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CHAPTER 1

The clink and clatter of silverware in the busy diner did nothing to block out the thoughts churning through Olivia Jameson's head. She had made the call earlier this morning, and now she would have to live with the consequences. Hoping she'd survive the experience, she had her doubts it would be easy.

"What can I get you, hon?" Betty, the owner of Petri's Dish, asked with pad and pencil in hand.

"Just coffee." At the thought of the storm she may have created, Liv's shoulders drooped.

Betty's eyes narrowed behind her thick glasses. "Tell me what's wrong. You never just order coffee, especially when I have my pineapple salsa pancakes on the Specials board." Her hand went to her hip, while her expression became mutinous. "So you're not still worrying about that little ruckus over at the Beckham farm, are you? I told you it would all blow over."

Unfortunately, it wasn't blowing over. In fact, it had just gotten a whole lot bigger. "They're pressing charges." It was as simple and as complicated as that.

"What?" Bustling around the counter, Betty plopped down on the stool next to Liv. A crowd began to gather the second she did. She never sat down for anything, not even when she wasn't working. "You better tell me what in the world is going on, right now."

No matter what she said or did at this point, Liv knew the entire story was going to come out soon enough. Such was life in a community their size. Sometimes she wished she lived in Kissinger, the next town over, where everyone seemed to mind their own business.

She might as well take a chance and tell her side before Mr. High and Mighty came rolling into town — if he could unglue himself from his society life long enough to take any interest.

"Some boys in town say they saw my boys over in Beckham's pastures trying to tip over cows. When these town kids came along, they said they spooked the camp boys, who took off running. According to the accusers, that's how the fence was broken and how the alpacas got out and ran away. Beckham still hasn't found two of them."

By this time, there was a solid crowd of about twenty people hemming Liv and Betty in at the counter. As much as Liv appreciated the looks of outrage for her camp boys, and for the situation in general, she didn't blame the Beckhams for pressing charges. Especially with the graffiti Mr. Beckham had told her was spray-painted on the side of his barn.

She just couldn't wrap her head around the idea that her boys would do something so destructive when they knew the consequences and the punishment for not toeing the line.

"I don't believe it," Betty declared, and had the majority of the other people agreeing with her both verbally and by nodding their heads. "There's no way the boys at Breathe would jeopardize their time here by doing something so stupid."

Liv would have said the same thing to her boss, Alex Campbell, this morning if he'd picked up his phone. Instead she'd left him a message asking him to please come to the farm, and she'd explain when he got here. It would be far better to handle this face to face. That way she could plead the case for her boys and make him understand more easily than she could convey over email. She didn't want him here, but she wasn't able to figure out a way to avoid it.

"I agree," Liv said to the diner at large, but worry still pulled her eyebrows together. "The problem is how do I prove it? I don't want to accuse anyone else, and I can't prove without a shadow of a doubt that the boys were all in their beds last night. Not even David. This is a huge mess, just in time for the annual cook-off."

"Don't you worry about the cook-off," Tim from the mechanic's shop said. "That's all taken care of, except for a few details. We'll figure something out with the boys, too. I'm coming there today to work on that car with them. I'll ask some questions that maybe you can't ask."

There was a chorus of agreement while people all went their separate ways. She really appreciated the support, but who was going to be there when Mr. Campbell came riding in to shut down the camp because she wasn't doing a good job as the director? She couldn't — and wouldn't — lose Breathe, a camp that had been around for almost eighty years. It housed underprivileged boys from major cities over the summer, giving them a chance to see real grass and real cows, to ride horses and learn skills and self-worth that would hopefully keep them out of gangs and make them productive members of society.

Life without Breathe would be pointless, since she had no idea what else she would do. She had her son, David, and loved being his mother, but Breathe was her calling. This farm had been her dream for years, ever since her uncle had rescued her and her sisters and made them a home here. She'd even shared that dream and the beginnings of the life she'd always wanted with her late husband before he died. For eight years she'd been living it on her own and doing a good job. But now it was all at risk.

She might have to start thinking about a different future if she couldn't convince one man that this was not the excuse he'd been looking for to close the place down from the moment he'd inherited it and then completely distanced himself from the farm except to write the checks.

* * *

Alex Campbell's morning so far had been filled with frustrating, irritating phone calls and general chaos all the way around. As he sped north from Washington, DC to backwoods Central Pennsylvania, he gripped the wheel tightly and hoped to be in and out of there in record time. What had begun as a day with few commitments had now become one huge rash of ridiculousness.

And to top it all off, he'd lied to his mother. He would probably hear about that for the next twenty years when she found out why he had cancelled her plans to go to the opera. The opera where he was supposed to meet the lovely and eminently suitable Phoebe Lehman, who his mother thought would be perfect for him to finally settle down with.

Instead, he was on back roads with potholes that had yet to be fixed, driving his low-slung convertible and hoping against hope that no cow would be standing out in the middle of the road where he couldn't avoid it.

Because it was only a three-hour drive, he had brought an overnight bag with him in case it wasn't an open-and-shut issue. He was not planning on staying at the camp his father had loved more than anything, not for longer than a night at most. Alex would go, do his duty, whatever that was, then come home the next day. Liv had not told him why she needed him at the farm, only that she did. And then she hadn't answered her phone when he'd called for more details before derailing his whole day.

Over the years, he'd considered shutting the place down, but something always held him back. It didn't hurt his business to be able to say he helped underprivileged kids on a continuous basis. And as much as he might hate the camp because of all it had stood for in his youth, it was a write-off.

Though hate was too strong a word. He didn't give it much thought other than at tax time. When his father died, he'd left Liv as director. Until this morning, she had handled anything that came up, using her best judgment. Beyond writing checks and doing taxes, he didn't have anything to do with the camp itself. That had worked for him just fine.

But now he had been summoned — he didn't know another word for it — and so he was on his way to cow-patty heaven and avoiding his mother. Not quite what he had wanted this morning when he'd woken up in his own king-sized bed with its expensive sheets.

After twenty minutes, when he was sure he'd seen the same lightning-struck tree three times, he finally admitted defeat and stopped at a convenience store. His directions must be wrong, and his GPS had decided to quit working about five minutes ago. Hell of a time to have the thing give up on him.

Add to that the fact that he didn't know the area well enough, since he had never actually driven out here because he'd left when he was thirteen, and he was stuck with no idea where he was going or how to get there. Calling his mom was out of the question. She would give him a hard time for being out here at all. Calling Liv was also not going to happen, as he didn't want to be at a disadvantage before he even got to the camp.

A bell dinged over his head as he entered Bob's Grab and Go.

The man he assumed was Bob gave him the eye as he threaded his way through rack after rack of miscellanea.

"I was wondering if you could help me get back on the right track," Alex said, just wanting to be done with this whole journey and yet flailing around out in the middle of nowhere. He hadn't been in this area for eighteen years. In fact, he'd made a point to avoid it whenever possible, except for the funeral five years ago that had saddled him with his father's camp in the first place.

"Where ya goin', city slicker?"

Alex would have laughed if it weren't so ridiculous. If he threw his father's name around right now, he'd bet he would be treated in a totally different way. Yet he didn't want to reminisce with Bob about the old days, he just wanted to get to the right farm.

"Right outside Dillsburg, to the north."

"Well, you're almost there, dependin' on where you're comin' from." The guy scratched his chin and stared, obviously looking for an answer to his unspoken question.

"I'm coming from Washington, DC. If you could just tell me where to go from here?"

"You made a wrong turn back at the stop sign on 114."

"And where was that?" He'd depended so heavily on his GPS that he'd just made the designated turns until Sheila, with her Australian accent, had died out on him.

"Back a ways."

"So where exactly did I go wrong back at the stop sign?" Alex asked, his frustration mounting. For some reason he could not get this guy in his overalls and trucker cap to give him a precise answer.

"Well, now, if you wanted to go on into the little burg, then you coulda turned left at the sign, or gone right, to the capital. But since you went straight across, you ended up here." The man used his thick fingers to trace the line of a red road on the map Alex had printed as a backup, just in case.

About at the end of his rope, Alex folded the computer-generated map and massaged his forehead. He squinted at the guy behind the small country store counter.

Intelligent eyes twinkled at him from under the trucker's cap that read Hal. And the slow wink did nothing to dispel Alex's tension. He didn't want to be here anyway, and now he was getting attitude from this backwoods guy. Gritting his teeth, he made a real effort not to say anything that would make it through the town's grapevine within two point three seconds.

"Should've gone to the left," the older man said out of the blue, lifting his cap and swiping his sparse hair backward.

Finally! Alex snapped the pages off the counter and made a point of saying thank you in his best office voice. He wasn't here to antagonize the locals but simply to assess the situation, use his expertise in business handling to get the full story of the incident at the farm, and then get back to his comfortable condo in DC. There was no time for detours. He should have been there almost thirty minutes ago. Glancing at his watch, he grimaced. Almost forty minutes ago.

"Got somewhere to be?" the rotund man asked, wiping his fingers on the bib of his overalls.

"Yes, I'm going to a farm to address an issue involving camp kids." It had to be them. He couldn't think of a single other reason Liv couldn't handle whatever this was on her own. At the last second, he realized he'd just invited the very conversation he hadn't wanted to have. All he needed to do was get back in his car, head toward the stop sign, and then turn left.

"Would that be Crockett's farm? The one run by Liv? That girl has a good head on her shoulders." His tone implied he couldn't believe Alex knew someone who had it so together.

Before he said anything he shouldn't, Alex forced himself to calm. He wasn't going to get into it with this man and his country store that had everything from live bait to a mini video store with DVD titles from the early nineties. "Yes, and I'm due there about an hour ago, so I'll be going." He nodded at Hal. "Thanks for the directions. I go back to the stop sign and turn left then, is it?"

"Not unless you want to go back the way you came, you won't." He scratched his chin again.

Alex suppressed a sigh. He did want to go back the way he came, but he'd made a promise. And he kept his promises, no matter how ridiculous they seemed after he had time to really think about what he'd committed himself to. "So do I go right, then?"

"Now you got the idea. Shouldn't be too far down the road, especially in that fancy car you got."

Alex made sure to thank Hal again before exiting the store and inhaling the fresh outside air. He preferred the exhaust and fumes of DC where he worked, but reminded himself that he wouldn't be here for long. He could handle the great outdoors for a short time.

And it would be fine to see the old homestead again. It had been a while since he'd been out this way. It wasn't going to kill him to relax and enjoy the scenery a little. Besides, if he remembered correctly, time was but a small thought out here. You got there when you got there. So he'd drive slow, take in the scenery, and maybe avoid seeing the farm for a little while longer. His manager wouldn't mind in the least.

* * *

"Where the heck is he?" Bill Jameson paced the spacious kitchen and turned at the oversized refrigerator. He came back with his hands in his gray hair and his shirt bunched at his belt buckle.

Since her uncle was only repeating what she'd asked four times already, Liv tipped her glass of lemonade to her lips, wishing the man wasn't coming at all. Fortunately David was out playing with all the other boys, so she and Bill could talk candidly without his little eight-year-old ears around. "I'm sure he'll get here when he gets here. He probably got lost without all his one-way streets and tons of street signs."

Bill gave her the disapproving scowl she'd gotten when she was fifteen and snuck out to see her boyfriend. "You're not going to antagonize him every moment he's here, are you?"

"Who, me?" she asked innocently.

"Yes, you. Please, Liv, I want this visit to go as smoothly as possible."

"I could have handled this on my own if Beckham would have listened to me. But he wouldn't, so I'm stuck. But I wish I hadn't called him.He's going to act like visiting royalty, and you know it," she grumbled.

"We do need him here. This is his farm, after all, and he has to handle something this big. Plus, I'm sure he could use the rest and relaxation."

"Rest and relaxation?" she asked incredulously. "With twenty kids here and a possible lawsuit on our hands? What planet are you living on?"

"That's the attitude I'm talking about." Her uncle wrung his hands, sidling onto a stool at the island in the middle of the kitchen. "I'm not going to be able to do this if you and he are at each other's throats."

"Please. I wouldn't ever dare do that to him. My job is too important to me. And this is David's home. Besides, Alex barely acknowledges me when I email him, and I've been left to manage this place by myself for years. The last time he was here was when he was twenty-five. Even then he wouldn't come to the farm, just went right from the funeral home in town to the lawyer's office before heading back to DC. It's not going to be any different this time. Once the problem is fixed, he'll leave again and hopefully never come back."

Her uncle groaned. For just a minute, Liv considered apologizing, along with promising she wouldn't cause any waves, or let the ones Alex made do anything except drift over her.

But Bill went on. "You have a habit of sticking your foot in it. I want to make sure that's not going to pop up here anywhere. I want you to be nice to him and help out if he needs anything."

"Not in my job description." She tipped the glass to her lips again and swallowed the tart lemonade while she swallowed the rest of the words that wanted to come spilling out of her mouth. Alex was no real prize to get along with, even over the phone, which she'd had the misfortune of using on several occasions when he called to clarify what an email couldn't get across. But she wasn't going to make this more difficult for the man she loved and trusted. And she wasn't going to lose the only home her son had ever known. "I'm sure we won't have much to say to each other, and when we do talk, I'll be absolutely certain to be nice and sweet."

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Excerpted from "Liv and Breathe"
by .
Copyright © 2019 Misty Simon.
Excerpted by permission of The Wild Rose Press, Inc..
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

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