With one masculine hand, he cradled the red wine, swirled the liquid in the glass and took a sip. She watched his throat work while he swallowed, her own going dry. It was an erotic scene to take in for a woman who was currently not having sex with anyone but herself.
She balled her fist as a flutter of desire took flight between her thighs. Now she wanted wine, dammit. And maybe to touch him. Just once.
He heartily ate another scoop of his food, then pushed her wine glass closer to her. An offer.
An offer she wouldn’t accept.
Couldn’t accept.
She wasn’t unlike Little Red Riding Hood, having run to the wrong house for shelter. Only in this case, the Big Bad Wolf wasn’t dining on Red’s beloved grandmother but Miriam’s family’s home cooking.
An insistent niggling warned her that she could be next—and hadn’t this particular “wolf” already consumed her heart?
“So, I’m going to go.” She’d risk her gas tank running dry before she stayed another minute and found herself trapped with him.
When she grabbed her coat and stood, a warm hand grasped her much cooler one. Chase’s fingers stroked hers before lightly squeezing, his eyes studying her for a long moment, his fork hovering over his unfinished dinner.
Finally, he said, “I’ll see you out.”
“That’s not necessary.”
He did as he pleased and stood, his hand on her lower back as he walked with her. Outside, the wind pushed against the front door, causing the wood to creak. She and Chase exchanged glances. Had she waited too long?
“For the record, I don’t want you to leave.”
What she’d have given to hear those words on that airfield ten years ago.
“I’ll be all right.”
“You can’t know that.” He frowned out of either concern or anger, she couldn’t tell which. “How was the hill?”
She shrugged one shoulder and wouldn’t look him in the eye. His sloped driveway had been slick, but she’d made it... Barely. She wasn’t looking forward to going back down.
“Mimi—” His phone rang and he reached into his pocket. Whatever he’d been about to say to her hung in the air like the sexual tension that was once between them. It wasn’t here now, but something was. If she were being honest, she might describe it as sadness. Or hope. Funny how hard those two were to tell apart.
Chase’s side of the conversation was filled with one-or two-word responses giving her no idea who he was talking to or what about. “I see. Thank you. Yes.” Until the farewell. “You too, Emmett.”
“Emmett?” She knew that name... She narrowed her eyes, her mind seeking the particular storage cabinet for that nugget of information while Chase pocketed his phone. A second later she located the memory. “Your friend, Emmett? The one who had several torrid affairs here in Bigfork while you...”
She trailed off. While you just had the one with me.
Chase hadn’t been interested in multiple girls that summer. Remarkably, amidst a beach littered with tiny bikinis stuffed with big breasts and curvy hips, Miriam had caught his eye. With her plain brown hair and superslim physique, she hadn’t expected the tall, dark-haired, muscular specimen playing flip cup with his friends to notice her.
She and her friend Mandie had stood on the sidelines watching as, round after round, his side of the table won each game. He and Emmett would high-five and Chase would smile, all white teeth and tanned skin... She’d fallen in love the moment his eyes clashed with hers, but she’d never dreamed she’d get any nearer to him than the other side of that patch of sand.
“Yes, one and the same.” Chase interrupted the memory. The bright colorful summer vision receded into the neutrals of the mansion’s interior. His careful smile was a ghost of what it had been and hers was now much harder to earn.
“I’m glad you’re still friends.” She’d long ago lost touch with Mandie, her work friend when she’d been waiting tables at the Crab Shucker that summer. She hadn’t thought of Mandie in ages, but now Miriam wondered what became of her. Mandie had gone home with Emmett back then. Neither of them had any interest in a second night together, despite Mandie’s raving that he was the lay of the year. She advised Miriam not to get too caught up on that Texas boy, meaning Chase, but Miriam had been completely caught up.
So, Eleanor Ferguson wasn’t the only one right about their relationship. Maybe it really had been in Miriam’s head—the love she’d been so sure she felt for him. Maybe it’d been mere appreciation. Infatuation...
“Stay.” Chase’s gray-green eyes were warm and inviting, his voice a time capsule back to not-so-innocent days. The request was siren-call sweet, but she’d not risk herself for it.
“No.” She yanked open the front door, shocked when the howling wind shoved her back a few inches. Snow billowed in, swirling around her feet, and her now wet, cold fingers slipped from the knob.
Chase caught her, an arm looped around her back, and shoved the door closed with the flat of one palm. She hung there, suspended by the corded forearm at her back, clutching his shirt in one fist, and nearly drowned in his lake-colored eyes.
“I can stay for a while longer,” she squeaked, the decision having been made for her.
His handsome face split into a brilliant smile and a laugh bobbed his throat. He released her and moved away, robbing her of his heat and attention. She hated how cold she felt with him gone. It was like a cloud had come out to mask the sun.
“Melodramatic much?” she mumbled to herself, hanging her coat in the entryway closet. Then she followed where he went. That, too, was a reaction she wasn’t going to explore.
He stood in the center of the sunken living room and flipped on the television over the hearth. A local station was sharing the latest weather report from Bigfork. A windblown, red-faced woman confirmed Miriam’s fears.
“Travel of any sort is not only dangerous but could be life-threatening!” Gale Schneider, broadcasting from what appeared to be the inside of a violently shaken snow globe, shouted over the wind. The hood of her downy coat was up, but the wind lashed, blowing the material like a flag on a pole. “Montana authorities warn that anyone watching should stay where they are unless they absolutely must travel!” she continued. “If you’re in your vehicle, you may want to find the closest open service station or convenience store until the storm blows over. Back to you, Joan.”
A little spike of fear stabbed her belly.
“Mother Nature and your local weather reporter agree with me,” Chase told her. He pointed the remote and the television winked off. “You’re staying. No sense in risking driving home to your empty apartment.”
She hated that she agreed with him.
“Is there anything you need from your truck that might make your stay here more comfortable?” His voice was seductive and low, the offer sincere and chivalrous.
“My purse,” she confirmed numbly. “And my overnight bag.” She’d never taken it into her mother’s house since her arms were full of pie and she’d been put to work the moment she crossed the kitchen’s threshold.
“That’s convenient.” His eyebrows jumped and he walked past her. She warred with the urge to explain herself, but decided against it. She’d come in here with her defenses up and where had that landed her?
She regretted having been robbed of her grand exit. After declaring what a successful adult she’d become, she really, really wanted to watch Chase’s mansion dwindle in the rearview mirror. It would have been poetic.
From the entryway closet where he was pulling on his coat, he said, “I’ll need your keys.”
“Sure you can handle the snow, Dallas?” she asked on her approach. “I can. I’m a born-and-bred Montanan.”
“And I’m a born-and-bred Texan. I’m not afraid of a little snow.” He popped the collar on his coat and held out his palm. She dropped her keyring into it.<
br />
Before he slipped out the door, he said, “Don’t eat my pie.”
* * *
After reassuring her entire family she was fine—really, yes, really, I’m fine, stop asking—Miriam pressed the end button on her cell and stared out the window at the whitewashed landscape.
From her vantage point in the sunken living room, she couldn’t see farther than the deck. She knew what was down there—the lake and a good portion of the shoreline that Chase owned along with this property. In another life, she’d been bikini clad on that beach, making out with the man she was snowed in with tonight.
Life had a twisted sense of humor.
Kristine’s reaction had bordered on comical once she’d learned that Miriam was in Chase’s mansion. She’d darted to another part of their mother’s house and hissed into the phone, “Do not have sex with him!”
“Only if you swear to keep it a secret that I’m here,” Miriam volleyed back.
Kris had humbly apologized for letting the mayor out of the bag, but she wasn’t through yet. “Do not have sex with that disgustingly beautiful man, Meems. Remember, this is not a second chance. You’re not trapped with him because fate said so, but because you’re too stubborn not to drive into a snowstorm to deliver the man pie.”
Miriam had lowered her voice—though there was no need, since Chase was in the kitchen, which was approximately the width of her entire apartment’s floor plan—and assured her sister that it’d be a cold day in hell before that happened.
She was acutely aware it was a cold day indeed and further aware that this might be hell since she was stranded with the former object of her passion and affection.
Again with the melodrama?
She’d told herself repeatedly that she’d leave the moment the snow stopped, but she’d also been watching Gale on TV, and even on Mute, Miriam’s plan was becoming the stuff of fiction.
“Do you at least have condoms?” Kris had asked.
At which point, Miriam said goodbye and ended the call. Why would she have condoms? She’d planned on attending a family weekend as a happy single, not getting naked with the mayor of Dallas.
That...shouldn’t sound as inviting as it did.
The snow swirled outside the wide windows and her vision blurred at the edges. She really was stuck here.
“Last chance.” A velvet voice smoothed over her shoulder.
She blinked the winter wonderland into focus and turned to find an offered plate with a single slice of sweet potato pie in the middle.
Chase held up a shiny, tined instrument. “I brought you a clean fork.”
“Did you like it?” She inhaled, catching some of his sandalwood-and-spice smell in her nostrils.
“Exquisite.”
What a Chase Ferguson word. He’d always had a formal edge alongside the rough-and-tumble. Then she’d met his parents and figured out why. He was practically royalty—not that they had royalty in the United States but she imagined billionaires as their own sort of royalty.
“If you liked it so much, why offer me your last piece?”
“The gentlemanly thing to do would’ve been to offer you the first piece, Mimi. Who the hell have you been dating for the last ten years?”
“You don’t want to know,” she said around a low chuckle. For a split second—maybe even half a second—she understood why her sister warned her against falling into bed with him again. Damn, he was charming.
“Share it with you?” She accepted the fork, noticing his fork pressed into his other palm.
“I was hoping you’d say that.” Just like that, they were coexisting in a moment of amicability.
“Let’s sit.” He took his seat in the middle of the plush walnut-colored leather sofa, forcing her to take the seat next to him. Her leg brushed his and warmth seeped through her jeans.
She ignored the nervous skip of her heart and ate a forkful of pie. “Not bad for my first time.”
“You nailed it,” he told her, taking a bite himself.
“Why are you here in Bigfork?”
He finished chewing before answering. And when he did, he leaned a hairbreadth closer to her.
“I suppose you’re looking for a bigger answer than vacation.”
She let her silence be her “Yes.”
“It was already scheduled when your photo crossed my desk. If that article goes live and the press finds out I’m in the same city as you, it’ll be a circus.”
“But you didn’t reschedule your trip.”
He ate another bite of pie. “I don’t make decisions based on what might happen.”
Didn’t she know that too well? He hadn’t taken the chance on her based on “what might happen” either.
Her gaze snagged on her suitcase standing in the mouth of the hallway.
“I guess this situation would look bad.”
“Not bad.” He offered her the plate holding the last bite. “But definitely...conspicuous. I don’t have anything to hide from the press. Do you?”
Seven
Short of sitting in a tree at Mountainway Park to keep it from being chopped down, or driving ten miles over the speed limit, or skinny-dipping with Chase in Flathead Lake, Miriam didn’t make a habit of breaking the law. She imagined he would’ve disagreed with saving a tree that she’d later learned was infested with ash borer beetles, but he’d give her a pass when it came to the speeding. And she knew exactly how he’d felt about stripping naked and cannonballing into Flathead Lake off a private dock—firmly against. But once she’d goaded him properly, he’d stripped down and dived in, resurfacing in the moonlight wearing a huge smile a few seconds later.
They hadn’t agreed on everything, and she’d argued her differing points of view fervently while they were together. He had nothing against the oil industry—later, she’d learned why—but they’d always agreed to disagree and then made out, their lips fusing and disqualifying their brains from further participation. Arguments made up a small part of their summer together. Mostly, they’d made love and stared into each other’s eyes, hardly able to believe they’d found their other half...
Or at least she’d done that.
“You know, I will have some wine.” She burst off the sofa and moved to the kitchen. A scant glass of red would be enough to calm her, but wouldn’t erase the recurring memories. Evidently nothing would keep them at bay. She splashed a few more inches into the glass he’d left on the kitchen island for her and swallowed a drink.
He joined her, placing the empty pie plate in the sink and palming his own balloon-shaped glass.
“What would you have been doing this evening if you weren’t trapped here with me?”
“‘Trapped’ is an interesting way to phrase it.” The next sip tasted better than the last. “My brother and two sisters and their significant others are most likely embroiled in a board-game battle. We save Monopoly for last since it’s better to play when everyone’s had more wine.”
“Ah, Monopoly. Ender of relationships.”
She couldn’t picture Chase doing something as commonplace as playing board games. Unless it was backgammon. Chess, maybe. Whatever games stuffy rich people played.
She frowned at the unkind thought, but then gave herself a pass. She hadn’t seen him in ten years, so it was wholly possible he was the Monopoly guy—minus the monocle—gobbling up property to expand his portfolio. Making under-the-table deals with dirty politicians to advance his own gain. Sweeping the Free Parking money and hiding his spoils under the board...
“So. What have you been up to since I saw you last?” She sat on one of the stools, resting an elbow on the surface of the island.
Rather than sit, he flattened both hands on the countertop and studied her before answering.
“I was a city council member for a while. Served on the board of public works. Even did a stin
t at Ferguson Oil as director of something-or-other.” He hoisted one eyebrow. “Ruining the environment and all that.”
“The oil business is no better for the planet than the cattle business, Chase. You know that.”
“What would you have my family do, Miriam? Go into the vegan faux-meat business and start from scratch?”
She felt her cheeks redden in challenge. Determined not to slip into shallow arguments as they had in the past—there’d be no making up by making out tonight—she gestured to the wine bottle. “This is very good. A favorite of yours?”
“One of the favorites. I packed a dozen bottles from my wine cellar and brought them up.”
“On your private jet?” She snorted.
“Yes. But I bought a car when I landed,” he said, completely serious.
“A problem easily solved for you.”
“You didn’t used to resent my financial status,” he shot back.
Her face was aflame. He was right. She hadn’t had a problem with his financial status back then. Why would she have? He’d been hers. She was too busy building castles in the sky to judge him for being wealthy.
She hid her rosy cheeks behind the wide rim of her wineglass and took another sip, then spoke without looking at him. “I’m sorry. That was rude.”
“Tell me more about what you do,” he said, smoothly changing the subject. He stood from his lean on the island and reclaimed his wineglass, hip against the far counter instead.
“I work outside a lot. Mostly in the warmer months. Winter is spent planning the spring and summer camps for the kids and writing the itineraries. Though I also help out the wildlife preserve.”
“Saving the world.”
“What’s wrong with saving the world?” she snapped.
“Nothing.” His confused frown was sincere. “You should try to save the world, or at least part of it. It’s what I’m doing.”
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