamarack. They'd invited her in, then cracked open a baby book and shown her about a hundred photographs of their new grandbaby. They'd tried to feed her pie, and they'd forced her to listen to stories about their daughter, Paris, and her husband, Myron, better known to the world of professional midget wrestling as Myron the Masher. Apparently Myron was making quite a name for himself in Mexico with his latest trademark move, The Swirly.
Which, Kate figured as she walked out of the M &S and into the bright afternoon sun, was way more info than she needed to know about the Fernwoods' son-in-law. She moved down the sidewalk toward her Honda CRV and looked across the parking lot. Rob was out front of Sutter Sports, still wearing the same green sweatshirt and jeans he'd had on earlier. The only difference was that he'd put on a pair of black sunglasses with blue lenses.
Before she thought better of it, she stepped off the curb and moved across the asphalt lot. Yeah, he was the president of the "bad relationship bet" club, but he'd also been the only man in the Buckhorn bar who'd stepped up to help her out. She wasn't sure he knew how truly grateful she was.
As she got closer, she watched him stick an ax under one arm and pull on a pair of brown leather work gloves. Then before her eyes, he turned and swung the ax at one of the four-foot evergreens growing in twin planters next to the front doors. Two swings and the tree lay on the ground at his feet.
"Hello," she called out to him as she stepped up onto the curb.
He glanced back over his shoulder at her and straightened.
"What? Are you in desperate need of firewood?" she asked as she stopped in front of the dead tree.
"Stand back a little bit," he said and swung at the other tree. It fell on the ground next to its twin.
"I've always hated those things," he said as he turned toward her. He held up the ax, and the wooden handle slid through his gloved hand and stopped at the heavy steal head. "They look like they belong at the Four Seasons, not a sporting goods store in the Idaho Sawtooths."
"Are you going to replace them?"
"I was thinking about maybe getting some of those tall weeds." He bit one fingertip of his gloves and pulled it off.