Chapter Five—Odds and Ends

    A few odds and ends from October and November…
     --Robin heard that Chris Draeger was engaged to someone. Robin was happy for him. She had enjoyed the times she had spent with him, but there was no future for them. He’ll be a good husband to her...
     --Cameron Collins came by the store one day. She hadn’t seen him much since she’d been in the hospital, but, as noted, knew that he’d been on a cattle drive. She didn’t notice him come in. He slipped up behind her and asked, “Ma’am do you have any saddles or bridles? I could use a new piggin’ string, too.”
     Robin turned around, smiled, and said, “Cameron! It’s so good to see you again….”
     They went to lunch a few days later, and he asked her if she’d like to go riding out at the ranch again. Given Robin’s current schedule, it would be hard to work in. “Well, it’s going to get cold before long,” Cameron said. “We might ought to wait until spring when it warms up and things slow down for you some.” That disappointed Robin a little, but made sense. He did come in and take her to lunch one more time in October/November. She wondered, for a moment, if Cameron and his cowboys could do something to stop Jones and his Three Trained Gorillas, as she started calling them, borrowing Len Kramer’s phrase. Cameron looked like he could handle himself and Robin was sure his cowboys could, too. But some of them would probably get hurt as well…I can’t ask that of Cameron…yet…Besides, it wouldn’t get to the source of the problem. Who’s behind it all? He could always hire more trained gorillas…
     --Jennie Adams was expecting and her friends were going to give her a baby shower. Joy. I’m happy for her, but getting involved in a baby shower is the last thing I need to do right now…Robin helped out, though, when she could. Jennie was one of her best friends.
     --Socially…Men are a luxury…and an amusement…at the moment….Robin simply had too much on her mind, especially the business, of course, but she also wanted to spend time with her aunt and some of her girlfriends. Even though it was fairly chilly, she and Susan Markum found a sunny Saturday afternoon to go out to the pond on the XQL and go swimming. The water was cold, but refreshing, and she and Susan gave each other a nice massage.
     “Mmm, that feels good,” Robin told Susan as the latter worked on some sore muscles in her friend’s back. “You ought to do this for a living.”
     Susan laughed and swatted Robin’s rump. “How does that feel?”
     “Ouch,” Robin said with a giggle. “I’m not sore there.”
     “Well, you will be if you don’t watch out.” And they both laughed. Robin considered Susan her best friend and wished they could spend more time together. Susan’s husband was a rancher, so they lived a little ways out of town. They didn’t have any children yet, so she could get free a little more often than Jennie Adams or Allie Kirk, Robin’s two other best girl friends. Robin was a little jealous of Susan; well, not really, but Robin thought Susan was the most beautiful woman she had ever seen. I wish I looked like that, Robin thought…and I wish she’d wear something when we go swimming, I can hardly keep my eyes off of her…she giggled to herself.
     --She was a little surprised when Adam Stouffer approached her at the November town dance and asked if she’d like to go walking again. She hadn’t thought of him since the time they had gone for a stroll at the August dance. She accepted his invitation for the walk, but interestingly, he didn’t try to kiss her, which Robin found a little peculiar, but she wasn’t necessarily disappointed or insulted. They just talked and it was comfortable. He was a very nice-looking man, well-groomed and neat, and carried himself well. His most attractive physical feature was his soft blue eyes. The rest of him was pretty special, too—a little under six feet, blonde hair, slender frame, strong, manly facial features. Robin had done a double, then triple-take the first time she saw him.
     “What do you do for a living?” Robin asked him. Actually, this conversation was in August the first time they went walking.
     He smiled, and he had a pleasant one. “Well, nothing actually, at the moment.”
     She smiled back. “Oh, you’re a bum.”
     He laughed. “Yeah, I guess so. Actually, I grew up over in Agua Caliente”—a town a few hours from Whitewater—“then went back east to go to school, got involved in finance, made a lot of money in railroads, and got out just before Jay Gould screwed everything up. I like it in the West so I came back out here. Not sure if I’m going to stay in Whitewater or go somewhere else. I’m looking around some…”
     In November, she asked him if he had found a place to locate yet.
     “I like this area better than any I’ve seen yet. Very pretty here and the people, by and large, are nice. I think I’m going to hang around for the winter and see how cold it gets.”
     “It can get pretty bad,” Robin said. “We’re pretty high up, so we get some good snows, though nothing like what’s up in the mountains, of course.”
     “Well, I’ll see. If it gets too bad, I may head south to a warmer climate. But I want to see. If I stay here, I may try to open some kind of business.”
     “Oh, anything in mind?”
     He smiled playfully. “Well, I think the town needs a women’s store, one just for ladies.”
     “Uh huh. Well, it might, if I end up not knowing what I’m doing, which is seeming more likely all the time.”
     “Oh, you’ll do well I’m sure…”
     Anyway, Adam asked her to dinner the next night, a Sunday and she agreed. They had a pleasant visit, and she invited him into the house when he drove her back there. He accepted.
     As always, Aunt Martha played the gracious hostess, bringing out coffee and cookies. While they were all sitting in the living room together, Adam pulled out a deck of cards. “Let me show you something,” and then proceeded to do a number of card tricks that had Aunt Martha enthralled and Robin suspicious. He always seemed to know exactly what card either one of them had picked out of the deck.
     “That’s a marked deck,” Robin accused.
     Adam smiled. “Do you have a deck of cards?”
     “Yes.”
     “Go get them.”
     She did, and he pulled the same tricks. “How do you do that?” she asked him.
     “You’re a gambler, aren’t you,” Aunt Martha said, and there was a slight tone of disapproval in her voice.
     “No, I’m not. Oh, I’ve played a little just for fun, but never professionally. I learned all these tricks while traveling. It can get very boring riding in a train or stagecoach or a ship—I’ve been to Europe three times—so I take along this book of card tricks and learn how to do them. Let me show you another one.” He took the deck and searched through it, finding the four Aces. He put them on top, then proceeded to shuffle the cards five times. When he finished shuffling, he set the deck face down on the table and started removing the cards, one at a time, not looking at them, laying the ones he didn’t want, face down, in a separate pile. Four times he turned a card over when he picked it up, and each time it was an Ace. Aunt Martha and Robin clapped gleefully at this exhibition of trickery.
     “How did you do that?” Aunt Martha asked him.
     “A good trickster never tells,” he said, smiling. “But just to give you a hint, the answer is in how you shuffle.”
     “I see. I’ll bet it takes a while to learn how to do it.”
     “It takes some practice, yes.”
     Aunt Martha was so engrossed in what Adam was doing that she didn’t notice the clock until it was 9:30. “Oh, my, it’s past my bedtime. I need to go to bed or I won’t be good for anything tomorrow.” Robin knew that wasn’t true. Yes, her aunt did generally go to bed around 9, but not every night, and she always seemed fine the next day regardless of what time she had gone to bed the night before. She was just getting out of the room so Robin could be alone with Adam. Another mark in the plus column for Aunt Martha…So she bid her farewells, and shuffled off into the other part of the house, where in a couple of minutes, Robin and Adam heard the door shut.
     “You had her mesmerized,” Robin told him with a smile.
     “What about you?”
     “I was…intrigued.”
     He smiled. He looked at her, still smiling. “Do you want to continue the game? Play for higher stakes?”
     “Hmmm,” Robin said, intrigued some more. “What kind of stakes?”
     Adam fanned the cards out, face down. “Pick a card. If I guess what it is, I get to kiss you once for each spot on the card. Seven times for a seven, and so forth. Face cards are 10, Aces are 11.”
     Robin smiled. Sounds like an interesting game. She drew a card and looked at it. Then, still smiling, “Ok, smart guy, what is it?”
     He put his thumb and forefinger to the bridge of his nose and closed his eyes, the perfect picture of meditation and mind-reading. “Uuuuuh…the Great Stoufferezi is in communication with the all-seeing, all-knowing spirits of the netherworld….” Then he looked up and smiled. “Eight of Clubs.”
     Robin still had a smile on her face as she turned the card around. Eight of Clubs. “I think I’ve been snookered.”
     “But only by the best,” he responded. “Did I win the prize?”
     “You won the prize.”
     Adam came and sat next to her. They looked into each other’s eyes for a few seconds…He has lovely eyes…He moved towards her; she could smell his masculine smell, and that roused her just a bit more. Robin closed her eyes and felt Adam’s lips touch hers, firmly, one…two…three…four…five…six…seven…eight times….He pulled away and she opened her eyes. It was terribly sensuous for Robin.
     “Do you want to play again?” he asked softly.
     “Yes.”
     He fanned the cards. She chose, and looked at him.
     “Three of Clubs.”
     She smiled, and closed her eyes again and felt his lips touch hers three times. She opened her eyes.
     “One more time?” he asked.
     She just nodded.
     “Pick a higher number this time,” he said, and Robin giggled.
     She picked another card. “Seven of Hearts,” Adam announced.
     Robin turned the card around. Seven of Hearts. Another seven kisses and this time Adam held a couple of them for several seconds. When he finished, he said, “I’m glad you keep picking the cards that I’m guessing.”
     “Yeah, me, too.”
     He held the cards out again, but before she picked one, he pulled one part-way out. “Choose that one,” he said.
     She smiled and picked the one he suggested. Not surprisingly, it was an Ace, the Ace of Diamonds, and not surprisingly, he guessed it right.
     “That means 11,” he said, and Robin just waited.
     This time, he set the cards down, pulled Robin to him, and when his lips touched hers, he kept them there….

     Where is the fine line between interest and nosiness? Aunt Martha trusted Robin but was also obviously concerned for her well-being. She didn’t want to stifle her niece, but she wanted to…know what her niece was doing. Am I being too overbearing, too fussy? She didn’t want to be, but she couldn’t help worrying. It was the nature of the familial relationship and the motherly feelings she had always had for Robin.
     So when Aunt Martha woke up about midnight, she wanted to know if her niece was home and safe. She arose from her bed, quietly opened her door, and looked out. Robin’s room was catty-cornered across the hall from hers and the door was still open, which indicated to Martha that Robin wasn’t there. There was a light still on in the living room, and she thought she heard something…oh, dear, I don’t want to interrupt or appear to be prying…but she did walk softly the few steps down the hall and peek around the corner…
     What she saw made her smile, but also brought a tear to her eye. Adam and Robin were…enjoying the Ace of Diamonds…and the sound that had come to Aunt Martha was the sound of lips coming together repeatedly and fervently. She slowly withdrew and headed back to her own room. Oh, my baby…my dear sweet baby…it won’t be long now until some man takes her from me…I hope he makes her happy…and I hope he’ll be as good a husband to her as Ben was to me…Oh, Ben, I wish you could see her…she’s such a beautiful girl, so beautiful…
     And she wiped away another tear.

     A couple of hours later, Adam and Robin were standing out on the front porch, their arms around each other, about to end the night with another kiss. Before they did, though, Adam grinned at her and said, “You owed me 11, you know.”
     Robin smiled. “Yes, I think I did. How far did we get?”
     “I think we got to half of one.”
     Robin laughed. “I think we got a little farther than that.”
     “Well, let’s get just a brief start on the rest before I have to go.”
     “Ok…”
     The “brief start” took another 10 minutes.

     --The last “odd and end” from October/November was Rob. Adam had made quite an impression on Robin. He was funny, sexy, and wow, could he kiss…They had made no further plans before he left, but Robin certainly wasn’t opposed to seeing him again. Let’s see…we got through half a kiss…that means we have ten and a half more to go…she giggled to herself. If each half kiss is as long and as good as the first one…Robin had to put that thought away because she had work to do. Men are a luxury…an amusement at the moment…But it’s nice to have the occasional distraction…
     Bottom line was, Rob, for most of those two months, was at the back of the bottom shelf. No, actually, he wasn’t even in play. Robin thought about him, and just as immediately thrust him from her mind. Because she knew what she would think.
     I would give all of my time with Ryan, Jason, and Adam up…to have those 24 hours with Rob again…
     So she just kicked Rob out of her mind every time he showed up.
     But he kept showing up…