Later that night she found some wholesalers who sold the prefect ingredients for focaccia. She tracked them down on the Internet, and by the time she was through, she'd also ordered pickled asparagus and smoked cheddar.

She searched the house for her grandfather to tell him about her orders, and she found him sitting at the kitchen table working on a poem. His hand held a pencil stub over a sheet of notebook paper, and his gaze was fixed somewhere near the ceiling.

"What rhymes with change?" he asked.

"Strange?"

He looked at her, then wrote on his paper. "Thank you. That's the perfect word."

It certainly was the perfect word to describe his behavior lately. "I ordered some things for the store," she told him and expected him to raise a fuss.

"That's nice." He was so absorbed in his poem that he didn't care.

The next morning, she made fifteen loaves of wheat bread and sold ten of them by noon. Also at noon, a delivery call came in from Sutter Sports. As always, her grandfather handed her the grocery bag he'd already filled. Kate hadn't spoken to Rob since the night they'd decided to be friends, or at least decided to give it a try.

"Why can't he walk over here and get it himself? We're just across the dang parking lot."

"Katie, we don't complain about business."

"We should if the business is just across the parking lot," she grumbled as she left the M &S.

Twelve

The sun was out, and site didn't bother throwing her coat over her lime green beb‹ sweater and black jeans. On her way across the parking lot she glanced in the plastic grocery bag and discovered a Paper Mate mechanical pencil some Krazy Glue, and three granola bars. She'c never been inside the sports store, and a set of bells hanging on one side of the double doors announced her arrival.

Her first impression was of dark varnished wood and forest green wainscoting. Canoes and kayaks were suspended from the ceiling, and a row of mountain bikes were lined up in front of several aisles of fishing poles and camping equipment. She glanced around for the owner of the store, but she seemed to be the only person around.

"Kate."

She looked up past a wall of hiking gear to the loft. Rob stood looking down at her, his hands gripping the half wall that extended across the loft and down the stairs.

"Could you bring that up here, please?"

The sound of her shoes on the hardwood echoed off the walls. He watched her progress as she climbed up the stairs and entered the loft. An oak desk sat in the center with a flat-screen monitor and keyboard on it. Stacks of papers and folders and magazines cluttered the top of the desk.

"Finally. Lunch," he said as he walked toward her wearing a pair of jeans and a deep beige chamois shirt with the sleeves rolled up his arms. He reached for the sack, and the sleeves slid up his forearms, the color of the shirt closely matching the deeper shades of his tattoo.

"I didn't see a snake when I was at your house," she said as she handed him the grocery bag.

He looked into the sack, then returned his gaze to hers. "I had to sell Chloe back to the breeder once Amelia came home from the hospital. Couldn't keep a six-pound baby in the same apartment as a python."

"No. I guess not." And because she was dying to know, she asked, "How long were you married?"

He moved to the far corner of the room and, for the first time since she met him, she watched the way he walked. "From beginning to end, a little over a year." His long, graceful strides showed no lingering sign of injury. He moved as easily as if he'd never been hit with a.22, and his knee shattered. He set the bag on a scarred workbench crowded with feathers and thread.

"Short marriage."

"We'd been together off and on for about four years. We never should have married, but Louisa got pregnant so we gave it a try." He took the mechanical pencil and glue out of the bag and set them on the workbench. "Come over here. I want to show you something."

Kate didn't think cheating was giving a marriage much of a try, but she really didn't want to pass judgment when she didn't know anything about the relationship. Or maybe she was rationalizing his behavior because he looked incredibly hot today.

She moved across the room and stopped next to him. He was bent at the waist, inspecting something through a magnifier clamped to the front of a small vise about the size of a medium, needleless syringe. "I just finished this elk wing caddis. Trout in the Big Wood River won't be able to resist it. Isn't it beautiful?"

She knew it was a fly. The kind you fished with, but beautiful? No. The silver Tiffany cuff she'd just gotten in the mail was beautiful. "What's it made of?"

He reached out to adjust the gooseneck lamp and shone the light directly on it. "The body is dubbed fur and the wings are elk hair."

She had no idea what dubbed fur was. "Real elk hair?"

"Yep."

Why? "Where do you get real elk hair?" She placed her hands on her knees and leaned in for a closer look.

"Usually I buy it, but this particular elk hair came off of Lewis Plummer's six-point buck last fall."

She turned her head and looked at him. His face was a few inches from hers, close enough to see the different shades of green in his eyes. "Yuck," she said, but the word came out kind of low and lacked conviction. "Can't you get fake hair?"

He shook his head. "I only use organic materials." His gaze continued to stare into hers as he asked, "Do you want to see my yellow humpy? It's a beauty."

His habit of inserting sexual innuendo was really juvenile. "Gee, Rob, I don't know. Does it require you dropping your pants?"

His brows drew together, then he chuckled, a soft caress of a sound that touched her cheek. "You have a dirty mind, Kate." He ran his gaze over her face. "But I happen to like that in a woman." The shoulder of his chamois shirt brushed her shoulder as he placed a palm on his workbench and leaned past her.

Kate straightened and watched him open one of four wooden boxes about the size of a makeup case. Several levels folded out like stepladders, revealing hundreds of flies. "It should be right here," he said as he lightly sifted through them with his fingertips. He shut the case, then opened a drawer in the bench. "Ahh, here it is." He stood up straight, took Kate's hand in his, and set a brown-and-beige fuzzy fly in her palm. Coarse hair stuck out around the eye of the hook like bushing. The hair continued down the shank wrapped in yellow thread, and shot out the end like a little tail.

"Humpy is the style," he explained as he touched the fly. The tip of his finger brushed her life line and scattered her nerves.

"This is your humpy?"

"Yeah. The dark hair is grizzly and the lighter yellow hair is yearling elk. I spent most of the winter getting this one just right."

Okay, maybe she'd been wrong about the sexual innuendo this time, but she didn't dwell on it because the insides of her elbows started to do the odd tingling his touch always seemed to inspire. And this time her stomach got a little light, too. She swallowed hard and told herself not to be ridiculous. This was not the man she should get all weak over. He had heartache written all over him. And yeah, she was supposed to be working on her pessimism, but that didn't mean Rob wasn't a heart-breaker.

While her sensible head fought for control of her foolish body, Rob seemed oblivious to the chaos he caused. He also seemed so pleased with the fly that she didn't have the heart to tell him that grizzly and elk hair was gross. "Have you been tying flies long?"

"Oh yeah." His gaze traveled up her arm to her lips, then finally her eyes. "My dad taught me when I was a kid." He took the yellow humpy from her and replaced it with a fly that looked like a little mouse. "This is a muskrat. The trout in the Big Wood won't go for this, it's more for bass and pike."

With her hand still cupped in his, she looked down at the incredibly real-looking rodent. "Don't tell me that's a real ear?"

He chuckled. "No. It's leather."

Thank God. She glanced back up past the little white scar on his chin, over his nose with the slight bump she'd noticed the first night she'd seen him, and into his eyes. "You made this too?"

"Yeah. It took me awhile to shave the hair perfect."

She didn't know which surprised her more, that a former hockey player with big hands could tie something so intricate, or that he was interested in tying flies at all. Or perhaps it was the fact that they were actually having a real conversation. Like real adults. "This is nice, Rob."

"I have over a thousand."

"Wow, that's a lot."

His gaze dropped to her lips. "Tying helps me take my mind off things."

"What things?"

Without taking his eyes from her mouth, he shook his head. "Don't ask."

"Why?"

"It's one of those things I'd have to show you?" His gaze returned to hers and his voice lowered. "Do you want me to show you, Kate?"

The way he said her name, all smooth and rough at the same time, as if he were making love to her, made her throat go dry. She swallowed hard, but he didn't wait for an answer. He slid his hand up her arm to her shoulder and the side of her neck. His fingers combed through her hair from underneath, and he held the back of her head in his hand. Slowly he pulled her to him, and she did not resist, sucked in by the sexual promise in his green eyes.

"I thought we were just going to be friends," she managed before she lost her mind completely.

"We both knew that wasn't going to last long." He lowered his mouth to hers, and she turned her face at the last moment. His lips touched her cheek, and he kissed his way to the side of her throat.