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With the purchase of the mansion he also became owner of a good slice of the Flathead Lake shoreline. Since he’d purchased the place he’d been there three—no, four—times. He tried to visit once a year, minimum. During those trips, thoughts of Mimi didn’t cling to him like moss on a rock, but passed by like a leaf on the surface of a stream. He didn’t linger on memory or the past. What was the point?
He stood from his desk to take in the city outside his office window. Dallas sat fat and happy, calm and cooling down for autumn. He was eighteen months out from reelection, and though reelection efforts were always in swing, they wouldn’t be in full swing for a while.
His scheduled trip to Bigfork was likely his last chance to flee town, to untangle himself from the political spider web for a bit. If the worst happened—if Mimi became embroiled in political mudslinging, it’d be best if he were here in Dallas, not in her backyard.
He contemplated skipping the trip for all of two seconds. He could handle the press—good or bad. It’s how he’d been elected. He wasn’t shying away from the trip because of Mimi, nor was he going there for her.
The past was the past and the future was all that mattered.
Decision made.
Bigfork, here he came.
* * *
“Honestly, Stefanie.” Eleanor Ferguson tsked her only daughter from across the dining room table.
Stefanie rolled her eyes. Her mother tended to bring out the child in her. Probably because she was treated like one whenever they gathered for holidays. Or a pseudoholiday like this one.
She slid a glance over at her brothers. Chase, in a suit and tie, fresh from working late, sat rigidly in his chair. He hoisted one regal eyebrow at her but otherwise stayed silent. Zach sat next to his wife, Penelope, but he was too preoccupied with his ten-month-old daughter to pay attention to his bickering mother and sister.
The other party at the table wasn’t family at all. Emmett Keaton, Chase’s head of security and best friend, sat at the head of the table opposite her father. He silently ate a few forked green beans and watched her, expressionless as per his usual.
God, he made her crazy.
He’d been breathing down her neck since that unfortunate run-in with one of Chase’s sworn political enemies. Emmett had watched over her like a hawk since. She’d been so aware of his presence lately, she looked forward to any event that didn’t include him. Yet here he was.
“This doesn’t count as Thanksgiving,” Stef dropped her napkin on her empty plate and her mother, who’d been insisting she take the serving spoon, dropped it back into the mashed potatoes with a sigh.
The chef-prepared meal—Mom didn’t cook—was top-notch. Golden, buttery turkey, stuffing, French green beans, and a gravy boat brimming with brown gravy. There was only one problem.
“Thanksgiving isn’t for another two weeks. This is just...” Stef shook her head. “Wrong.”
Emmett grunted what might’ve been a laugh and she sliced him with a glare. He shoveled another bite into his mouth and chewed.
“Why is he here?” she asked the table collectively.
“Rider. Remind your daughter she is to have manners in this house.” Elle looked over at her husband.
“Stef, sweetheart.” Her dad smiled. “We’re all making sacrifices. You think I want to be on a boat during my favorite holiday of the year?”
“It’s a cruise,” her mom corrected.
“Em’s here because he can’t turn down a free meal,” Chase said conversationally.
Emmett grunted again. Stef guessed that was his way of agreeing with his friend.
Neanderthal.
“It doesn’t seem right for everyone to leave during Thanksgiving.” Sacrilegious, even, but she didn’t want to be melodramatic. But honestly, did tradition mean nothing to anyone but her? Chase was vacationing at a lake in Montana by himself; Zach and Pen were traveling with their daughter Olivia to visit Pen’s parents in Chicago, which was, okay, fine,excusable; and her parents were going to be floating in the Atlantic Ocean wearing bathing suits and drinking mai tais.
“I’ll be here,” Emmett offered.
“Lucky me.” Stefanie mimicked his sarcastic smile and he went back to his food. She’d rather eat a microwaved frozen meal by herself than take him up on a shared turkey-day dinner.
“Stef, my parents would love to have you if you want to come to Chicago with us.” Pen lifted her fussing daughter from the high chair. Zach shot his wife a look that said they hadn’t talked about this.
Her brother’s wife was sweet and thoughtful and sharp and beautiful. If Zach hadn’t pulled his head from his rear and married Pen, Stef would’ve seriously considered it. Penelope Ferguson had granted them all a beautiful niece-slash-granddaughter, and Pen’s presence at parties made Stef’s life a lot brighter. As much as she’d love to hang with Pen over the holidays, however, Stef would never dream of intruding on Pen’s time with her family. This would be their first Thanksgiving with Olivia.
“I appreciate that,” Stef smiled over at her sister-in-law. “But I’ll be all right. I’ll just...decorate for Christmas early.”
“You mean late,” Zach said. “You barely waited until Halloween last year before you adorned everything that crossed your path in red, green and gold.”
Stef curled her lip at her brother. Zach smirked.
“If you change your mind, let us know.” Pen excused herself from the table to take care of Olivia and Zach stood with her.
“Need help?”
“No, I have her.” She kissed him and he smiled, adoration on his face.
So. Stinking. Sweet.
“I’m not inviting you to Montana.” Chase scooped more mashed potatoes onto his plate. “So don’t ask.”
“I don’t want to spend Thanksgiving with you, anyway,” she teased.
He pointed at her with his fork when he said, “Good.”
Her oldest brother had always looked out for her, had always been there for her. She could guarantee if she wanted to abscond to Montana with Chase, he wouldn’t hesitate taking her along. But he deserved a break, too. There’d been so much fatigue in his eyes tonight. Must’ve been a hell of a week in the mayor’s office.
“How are you spending the holiday, Emmett?” Elle asked.
“I’ll be on call. Security never sleeps.”
Stef eyed him over the rim of her water glass, trying to decide if that was true or not. She didn’t know Emmett that well, only that he and Chase had been friends for years, and that Emmett was part of the backdrop of nearly every big event in recent history. She assumed that behind those hulking shoulders and permanent scowl of his, she’d find a loner who worked 24/7, and not much else. He didn’t seem to have a life other than one involving the Ferguson family.
Not five minutes later, Penelope returned without Olivia, explaining her daughter had missed a nap and was too tired to deal with dinner.
“It’s Zach’s turn so I’m off the clock.” She refilled her wineglass with dark red wine and gestured to Stef with the tipped bottle. “Join me?”
“Always.” Stef allowed Pen to fill her glass, feeling a ping of loneliness. Stef was used to her family being around, to big parties and to-dos year-round. Save when Zach had lived in Chicago for a stint, they’d been together as a family most of the time. The business they held stakes in kept them in each other’s orbit.
So, yeah, Stef wasn’t used to being alone, but that didn’t mean she couldn’t be. This year she’d embrace Thanksgiving on her own and build that muscle.
It was time her family started seeing her as a twenty-nine-year-old anyway.
Two (#u01f7f579-cf9e-5b56-aee2-a5b84aa7aafc)
Bundled in her knee-length pea coat, Miriam Andrix marched up the asphalt-covered parking lot, her head down to thwart the icy wind. She was born and raised in Montana, but every winter she experienced here made her a bit less tolerant of the cold. Which was ridiculous. She was only thirty-three, for Pete’s sake. It wasn’t as if she was her seventy-five-year-old grandmother who kept the thermostat set on eighty degrees at home.
She peeked up from her trudge so that she didn’t mow over a shopper who’d just overspent on groceries, and then tucked her chin again and watched her laced boots move her forward. Her destination? Whole Foods Market in search of fixings for sweet potato pie, as assigned by her mother. This was the first year Miriam had been placed in charge of dessert. Typically, she made a side dish like potatoes au gratin or cranberry sauce.
Mom’s rules were anything but simple when asking her four children to participate in the preparation of Thanksgiving dinner: no canned ingredients, organic if you can. She also provided the family recipe cards for the requested dish—tweaked by each generation to add an extra dash of cinnamon here or an additional crushed garlic clove there. And since Miriam was responsible for a dessert she wasn’t comfortable making, she wasn’t taking any chances on shopping at the corner market. She might well spend her entire paycheck in here, but at least she could guarantee that only the most beautiful sweet potatoes would go into her pie.
At the entrance of Whole Foods, the automated doors swished aside and the fragrant scent of mulled cider wafted out. She lifted her head and closed her eyes to inhale her most favorite scent—autumn—when a competing smell mingled with the cider.
Sandalwood. Pine. A touch of leather... And eerily familiar. As was the voice that crashed into her like a runaway shopping cart.
“Mimi?”
She snapped her head up and her gaze collided with a man taller than her by several inches, his devastatingly handsome face broken up by the frown on his forehead and additional lines at the corners of his gray-green eyes. His jaw sported a barely-there five o’clock shadow, and his hair was in the same disarray she remembered from ten years ago—the one crooked part of Chase Ferguson that couldn’t be tamed.
“Chase. Hi.” She blinked again at the man in front of her, having the half-crazed thought that she’d summoned him with her mind. A week ago she’d received a photo of herself in an envelope she’d had to sign for. Along with the photo was a letter from the mayor of Dallas’s office—Chase’s office—that was signed by a woman’s hand. Miriam had read the two neatly typed paragraphs and tossed the letter into the trash. There was no action step for her, merely a “making you aware” note that she might be mentioned in Mayor Chase Ferguson’s upcoming campaign and “may be called upon in the future” for her cooperation.
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. Tenyears 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.
