Read With Every Breath for Free Online

eyes, as though she might scold him for his language. Then she said, “Exactly. Not a damn thing,” she repeated, and Cole swallowed a smile. “I don’t understand why it keeps asking for a credit card. I don’t own a credit card. That’s the devil’s work and the reason this country’s gone to hell in a handbasket.” She turned to glare at the gas station door, and her culottes swayed around her orthopedic hosiery. “Where is that man, anyway?”
    “Probably taking a break,” Trey said, looking as if he were enjoying himself.
    Sweat beaded Margie’s forehead and her cheeks were flushed as pink as her strawberry-hued lipstick. “A break.” She looked downright exasperated.
    “Mrs. Nelson, why don’t you sit in the car and turn the air up. I’ll get your gas pumped,” Trey said, and Cole opened the driver’s door to the LTD.
    “We’ll find out what’s keeping Joe,” Cole promised as she climbed into her car.
    “It’s just too hot out here...” There was a note of relief to her voice as she settled in behind the wheel. “I’ve been out here five minutes trying to figure this thing out.”
    Cole eased the car door shut.
    She cracked the window and tilted her face up to the opening. “Only ten dollars. I’m heading out to Angela’s for a visit. The new baby arrived last week, you know.”
    She rolled up the window before Trey or Cole could respond.
    Trey chuckled and turned to the gas pump. “I got this,” he said. “You get your rig gassed up.”
    Cole went around to pump his own gas.
    A few minutes later, Margie called out, “You didn’t go over, did you?”
    “No, ma’am,” Trey answered. “I’ll have Joe add it to your tab.”
    “I don’t care what they say about you, Trey Thompson,” Margie said, and Cole peered around the pump and grinned in anticipation of what might come out of her mouth next. “You’re a good kid.”
    The car fired up with a deeper rumble than the LTD should have. Trey jumped out of the way before Margie ran his foot over. Chuckling, Cole turned his attention back to his own pump.
    “Hear that?” Cole said with a laugh. “You really aren’t that bad.”
    “She’s a feisty one, that Margie.” Trey shook his head as he rounded the pump.
    “Can you top off the tank?” Cole didn’t wait for his answer and walked toward the station. “I’ll run in and talk to Joe.”
    “This thing’s as bad of a gas hog as my car.” Trey leaned against the truck, his eyes on the numbers racing upward on the gas meter.
    A cold blast of stale air rushed Cole when he stepped into the gas station. The girl behind the counter didn’t look up. She swiped a fingernail with magenta polish then moved on to the next nail. He’d had an idea Tatem was at the register, which explained why no one had come outside to check on the customers at the pump.
    “Working hard again?” Cole asked.
    Tatem shrugged and went back to polishing her nails. “Not much to do.”
    “It’s a full service gas station,” Cole mused. He grabbed two sodas from the cooler against the wall and set them on the counter. “Margie was out pumping her own gas.”
    Last fall, Joe’s sister took off with a new boyfriend and hadn’t wanted a teenage daughter dragging her down. Joe drove across the state line into Denver to bring Tatem home. Joe and Melissa didn’t have kids; they’d tried for years. Going from no kids to a teenager wasn’t a walk in the park, Cole guessed. He’d been an asshole as a teenager, oblivious to the world around him and how much growing up he had to do before he became the adult he thought he was. How Joe and Melissa would survive a rebellious teenager was something the whole town wondered.
    “Margie?”
    “Nelson.”
    “Didn’t hear the bell ring.” She shrugged and raised her hand to her lips to blow on the nails. “I don’t know how to pump gas anyway.”
    Cole cocked his brows. “Really? Seems to me if you’re going to steal your uncle’s car you should at