Breathe (Colorado Mountain #4)(44)

The Rooster was my favorite restaurant ever. It was a fancy steak joint in the mountains about a half an hour away. The views were amazing. The steaks melted in your mouth. The prices were astronomical but you’d sell your kidney without blinking just to trail your finger in their tri-peppercorn sauce and lick it clean.

I’d eaten there five times, all special occasions, and I’d never had anything that I didn’t consider the best I ever had. This was saying something since Denver had some amazing eateries and I partook copiously while living there when I was at Denver University and going back for my Master’s.

It was also one of the only places close by where you could dress up. Even in Denver, jeans were acceptable practically everywhere and considered formal attire in some circles depending on your top and footwear. But in Denver, women, and men, found their occasions to run the gamut of gorgeous apparel.

In the mountains, this was few and far between and in our area, The Rooster was one of the only places you could get by with going for the gusto.

On my first going out on a date well… date with Chace, I wanted to go for the gusto.

But I couldn’t go for the gusto if he was showing up on my doorstep about a nanosecond after I got home from work.

So no way I could be ready by six thirty.

I still said, “Yes.”

Chace didn’t reply. He just studied me.

Then he demonstrated yet again he could read my mind.

“How about this, can you be ready at seven thirty?”

That was way better.

“Yes,” I whispered on a small smile.

He grinned before he looked away, lifted his coffee cup but said to the lid before he took a sip, “Lookin’ forward to the show you got planned, baby.”

Panic instantly oozed from my every pore.

I liked my clothes. They were nice. Good quality. I thought they suited me. I had a few good getups for when I went back to Denver to meet friends or my family had special occasions that called for a little effort. And when I made an effort, I didn’t mind making a statement. Though, only a minor one.

But I had not one thing to wear on a date at The Rooster walking in on the arm of all the beauty that was Chace Keaton.

My mind quickly flipped through my options and this time, it settled on Lexie.

Krystal wore tank tops even in the winter. She might put a cardigan over them if she was heading outside, but even when it was super cold, that was all the effort she put into covering up and keeping warm.

Lauren always looked good. She used to be some executive but it was clear since she hit Carnal she’d embraced the biker babe lifestyle. This included her wardrobe if, compared to the vast number of other biker babes who lived in the vicinity, she injected a healthy dose of class.

But Lexie used to be a buyer at a department store. She wore high heels all the time, even high-heeled boots in the winter. Her husband was not a biker, he was a mechanic. A mechanic who owned a Dodge Viper and lived in one of the swank condos in the hills on the south end of town. Not to mention they were currently moving into an enormous house in an even more swank development in the eastern hills. I didn’t see him often but when I saw him with Lexie, he didn’t look like he could be in a beer ad. He looked like he could grace the cover of GQ. So Lexie didn’t embrace biker babe chic or mountain girl cute comfort. She always, but always, looked phenomenal.

So I hoped she was free to go with me to the mall that night on an emergency mission.

“Incoming,” Chace muttered as I made mental plans with Lexie and took a sip of my latte.

My eyes snapped up and I saw the boy stealthily rounding the building. I noted immediately even from our distance that the eye wasn’t swollen anymore, the bruises were fading but not gone and the cut on his lip was still noticeably angry. He’d received a thrashing. Over a week and the evidence was still there.

The only thing that made me feel better about this was he was wearing the coat I gave him, the hat and the new jeans. But it was nippy. He really should put on the gloves and scarf.

I watched as he took his time and, as he did, he looked through the lot and surprisingly straight at the spot I’d been parked in yesterday, like he expected to see us there.

Like he’d seen us there yesterday.

Strange. Very strange. So strange it sent my body sliding toward Chace’s. My shoulder bumped his and, without taking his eyes off the boy, his arm shoved behind me and rounded my waist.

My hand went out and my fingers curled around his thigh.

We watched in silence as he approached the bags, crouched by them but he didn’t take time to dig through. He just grabbed them and motored to the back of the library, around and he was gone.

“Made us,” Chace muttered and I turned my head to look at him.

“What?”

He dipped his chin and twisted his neck to look at me, it hit me then how close he was but I didn’t move back.

Not a centimeter.

“Made us even before he grabbed the shit yesterday,” he answered. “My guess, just now, he scouted the area, didn’t see us on the street so he made his approach from the direction he came from. This means he led me off-track yesterday. He approached from the front, left around the front, headed toward town. Approached from the back this time, thinking we aren’t here. Wherever he goes, he approaches the library from the back.”

“Um… aren’t you going after him now?”