Читать книгу A Snowbound Scandal - Jessica Lemmon, Джессика Леммон - Страница 12

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.

“I’m sorry.” She stood abruptly from the table and the room silenced. Even Raven seemed to sense the importance of the moment and stopped her complaining. Every pair of eyes swiveled to Miriam. “I have to run an errand.”

“What? Now?” Her mother’s voice rose.

“I’ll be back in an hour, tops. That leaves plenty of time for dessert. Feel free to start playing games without me.” She could easily make the round trip to Bigfork and back before the traditional board game battle began. And she didn’t mind at all ousting herself from a conversation involving families and children when there was a man very nearby who was going about his evening as if she didn’t matter. Been there, done that. She didn’t care to suffer a repeat of ten years ago.

Miriam rushed into the kitchen and rifled through her mother’s cupboard for a plastic storage container. She sliced one of her pies and slid three large wedges into the container before snapping on the lid. She’d show him what he was missing all right.

She was pulling her coat over her shoulders when her mother appeared in the doorway of the kitchen. Judy eyed the pie in the container.

“Where on earth are you going in the middle of Thanksgiving dinner?” Her mother was a narrow, thin woman whose supermodel good looks couldn’t be ignored, even if she was in her early sixties.

“I don’t expect you to understand.” Miriam gave her mother’s arm a squeeze. “But there’s someone I have to talk to or I won’t be able to enjoy a single second of my holiday. I just... It’s something I have to do.”

“And a phone call won’t cut it?” Judy leveled a knowing smile at her third child.

“No.” Miriam wouldn’t risk a repeat of that robotic blowoff from last night.

“It’s snowing again.”

It was, but... “I have four-wheel drive.”

“I suppose if I stand here and try to talk you out of it, you’ll go anyway, only a little later than you intended on account of my keeping you.” Her mother folded her arms over her chest. She knew her daughter well.

“One hour. Tops.” Miriam repeated, wrapping her hand around the doorknob.

“At least take the mayor a plate of food,” her mother called before Miriam could escape. “You can’t only show up with pie.”

“How did you—?” Miriam leaned around her mother to glare beyond the doorway where Kristine sat in Dad’s former seat at the table.

Kris blew a kiss and waggled her fingers in a wave.

* * *

Only a year old, the Ford F-150 was equipped to glide through snow like it was popped corn. But as she drove closer to Bigfork, the visibility dropped and it was more like trudging through wet sand. It wasn’t “her” truck, per se, but had been provided graciously by MCS. She’d been begging for two years for a vehicle that could haul, tow and not give out if she had to drive up a mountain and rescue someone’s lost dog. Sure, that had only happened once, but she’d had to hike most of it on foot since her compact car hadn’t been equipped for the elements. It was practical for her to have a vehicle that could handle Montana’s terrain.

Thanks to those elements, the twenty-minute drive to Bigfork was stretching to sixty. She’d encountered traffic and low visibility, and on top of that her gas gauge was dangerously close to E. At a top speed of twelve miles per hour, she was getting nowhere slowly. Because she’d underestimated the weatherman and overestimated her F-150, there was no way she’d make it back to her mother’s house in this mess.

But Miriam still intended to make her way to Chase’s. She wasn’t giving up a scant few miles from his house. No way.

At a stoplight, she keyed in a quick text to Kris. I’m going to be celebrating at home alone tonight! Bigfork is buried. :(

Before the stoplight turned green, Miriam’s phone rang.

“You have to come back!” Kris said in greeting.

“It’s a mess out here.” Windshield wipers swiped away the gathering snow and Miriam turned right toward Pinecone Drive and the mayor of Dallas.

“I thought that storm was supposed to miss us.”

“Yeah, well, evidently Bigfork caught the edge of it. I’m in a winter wonderland.”

“You’re still on the road?” asked her downtrodden sister.

“I am, but I’m almost home. Tell everyone I’m sorry. I’ll call later when I get settled.” She forced a smile as she mentally kicked her own butt for leaving her mom’s house. “Hey, maybe you can video chat me in later.”

“Is that Miriam? Is she all right?” their mother called in the distance.

“She’s fine!” Kris called back. Then to Miriam, “I’ll let her know you’re all right and home safe... That is where you’re going, right? Home?”

“Of course.”

“Meems.”

“I have to go.” Miriam hung up on Kris, who clearly could not be trusted with sensitive information, and resumed her drive to Chase’s mansion. If Miriam didn’t go to him like she’d vowed, the entire trip would be a waste.

Once she looked him in the eye and made sure he understood who she’d become, she could be on her way. Who was she? A woman who didn’t take crap from anyone. A woman who’d found herself and her way in the decade that separated them. Her biggest worry was that she’d remained a still frame in his mind: standing next to a private plane, tears running down her face, begging him not to leave.

Or worse, the one who’d emailed and called him after she’d come home to Montana. She’d been so weak back then, but Chase had always maintained his strength.

“Clean break,” he’d told her, and he’d meant it.

Meanwhile, she’d continued to declare her love for him and had reiterated her claim that they were meant to be. Never had she been so wrong before or since.

Chase’s mother, Eleanor, had seen Miriam not as a lifelong mate for her son, but a preoccupation he couldn’t afford. Miriam knew because the only phone call answered from Chase’s cell phone happened to be answered by Eleanor herself.

On Thanksgiving.

Miriam blinked in shock. She’d completely forgotten that fact.

But yes, it’d been Thanksgiving. She remembered excusing herself from the room while her siblings and parents were unboxing a new board game. Then she’d shut herself in Kristine’s bedroom and called Chase. She’d been thinking then about how she was the only one of them at the table not coupled off.

The more things changed...

She heard those words in her late father’s voice, her heart squeezing as she remembered his big laugh and bigger presence. He’d been comforting, but notably frustrated while she nursed her broken heart that winter. He’d been exactly what a father should be.

She turned into the lakeside neighborhood where the wealthiest residents of Bigfork lived, rolled by the snowy, pricey new builds with their lack of trees and yard space, and toward the older part of the neighborhood. The houses closer to the lake sat on high hills, were spread much farther apart and had exponentially higher price tags.

Ten minutes of slow-crawling her way toward Pinecone Drive, and she was navigating through dark trees and an abandoned road piled deep with snow.

This is a bad idea.

Not braving the storm—she was confident in her driving abilities and her trusty Ford to get her both in and out of this mess—but confronting Chase. That phone call from ten years ago replayed in her mind and her gloved hands gripped the steering wheel, her shoulders wilting.

Chase Ferguson’s phone. Who is this?

The woman who’d answered had been older. An air of sophistication outlined every word she spoke. Miriam had recognized Eleanor’s voice instantly, but she refused to let the woman bully her. Her future with Chase involved only them—or so she’d believed.

Listen, darling. I appreciate that you have an affinity for my son, however I can’t allow this to continue. He has aspirations for a political seat. He has a future involving Ferguson Oil. Can you honestly tell me that you wouldn’t be a hindrance to those goals? If you love him, truly, you’ll support him by letting him live his life here in Dallas without you.

Miriam never found out if Chase had asked his mother to handle his dirty work for him, or if Eleanor had taken the call and kept her son in the dark. In the end, Miriam guessed it didn’t matter.

She’d reached out. He’d stayed hidden.

Dumb. Dumb of her to come tonight.

At the base of the gargantuan property, she waited for the wipers to swipe the gathering snow from the windshield to assess the situation. The property was nestled in the trees, the clearing blocked by a gate with a keypad she’d have to drive up to. Her truck would make it, of that she was sure. And even if she wasn’t, she wasn’t risking using the last of her fuel to turn back. She could only hope that Chase had a few gallons of gasoline to fill her tank up so that she could drive home, or else...

No. She wasn’t entertaining that thought.

She climbed the steep, snowy hill, her tires sliding enough that her heart hammered against her throat. Thankfully, the driveway evened out at the gate so she didn’t slide backwards in the snow. She pressed a button on a callbox to request to be let in. A camera lens attached to the device stared at her from its unblinking mechanical eye. Miriam grabbed the container of sweet potato pie from the passenger seat.

While she waited, snow covered her windshield and drifted inside. He might not be here, she thought miserably. Or maybe he’d been caught in the storm while gathering supplies and was holed up in a hotel somewhere—

“Mimi.” Chase’s low timbre sailed out of the speaker, at once surprised and scolding.

“Hi.” She waggled the container. “Pie delivery. I won’t stay long.” There was a significant pause, but no response. She swore she could feel his laser-like glare through the camera. A buzz sounded as the iron gates swung aside through the gathering snow.

The white stuff on the driveway was untouched by tires or boot prints. After debating leaving her truck running, she shut it off to save fuel and climbed out. The walkway to the front door had been shoveled at some point, but since then a few inches of snow had filled in the gaps.

She shuddered as icy wind sliced through her hair, the temperature colder coming off the frigid lake below. A porch light snapped on and Chase appeared outside wearing a sweater and jeans and sneakers that didn’t appear weather resistant.

“Running shoes in this weather. Are you crazy?” She pulled three containers filled with his dinner and dessert from the passenger seat and then shut the door.

“You’re calling me crazy? What the hell are you doing here?”

“I told you I won’t be long.” She shoved the pie container into his hand and his scowl deepened. Her teeth chattered, partially from nerves. This was the moment she’d been waiting for—to set Chase Ferguson straight. On her terms. She glanced around at the pale moonlit mounds of snow. Okay, not exactly her terms, but it was too late to back out now.

“Get inside,” he commanded, his breath visible in the cold. Out of habit she locked her truck and it beeped briefly, letting her know. Chase glared over her shoulder at the sound, but she refused to let him scare her off from what she came here to say. She was going to set him straight, then turn this big bastard around and drive straight home.

Do not pass Go. Do not collect $200.

She’d really miss playing games with her family tonight. A dart of regret shocked her ribcage. And then a dart of something else when Chase cupped her elbow and started toward the house.

“Watch your step,” his low voice rumbled as he gestured to the nearly invisible porch steps. “You’d better have a good reason for being here other than bringing me pie.”

Oh, no worries, Mayor McCheese. I have one.