Prologue
June 23
Denver, Colorado
Eric Hawke parkedhis blue Ford F-150 on the upper level of the parking garage at Denver International Airport, and then looked up Vic Woodley’s flight info on his smartphone. He glanced at his watch.
Shit.
The guy’s flight had landed thirty minutes early.
Eric grabbed the little cardboard sign he’d made, climbed out of his truck, and moved in long strides toward the terminal, the late afternoon heat stifling.
Well, he couldn’t have gotten here any sooner. Traffic coming down the canyon had sucked, and it had only gotten worse when he’d hit Highway 36. Besides, picking this Woodley guy up hadn’t been on his list of things to do this morning. He wished Woodley would mind his own business and fly back to Chicago. From what Taylor had told Eric, the bastard was here to convince Lexi to leave Scarlet Springs and Taylor behind and return to Illinois with him.
Yeah? Well, let him try.
Austin Taylor had been Eric’s best friend since preschool, and Lexi Jewell was the woman Taylor had loved since he was seventeen. Eric wasn’t about to stand by while some slick, big-city hipster dude tried to convince Lexi that staying with Austin was wrong for her. She and Austin were crazy in love, and they’d been through too damned much to put up with more bullshit.
Eric was only picking the guy up as a favor to the two of them. They were still dealing with the aftermath of Lexi’s near-death ordeal. Lexi couldn’t drive because of her broken leg, and Taylor couldn’t pick Woodley up because he was taking Lexi to a follow-up visit with her orthopedic surgeon. Eric had offered to dump Woodley in a ditch somewhere, but Taylor had been against the idea. In fact, he’d seemed awfully chill about the thought of another man coming to visit Lexi.
“I can handle the competition,” he’d said. “Besides, if Lexi stays in Scarlet, it needs to be because she wants to livehere, not because we murdered her friend.”
Okay, so Taylor had a point.
Eric stepped into the crowded terminal, air conditioning blasting him, bringing relief from the heat. He glanced around, fairly certain Woodley would have made his way to baggage claim by now.
How was Eric supposed to recognize the guy?
He had planned to stand at the top of the escalator in the main lobby holding the little cardboard sign with Woodley’s name on it so that all new arrivals would have to pass by him. Woodley would have seen his name, and that would have been it. Nice and easy. But now Woodley could be anywhere—sipping chardonnay in a restaurant, getting his nails buffed, waiting for his baggage.
Ah, hell.
Eric walked over to a white service telephone, dialed Paging Services, and asked the woman who answered to page Vic Woodley. She told him the airport had switched to a visual paging system and said his page would be visible within the next five minutes.
Left with nothing to do but wait, Eric ended the call and headed down the center hallway toward the coffee shop in the lobby. He’d spent most of the day working a controlled burn and was thirsty enough to drink a water tender dry. He hadn’t even had time to take a shower or put on a clean T-shirt and probably reeked of sweat and smoke.
He reached into his back pocket for his wallet—and then he saw her.
Whoa.
She entered the coffee shop ahead of him, pulling two blue suitcases behind her, one strapped to the other. Her thick, dark hair fell in soft layers to below her shoulders, a short black tank dress hugging her curves, strappy black heels clicking on the stone tiles. He walked to the cooler, grabbed a bottle of water, and then got in line, watching as she tried to decide which flavor of bottled iced tea she wanted. Finally, she made up her mind and maneuvered her way through the shop to stand in line behind him.
God, he could smell her, the sweet scent of her skin and the faint musk of her perfume warming his blood.
He turned to the side and looked over his shoulder toward the lobby as if searching for someone. He looked down and found the woman’s gaze right where he wanted it—fixed on the Scarlet Springs Fire Department logo on his T-shirt. She had a sweet face. Long lashes, high cheekbones, flawless skin. Her nose was small and slightly upturned at the tip, her lips full and covered with shiny gloss.
She looked up at him through big brown eyes, then leaned in as if to tell him a secret, those lips slowly curving into a smile. “Firemen are my favorite color.”
Her flirty words hit him right in the solar plexus.
Jesus!
His brain must have shorted out because all he could say was, “Yeah?”
“What’s your name?”
He’d left his name pin and badge in his truck. “Eric. What’s yours?”