He smiled. Noodles were her favorite and could mean she'd had anything from spaghetti to chicken soup. Lord, he missed her, and it was times like this when, for a few brief moments, he thought of selling the store and moving back to Seattle. But ultimately he knew that he could not. He didn't belong there anymore. "I love you."
"Love you," she repeated back to him.
Louisa got back on the telephone. "Are you still planning on coming to Seattle for Easter?" she asked.
"I'll fly in the prior Wednesday, but I have to be back here the Saturday before."
"Why? I thought we could shop for Amelia's basket and give it to her Easter morning. I thought we could spend the holiday together as a family."
There it was. The first tentative thread. Reaching across the distance to wrap around him. Drawing him in like always. She wanted to reconcile. He still wasn't sure that's what he wanted. He couldn't live in Seattle. She didn't want to live in Gospel. And even if she did, he wasn't even sure Louisa was "the more" he wanted f
or his life.
"I have commitments here that Saturday, and it doesn't make sense to turn right around again and head back to Seattle." The Saturday before Easter, the town was having a parade, and he'd agreed to pull the elementary school's float with his HUMMER. "Amelia doesn't care if I'm there three days before Easter, on Easter, or three days after. It's all the same to her."
There was a long pause, and then she said, "Oh. That's okay, I guess." Which meant it wasn't okay at all. "How long did you say you were staying this time?"
"Three days."
Another long pause. "Short trip."
He looked out at the lake and the lights of Gospel. "I'm teaching some fly-tying classes that start the Monday after Easter," he explained, although he knew she wouldn't understand. "But I'll be there for my regular weekend."
"Perhaps you can stay here with us this time."
He rested his forehead against the window and closed his eyes. It would be so easy. So easy to take her up on what she offered. He knew her. He knew her mind and body. He knew how she liked to be touched, and she knew just how to touch him. He knew she wouldn't leave two hundred messages on his answering machine and travel hundreds of miles to confront him with a gun.
She was the mother of his child, and it would be easy to lose himself in her, for just one night. But there would be a price. Whether you paid in emotion or flesh, sex was never free. "I don't think that's a good idea, Lou."
"Why?" she asked.
Because you'll want more than I can give, he thought. Because the sex was good between us, but everything else was lousy. Because there are worse things than loneliness. "Let's just leave it alone." He wasn't any good at relationships. Not with her or anyone else. The scars on his body reminded him of that every day. "I gotta go," he said. "I'll call you next week."
"I love you, Rob."
"Love you, too," he said even though he knew it wasn't the right kind of love. Perhaps it never had been.
He pressed disconnect and straightened. A smudge on the glass caught his attention, and he raised his hand and placed it against Kate's palm print. The print was cool to the touch, unlike the woman who'd left it there.
Kate Hamilton was anything but cold. Everything about her was hot. The look in her eyes after he'd soul-kissed her. Her response to him. Her temper. The way she'd torn out of his house like she was on fire. The next time he saw Kate, he fully expected her to hit him with her white-hot anger.
He probably deserved it. He probably should apologize. Too bad he wasn't sorry.
Kate pulled her CRV into her grandfather's detached garage and cut the engine. The door squeaked as it rolled closed in the old metal track. She stared straight ahead at several boxes sitting on her grandfather's workbench.
Rob Sutter had kissed her, and she was still in shock.
Her hands fell from the steering wheel to her lap. Kiss seemed too mild a word. Consumed. He'd consumed her. Overpowered her resistance.
She touched her fingers to her bottom lip, where it was a little tender from his soul patch. She was thirty-four, and she didn't think she'd ever been kissed like that in her life. One second she'd just been standing there eating granola and talking, and in the next, his mouth had been on hers. One second the air around her had seemed normal, and in the next, it had turned thick with passion and need and lust. It had pressed in on her in hot, beating waves, and all she'd been able to do was grab onto him for dear life.
She'd held onto his big shoulders, and when he'd taken her hand and pushed it down his chest, she hadn't had a thought in her head other than the feel of hard, defined muscles and flat, corded belly. He'd scrambled her brains and sucked out her will to say no. Then he'd pressed her hand against his erection. She should have been appalled. Outraged that a man whom she hardly knew had done that. Right now, sitting in her grandfather's garage, she was outraged, but at the time, the only thought that had slid through her brain was, I guess he can get it up. Followed closely by, Mmm, he's big all over.
Kate grabbed her keys and reached for her purse. While she'd been melting all over him, he'd only kissed her to make a point. He could definitely get it up. While she'd been all light-headed and brain dead, he'd made a second point. He still didn't want her. Not only did she feel outraged, she felt rejected, too. Again. She hadn't learned her lesson the first time.
Kate walked from the garage, across the side of the yard and into the house. There was a bowl and spoon in the sink, and Kate dropped her backpack by two empty boxes on the kitchen table. She moved through the living room and took a peek into her grandfather's room. He lay very still beneath a faded patchwork quilt her grandmother had made years ago from scraps of her children's clothes. Above the bed, the shoulders, neck, and head of an antelope her grandfather had shot back in 1979 stuck out of the wall like it was jumping through the Sheetrock. His hands were folded across his chest and he stared up at the ceiling. He looked dead.
Kate rushed to the side of his bed. "Grandpa!"