Breathe (Colorado Mountain #4)(82)

“You! With you! Together! Groovintude!” Then he dropped his arm and shouted, “Sunny! Baby! All those coffees to go separate and now they’re here together! Proof! Our sweet Faye landed the hot police guy!”

This was the exact time my dreamy feeling ended and heat hit my face.

Sunny ran in from a room at the back as Chace, reading me again, dropped my hand and slid an arm around my shoulders, pulling me protectively close to his side. With no other choice and because it felt good, I slid my arm around his narrow waist.

Neither of us was able to say a word.

This was because Sunny clapped while jumping up and down and shouting, “I like!”

We made it to the counter (unfortunately) and Shambles looked at Chace, “No offense to your brethren, dude. There are other hot local federales but none as hot as you.”

“Shambles is a guy,” Sunny leaned in to inform me of a fact I knew, “but he’s comfortable in his manhood so he’s capable of spotting hotness and has no problem sharing his opinion. He’s not my style,” she jerked her head at Chace, “but I think every member of the sisterhood would agree on some level your guy is a hot guy.”

This was not in doubt.

“Um…” I mumbled.

“I appreciate the compliment but I think you both get Faye’s a little quiet so I’d also appreciate it if for her sake you’d be a little more cool,” Chace said in a quiet voice that nevertheless held authority at the same time it was weirdly gentle.

I tipped my head back to stare at his profile, amazed he could pull this off at the same time not surprised at all.

“Right,” Shambles whispered like he’d been shushed in a library and not gently told off by a hot guy cop. Then he looked at me and he said, “Sorry Crimson Stargazer.”

By the way, if you were a regular, and Sunny and Shambles liked you, they gave you a hippie name. I knew this because, while getting to know Lauren and Lexie, I learned that they called Lauren “Flower Petal” and they called Lexie “Midnight Sunshine”. Usually, they just called me “Star” for short like they called Laurie “Petal” and Lexie “Midnight”.

They were weird. They were hippies. They were the only hippies I knew so I didn’t know if they were weird hippies. What I did know was that they were sweet.

“It’s okay, Shambles,” I said, smiling at him.

“It’s cool you read ‘cause reading is cool,” he went on softly. “It’s cooler you’re not reading and, instead, standing close to a hot guy.”

No truer words were ever spoken.

My smile got bigger.

Shambles smiled back.

Then he jumped as he whirled, moving to his espresso machine and crying out, “Hazelnut latte and triple shot latte, coming up.”

“We need breakfast, Sunny,” Chace said and she jumped to the case filled with Shambles’s homemade baked goods.

“I see you’re having a good effect on the hot guy already, Star,” Shambles said to me while fiddling with that coffee grinder thingie. “He never gets anything out of the case. The only alternate he orders is one of my smoothies with a scoop of protein powder. The only reason I have protein powder is because he and Midnight’s hubster ask for it in their smoothies.”

“The hot guy has a name, Shambles,” I said quietly, smiling through it and hoping I didn’t sound like I was being mean. “His name is Chace.”

Shambles, showing he took no offense, threw a goofy grin over his shoulder at me and replied, “We know his name but I’m the kinda guy who calls ‘em as he sees ‘em.”

Well, there you go.

“Lapis Bravery,” Sunny, at this point, murmured under her breath.

“Perfect,” Shambles murmured back.

“What?” I asked and Sunny’s eyes tipped to me.

“Lapis,” she said softly, “his eyes. Bravery,” she hesitated and I felt my throat get thick before she finished, “him.”

That was perfect. If there ever was a hippie name for Chace, that was it.

Chace didn’t think so and I knew this when I felt his body get tight and he asked, “What the f**k?”

I looked up at him. “Your hippie name. I’m Crimson Stargazer. Lexie is Midnight Sunshine. Sunny is Sunray Goddess. And you’re Lapis Bravery.”

“I don’t –” he started but I gave his waist a squeeze and shook my head once.

His jaw got hard and he shut up.

I looked into the display and ordered a blueberry muffin with brown sugar crumbles on top. Chace took the fun out of it by ordering a carrot muffin made of whole wheat flour which was the healthiest thing in the display.

Chace paid and I didn’t even go for my purse. This was because Chace paid. I learned that lesson already. In fact, I learned it the third time I tried to text him saying coffees were my treat at stakeouts and he’d texted back:

Baby, I pay. The end.

There you go.

The end.

We gave our farewells and were walking back to his truck (we’d dropped mine at my place before shopping) when Chace started, “Faye, I’m not big on –”

I stopped walking abruptly and stopped him with me on a tug at his waist (we still had our arms around each other).

Chace looked down at me and I whispered, “Don’t.”