"Oh." Stanley nodded. "Your grandmother used to bake bread and sell it in the store."
"I remember that," Grace said through a genuine smile. "Melba always made the best bread."
"Well, I guess Katie and I can't stay and hear your poetry tonight."
Grace's smile fell. "Oh, that's too bad."
Shame weighted Kate's shoulders, and she was just about to say she'd stay when Rob took the matter into his hands.
"I'll take Kate home," he volunteered, and Kate didn't know which would be worse: staying for a poetry reading or riding alone in a car with Rob Sutter.
Eleven
Riding alone in Rob's HUMMER. was worse. The vehicle was huge, and yet he seemed to take up so much space—and not physically, although he was a big guy. It was the deep texture of his voice filling the shadows as he answered her questions about his vehicle. It was the smell of his skin and the starch in his shirt mixed with the scent of leather seats. The lights from the dash lit up the dark interior with so many digital displays that she couldn't even guess what half of them were for. According to Rob, the HUMMER had heated seats, a Bose stereo, and a navigation system. If that wasn't enough, it also had OnStar. span
"Do you know how to use that thing?" she asked and pointed to the blue navigation screen.
"Sure." He took one hand from the wheel, pushed a few buttons, and the city display of Gospel popped up. As if a person could get lost in Gospel.
"Do you need it to find your way home?"
He chuckled and glanced across the vehicle at her, one side of his face washed in blue light. "No, but it comes in handy when I travel to places I've never been before. I used it a lot this past February when I went skiing with my buddies." He turned his gaze back to the road. "I've been meaning to ask you something."
"What?"
"Do you really have a tattoo on your butt?"
Her fingers on the hors d'oeuvre plate in her lap tightened. "You need to forget that night ever happened."
His quiet laughter filled the space between them. "Right."
"I know you probably won't believe this, and it's a waste of breath, but that was the one and only time I've ever propositioned a man. I always wanted to pick up a boy toy in a bar, but I'm too inhibited. I'm sexually repressed."
"You weren't inhibited or repressed that night."
"I was drunk."
He made a scoffing sound that made Kate want to hit him. "You weren't that drunk. You had a nice buzz going, but you knew exactly what you were doing."
True, but there was no way she was going to admit it. "I just wanted to live out a fantasy for one night. One night, that's it. Is that so horrible?" The collar of her peacoat brushed her chin as she looked out the passenger's window at the dark silhouette of pine trees. "All I wanted was to pick up a man and use him bad. Twist him into a sexual pretzel, then kick him out the door when I was through and never see him again. But look what happened." She'd been turned down flat, then given a moral lecture a few weeks later. "Why are women considered promiscuous when we take charge of our own sexuality? Why is society threatened by strong women who go after what they want? Men proposition women in bars all the time, and they're just being men when they do it."
She turned her gaze to the front. The head beams lit up the road, and she paused a moment to think about the injustice of it all. "Why is it different for women? We have control over our own fertility, but we still must conform to some archaic moral code. Even in the twenty-first century, women can't be as sexually aggressive as men. If we are, we're sluts. Why is it so wrong for women to admit that we think about sex like men do?"
Rant over, Kate sighed and leaned her head back against the seat. Silence filled the vehicle for several long moments, and she began to think he hadn't been listening.
He had. "You planned to twist me into a sexual pretzel?"
"Yeah," she said through a sigh. "But we both know how it turned out. You ran away as fast as you could."
"I didn't run."
"Practically."
He reached for the navigation system again, pushed a few buttons, fiddled with the stereo, then shut it off. He glanced over at her, and his brows were drawn together as if he were hard at work thinking about something important. He returned his attention to the road, and when he spoke, his voice was a little lower than before. "How were you going to twist me into a sexual pretzel?"
"Forget it."
"Will you tell me if I beg?"
"No."
"I'll pay you."
"No. You already think I'm a slut."
He glanced at her then back at the road. "I don't think you're a slut."
"Yes, you do. You grabbed my hand and shoved it on your crotch. That pretty much says to me that you think I'm a slut."
The lights from the dash accented the outline of his mustache and the scowl turning down the corners of his mouth. "I shouldn't have grabbed your hand."
"No," she said. "You shouldn't have."
"I was provoked."
Maybe.
Again he was silent for a few seconds. "Do you really believe women can think like men when it comes to sex?"
"Yes," she answered, although she'd never had the opportunity to try. The guy across the HUMMER had killed her only chance.
"You think women can just have a good time and that's enough?"
"Yes." At least in theory. "Don't you?"
"I used to, but I'm not so sure anymore."
They entered town and drove past the big red Texaco sign. "Why not?" she asked, although she figured she knew the answer.
"Sex can make women psycho," he said.
"That's ridiculous." Yep, that was pretty much the answer she'd thought he'd give. "Sex doesn't make a person psycho. They're psychotic before the sex."
"Yeah, but you can't tell by looking. A woman can look perfectly normal until she shows up at your house with crazy eyes and a.22 Beretta."
"Psycho men can look perfectly normal, too," she said, thinking of how normal Randy Meyers had looked the day he'd walked into her office.
"Yeah, but a man is less likely to freak after a one-nighter when he doesn't get hearts and flowers and a marriage proposal." They drove past the courthouse and Hansen's Emporium. "But you give a woman some good sex, and she's more likely to go postal."
Which was patently absurd. "Are you saying that if the sex is bad, a woman won't go all postal?"
He glanced at her as if she'd asked the obvious. "Why would anyone stalk a lousy lay?" He turned onto her grandfather's street. "Do you like to fly-fish?"
"What?" How had the conversation turned from psycho women to fishing?
"Fly-fishing. Do you like it?"
"Ah… I don't know. I've never been fly-fishing."
He pulled the HUMMER into Stanley's driveway and parked behind Kate's Honda. "I'll take you sometime. It'll be good for your nerves."
"My nerves are fine," she said and grabbed the door handle. "Thanks for the ride."
He reached across and grasped her arm. "Hang on." When she looked at him, he added, "I'll get your door."
"I can get it myself."
"I know you can," he said and was halfway out of the HUMMER. The grill lights were as big and obnoxious as the rest of the vehicle, and for a few brief moments they lit him up like he was on stage. He opened her door and took the hors d'oeuvre plate from her. His hand once again grasped her arm as he helped her out, which was ridiculous, because she was perfectly capable of getting out of a car by herself.
"We should start over." His palm slid to her elbow then dropped to his side.
But, she did have to admit, there was a part of her that liked the old-fashioned male attention. "Start over? You mean forget the night we met?"
"That's not going to happen." He followed close behind as she moved up the dark sidewalk, the soles of his loafers drowned out by the sound of her boot heels. "Maybe we can be friends." Wow, that's a first, she thought as she stopped beneath the porch light and took the plate from him. She usually heard those words right before she was dumped, and Rob wasn't even her boyfriend. "Have you ever had a friend who was a girl?" she asked and hunched her shoulders as the cold night air seeped down the front of her coat.