"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 a
s 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."