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female me sad and upset and maybe I’ll cry. So let me repeat myself. I do not want to be protected. We are equals in this. In our business and in our . . . our relationship. If you can’t show me that kind of respect, that will be the end of us. Do you get it?”
    â€œI get it,” said Calhoun. “You’re right. I’m sorry.”
    â€œWell, okay, then,” said Kate.
    â€œOkay,” said Calhoun.
    â€œEquals,” she said.
    â€œSure.” He nodded. “Equals.”
    She looked out through the glass into the store. “Customers all gone?”
    â€œPlace is empty except for you and me and Ralph, and he’s snoozing out there by the fly-tying bench.”
    Kate got up from her chair, came over, and looked down at Calhoun. Then she sat on his lap facing him with her legsstraddling his thighs. She touched his face, leaned forward, put both arms around his neck, and gave him a long wet kiss on the mouth.
    Calhoun had to resist the powerful urge to put his hands on her butt and pull her tight against him. He satisfied himself by stroking her hair.
    After a minute she pulled her face away. She touched his lips with her fingertip. “I’m pretty mad at you,” she said softly.
    â€œCan’t blame you,” he said.
    â€œBut I suppose your heart’s in the right place.”
    â€œIt’s thumpin’ pretty hard right now,” said Calhoun. “I can tell you that much.”
    â€œAnd I am pretty happy about Walter,” she said. “Also about not getting evicted from our shop.”
    â€œMe, too.”
    â€œI feel like we should celebrate, Stoney.”
    â€œEvery day’s a celebration, honey.”
    Kate smiled. “How’s about tonight you pour me a short glass of bourbon and branch, toss me a green salad, broil me a T-bone, bake me a potato?”
    â€œI think I remember how to do those things,” he said. “Though it has been a while.”
    Kate wiggled her butt in his lap and bent to him and curtained his face with her hair and held him tight against her and kissed him again, hard and deep, and even as he felt every muscle and nerve ending and blood vessel in his body respond to her, all he could think was
I should tell her right now that I’m going to have to go away for a month or more on some kind of damned mission for the Man in the Suit and somebody who calls himself Mr. Brescia. That is the price we’ve got to pay for me being who I am
.
    But he didn’t want to spoil the moment. So he said nothing.

 
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CHAPTER FIVE
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    A little before seven o’clock that evening, Calhoun was sitting in one of the Adirondack chairs out on his deck sipping from a can of Coke. Ralph, who’d already had his supper, was sprawled beside him. They were listening to the gurgle of Bitch Creek, the lovely little trout stream that ran through the woods and under the burned-out bridge behind his house, and enjoying the warmth of the late-day May sunshine. They were only a few weeks shy of the summer solstice, and even at this time in the early evening, the sun had not yet descended below the treetops.
    The charcoal grill was lit. Kate’s bottle of Old Grand-Dad had been dusted off and was sitting on the kitchen table. The rib eyes had been rubbed with sea salt and ground pepper. The Maine russets were brushed with olive oil and wrapped in aluminum foil. The greens and other fixings were ready to be sliced and tossed with oil and vinegar in the big wooden salad bowl.
    Calhoun was never sure when she’d arrive. She usually visited Walter after they closed the shop. Sometimes she foundhim sleeping and didn’t linger. Sometimes she stayed awhile and watched TV with him. Sometimes they talked. Sometimes they argued.
    Calhoun didn’t mind waiting, and he didn’t mind not knowing when he’d hear her truck come growling down his driveway. In fact, he kind of enjoyed the suspense