Barely Breathing (Colorado High Country #1)

by Pamela Clare

  Lexi shared a horrified glance with her sister, mortification on both their faces, then looked up at Austin. “Please get me as far away from here as you can.”

  Lexi was sitting in the kitchen, her right leg elevated on a chair, when Eric’s truck pulled up. It was funny to think that she hadn’t really been looking forward to Vic’s arrival because of the time she’d lose with Austin. But things had changed.

  Austin was staying here with her, so she wouldn’t be losing time with him at all. Now, she couldn’t wait to see her friend.

  She reached for her crutches and got to her feet in time for Eric to appear in the doorway, two suitcases in his hands.

  Austin opened the door for him. “Need help with that?”

  “No, thanks, buddy.” Eric glared at Austin, still wearing his Scarlet Springs Fire Department T-shirt, streaks of soot on one cheek. “Just show me where you want them.”

  “I said I can handle it myself.” Vic was right behind him, wearing a breezy tank dress in black crepe, strappy black heels on her feet, an irritated frown on her face.

  Kendra stood. “She’s upstairs in room seven.”

  “I know the way.” Eric disappeared toward the elevator.

  “Oh, my God. Look at you!” Vic stepped forward, gave Lexi a warm hug. Lexi had already told her the whole story over the phone, so she didn’t need to explain. “Does it hurt? You should probably sit down. Don’t you think you should sit down?”

  Lexi laughed. “I’m fine. The doctor says I’m healing well.”

  She introduced Vic to her father, Kendra, Britta, and finally Austin.

  Vic shook his hand, smiled sweetly. “I’ve heard so much about you.”

  Austin grinned. “I just bet you have.”

  Okay, so this was getting awkward.

  Lexi cut it short. “Is anyone hungry? What do you say we head to Knockers?”

  Britta said she’d stay home with their dad and Kendra. Eric insisted he needed to go home and take a shower.

  “See you later, Victoria.” He glared at Austin again and walked out the door.

  “What was that about?” Lexi asked Vic.

  “I’ll tell you later,” Vic whispered.

  Austin drove Lexi and Vic the short distance to Knockers, Vic staring out at their surroundings.

  “You never told me how beautiful it is here.” There was an accusing tone to her voice, as if Lexi had tried to keep that secret.

  “Well, it is Colorado.”

  It was Lexi’s first time at the pub since her ordeal. When she stepped inside, a hush fell over the room, and the band quit playing. And then the place erupted in cheers.

  A hard lump formed in Lexi’s throat, tears threatening to ruin her mascara.

  These people cared about her. She’d been away for twelve years, hadn’t given them a passing thought, and still they cared about her.

  She blinked back the tears, glanced around, the room a sea of smiling faces, so many of them familiar. Megs and most of the Team members were there, too. They sat together near the climbing wall as usual.

  Rain hurried up to Lexi, gave her a gentle hug. “Welcome back! God, it’s good to see you safe and getting around. You’re Joe’s guest, so order whatever you want.”

  “Thanks. That’s so sweet of him.” She glanced over Rain’s shoulder, saw Joe waving to her from behind the bar, a smile on his face.

  “Wow.” Vic glanced around. “Everyone really does know you here.”

  With Austin’s help, Lexi threaded her way through the tables to a place Megs had saved for her.

  “How are you feeling?”

  “I’m doing a lot better, thanks to all of you.”

  These people—her friends—had helped save her life.

  Remembering her manners, Lexi introduced Vic to Megs, Mitch, Harrison, Sasha, Malachi, Nicole, Kenzie, Chaska and Winona.

  “Those two on the rock wall are Creed Herrera and Jesse Moretti.”

  But Vic wasn’t listening. She was still staring at Chaska.

  Lexi leaned over, whispered in her ear. “You might want to close your mouth.”

  Vic’s jaw snapped shut. “You didn’t tell me the men here were all so … hot.”

  Lexi shrugged. “It’s Colorado.”

  They had finished their meals by the time Hawke walked in.

  Austin knew with one glance that his buddy was still pissed off, and he was pretty sure he knew why. He got up from the table, pressed a kiss to Lexi’s cheek. “I’m going to find out what’s up with Hawke.”

  He met Hawke in the center of the pub. “Want to play a game of pool?”

  Hawke glared at him but followed him to the back corner. They claimed a table, Austin racking the balls, while Hawke picked out two cues.

  “You let me believe she was a guy.”

  Guilty as charged. “What’s so bad about that? What happened?”

  “Thanks to you, I made an ass of myself.”

  Austin couldn’t stop himself. “You don’t usually need my help for that.”

  “Funny.” Hawke took the break shot, balls racing over green felt, a solid dropping into a side pocket. “So I get there, and I see that Vic’s flight had gotten in thirty minutes early. I figure he’s waiting somewhere in the terminal, so I page him.”

  “Are we calling our shots?” Austin stepped aside as Hawke circled the table.

  “Six ball, side.” Hawke shot again, missed.

  “So you paged him.”

  “Meantime, I head to the little coffee shop to grab a bottle of water, and this incredibly hot chick gets in line behind me. I smile and say hi, making sure she sees the Scarlet FD logo on my T-shirt. And do you know what she says to me?”

  “Nine, side.” Austin took his shot, made the ball, then circled the table to line up the next one. “What did she say?”

  “She leans in, looks me straight in the eyes, and whispers, ‘Firemen are my favorite color.’ Jesus!”

  Austin bent down. “Fifteen, corner.”

  This time, he missed.

  “So I’m thinking, great, this woman and I have a connection. I tell her I’m waiting for someone. She says she’s waiting, too. So we sit, and I’m wishing I could ditch this Vic dude I’m picking up and take her out for a drink.”

  “So far I don’t see how you made an ass of yourself.”

  Hawke bent down, lined up his shot. “Two, corner pocket.”

  He sank it. “I start telling her how I came to pick up some guy for my good friend who almost died in a mine shaft and how this asshole has flown out from Chicago to lure my friend away from her boyfriend, a guy who happens to be my best friend.”

  Ah. Okay. Austin understood now. “Do you usually go into that kind of detail with strangers at the airport?”

  “I thought we had a connection, man.” Hawke circled the table again, his gaze meeting Austin’s. “So she gets this funny look on her face and asks me the name of the guy I’m picking up. I show her my sign. She turns beet red, glares at me, tells me that’s her name. Then she calls me a jerk and stomps off on those sassy little heels of hers, dragging her luggage behind her.”

  Austin was glad Hawke was busy lining up a shot and couldn’t see the grin on his face. “Did you go after her?”

  “Of course, I went after her. Six and three, side.” He made the six, but the three spiraled off.

  Austin stepped up, studied the table.

  “I know she’s Lexi’s friend, but the woman is cold. I apologized, but she wasn’t interested. She probably would have taken a cab or walked all the way here if she could have. She finally agreed to go with me, but she wouldn’t let me help her with her baggage. She sat there, angry as hell, all the way back from Denver. She’s probably sitting over there right now telling Lexi how you and I joked about dumping ‘her friend Vic’ in a ditch.”

  Austin bent down. “Twelve, corner. You told her that, too? And, hey, that was you. Did you tell her what I said about being able to handle the competition and all that?” />
  Eric shook his head. “I forgot.”

  Austin took his shot, missed.

  Austin stood upright. He could see Lexi and Vic, heads bent together, Vic saying something, an expression of outrage on her face. “Shit.”

  Hawke came to stand beside him, his gaze on Vic. “Tell me about it.”

  “Then he says to me, ‘I told my buddy we should just dump this guy in a ditch somewhere.’ I’m starting to get suspicious, so I ask him the name of the guy he’s supposed to pick up. He pulls this piece of paper out of his pocket, unfolds it—and it has my name on it.”

  Lexi fought not to laugh, took a sip of her sweet and fruity Sexy Lexi. Hey, she had to try it, right? “It was just a misunderstanding.”

  “I’m not angry because he thought I was a guy. That’s kind of funny. What ticked me off was hearing that he and Austin are conspiring to keep you here.”

  “They were just joking. The three of us have been friends since we were little. They don’t want me to leave Scarlet any more than you want me to leave Chicago. Besides, Austin loves me, and Eric is his best friend. He doesn’t want to see Austin hurt.”

  “I know he’s a firefighter and he’s your friend, but I think he’s a jerk.” Vic had clearly made up her mind. “Is he still looking this way?”

  Maybe Vic didn’t dislike Eric quite as much as she wanted to believe.

  Lexi glanced over to where Austin and Eric were playing pool. “He’s taking a shot now, but he was looking this way just a moment ago.”

  Bear walked up to the table, hat in hand, Winona beside him.

  “Bear has something important he needs to say.” Winona waited patiently beside him, while Bear fidgeted with his hat, at a loss for words now that he wasn’t preaching. “What did you want to tell her?”

  “Sorry, Lexi,” Bear said after a moment. “I didn’t know he was such a bad man. I said to him, ‘Do not participate in the unfruitful deeds of darkness. Ill-gotten treasures have no lasting value,’ but he didn’t listen. Are you mad at me?”

  “No, Bear. I’m not mad at you.”

  “You’re not?” He looked confused by this.

  Lexi got to her feet—or, really, her foot. Using one crutch for balance, she kissed Bear on his whiskery cheek. “It wasn’t your fault. He was an evil man. I never blamed you. I’m just glad you’re okay.”

  “See?” Winona smiled up at him. “I told you she wasn’t mad at you.”

  Bear took a moment to absorb all of this. Then his eyes went wide, and a grin lit up his face. He stood up tall and proud. “For if you forgive other people when they sin against you, your heavenly Father will also forgive you!”

  “Come on, buddy. Save the sermon till after you’ve had some dinner.” Winona led Bear toward a table, smiling at Lexi over her shoulder.

  Lexi sat and found Vic staring after them.

  “Who was that?”

  “That’s Bear. He lives somewhere west of town in the mountains—no one really knows where. He comes down to preach and ask for food or spare change.”

  “What happened to him?” Vic was still watching him, her voice soft with compassion. “He doesn’t seem like he’s all there.”

  “No one knows why he is the way he is. The town just takes care of him.”

  Vic smiled. “So far Scarlet Springs is not at all what I imagined it would be.”

  Lexi had to know. “What did you expect?”

  “Going off what you’ve told me, I figured it was a tiny town where there’s nothing to do but wish you were someplace else.”

  Lexi couldn’t blame her for having that impression. “That’s pretty much how I felt about it for most of my life.”

  That’s not how she felt now.

  “It’s beautiful here, and the people—they really care about you.”

  “I know.” The crazy thing was she cared about them, too. She cared far more than she had realized.

  They talked for a while about the things Vic might want to see—Rocky Mountain National Park, Estes Park, the mining museum, the Continental Divide. Then Austin and Eric rejoined them.

  “Who won?” Lexi asked.

  “Hawke crushed me.” Austin sat beside her. “How do you feel? I don’t want to wear you out.”

  She hated to admit it, but she was fading. “I’m ready to go when you are.”

  Vic looked surprised by the thought of leaving so soon. “What time is it?”

  Eric glanced at his watch. “Eight-thirty-five.”

  “I might stay for a while, if that’s okay.”

  Lexi didn’t mind. “The inn is just a few blocks away.”

  “I’ll make sure she gets back safely.” Eric looked over at Vic. “Victoria and I need to start over anyway. We didn’t get off on the best foot.”

  That much was true.

  With Austin holding one arm, Lexi got up from the table, but she hadn’t taken a single step when a hush fell over the room.

  Rain appeared holding a tray with four shot glasses on it, each one filled with amber liquid. “Before you go, Joe wants to make a toast. It’s the good stuff.”

  “A toast?” Lexi, Austin, Eric, Vic each took a glass.

  Then Joe stepped out from behind the bar, his long dark hair up in a bun.

  “Who’s that?” Vic whispered.

  “That’s Caribou Joe—Joe Moffat,” Lexi whispered back. “He owns this place. His grandparents owned the Caribou Mine where most of our grandparents worked.”

  “We came close to losing one of ours this week,” Joe said. “Lexi’s been away for a long time, but we all remember her. Hell, the very rock in these mountains remembers her. It’s been a couple of decades since anyone has seen a knocker, but when Lexi needed them, they were there for her. So let’s remember them tonight.”

  His words put a lump in Lexi’s throat.

  Joe raised his glass. “To the knockers!”

  “To the knockers!”

  Lexi raised her glass, whispered her own toast. “Thank you, Jack.”

  And then she drank.

  Chapter 25

  On Saturday, Austin kissed a sleeping Lexi goodbye, passed her father and Kendra at the breakfast table, and went back to work. He drove to the county building, climbers already hitting the crags in Boulder Canyon, hoping to get their fix of vertical before the sun heated the rocks. He parked his Tahoe and walked inside to clock in and check his mailbox. He had just stamped his time card when Sutherland opened the door to his office.

  What was he doing here on a Saturday? He wore street clothes, not a uniform, a cup of coffee in his hand.

  “Taylor, we need to talk.”

  Damn.

  When your boss put it like that, it was never good news.

  Austin followed Sutherland into his office, shut the door behind him, pretty sure he knew what this was about. “I should have disclosed to McBride that Lexi and I are involved. He asked whether I knew the area and—”

  “Shut up, and sit down. This isn’t about that.”

  It wasn’t?

  Austin sat.

  “I got a call from the county attorney on Monday. He says you found Bear homesteading on the Haley property and came to him with this information, hoping to find some way to circumvent county statutes.”

  Well, shit.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Why didn’t you come to me?”

  “If I’d come to you, you’d have had to act. As the head of this department, you are answerable to the county commissioners. From the moment I told you, you would have faced the responsibility of evicting Bear. I was hoping to find a way to keep Bear in his cabin before putting you and him through all of that turmoil.”

  Sutherland nodded. “The Colorado Homestead Act.”

  “The Colorado Homestead Act?”

  “It’s a law that was passed before Colorado became a state. It protects homesteaders from creditors and others who want to lay claim to their land. Basically, it says that if you’ve lived on a piece of land for five years an
d improved that land, it belongs to you outright. Every mortgage in the state includes language exempting the property from the act. Otherwise, some savvy person might live in a house for five years, fix it up, and then decide they don’t have to repay their loan.”

  Austin took all of this in. “So, because Bear has been up there forever, an argument could be made that it’s legally his land.”

  “Exactly. We don’t want that legal precedent, so we’re not going to try to evict him. That’s our story, anyway, and we’re sticking to it.”

  Relief washed through Austin. “That’s a load off my mind.”

  He did not want to be the guy who made Bear homeless.

  “If you had come to me from the beginning, you wouldn’t have had to worry.”

  Austin stared at his boss. “You knew?”

  “Of course, I knew. There are a handful of people in county government who know where Bear lives. We’ve kept this quiet ever since we bought the property. If the public found out, some would want him evicted. Others would decide to build their own cabins on public land. What a damned mess that would be.”

  Yes, it would.”

  “Like you, we don’t see how we serve the public good by making him homeless. I’ve personally asked him to take firewood only from the south side of the creek where the forest is too dense and we’re trying to thin them anyway. He keeps to that.”

  “How long has he been there?”

  “No one really knows. Bear is a man of mystery.”

  “Have you told Hatfield?”

  Sutherland nodded. “He and I had this little conversation a few days ago. He didn’t know you’d gone to the county attorney, who, by the way, thinks you ought to be given a formal reprimand for going outside the chain of command.”

  A formal reprimand. He hadn’t seen that coming. It would go in his permanent file and probably make it impossible for him to get a raise this year. Still, he could accept that. At least his conscience was clear.

  “I wanted to do what was best for Bear.”

  “I see that. You’re one of the best I’ve ever worked with, Taylor. It’s not just your college degree and your outdoor skills. You know the land. You know the flora, the fauna. You’re good with people. You bring real passion to the job. This is what you’re meant to be doing. So please don’t do anything that forces me to bust your ass.”