AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Her lawyer returned our call and stated that 'Mrs. Sutter has no comment.'"
Married. He'd been married at the time of the shooting, and he'd had a child. Still had a child. Kate pushed her hair behind her ears. She was stunned and shocked, certainly, but she was also surprised at the deep disappointment she felt. In spite of herself, she was beginning to like him. He'd stepped up and pounded on the Worsleys on her behalf. Yeah, he'd had a little too much fun doing it, but if it hadn't been for him, she was certain she'd still be at the Buckhorn playing pool. Because one thing was for sure, the Worsleys wouldn't have let her leave until she'd lost, and Kate never lost on purpose at anything.
Kate closed the laptop and placed it on the closet shelf next to a box of Tom Jones memorabilia. Rob had cheated on his wife with a hockey groupie. Kate had been cheated on before, and she hated cheaters. Still, no one deserved to get shot or lose his career over it. No one deserved to die, and there was no mistaking the fact that Stephanie Andrews had been aiming to kill Rob.
Kate climbed beneath the pink frilly covers of the twin bed. The bedding she'd brought with her from Vegas was all queen sized, so she was stuck with lace and frills and, of course, Tom.
Getting shot by a groupie he'd picked up in a bar might explain why Rob had turned her down in the Duchin Lounge. It also explained why, despite her best efforts to dislike Rob, she was attracted to him.
She reached for a Kleenex and blew her nose. For whatever reason, if there was a man within a hundred miles who would break her heart and treat her bad, Kate was drawn to him.
She flung the Kleenex at the Tom Jones waste paper basket and missed. Rob was a cheater. He had commitment issues-had "bad bet" written all over him. He was every jerk she'd ever dated rolled into one gorgeous package. He'd smash her heart quicker than he used to smash heads.
Yeah, that might be cynical. And yeah, she was supposed to be working on her inner cynic, but it didn't make it any less true.
Kate was attracted to Rob, but she wasn't going to do anything about it. She was through with impossible men.
She laid her head on her pillow and closed her eyes. As Kate fell asleep, she thought about her life in Gospel. Sometimes she was so bored she thought she just might go as nutty as everyone else in town. But there was something to be said about the mundane. Something comforting in things that didn't change, like the monotony of shelving groceries and ordering produce.
Kate reminded herself of that sentiment two days later when she and her grandfather were having a discussion about how to cut some of the waste out of the business. Kate thought they should stop home deliveries or, at least, charge for them. Stanley wouldn't hear of it.
She wanted to put a tip jar next to the coffee machines to help fund the coffee the locals guzzled every morning. Stanley wouldn't consider that, either. She suggested stocking gourmet cheeses and pasta. Stuffed Italian olives and jalapeno jellies. He looked at her as if she were crazy.
"No one around here eats that fancy stuff."
"Triangle Grocery stocks it," she told him, referring to the other store in town.
"Exactly. If they stock it, why should I?"
They finally compromised on the sticker issue. No more stickers on items that were already marked. Her grandfather finally agreed with her that it was not only a waste of money but also a waste of time.
It was a small victory for Kate, but an important one. It proved to her that her grandfather wasn't completely unbending. He listened to her on some things. When the time came, he might be receptive to her ideas for updating the store's inventory and bookkeeping system. She might help his life get easier, after all. Things were looking up.
Or at least she thought they were until the door to the M &S opened and Rob breezed in looking slightly windblown. Over the stereo speakers, Tom belted out his version of Otis Redding's "Try A Little Tenderness." She hadn't seen Rob since the night of the Buckhorn brawl, and despite all she'd learned of him since, the sight of him made her want to check her posture and reach for her lip gloss.
She stood behind a bin of oranges and grapefruit, and as if he sensed her gaze on him, he looked over at her from the end of aisle two. He wore a dark green hooded sweatshirt the same color as his eyes. He had a black-and-blue bruise on his jaw, a reminder of the night he'd taken on the Worsleys on her behalf.
"How are you?" he asked, his voice a little rough, as if he hadn't been using it a lot lately.
"I'm good."
His lips parted as if he meant to say something more. Instead, his gaze slid to the two boys buying candy bars.
It was three-thirty in the afternoon and business was slow. The only other customers in the store were Adam Taber and Wally Aberdeen, and they were arguing over who was tougher, Spiderman or Wolverine. Rob grabbed Adam around the neck and rubbed his knuckles in the kid's hair.
"Are you going to work for me this summer?" he asked.
"Yeah." Adam laughed and wiggled out of Rob's grasp. "Can Wally work too?"
While Rob pretended to think about it, Kate ran her gaze down his sweatshirt, over the brand name Rossignol printed on the front and down the sleeves, to his faded jeans. The seams were worn, and there was mud caked on the knees. "If you think he can handle it," he said.
"I can handle it," Wally assured him.
"Good. I might have something for you two next month." The three of them did some sort of male ritualistic high-five knuckle-smashing thing before Rob walked toward the front counter, where her grandfather stood refilling racks of cigarettes.
"How's your mother?" Stanley asked him.
"Great. I was just at her house digging up some old dead rosebushes."
