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Kate made him feel those things. He wanted her like a man should want a woman. She made him feel the biting, animalistic urge to pick her up, throw her down, and get on with it. The kind of urge that a man should feel for an ex-wife he was thinking about getting back together with. But was desire, or lack of desire, a reason to reject the notion out of hand? Wasn't there more to a good relationship than sex? When he and Louisa had been married, the sex had been good but everything else had pretty much sucked. So if everything but the sex was good in a relationship, could it work?
The more Rob thought about it, the more confused he got. His temples began to pound, and the longer he let it all tumble around in his mind, the bigger his headache got until he could hardly think at all.
There was only thing he was real clear about. Until he got it all sorted out in his own mind, he'd have to resist Kate Hamilton.
He'd learned his lesson about talking reconciliation with one woman while having sex with another. He'd been there and done that, and he didn't need that kind of trouble.
Thirteen
Instead of bread, the next morning Kate made something different. It was five days before Easter, so she baked cupcakes and topped them with a thick layer of white frosting. She dyed coconut green for grass and placed tiny hummingbird candy eggs in the coconut grass. As she stuck pipe cleaners in the cupcakes to look like little handles, her thoughts turned to Rob, where they'd been stuck since yesterday.
You can't say no forever, Kate Hamilton. Someday I'm going to make you say yes, he'd said. Someday real soon.
His threat worried her. Not on a physical level. She didn't believe for a second that Rob would force her to do anything. She was worried about her attraction to him-worried that if he whispered her skin was like dessert, and that he fantasized about her, she'd get all weak and brain dead-again.
She knew Rob. She'd dated men just like him. She didn't want yet another bad relationship, but there was a part of her that tended to forget all of that when she was alone with him. The next time he called for a delivery, her grandfather would have to make it.
Kate placed the last tiny egg on the last cupcake and took a step back to view her work. "Martha Stewart, wherever you are, eat your heart out." By noon, she'd sold all five dozen and had orders for five dozen more.
At two, while Stanley sat in the back office working on a poem, Regina Cladis came in for a rump roast, a bag of baby carrots, and some red potatoes. "Tiffer's home for a visit, and he loves my roast."
"How long will he be staying?" Kate asked as she rang up the meat and placed it in a bag.
"Until the Monday after Easter," she answered and dug around in her big purse.
"Perhaps you and Tiffer might enjoy a bit of jalapeno jelly."
Regina looked up and pushed her heavy glasses up the bridge of her short nose. "Jalapeno what?"
"Jalapefio jelly. It's very good served with cream cheese and spread over crackers. Or you can spread it on bagels."
"No thanks. I don't eat bagels, and that jelly sounds horrible."
> "I don't understand why no one in this town will try it." Kate sighed and rang up the carrots.
"We like our jelly made with fruit," Regina explained. "When I first moved here from out of town, I had a hard time fitting in, too. I was treated like an outsider, just like you."
Kate wasn't aware that she was being treated like an outsider. "Really?"
"Yes. Myrtle Lake and me applied for the same job at the library, and when I got it instead of her, there was a big dust up because I wasn't a local. People were all bent out of shape and wouldn't come into the library."
"Where did you live?"
"I was born and raised in Challis."
Challis sounded familiar. "Where's that?"
"About forty miles north."
Kate pointed out what she thought was the obvious. "But that's local."
Regina shook her head and said with an absolutely straight face, "No. It's in the next county."
Kate was about to ask why a city forty miles north wasn't considered local, but she stopped herself. It was best not to ask too many questions. Especially since you'd get the answers. And the answers were usually followed by a tightening of Kate's forehead and a tick in her left eye. The tightening could cause wrinkles, the tick a tumor, and Kate didn't need to borrow that kind of trouble.
"Folks did eventually warm up to me though, and they will you. Shoot, Sheriff Taber married a gal from California. If the town can get over that travesty, they'll accept Stanley's granddaughter being from Vegas. 'Course we all go to Sin City occasionally to gamble and see the shows. So that's an easier pill to swallow."
"What's wrong with California?" Kate asked before she thought better of it.
