Above It All (Eureka, Colorado Book 4) (Contemporary Romance)

by Cindy Myers

  “Then what’s your problem?” He looked at her, his blue eyes holding a sharpness that sent a warm shiver down her spine in spite of herself. She didn’t want to be attracted to Bob Prescott. He wasn’t the kind of man she liked—he was too old-fashioned, too chauvinistic, and ornery as an old billy goat. She felt betrayed by her own body—that the lure of all that testosterone and he-man machismo overcame her better sensibilities.

  “I don’t like using my girls as bait.” She motioned toward the goats, munching contentedly through a patch of thistle and leafy spurge that was threatening to take over this pasture. “It feels wrong, sending them out there defenseless, waiting for them to be attacked.” Bob had convinced her to lock Alice in the trailer, where she wouldn’t chase off the bear.

  “You know where the term ‘scapegoat’ comes from, don’t you?” he asked.

  “Not really.”

  “It’s from the Bible. A goat was driven into the desert or sacrificed to atone for sin. The goat took the fall so that everyone else would be okay.”

  “I’m not sacrificing any of my girls for anything,” she said. “That’s barbaric, and we are not barbarians.”

  “Speak for yourself, honey. We’re all a lot closer than you think. Besides, none of your goats are going to be sacrificed. I’m going to pepper the bear’s hide before she gets hold of one.”

  “That part bothers me, too,” Daisy said. “After all, she’s a mother, trying to provide for her children. That shouldn’t get her shot.”

  He gave her that raking gaze again, not a dismissive look, but more like he was trying to see deeper into her, to her core. “Woman, are you even listening to yourself?” he asked. “You don’t want your goats eaten, but you don’t want the sow punished for trying to feed her young’uns. The world don’t work that way and you know it.”

  “I know it.” She sat back in her chair, weary from the argument she’d been having as much with herself as with him. “But I’m entitled to my opinions, no matter how contradictory they are.”

  “Hmmph.” He returned to contemplating the goat herd and the woods beyond. “If there’s one thing women are never short of, it’s opinions.”

  Just when she was beginning to think there was more to him than the old codger act, he had to come up with a chauvinistic remark like that. “Since when are you an expert on women?” she asked. “Have you ever been married?”

  “Three times. Enough to make me know I’m not walking down the aisle again.”

  She gaped at him. He grinned. “You didn’t think I could have found three women who’d put up with me long enough to get hitched, did you?”

  She looked away, unwilling to admit she’d been thinking exactly that. “What about you?” he asked. “Was your late husband the first one?”

  “And the only one,” she said.

  He didn’t have an answer for that. He took another swig of his coffee. The aroma rose to her, rich and dark. “Do you really think the bear will show up today?” she asked.

  “No way of knowing. All we can do is wait.” He settled back into his chair. He looked content to sit there for the next week, but she was restless, unable to stay still.

  “Tell me about your wives,” she said.

  He shifted the rifle, cradling it almost like a child, the barrel pointed over his left shoulder. “Nosy, aren’t you?”

  “Yes.” She lifted her chin. “I don’t mind telling you about my husband.”

  “Except I don’t care to hear about him. I’m sure he was a fine man and all—better than me in every way.”

  “Roger was a fine man, but he certainly wasn’t without his faults.”

  “I’m glad to hear it. Otherwise, I’d have suspected you of lying.”

  She didn’t know what to say to this, so she fell silent once more. Roger Mott had spoiled and indulged her; she’d only realized how much after he was gone. He’d let her have her way, even when she didn’t make the best decisions, something that had gotten her into trouble at times after he was gone. His common sense had always reined in her flightier tendencies.

  But there had been freedom in succeeding or failing on her own, as well. Roger would never have approved of the goat rental idea, and would have found a way to talk her out of the business, or he would have nudged her toward a different, safer, and maybe even more profitable approach. But she wasn’t trying to get rich from natural weed control. She simply liked living like a gypsy six months of the year, with her girls and Alice for company.

  “I think it’s the differences between men and women that make marriage so difficult,” she said. “And at the same time more rewarding. When the relationship is good, it’s because you’ve both managed to overlook or overcome your differences in the interest of realizing something better.”

  “And I thought men and women generally stayed together for sex.”

  She turned to glare at him, then recognized the glint in his eye. “You take great joy in goading me, don’t you?”

  “Only because you’re so easy to get a rise out of.”

  It was true. Though she was tough in many ways, she wore her emotions close to the surface. She felt things so deeply, from the beauty of a sunrise to the wound of harsh words. “One thing age has taught me is to not be afraid of showing my feelings,” she said. “I’ve always thought—”

  “Shhh.” He held up a hand, cutting her off in midsentence.

  She froze. “What is it?”

  “Shhh! Hear that?”

  She leaned forward, straining her ears. Then it came to her—a shuffling, snuffling sound. Her heart pounded, as if she’d been running hard. “Is that her?”

  “Think so.” He shifted the rifle, barrel pointed toward the ground.

  The goats must have heard the noises, too; they raised their heads and looked around, ears twitching, shifting from hoof to hoof. Stella, the oldest doe and the herd’s leader, made a worried sound, an anxious whine deep in her throat.

  All at once, the bear exploded from the edge of the woods, her great, lumbering body quickly closing the distance between her and the goats. The girls raised high-pitched cries of panic; inside the trailer, Alice barked and scratched at the door. “Oh no!” Daisy rose, hand over her mouth to muffle a scream.

  In one fluid motion, Bob stood, raised the rifle to his shoulder, and fired. The reverberation momentarily deafened Daisy. Her ears rang and the scent of gunpowder stung her nose. The bear gave a cry of rage and turned to flee, limping, the two cubs whirling about and racing after her.

  “You’ve hurt her!” Daisy cried.

  “She’s stung, but she’ll be okay,” he said. “And she’ll think twice about coming back here.”

  “How can you be sure?” Daisy asked.

  He gave her a withering look that made her feel about three feet tall, but she fortified herself with a deep breath and stood up straighter. “I think we should go after her,” she said. “To make sure she’s all right.”

  “Now I know you’re certifiable.” He fiddled with some adjustment on the rifle.

  “I don’t think it’s crazy to want to check on her,” she said.

  “You want to go chasing off into the woods after a wounded bear—a bear who might just as soon turn and attack you?”

  She swallowed hard against the metallic taste of fear that bloomed in the back of her throat. “I didn’t say we needed to get close to her—only that I want to make sure she’s okay.”

  He sank into the lawn chair once more. “Help yourself. But I’m not fool enough to go with you.”

  “Fine.” She grabbed her sweater from the back of the lawn chair and tugged it on. “I certainly don’t need your help. Good-bye.”

  She marched toward the woods with as much dignity as she could muster, aware of his gaze boring into her back, as straight and unforgiving as the bullets he’d fired. By the time she reached the edge of the woods, she was beginning to feel a little foolish. After all, what was she going to do when she did see the bear? It wasn’t as if sh
e could give it a physical examination. It was either hurt—in which case she couldn’t do anything to help it and would have to live with the knowledge—or it was fine, in which case she hoped it would never come anywhere near her or her goats again.

  Then there was the problem of how to track the bear. When she reached the edge of the woods, she could no longer hear the animal crashing about. She studied the dried leaf litter at her feet, trying to picture in her mind which way the animal had lunged.

  Two minutes deeper into the woods, a crashing and thrashing behind her made her look around for a tree to climb. Bears couldn’t climb trees, right? Or was that mountain lions? She turned toward the noise, a scream frozen in her throat.

  “Don’t go getting hysterical, it’s just me.” Bob shoved a pinion branch out of his way.

  “What are you doing here?” she demanded, trying to hide her relief behind feigned indignation.

  “Call it self-preservation. If something happened to you, I’d end up feeling guilty.” He moved past her and surveyed the area. “Any sign of the bruin?”

  “No. I mean, I’m not sure what to look for.”

  “I think you’re on the right track.” He pointed ahead. “Looks like she went that way.”

  She followed him along a faint path between the trees. Some kind of animal trail, she guessed. It made sense the sow would follow this easier route. Another two hundred yards and the trees began to thin. They broke out into a clearing, atop a bluff. “Do you recognize where we are?” he asked.

  “Nothing looks familiar.” She squinted in the harsh afternoon sunlight. “Is that a road over there?”

  “County Road Ten.” He indicated the faint, gravel track on the opposite bluff. “It cuts over to the highway another five miles or so farther on. It’s kind of a shortcut from town, though not many people use it. The road’s kind of rough, and slick as snot when it rains.”

  She looked around them, at the countryside as silent and empty as a church midweek. “I don’t see any sign of the bear,” she said.

  “She might have gone on down into the ravine.” He walked to the edge of the bluff. “There’s a creek down there. A good place to find more food and to lick her wounds.”

  She followed him and looked down into the gully. Heavy underbrush and shadows obscured the bottom. “I don’t think I want to go after her badly enough to climb down in there,” she said.

  “Climbing down might not be so bad, but climbing out would be a bitch,” Bob said. “Not to mention you could turn an ankle or fall and break a leg and have to wait for Search and Rescue to fish you out. Then you could tell them how you came to be down there in the first place—trying to track a bear you’d just gone out of your way to chase off.”

  “All right, all right.” She held up her hands in a gesture of surrender. “I’ll admit this was not my best idea. I’ll just have to take your word for it that she’s okay, and that she won’t come after my goats again. I guess we’d better go back now.” She started to turn away, but he caught at her sleeve.

  “Wait a minute,” he said.

  “What?” She didn’t turn back. She was tired and she had a headache and she didn’t like the way her emotions were always in turmoil around him.

  “There’s something down there,” he said. “Something that’s not right.”

  She angled toward him and found him bent at the waist, staring into the ravine. She followed his gaze and caught her breath. “Do you mean that glint of metal, or something shiny? Could it just be the light reflecting on the creek water?”

  “I think it’s a car.” He pointed. “See that broken tree? The car must have went off the road, crashed through that tree, then landed on the bottom of the ravine.”

  A shiver raced up her spine as she stared at the brown top of the broken fir. “That damage doesn’t look recent,” she said softly.

  “No, I’d say this happened a while ago.” He started down into the ravine.

  “What are you doing?” she asked.

  “I’m going to check it out. You stay up here. Do you have your phone with you?”

  “Yes.” She put a hand on the pocket where the cell phone rested.

  “I’ll call you when I know more.”

  “Be careful,” she said, the words out of her mouth before she could stop them.

  He grunted, and kicked his way down the steep slope. “More careful than whoever is in that car, anyway.”

  Chapter 15

  “I’m calling a staff meeting.”

  Maggie had scarcely slipped her purse off her shoulder on a hot late-August Thursday afternoon when her boss, Rick Otis, swooped out of his office at the Eureka Miner. A slight man, he radiated a feverish energy that made it impossible to tell if he was forty or sixty. He favored wildly printed aloha shirts to hide his slight paunch, and cargo shorts or hiking pants, depending on the season.

  “Since when do we have staff meetings?” She sat and flipped the switch to boot up her computer. “Ellie and I are the only staff you have, and you don’t have to call a meeting to communicate with us.”

  “You and I need to brainstorm ideas for stories.” He sat on the edge of her desk. This, unfortunately, meant that if she turned toward him, his crotch was almost at eye level. She resolutely kept her body angled away. The first time she’d met Rick, he’d been stark naked—and for that matter, so had she. But they’d both been in the main pool of the local clothing-optional hot springs, and at least then they’d had steam, and a crowd of other people to help her pretend they were more formally attired.

  “It’s not as if so much is happening in Eureka that we have to pick and choose what to report,” she said. “If it happens and it’s news, we report it.” She also wrote her share of stories that might not be considered news in other papers, but that people in Eureka loved, such as the piece she’d done last month on Dennis Kinkaid’s record for growing the largest zucchini in the county for three years in a row, or their photo feature on old outhouses in the area, which had actually won a state press award.

  “I’ve been thinking we need to expand our coverage,” Rick said. “Draw in some new readers.”

  “Where are these readers going to come from?” she asked. “Almost everybody in the county, not to mention a fair number of people who used to live here and moved away, already subscribe. And then you get newsstand sales from tourists.”

  “I was reading an article the other day about a weekly paper in Alaska—or maybe it was Arkansas.” He scratched his chin, the sandpapery sound of his afternoon beard making her teeth hurt. “Anyway, some small-town paper that has over five thousand subscribers, from all over the world. They all want to read the news this guy prints.”

  “What kind of news?”

  “Apparently, he’s big on reporting Bigfoot sightings and UFO abductions.”

  “I’m pretty sure we’re fresh out of Sasquatches and UFOs.” She nudged his knee with her elbow. “Could you move? I have to write an article about the competitors for Hard Rock Days.” Though what she was going to say about anonymous men with pseudonyms like “Badger” and “Dark Knight” was anybody’s guess. The fake bios the competitors had submitted to go with their fake names were as suspect as their aliases. For instance, “Badger” declared that his interests were “firearms, fearlessness, and females.” Come to think of it, those words might describe half the men in Eureka County.

  “We’ve run two hundred stories on Hard Rock Days,” Rick said. “We have to come up with something new. Something compelling enough that people won’t be able to wait to get the next issue.”

  She sighed and looked up at him. “You really aren’t going to let this alone, are you?”

  “If we’re going to survive in today’s competitive market, we’ve got to come up with the kinds of stories people can’t wait to read.”

  “Such as?”

  “Such as—what really happened to Gerald Pershing? Why did he disappear when he left here?”

  “Maybe he was abducted by
aliens.”

  “Exactly!” He hopped off the desk and began to pace. “Or—what if he was murdered? Who would want to kill him, and why? Was it a local with a grudge? A jilted lover? A jealous husband?”

  “Rick!” She stared at him, alarmed. Rick was known for his crazy ideas and occasional rants. She’d quickly learned the fevers that hit him didn’t last, but this felt different, more serious. “That isn’t news,” she said. “It’s gossip.”

  “And people love to read gossip.”

  “But you can’t print it and call it news.”

  “Then the key is to find the news angle,” he said. “What if you interview this detective fellow—Duke? Find out why he’s here and what he knows.”

  “Why should he tell me anything?”

  “Persuade him that by printing his story in the paper, he’ll reach potential witnesses who could give him more information. It’s like those cold-case stories the Denver paper runs all the time.”

  “Except that, in those cases, an actual crime has been committed,” she said. “Gerald Pershing just left town.”

  “Duke Breman apparently doesn’t think so.”

  “And he’s pissing off a lot of people in this town, with his accusations and insinuations.”

  “Pissed-off people buy papers,” Rick said. “If nothing else, they want to know what we’re saying about them.”

  “Rick—let it go. You can’t run an inflammatory story with no basis in fact and call it news.”

  “Television does it every day of the week.”

  “We’re better than television.”

  “Right. Which maybe is why print journalism is dying. We need to give the people what they want.”

  “The people in Eureka don’t want any more of Gerald Pershing,” she said. “Most of them were sick to death of the man before he ever left, and Duke’s snooping hasn’t made them feel any differently.”