"I guess this means I never get to hear about the sexual pretzel."
She tried not to smile. "No."
"Damn." His thumb brushed across the heel of her hand, back and forth, scattering the hot tingles in her wrist.
"Good night." This time when she pulled her hand away, he let her go.
"Good night, Kate."
She moved into the house and shut the door behind her. She felt a little flushed as she set the tray on the counter and hung up her coat. A frown pulled her brows even as the hot tingles settled in her stomach.
She didn't really believe she and Rob could be anything that even closely resembled friends. For some reason that defied logic but probably had a lot to do with anthropology and absolutely nothing to do with common sense, her body reacted to his. It was natural. In her DNA. Programed into females since prehistoric times, and Rob Sutter happened to be the biggest, baddest Neanderthal in the cave.
Kate set the hors d'oeuvre plate on the counter, then hung her coat by the back door. She didn't want to get a club to the head. She'd been there and done that with other men who couldn't make a commitment to one woman. There was no doubt in her mind that if s
he was foolish enough to get involved with Rob, he'd leave her battered like a baby seal.
She removed the plastic wrap from the tray and threw it in the garbage beneath the sink. Not only was he a bad bet, he believed sex could "make women psycho," which was ridiculous on so many different levels. One of which was the fact that men were much more likely to kill their coworkers, sniper cars on freeways, and wipe out their entire families. The only thing she did agree with Rob on was that you couldn't tell a psycho by looking.
Reaching into a cabinet, she pulled out a few plastic containers with snap-on lids. Almost a year later, she could still recall the absolute average-Joe looks of Randy Meyers the day he'd walked into her office at Intel Inc. She remembered the family portrait he'd brought in with him. The light blue muted background, contrasting with matching red sweaters. Doreen sat frozen in time with a pleasant smile on her lips. Her children on each side of her-Brandon with his short blonde crew cut and Emily with her blonde ponytail and missing front tooth. Randy stood behind his family, his hands on his wife's shoulders while a normal smile curved his mouth.
On the surface, the perfect family. But if Kate had bothered digging, she would have found out that normalness was a carefully constructed facade. She would have discovered that Randy had exerted a systematic control over every facet in the lives of his family.
He hadn't physically abused his wife, but he'd ruled her life just the same. He hadn't isolated her from her friends and family, but he'd alienated her from them. He'd made sure he was invited and included in every aspect of Doreen's life. He hadn't allowed her to work outside the home, but he had allowed her to attend college classes. The catch was that he took them with her. He'd been his daughter's soccer coach. His son's Cub Scout leader. He was always there. Always directing. Always watching.
When Doreen left, he couldn't accept the fact that he was no longer the center of their lives. He'd driven for two days straight to find them. Then he'd perpetrated his last act of control. He'd made sure they were all together. Under the same headstone in a Tennessee graveyard.
No matter how many times Kate told herself that she wasn't responsible for what an insane freak had done to his family, she could not separate herself from her part in it. She felt the weight of their deaths in her soul, and she could not completely wash the blood from her hands.
She didn't know if she would ever get over what had happened in that small house in Tennessee, but she was going to try. She was going to get on with her life. She was going to help her grandfather get on with his, too.
She placed the olives in a container and snapped on the lid. For her grandfather's sake, she would try to be friends with Rob. If he really did have feelings for Grace, Kate didn't want to cause friction. Because despite what her grandfather thought, she was a "people person."
Damn it.
Kate went into work early the next morning and shifted through bread recipes her grandmother had kept in a recipe box at the M &S. Kate would have loved to bake focaccia bread, but the store didn't carry fresh cake yeast. She settled on cracked wheat bread and got busy. When her grandfather arrived to open the store at six-thirty, she was just taking the loaves out of the big ovens.
"That smells wonderful, Katie," He hung his coat and knit cap next to the back door. He rubbed a hand over his bald head.
"You got home late last night," she said as she sliced off a hunk for him and spread it with butter.
"Grace read me a few of her poems and then was kind enough to give me some pointers." He took the bread from her and bit into it. She didn't know if it was the chill clinging to his cheeks, but they were definitely pink.
She moved to a cabinet and reached for bread bags on the top shelf. "You're writing poetry now?"
"Poetry feeds the soul of mankind."
She dropped on her heels and slowly turned toward him. The man in front of her looked like Stanley Caldwell. He stood there eating his bread, getting butter on his mustache, and he had the same white pants and shirt her grandfather always wore. Same apron he tied in place before he left the house every morning. But he didn't sound like her grandfather. "Did Grace say that?"
He nodded and took his bread out into the store. A few moments later, she heard him starting the coffee machines. He has it bad, she thought as she shoved the bread in clear bags and closed them with twist ties. He was moving on. Starting to live again. She was glad. Really.
She got out the sticker gun and marked each loaf. Yeah, she was happy for him, but at the same time, a tiny part of her wondered when she was going to get her life together enough to move on. He was seventy-one. If he could do it, she certainly could too.
She dragged out a card table and set it at the corner of the bread aisle. She draped it with a green-and-white-striped cloth and set her ten loaves of bread on it.
Eden Hansen, owner of Hansen's Emporium, was the first to bite.
"A dollar seventy-five is a lot to pay for a loaf of bread," she complained. "Melba used to sell her loaves for a dollar."