A Snowbound Scandal

But throwing the letter into the wastebasket hadn’t removed the memories of Chase from her head. For a solid week, she’d reflected on the summer they’d spent together, fumed anew at the senseless way he’d cast her aside and played out a few scenarios wherein she’d enjoy humiliating his mother—whom Miriam blamed in part for Chase breaking things off.

“I didn’t expect to run into you while I was here,” the man from her past was saying. It was the same deep, silken voice she remembered, but his Texas drawl was diminished, no doubt due to rigorous training from a speech coach.

“That’s my line,” she said with a flat smile, stepping aside to allow a woman pushing a stroller to go in ahead of her.

Chase palmed Miriam’s arm and physically moved her to the side of the automated door, and if she was still twenty-three and over-the-moon crazy about him, she might have said that his hand was warm and brought back memories of the summer they spent with each other, most of those days wearing as little clothing as was legal. Sometimes less.

“Yes, I suppose that would be your line.” His smile hitched at one corner and dropped like it’d never been there. He adjusted the paper grocery bag in the crook of his arm.

“What are you doing in Montana?” She had to ask. Because seriously—what?

“My annual break from the political hoopla.”

Annual?

A brisk wind cut through her coat and she pulled her shoulders under her ears. “I received a letter mentioning said hoopla.”

“Good. It’s only fair for you to know. We suspect someone on my opponent’s camp dug that photo up.” He sounded so distant standing not a foot away from her. The same way the letter had sounded—probably because it’d been written by a member of his staff and not Chase himself. Too many years had passed for that to hurt, but part of her had felt the sting of loss that he hadn’t bothered with a personal note.

“Where are you staying?”

“I have a place here.”

“You do?” News to her.

“On Flathead Lake.”

Another memory hit her—one of her cajoling him into skinn-dipping in that lake. On the shoreline on private property in the middle of a warm July night. The water had been cold despite the calendar’s date, but Miriam had talked him into it. Watching Chase undress and dive in ahead of her had been one of the highlights of her summer. He had a great ass.

She studied his broad shoulders and tall form, feeling that same commanding presence now. The pull he had on her might have shrunk, but he sure hadn’t. If anything, he’d grown both physically and figuratively. Hell, he was as big as Texas in a way—in charge of part of the gargantuan state with a billionaire fortune in his back pocket.

“Pinecone Drive,” he said as if he’d been waiting to share that bit of intel.

“You don’t mean...the house on the hill with all the windows?” She adjusted her purse strap on her shoulder as the doors swished open again. More cinnamon smells assaulted her and tempted her into the warmth, out of the brisk wind and away from the physical reminder of the summer fling that had gone from scorching hot to corpse cold in three months’ time.

“One and the same. I bought it a few years back. I always liked the way it looked. I don’t visit much, unfortunately.”

“And now you’re here with...your family?” Wife? Kids? she thought but didn’t add.

“Alone. My parents are going on a cruise to Barbados and my brother Zach and his wife and their daughter are spending the holiday in Chicago.”

“Zach’s married.” She smiled at the idea of Chase’s younger brother married with a child. She’d only met him once, but had warm memories of the smiling blond guy with green eyes. Chase’s younger sister had been fresh out of high school at the time but Miriam had met her too, in passing. “And Stefanie?”

“She’s good. Single. It’s good for her.”

“Yeah. It’s good for me, too,” Miriam couldn’t help saying.

“For me, as well.”

They had a mini standoff, meeting each other’s gazes for a few seconds. In that protracted moment, she could feel a whisper of the past roll over them. It spoke of what could’ve been if they’d stayed together instead of separated. What would’ve been if... So many ifs.

Miriam tore her gaze away from him and looked through the glass doors at the cornucopia of produce waiting to greet her. She’d be safe in there. Safe from her past snuggling up and threatening to suffocate her. Standing next to Chase made her want to simultaneously move closer and back away.

A defense mechanism, no doubt.

“I’d better get going. I have to buy ingredients for sweet potato pies for my family’s Thanksgiving.”

“My favorite.”

“It is?”

“But I couldn’t find it in the freezer section, so...” Chase reached into the grocery bag and pulled out a frozen cherry pie, then from behind it a frozen pizza.

“You can’t be serious. Pizza for Thanksgiving dinner?”

“I have wine at the house, too. I can be fancy.”

He was “fancy” incarnate. From his shiny shoes to the expensive suit hiding under a long, dark coat. A tie was cinched at his neck just so. He smelled of wealth and warmth. It was harder to imagine him eating a meal that came from a box than it was to picture him pouring wine from a bottle with a thousand-dollar price tag.

“If frozen pizza sounds too labor-intensive, I may go the route of grilled cheese,” he said. “I have a loaf of sourdough and three types of cheddar in this bag.” He offered a brief smile. She watched his frowning forehead relax and a hint of levity tickle his lips. The transformation kicked her in the stomach. In that brief half of a second Chase had looked years younger. Ten years younger to be precise. He’d reminded her of the boy she’d fallen in love with.

And oh, how she’d fallen. So hard that if she’d broken bones it’d have been less painful than the broken heart she’d suffered. He hadn’t been there to catch her. He’d simply stepped out of the way.

“Well. Enjoy your bread and cheese, in whichever form you choose.” She offered a curt nod, and without ending the conversation gracefully, turned away.

“Mimi, wait.” A masculine hand shot out in front of her, his arm brushing hers as he offered a business card. His deep voice rumbled in her ear, “My personal cell number if you have any issues. Any at all.”

She swallowed thickly before accepting the card. Then nodded, and, without looking back, dashed into the grocery. She skipped the temptation of a cider with whipped cream at the cafe, terrified that any delay might prompt Chase to follow her in and resume their stilted conversation.

A conversation that had no place in the current year. A conversation that could only end in an argument since she and Chase were on the opposite sides of many, many topics.

Not the least of which was the state of her heart when she’d boarded a plane that long-ago summer.

She stopped at the display of sweet potatoes, but there were only two knobby yams left. She clucked her tongue at her timing, which couldn’t be worse. Both for sweet potato shopping and running into ex-boyfriends who should look a lot less tempting.

The simple black-and-white business card weighed heavy in her hand but she couldn’t part with it just yet. She shoved it into her purse and instead debated her next step. Either bribe the woman next to her into relinquishing a few of her sweet potatoes or buy the damn things in a can and hope to God her mother didn’t notice.

Three

“Kristine Andrix. Saver of the day!” her youngest sister announced as she strode into Miriam’s apartment the next evening. Kristine placed a handled paper sack on the counter and Miriam peeked inside, gawking at the gorgeous produce within.

“Oh, they’re beautiful!”

“And organic. I bought them last week since I started eating sweet potatoes for breakfast.”

“Breakfast?” Ever the health nut, Kris was always up to some culinary experiment or another. Last year she was vegan and brought her own Tofurkey to Thanksgiving dinner; this year she was vegetarian but only ate “whole foods.”

“Yeah. You bake the potato ahead of time, then in the morning pull it out of the fridge, warm it and top it with peanut butter and cinnamon.”

“That...actually sounds delicious.” Miriam moved to the sink to scrub the spuds. “What time are you driving to mom’s tomorrow?”

“I’m going tonight.”

“Tonight?” So much for the wine she’d picked up. She was hoping they could share a glass while she regaled her sister with the tale of the Billionaire Mayor in Bigfork.

“Brendan and I were invited to stay the night.” She waggled her eyebrows.

“In the same room?”

“Crazy, right? Dad never would’ve allowed it.” Kris’s mouth pulled into a sad smile. They all missed him so much. The holidays were the hardest. “I think Wendy helped lighten up the entire household.”

“Yes, all it took was her bringing Rosalie home for Christmas.”

“Mom prides herself in being progressive.”

“I’m bummed, though. I was hoping we could polish off a bottle of wine like we used to...” Miriam decided not to add the words “before Brendan” to that statement. She wouldn’t rob her sister of her happiness. She placed the washed potatoes on a pan and Kristine started stabbing them with a fork.

“Why not go tonight?” Kris lived in Bigfork, not too far from Miriam.

“I have work to do. A report that should’ve been done earlier this week.”

“Seems unfair for you to work on the biggest drinking day of the year.” Her sister quirked her lips.

“Well, I’m staying Thanksgiving night so that we can raid the stores at the crack of dawn on the biggest shopping day of the year.”

“Too bad you’re not still dating Gerard. Brendan would’ve had someone to talk to.”

“Gerard wasn’t a great talker.” It’d been the reason they split. He hardly shared anything about his life, little or big. How his workday went, his plans for the weekend or the fact that he’d been seeing another woman at the same time he’d dated Miriam. His silence had been absolute on that front. “We have a horrible track record of having boyfriends at the same time, don’t we?”

“The worst.”

Kristine and Miriam were ten months apart. Their older siblings Ross and Wendy had a six-and four-year gap on Miriam, respectively. Given that the two youngest Andrix daughters had never not remembered the other being around, Kristine and Miriam felt more like twins. They shared the same wavy dark hair that curled on the ends, and had similar full-lipped pouts. Kristine was built more like Wendy, though, on the curvier side, whereas Miriam couldn’t do enough leg exercises to thicken her spindles into anything resembling curves.

“Speaking of boyfriends...” Potatoes wrapped in foil, Miriam slid the tray into the oven. She set the timer and then leaned on the counter while Kristine poured herself a glass of water from the pitcher. “I ran into Chase Ferguson at Whole Foods.”

Mouth agape, Kris blinked. “Come again?”

“I was walking in and he was walking out. He’s on vacation. I guess he bought the estate on Pinecone Drive.”

“The one with the indoor pool and the wine cellar and a million bedrooms?”

“Uh-huh. And fifteen thousand square feet overlooking Flathead Lake.”

“Wow.” Kris’s eyes sought the ceiling in awe, then jerked back to Miriam. “You seem awfully calm about this.”

“I’ve had a few hours to cope.”

“You were so in love with him.” Kris shook her head in a pitying fashion. “Like, gone.”

“Yes, thank you for that reminder.”

“What’d he look like?”

“Oh, you know. Tall, dark and handsome.”

“Ouch.” Her sister winced. “Who’s he here with?”

“No one. Not a single soul.”

“Really...because his wife and kids are in a Tuscan villa on holiday while he’s here writing his memoirs?”

“There is no wife. There are no kids,” Miriam said. “At least I don’t think there are any kids. We didn’t get past him mentioning he was single.”

“Sounds like you two had quite the conversation.” Her sister deftly raised one eyebrow.

“We mostly stood shivering in the cold while trying to find the balance between polite and concise. His parents and siblings are going out of town over Thanksgiving weekend, so he came here to enjoy his rarely used mansion and eat frozen pizza instead.” Miriam fingered the bent corner of the recipe card her mother had given her. “He said sweet potato pie was his favorite. I never knew that. Do you know why?”

“I’m assuming because in the short summer months you two spent boinking each other in the lake, you never broached the topic of pie preferences?”

“Fair point.” Miriam smiled. “I was going to say it’s because we ended before sweet potato pie season. It’s been ages since I’ve thought about him... I mean really thought about him. It was a silly summer fling and I was swept up.” Her gut pinged with warning at the lie. Miriam ignored that ping. She would rather make believe she never loved him than consider that she’d been right about them living happily ever after if he hadn’t discarded her so callously. Half kidding, she added, “I could invite him to Mom’s for dinner. Bury that axe for good.”

“Do it.”

She faced her sister’s wide-eyed gaze. “What? Why? I was joking.”

“Burying the axe for good would be cathartic. Once you’re around each other again you’ll both see that you are not the Miriam of ten years ago. You’re the Miriam of today. It’d do Chase good to see what he’s been missing.”

“Thanks, Kris.” Miriam was touched, but not sure she agreed. “He’s not missing much. Other than a job I love, I have no husband, children or Nobel Peace Prize to wave in his face.”

“None of that matters.” Kristine swept Miriam’s cell phone off the dining room table and offered it, but then frowned. “Unless... You probably don’t have his private number. I didn’t think about that.”

“Actually, I do. He handed me his card.”

“Bury the lead why don’t you! Why’d he give you that?” Kris was grinning, her eyes twinkling. “For like, a holiday hookup?” She blinked, then screwed her eyes toward the ceiling. “That’d be a great book title.”

Her sister the freelance editor never shut her brain off.

“It would be a great title for a work of fiction.” Miriam snatched her phone away and shoved it into her back pocket. “Remember that protest I did years ago with a conservation group in Houston?”

“Big oil, right?”

Miriam nodded and explained the letter that’d arrived last week. “He didn’t plan on seeing me while he was here, so I don’t know what the offer of calling him if I need anything was about.”

“Told you. Holiday hookup.” Her sister shrugged. “You should invite him for no other reason than we can skewer him at the dinner table about being a dirty politician while you’re the Snow White of Bigfork.”

Miriam had to laugh at her sister’s imagination.

“Plus, it’d be fun to watch Mom go from simmer to boiling over while she tries to make sense of a mayor at her table.”

“It was a dumb idea. Forget I mentioned it.” Miriam just hadn’t liked the thought of him alone on a holiday. How ridiculous was that? She wasn’t in charge of his well-being.

“Spoilsport.”

Topic dead, they went back to chatting about everything but sexy mayors and summer flings.

Two hours later, the pies had finished baking and were cooling on the stovetop. Miriam had poured herself a glass of red after Kristine left, and camped out on the sofa, laptop and charts spread on the coffee table for work. But the website she’d pulled up had nothing to do with work. It was the City of Dallas website, particularly Chase’s headshot. He looked merely handsome in that still frame. He’d been devastatingly gorgeous in person.

Chase’s business card in hand, she rubbed her thumb over his phone number.

One glass of wine was all it took to weaken her resolve. That and the smell of sweet potato pie in the air.

“Damn him.”

She swiped the screen of her phone, dialed the first eight digits of the phone number, then paused.

Why should she care if her ex-boyfriend ate alone on Thanksgiving? Shouldn’t she embrace the idea of the jerk who broke her heart spending the holiday alone in a way-too-big-for-one mansion? Except she’d always been horrible at holding grudges, and even the blurry, faded memories of her broken heart couldn’t keep her from completing the task.

She dialed the remaining digits and waited patiently while the phone rang once, twice and then a third time. When she was about to give up, a silken voice made love to her ear canal.

“Chase Ferguson.”

“Chase. Hi. Um, hi. It’s Miriam.”

“Miriam?”

“Andrix,” she said through clenched teeth. Was it that he’d had so many other women in his life over the last decade that he couldn’t keep track of them? Or was it that he’d forgotten her already even though she’d bumped into him yesterday afternoon?

“I know. I think of you as Mimi.”

That husky voice curled around her like a hug. He’d always called her Mimi, and to date had been the only person who had, save her best friend in the third grade. Her family either called her Miriam or Meems.

“Is everything all right?” If that was concern in his voice, she couldn’t place it. His tone was even. His words measured.

“Everything is fine. I, um.” She cleared her throat, took a fortifying sip of her wine and continued. “My mother lives about twenty minutes north of Bigfork. We make enough for Thanksgiving dinner to feed ten extra people. You’re welcome to join us tomorrow night.”

She pressed her lips together before she rattled off what would be served and how she’d baked two pies that were presumably his favorite. She wasn’t begging him to show up, simply extending an invitation as an old acquaintance.

Silence greeted her from the other end of the phone.

“Chase?”

“No. Thank you.”

She waited for an explanation. None came. Not even a lame excuse about having to work like she’d used tonight. Though she truly did have to work. She scowled at her laptop and his handsome mug before snapping the lid shut.

“Will there be anything else?” he asked. Tersely.

At his formal tone, ire slipped into her bloodstream as stealthily as a drug. Her back went ramrod straight; her eyebrows crashed down.

“No,” she snapped. “That concludes my business with you.”

“Very well.”

She waited for goodbye but he didn’t offer one. So she hung up on him.

“Jerk.” She tossed the phone on the coffee table and rose to refill her glass. She’d called out of the kindness of her heart and he’d made her feel foolish and desperate.

Just like ten years ago.

“This is who he is, Miriam,” she told herself as she poured more wine. “A man who owns a sixteen-million-dollar mansion he rarely visits. A man whose only interest is to increase his bank statement and buy up beautiful bits of land because he can.”

She swallowed a mouthful of wine and considered that, as much disdain as she’d had for Chase’s mother then and still, Eleanor Ferguson had been right.

Miriam and Chase were better off apart.

Four

Miriam hadn’t been in her mother’s kitchen for more than five minutes before she started airing her grievances about Chase and the phone call from last night.

Kristine was placing freshly baked rolls into a basket and her brother Ross snatched another one and dunked the end of it into the gravy.

“He’s the mayor of what?” their older brother asked around a bite.

“Dallas, dummy,” Kris replied. “And stop eating my rolls. I made three dozen and you’ve already snarfed three of them.”

“Four.” He argued. His mouth curling into a Grinchy smile.

Kristine sacrificed one more that she tossed at him, but Ross, former college football player that he was, caught it easily, struck a Heisman pose and absconded to the dining room.

“He doesn’t act thirty-nine,” Kris grumbled. “Anyway. Chase is a jerk and I’m sorry you had to deal with that.”

“Yeah, well. I’m sorry I didn’t say what I thought to say until after I hung up.”

“Such as.” Kristine motioned with a roll for Miriam to go on.

“I would’ve informed him that I wasn’t one of his underlings and I deserved better treatment than a haughty No. Thank you.” She dipped her voice into a dopey tone that didn’t sound like him, but made her feel better. “I’d have told him that I became a success without his billions and in a field where I wasn’t causing global warming. My line of work is admirable.”

“It is, sweetie.”

“Thank you.”

Miriam had completed her degree in agricultural sciences, going on to do compliance work behind a desk for a few years until she realized how wholly unsatisfying it was to push papers from one side of her desk to another. Five years ago, she’d found the Montana Conservation Society and stumbled into her calling. She’d started as program manager and was then promoted to director of student affairs. She mostly worked with teenagers. She taught them how to respect their environment and care for the world they all shared. She found it incredibly rewarding to watch those kids grow and change. Several of the students who came through MCS wouldn’t so much as step on an ant if they could help it by the time she was through with them.

And yet Chase had dismissed her like she was a temp on his payroll.

“I should’ve gone over to his big, audacious house and told him what I think of his wasteful habits and egomaniacal behavior.”

“Who, dear?” Her mother stepped into the kitchen and gestured to the basket of rolls. “Kristine, to the table with those, please. We’re about to start.”

“No one,” Miriam answered. “Just... No one.”

Kris shuffled into the dining room and Judy Andrix watched her go before narrowing her eyes and squaring her jaw. Since Miriam’s father, Alan, had died five years ago of complications from heart surgery, her mom had taken it on herself to play both the role of mom and dad. It wasn’t easy for any of them to lose him, but their mother had taken the brunt of that blow. Thirty-nine years of marriage was a lifetime.

“Miriam, would you grab those bottles of wine and take them to the table for me?”

“Sure thing.” Relieved the conversation was over, she did as she was asked.

Halfway into dinner, however, her wine remained untouched and her food mostly uneaten.

“Meems, what’s going on in your world?” Wendy’s girlfriend, Rosalie, asked conversationally.

Miriam blinked out of her stupor and realized she’d been staring at her mashed potatoes, Chase on her mind. “Work. That’s about it.”

“How did the camp go this summer? I meant to ask but I was so busy.”

Busy being a surgeon. It happened.

Miriam filled her in on the camp for eighth graders she’d cochaperoned. “You haven’t lived until you’ve been in charge of thirty hormone-riddled teens in tents.”

Wendy nudged Rosalie with her shoulder. “That’s what I keep warning her about every time she brings up having children.”

“Children are great,” Ross’s wife, Cecilia, said at the exact moment their five-year-old daughter Raven threw her butter-covered roll on the floor.

“Raven!” While Ross went about explaining to his daughter that the food belonged on her plate and not on the rug, Wendy and Rosalie answered questions from Kristine about having children. Surrogate, they agreed, but they weren’t against adoption.

Mom interjected that she didn’t care how any of them went about it so long as she was given another grandchild.

“Or two,” she added with a pointed look at Kris and Brendan, who wisely filled his mouth full of stuffing rather than comment. “Meems, have you been seeing anyone?”

And that’s when the last strand on the rope of Miriam’s dwindling patience snapped.