Page 7 of Trophy
She didn’t regret divorcing Arthur. In fact, it was the best thing she’d ever done. But she couldn’t help but wonder if she’d made a mistake by moving to this rural town.
She wasn’t likely to ever fit in here.
Fifteen minutes later Rob West was leaning against his pickup truck, talking to his friend Keith, whom he’d run into on leaving Dora’s.
He and Keith had gone through school together, and they’d married in the same month, when they’d both been eighteen. But while Keith’s marriage had worked out and produced four kids, Rob’s had fallen apart within a few years. Then his second marriage had imploded two years ago. Fortunately he’d not had any kids of his own to deal with the fallout, although his former stepdaughter was more than enough.
Keith obviously knew something about marriage that Rob didn’t.
“Are you even listening to me?” Keith asked, blowing out a long puff of smoke from his cigarette.
Rob hadn’t been listening. He’d been thinking about a beautiful pair of brown eyes and a very fine, shapely body. “Not really.”
“Dee causing more problems?” Keith asked, his eyes focused on the cars that occasionally drove down Main Street.
“Nah. Not thinking about her. Thank God.” Dee was Rob’s second ex-wife. She still lived in town and was always calling him up with one sob story or another.
“One day you’re going to have to stop running to help her.”
Rob exhaled deeply. He knew it was true, but it was harder than it sounded. Dee always threw a fit if she didn’t get what she wanted, and it was easier to just help her than to put up with that kind of scene.
Besides, Rob liked to help people. He liked to be needed.
“One day,” Keith continued, as if he’d just read Rob’s mind, “you’re going to have to think through why you’re so set on helping everyone.”
There was a strangely significant timbre to the words for such a casual conversation. Rob narrowed his eyes at his friend. “What is that supposed to be mean?”
Keith blew out a puff of smoke. “I don’t know.”
“It sounded like you meant something by it.”
“Don’t get huffy. I don’t know even know what I meant. It was just somethin’ to say. I was—” Keith broke off as he got distracted by someone leaving Dora’s. He gave a soft whistle of appreciation.
Rob knew who he’d seen. Her name was Allison. He knew that because her folks had told him, not because she’d bothered to introduce herself. He tried not to stare as she carried her Styrofoam container down the sidewalk toward the parking lot, but he couldn’t drag his eyes away from her.
From the moment he’d seen her across the street, getting out of that Cadillac, he’d been mesmerized. She wasn’t justbeautiful. She seemed so elegant, so different from all the girls he knew. And underneath her polished appearance was something delicate, vulnerable.
And she must have gotten divorced, since she wasn’t wearing a wedding ring anymore.
His eyes met hers as she drew nearer, and she gave him a nod without a smile. Just acknowledging his existence. Obviously not inviting any sort of acquaintance. She didn’t like him.
Rob wasn’t used to people not liking him. It was strange and frustrating.
She raised a hand to her face as she passed by then and turned her head slightly. When she was out of hearing distance, Keith muttered, “Who the hell is that?”
“She moved in across the street from me.”
“Lucky bastard.” Keith always talked like that, although everyone knew he was very happily married. “She doesn’t look too friendly, though.”
“I think the cigarette bothered her,” Rob said, wondering why he was offering an excuse for her. She probably wasn’t very friendly. She probably thought she was too good for him, for any of them, for this town. Her parents had always bragged about her, talking about the rich, important man she’d married.
There was no way in hell she would be interested in him.
Despite this self-evident conclusion, Rob found himself watching as she got into the car and drove away.
“You might as well get that look out of your eye,” Keith said, laughing.
“What look?”
