“Your best girl stepping out?” Lyndee gave him a hard stare. “It’s not like she’s got any choice in the matter.” Taking his mug, she leaned in again and whispered directly in his ear. “He is paid to give her care. She needs her family. Don’t fuck this up or you’re going to regret it.”

Peter was a little shocked by Lyndee’s use of the f-bomb, but she’d moved back into the food prep area and started tossing a large salad.

“I’m taking the truck, okay?”

“Fine, the keys are on the wall there.”

“I got them earlier, but I thought it was polite to ask.” He grinned at her and at last she gave him the all-clear smile.

“I made up the room next to mine. When you get back, take your things from my office and put them up there.”

“If I stay.”

“You always do the right thing in the end, Petey.” She picked up the salad and made her way into the dining room. “Regular as clockwork. But it’s

frustrating as hell to watch you flail. It’s getting so my heart can’t take the strain anymore, so sooner, rather than later, would be good.”

She gave him another long hard look and left him standing there to drink his coffee in peace.

Peter put Lyndee’s keys in the ignition just as Robin came out of the house-not in the scrubs he’d been wearing but in a pair of jeans and a tight T-shirt, carrying a messenger bag. Peter watched as he calmly walked in front of the truck to stand at the driver’s side window, which was open.

“Are you headed to town?” Robin asked.

“I am.” Peter leaned his head on his arm, propped up on the door. He didn’t need to make it easy for Robin to tag along. He had no idea what he would do with the man at the tire center, and had a bad feeling that Robin needed to run errands or shop. Or that he intended to make it a time when they would talk. The last thing he wanted was to talk to his mother’s…Robin.

Robin’s lips twisted into a kind of resigned smile. “May I please come along?”

“Yes but I’m planning to make an afternoon of it, you probably have to get back, and—”

“Perfect.” Robin took off back around the truck and got in on the passenger side. “I have the afternoon off and I intend to unwind.”

Shit. Peter pulled the truck out onto the street and headed for the highway.

“Don’t look so glum. It won’t rub off on you, whatever you imagine.”

Peter slowed the car to a stop. “What won’t rub off?”

Robin shook his head and his braids did a little dance. “The gay, the black. Whatever has you frowning. Everyone in town knows I care for your mama at Lyndee’s place, so you’re safe from awkward assumptions.”

Peter brought the truck up to speed again and ignored the urge to set the record straight. He wouldn’t be drawn out. “Where do you need to go?”

“Pharmacy.” Robin pulled a paper out of his bag. “For starters, then I have to get a couple of things from the market and a book from the library.”

“That’s what you do to unwind?”

“No,” Robin laughed. “After all that I’m going to get a beer and play some pool. Maybe eat something that doesn’t taste of the tin. Would you care to join me?”

“Me?” Peter didn’t know why he was surprised.

“If you’d rather not.” Robin pressed his lips together. “I can surely—”

“No, I would.” When had that happened? That he decided he wanted to spend time with this man. As soon as he’d smiled. “I’d like to get a beer. I just…”

“I thought my rainbow dog tags were clashing with your uniform, soldier boy,” Robin teased.

The moment came when Peter knew he could tell Robin that he wasn’t exactly limited to what he seemed to be on the surface.

“Surely Don’t ask don’t tell doesn’t preclude a beer with the nurse taking care of your mama?”

“No, of course not,” Peter said, and the moment was lost.

Probably not for long. Peter stole a glance sideways at Robin’s fine features in profile. His work probably made him fit and strong, Peter thought, taking in the way the man’s shirt caressed his biceps and pecs. Maybe he worked out to keep fit enough to lift patients. He wore his button front jeans loose around his hips and thighs so they hung low, but they’d been worn enough that they outlined all the good parts, and the good parts were very good indeed. Robin was busying himself with his cigarettes or Peter thought he’d surely have noticed the interest he was generating.

Peter shifted his attention back to the road. “I’d like to buy you a beer.”

“Really?” Robin smiled. He lit a cigarette, and then offered it to Peter. “Thanks man, I could really use a drink, it’s been a hell of a week.”

“My mom?”

“Yes and no.” Robin lit his own cigarette and rolled down his window. “She’s been in pain and the medication doesn’t always help. I have a new prescription from hospice. A patch to provide a baseline of pain relief. There are several layers of pain meds she’s on now. I hate to see it because they make her spacey and she refuses food and sometimes even water.”

“Spacey is bad. She prides herself on doing the daily crossword in pen.”

“Don’t I know it?” Robin closed his eyes. “When she’s angry and frustrated that she can’t figure out the words or the letters she knows that she’s lost something important. It would be easier if she didn’t know.”

Peter took a chance and placed his hand on Robin’s forearm, finding it strong and corded with muscles that moved under his touch. He’d startled the man, he could tell, but he didn’t take his hand away.

“It’s hard.” Peter said simply. “I can tell you care and I’m really…I’m very grateful.” He let his hand slide just a little and knew that most men wouldn’t see it for the caress it was. Robin wasn’t most men. And again he caught that speculative look.

“I’ll drop you at the pharmacy and when you’re done, you can meet me… where?”

“Let me think.” Robin’s eyes sparkled. “There are so many choices.”

“Buzzy’s or Frank’s.” At the very least Peter still knew where to go for a drink in the place he’d privately called the town-that-time-forgot.

“Buzzy’s, the pool tables have better felt and I plan to win some money.”

“Not from me I hope.” Peter slowed the car and parked in a diagonal space in front of the town’s only drugstore.

“Yeah, now you ought to run, soldier man because you will lose money to me if we play.” Robin smiled. “I’ll be about an hour, maybe, give or take.”

“See you at Buzzy’s.”

“See you.” Robin waved a hand.

Peter probably shouldn’t have been looking in his rearview as he pulled out but Robin turned to enter the store and from where Peter sat in the car he had the perfect view of Robin’s tight ass. A car honked and he pulled the wheel sharply to stay in his lane.

“Sorry.” He waved the other driver off, then headed to the tire center driving sedately within the speed limit.

No one knew why the tavern on the highway was called Buzzy’s but over the years the speculation had been that its owner and founder, Trig Thompson, had a wife who called him her honeybee and he’d named the place Buzzy’s to tease her. It hadn’t changed much since he’d put the first coat of varnish on the wooden bar and now his grandson Tim ran the place.

During the sexual revolution they’d added a condom machine to the men’s room, and sometime in the late eighties they’d installed a Bunn automatic coffee brewer with two pots, one for regular and one for decaf at the request of the snowmobile set.

When Peter entered the dimly lit space the only thing different from the last time he’d been there was that Minnesota had finally enacted a ban on smoking indoors, and the air, while certainly as unpleasant as he remembered it, was clear enough to see through. And the first thing he saw was Robin’s very fine ass as he bent over a pool table lining up a shot.

“Well, shit.” Peter strolled to the bar and ordered a Moosehead lager. He wondered whether he should order one for Robin when he saw that Robin had completed his shot and was bringing a beer bottle to his lips while he waited for