Broken Miles

by Claire Kingsley

  Table of Contents

  Remembering Ivy: Chapter One

  About this book

  Roland

  Zoe

  Epilogue: Roland

  Afterword

  Acknowledgments

  Also by Claire Kingsley

  About the Author

  Broken Miles

  The Miles Family Series Book One

  Claire Kingsley

  Copyright © 2018 by Claire Kingsley

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  This is a work of fiction. Any names, characters, places, or incidents are products of the author’s imagination and used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual people, places, or events is purely coincidental or fictionalized.

  Edited by Elayne Morgan of Serenity Editing Services

  Cover by Cassy Roop of Pink Ink Designs

  www.clairekingsleybooks.com

  Created with Vellum

  To my crazy little family, for always having my back.

  Contents

  About this book

  1. Roland

  2. Zoe

  3. Roland

  4. Roland

  5. Zoe

  6. Roland

  7. Zoe

  8. Roland

  9. Zoe

  10. Roland

  11. Zoe

  12. Roland

  13. Roland

  14. Zoe

  15. Zoe

  16. Roland

  17. Zoe

  18. Roland

  19. Zoe

  20. Roland

  21. Zoe

  22. Roland

  23. Zoe

  24. Zoe

  25. Roland

  26. Roland

  27. Zoe

  28. Roland

  29. Zoe

  30. Roland

  Epilogue: Roland

  Remembering Ivy: Chapter One

  Afterword

  Acknowledgments

  Also by Claire Kingsley

  About the Author

  About this book

  Broken Miles: The Miles Family Book One

  This trip home would be a hell of a lot easier if she wasn’t here.

  Zoe. My ex-wife.

  Fixing the broken finances of my family’s winery is a little below my pay grade. But if I don’t help, they might lose their land. The trouble is, she’s everywhere, and I can’t avoid her.

  Seeing Zoe again dredges up feelings I’d rather ignore. Hurt. Regret. Desire. So much fucking desire. She’s sassy and tough, and still the sexiest woman I’ve ever known.

  I shouldn’t want her like this.

  I let her go once, and I don’t deserve a second chance. But the more time I spend with her, the more I realize what we lost. What we could have again.

  It might be crazy, but crazy was always our thing. And this time, I’m not going down without a fight.

  One

  Roland

  All your shit’s gone, and I’m just trying to figure out what the hell happened.

  ~Text from Roland, four years ago

  They wanted a damn miracle. I looked over the email again, already formulating a strategy. What my boss was asking for was tough. But, as the saying went, that was why they paid me the big bucks. I was the youngest CFO in Dimension, Inc.’s history for a reason.

  I was a goddamn miracle worker.

  Glancing at the time, I had to do a double take. It was already after nine. I hadn’t realized it was so late. But I worked late most nights, and it wasn’t like there was anyone around to bitch at me about it. I didn’t have plans with Farrah tonight; she was out of town. And even when we did have plans, she got it. She worked as much as I did, and she understood what it took to make it at this level. I never had to worry about that with her.

  My cell buzzed, vibrating on the desk next to my laptop. Looking down, I winced. My parents’ number. Their business number, to be specific. Which meant it could be either one of them calling. I didn’t particularly want to take the call, but if I didn’t answer, I’d have to call them back. Better to get it over with.

  I picked up the phone and answered. “Yeah.”

  “Hey, it’s Leo.”

  That was odd. My younger brother never called. An occasional text, maybe, but it wasn’t like we were close. This probably meant bad news.

  “What’s wrong?” I asked.

  “You need to come out here.”

  “Why? What’s going on?”

  “Mom and Dad are on the verge of losing the winery,” he said. “It’s a mess.”

  I sat back in my chair and pinched the bridge of my nose. You’ve got to be kidding me. “What do you mean, lose the winery?”

  “The business is in debt up to its eyeballs,” he said. “Dad’s been hiding shit. It’s bad.”

  “What do you expect me to do about it?”

  “Don’t be an asshole,” Leo said. “Do you think I would have called you if it wasn’t a big deal? This is serious. You need to come home.”

  Fuck. Home? That was the last place I wanted to go.

  “Now?” I asked. “I can’t just drop everything. I’m sure Dad will figure it out.”

  “Roland,” Leo said, his tone sharp. “Dad’s the one who fucked everything up. He’s not going to fix it. We need you out here, man. If this is about Zoe…”

  “It’s not about Zoe.”

  I pinched the bridge of my nose again. Just thinking about Zoe gave me a headache. Why my mom had hired my ex-wife to work at the family winery was beyond me. Although, normally I didn’t give a shit. I was in San Francisco, almost a thousand miles from my hometown in central Washington. It’s not like it had any impact on my life if she worked there.

  “Because we can, I don’t know, find ways to keep some distance between you two or whatever,” he said.

  “I already said it isn’t about her. I’m an adult, I can be in the same room with Zoe.”

  “Good,” he said. “Then get your ass home.”

  “Leo—” I stopped because I heard the click of the call ending. I tossed my phone back onto my desk. “Fuck. Fuck you, Leo. And fuck you, Dad.”

  I checked my calendar. Tomorrow was out, but if I flew out early on Thursday, I could get to the winery and finish up my day from there. I sent my assistant, Danielle, a text, telling her to book me a flight to Seattle and reserve a rental car.

  My concentration was shot to shit. I wasn’t going to get any more work done tonight. But it was late anyway. I closed my laptop, grabbed my things, and went home.

  I’d bought my condo for the view. During the day, I could see all the way to the water. At night, the lights of the city twinkled in the darkness. It had cost me a shit-ton of money, but every night when I stood looking out the floor-to-ceiling windows, I knew it had been worth it.

  I went to the kitchen and took a bottle of Glenlivit out of the liquor cabinet. Poured a glass and took a long swallow. It burned going down, spreading warmth through my chest.

  Danielle texted me back with my flight details for Thursday. I blew out a long breath and took another drink of Scotch.

  Home. I’d grown up in Echo Creek, a small town in the Cascade Mountains. Growing up on a winery sounded idyllic, but I’d been glad to leave it behind.

  How long had it been since I’d been there? Eighteen months? More? That didn’t sound right. But I hadn’t gone back for the holidays last year. It probably had been that long.

  I felt a twinge of guilt at that. It wasn’t that I disliked my family. True, my dad and I butted heads, and my sibli
ngs liked to give me crap for having moved away. But I knew my mom would like it if I came home more often.

  I was just so damn busy. It was hard to carve out the time for a trip that wasn’t business related. And I’d have to endure the inevitable guilt trips. Why don’t you visit more often? Can’t you stay longer? Don’t you want to come back and join your brothers in the family business?

  No, I fucking didn’t. But none of them had ever understood why I hadn’t fallen in line. Why I hadn’t taken up my proper place at the winery.

  I was made for bigger things than running a goddamn wine business in a small town out in central nowhere. There was no challenge to it. No risk. And the potential rewards—particularly financially—were much too low for me. Money wasn’t everything, but honestly, it was most things. And I was good at making money. Great, even. I’d made my company a hell of a lot of money in the last several years.

  I was respected here. People deferred to me. Trusted me with millions of dollars. I had my own office, an assistant, a penthouse condo with a priceless view. Enough money that I could have more or less anything I wanted.

  I was living my dream, and I didn’t understand why my family couldn’t just be fucking happy for me. Why they had to harp on the fact that I wasn’t there all the time. My brothers had stayed. My sister would probably wind up back home after college. They even had my ex-wife. What the hell did they need me for?

  I took another sip of Scotch and wandered over to the window, wondering what my dad had done that had Leo so riled up. Leo and I rarely saw eye to eye. He wouldn’t have called me over nothing. The big question was, did my dad know he’d done it? Were they expecting me to ride in with my MBA and save the day? Or was Leo going behind their backs to drag me into their mess?

  I guess I was about to find out.

  Thinking of home brought my thoughts back to Zoe. I went into the bedroom and set my drink down. With a glance over my shoulder—as if half-afraid someone would catch me—I pulled a small box down off a shelf in the closet.

  There was only one thing inside. Zoe’s wedding ring.

  I’d found it sitting on the kitchen counter of our old apartment the day she’d left me. The rest of her things had been gone. Her side of the closet, empty. Her drawers in the bathroom, cleaned out. She hadn’t taken much that had been ours—the things we’d accumulated together. I’d brought some of it to her later—the things I’d thought she’d want to keep—and given away the rest. But not her ring.

  Keeping it was the stupidest thing. I didn’t know why I still had it. It wasn’t even very nice. We’d eloped when we were twenty—just a couple of poor college students. I’d saved for months to get it, and at the time, I’d been pretty damn proud of myself. Looking at it now, it was rather pathetic. Just a plain gold band with a tiny excuse for a diamond. Zoe had loved it when I’d given it to her—said she hadn’t expected a ring at all.

  But we’d been different people, then. Young. Rebellious and wild. Idiots, really. We’d thought teenage hormones had been the real thing. Maybe they had, in their own way. But that hadn’t been enough.

  It hurt to look at it, and I wondered why I did this to myself. I didn’t pull it out very often. Once when I’d randomly remembered it was her birthday. Another time on what had been our anniversary. Occasionally, thoughts of her would creep into my mind and refuse to let go, and I’d find myself right here. Nursing a glass of Scotch and staring at the cheap piece of shit I couldn’t bring myself to throw away.

  I closed the box and put it back on the shelf. Maybe I’d get rid of it for good someday. A colleague of mine had proudly flushed his ex-wife’s ring down a public toilet. Another guy I knew had taken his ring off and dropped it in a garbage can in a park near his office.

  I didn’t have my ring anymore. I’d lost it a few years after we’d gotten married. Zoe and I had been visiting my family for Christmas, and it had snowed. We’d been outside, embroiled in an impromptu snowball fight with my brothers. None of us had been dressed for the cold—no coats, hats, or gloves. Just a bunch of dumbass kids tossing snow at each other until our bare hands hurt. Back inside, I’d realized my ring had come off. We’d looked, but never found it.

  It had been prophetic, in a way.

  But I was past that now. Zoe and I hadn’t worked out. She hadn’t been happy, so she’d left. Moved back to Echo Creek. Started working for my parents. She was fine, and so was I.

  In fact, I was more than fine. I was at the top of my game. Whether or not my family could appreciate it, my life was pretty fucking good.

  I would do what I had to do. Spend a few days at home, look at their books, probably find a few errors. Argue with my dad. Talk shit with my brothers. Let my mom fuss over me a little. Then I’d be right back here, where I belonged.

  Two

  Zoe

  The stack of shit on my desk never seemed to get any smaller. I’d been downstairs for most of the morning, hauling out decorations for a wedding tomorrow. It was going to be indoors, which was good. Spring in the foothills was beautiful, but chilly. It was early April, and not very warm, even though the sun was out.

  The couple I was working with were fucking adorable. Both in their sixties, both on second marriages. They’d waited a long time before deciding to marry again, and to see them look at each other, I knew they had a shot at forever.

  People like them were my favorite part of my job. I handled more than weddings, and I certainly had my share of first-time nuptials. Those were lovely, too. But there was something special about those second-chancers. They reminded me that love could surprise anyone, and it was never too late for a happy ending.

  I took a sip of coffee and winced. It had gone cold. Gross. Glancing down, I noticed a spot on my white t-shirt where I’d dripped some. I wondered if I’d been walking around in a dirty shirt all morning.

  Oh well, fuck it. It was too late to worry about it now.

  I put the traitor coffee down—I’d have to get more later—and dug around the mess on my desk for another shirt. There was one beneath a bent spiral notebook, so I tugged it out and gave it a look. No stains. Sniffed it. Smelled fine. I pulled off my offending t-shirt just as Cooper stuck his head in my office.

  “Zo—what the fuck?” He turned around. “Zoe Marie Sutton, why are you getting naked in your office?”

  “I’m not getting naked,” I said, laughing at his attempt to call me by my full name. “I got something on my shirt so I’m changing. And my middle name is Elizabeth.”

  “Zoe Marie sounds better. And have you heard of doors?” he asked. “They do this amazing thing where they close so people don’t see you in your bra.”

  “Who wouldn’t want to see me in my bra?” I pulled on the clean shirt. “I have great boobs.”

  “True,” Cooper said. “You do have an excellent rack.”

  I laughed. Technically, Cooper was my ex-brother-in-law. Also my boss’s son, and my co-worker. But mostly he was one of my favorite people on the planet. The little brother I’d never known I wanted.

  “You can look now,” I said. “Although I don’t know why you’re being weird about it. You’ve seen me completely naked. More than once, if I recall.”

  “Yeah, and it’s awkward every time you give me a goddamn boner.” He came in but didn’t sit in the chair on the other side of my desk. Cooper rarely sat down. “And I think I’ve only seen you naked once.”

  “Are you sure?” I asked. “There was that one time you walked in and—”

  “Stop it, Zoe; I don’t need to be reminded.” He made a show of adjusting his dick. “Since technically we’re not related, I’m not immune your hotness. Even though I’m not the least bit sexually attracted to you.”

  I smirked. “If you’re not sexually attracted to me, why is just the memory of my naked boobs giving you a chubby?”

  “I’m a guy,” he said with a shrug. “Nice boobs equals hard-on.”

  Cooper was about six years younger than me, and way too cute for
his own good. He did that messy-haired, ripped abs thing quite well. People never expected him to be the farmer in the Miles family. Although he looked like a pretty boy who ought to be posing in front of a camera—except for the dirt perpetually beneath his fingernails—he spent his days working in the fields. He took care of the vineyards like they were his babies.

  Adorable as he was, I’d never seen Coop as anything other than a brother. And despite the way he joked about my boobs making him hard, he saw me the same way. We just had fun messing with each other, and sometimes our banter got a little raunchy. Another reason I loved him.

  “Did you come up here to talk about my boobs, or…?” I asked.

  “No,” he said, and wrinkled his nose.

  “What’s going on?” I asked.

  He rubbed the back of his neck. “Well…”

  “Just get it over with, Coop,” I said.

  “Fine. But I want you to know ahead of time, this is all Leo’s fault. So if you’re going to get feisty with anyone, go find him.”

  “Get feisty?” I asked. “Why would I get feisty with Leo?”

  He grabbed the chair and tilted it backward, rocking it on its back legs. “Roland’s coming home.”

  It took every bit of self-control I possessed not to let my face—or body—react to the sound of my ex-husband’s name. But I was determined to remain unaffected, and the first step in achieving that was to show no emotion.