The Mountain Between Us. Cindy Myers

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СКАЧАТЬ teacher’s idea to keep him out of trouble. He’s so damn smart.” Pride for her kid mingled with her own sudden happiness and she didn’t even try to hold back a smile.

      “He is that. I’m glad you’re going to paint the mural. You deserve to have more people see your talent.”

      “I can’t believe you even noticed.” For the first time in a long time she let herself meet his gaze. “It’s not like I was always painting or anything.”

      “No, but you couldn’t sit still for five minutes without doodling some little drawing, and you always put your own artistic touch on things, like that shirt you’re wearing. I’ll bet you painted that.”

      “Yeah.” She smoothed the shirt again, once more uncomfortable with the intensity of his gaze. She set the olives on the bar. “Well, thanks anyway for recommending me.”

      “You’re welcome. I just came from the county offices. I got a job driving a snowplow.”

      “What do you know about driving a snowplow?” Until he’d moved to Connecticut, D. J. had spent most of his life in Texas and Oklahoma, where they never got enough snow to plow.

      “I drove heavy equipment in Iraq. A snowplow is just another big machine.”

      Snowplowing jobs were some of the best paying in the county, or so the guys who propped up the bar said. The work involved early hours and long treks into the mountains to clear high passes. At least one plow driver was pushed over the side each year by avalanches. Most survived the trip, but a monument up on Black Mountain Pass testified to all those who hadn’t made it.

      She pushed such macabre thoughts aside. “Bob says the snow is late this year, so you might not have any work.”

      “I’ll find ways to keep myself busy.”

      She couldn’t look at him anymore. He made her feel too weak-kneed and uncertain. “Yeah, well, thanks again. I better get to work.”

      “I’ll see you around.” He turned and strode out of the bar, a big man with broad shoulders and a cocky attitude that alternately drove her crazy and melted her heart.

      Only after the door closed behind him did she wonder why he’d stopped by the bar this afternoon. He hadn’t stayed to drink. Could it be he’d stopped to see her—to tell her about his new job, maybe, or to try again to persuade her to end the hostilities between them? Just because she’d been civil to him, she didn’t hope he thought that meant they could be friends. She wasn’t ready—would never be ready—to be that close to him again.

      She retreated behind the bar and put the jar of olives on the shelf. “Thanks for holding down the fort, Reggie.” The stocky, bearded lawyer looked more like a biker than an attorney, but she couldn’t picture some dark-suited legal brain fitting in in this town that had made a virtue of informality.

      “No problem. If I ever decide to give up the law, I can start a second career as a bartender.”

      “If you do, I’ll have to start drinking somewhere else,” Bob said. “Having to look at you every day would spoil the taste of the beer.”

      “I imagine you wouldn’t be the only one to complain,” Reg said. “Olivia here is a sight better looking than I am, I’ll agree.”

      “Where have you been anyway?” Bob asked. “Reg doesn’t have any idea how to put a decent head on a draft beer.”

      “I had to run next door for a jar of olives.”

      “Olives!” Bob’s expression grew more sour than usual. “Fruit and vegetables don’t belong in liquor.”

      “Now, Bob. Some people like to feel they’re getting a little more sustenance with their drinks,” Reggie said.

      “That’s what the pretzels and popcorn and beer nuts are for.”

      “Janelle and Danielle have asked me to paint a mural on the back wall of the café.” Reggie and Bob weren’t her first choice for confidants, but she couldn’t keep the news to herself anymore.

      “A mural?” Bob asked. “What of?”

      “They want something depicting the history of Eureka.”

      “That’s a great idea,” Reggie said. “Congratulations.”

      “I’d like to see that,” Bob said. “Give me something to look at over my eggs beside last year’s feed calendar.”

      Olivia waited, but neither of them said anything about it being odd for the girls to hire her or acted surprised that she’d been the one to get the job.

      “Guess this means you’re staying in town after all,” Reggie said.

      “Yeah, I guess it does.”

      “Say, maybe you can help me with my new project,” Bob said.

      His words brought her back down toward earth. Even though she hadn’t been in town that long, she’d heard enough about Bob’s “projects” to make her wary. “What’s that?”

      “Janelle and Danielle said I could start a pool at the Last Dollar for folks to guess when the first snow will fall in Eureka. But I need somebody to make up a chart with all the dates and names. Maybe you could do that for me.”

      “Uh-huh. How much are you paying?”

      “I’m not paying anything.” Bob assumed a look of martyred superiority. “This is a civic project to benefit the town. I thought maybe you’d do it out of a sense of community.”

      Olivia opened her mouth to tell him she didn’t have a sense of community, that she wasn’t really part of the town, she was only passing through. But that wasn’t exactly true anymore, was it? The people in Eureka were involving her in their lives whether she wanted them to or not. Just last week one of Lucas’s teachers had asked her to volunteer at some harvest festival thing the school was having. And today Janelle and Danielle had asked her to paint the mural. People treated her as if she belonged here.

      Her stomach fluttered at the thought. Olivia Theriot, citizen of a hick town like Eureka, Colorado? Six months ago, if anyone had suggested such a thing, she’d have laughed them out of the room.

      How scary was it that now she actually—sort of—liked the idea?

      “I’m fine.” Jameso sat up and clutched the side of his head, which had hit the ground hard when he fainted.

      “You’re not fine. You passed out.” Maggie pried his hand away from his face and frowned at the golf-ball-sized knot rising above his temple. “Your head must have hit a rock.”

      “I’m fine,” he said again more forcefully. “It was just the shock, that’s all. You shouldn’t spring a thing like that on a guy all of a sudden.”

      “What was I supposed to do?” She sat back on her heels. “Suggest a game of twenty questions? Guess what I’ve got cooking in the oven?”

      He stared at her belly, the lines on his forehead forming a СКАЧАТЬ