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."

"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.