“What’s so funny?”
“Nothing.” He licked his lips as he helped organize the cards into stacks. “You’re not a gracious loser, Mimi.”
“No one likes to lose, Chase.” Some of the fire went out of her voice, though. He looked genuinely relaxed and happy and it was hard not to replicate his mood. It was obvious from the faint lines between his dark eyebrows that he typically worried more than he relaxed.
Game boxed, he stood and put it away. When he paced back, he offered a hand to help her off the cushion on the floor. She accepted, his warm fingers curling around hers and making other parts of her warm, as well. Naughty, tingly parts. Oft-ignored parts.
She tugged her hand away and he tossed the square cushion she’d been sitting on onto the chair.
“Do you have everything you need for the evening?” he asked.
A jerky nod was all she could manage in response.
He lifted his hand to her cheek and brushed the back of his fingers from her jawline to her neck. His mouth pulled flat.
“I wish things wouldn’t have ended so poorly between us, Mimi.”
Her heart, her damned heart, dusty from being ignored for so long, thudded with regret.
“So do I,” she admitted.
He gave her shoulder a gentle squeeze, his eyes on hers, his head tilted at the right angle for a kiss. Not that she should be kissing Chase Ferguson, but if he leaned in...oh yes, she’d kiss him. She’d kiss the life out of him if for no other reason than to learn if her lips still fit against his like they were made to.
They did. She knew it.
Instead of bending for a kiss, he returned both hands to his pockets. The heat in his eyes banked.
“There was nothing I could do at the time except wish you well.”
The words stung like a rubber band snapped against her skin. They also snapped her back to reality. There was a warm fire and wine and casual, fun banter, but there was also ten years of loss and pain that separated them. A mountain that, while scalable, wasn’t worth risking her heart to climb.
“Nothing you could do?” She threw his words back at him, mentally lacing up her hiking boots to climb anyway. “You put me on a plane the same day you brought me to Dallas. You didn’t even offer me a place to sleep.”
“Why would I have offered to take you home with me?” His expression was genuinely sincere.
“Because—” I loved you “—it was the decent thing to do!”
His face remained blank, his voice calm while she’d entered the lower range of yelling. “It would’ve been decent to break up with you and then invite you back to my bed? You were upset. You needed to go home where you belonged. Holding you while you cried wouldn’t have eased the transition for either of us.”
She wanted to scream or slap him. Or both. Instead, she welded her back teeth together and forced a breath through her nose. This was an old argument. One that couldn’t be resolved then and sure as hell wouldn’t be resolved if they talked about it now.
She hadn’t seen Chase sending her away as decent. Especially after a flight where they’d made love in the private plane’s cabin and he’d told her he was glad she’d come with him to Dallas. At the time she’d believed what they had was real and lasting, and she thought he’d believed that, as well.
Until dinner with his parents ended after Eleanor had made her opinion abundantly clear. Chase had dumped Miriam right there in the driveway.
The memory stung like a cloud of angry wasps...
Nine
“My mother’s right,” Chase said from the driver’s side of a sleek black Porsche. Miriam was still getting used to this much finery...and getting used to learning that his family owned an oil company. Like, one of the biggies.
“Right about what?” She stopped digging through her purse for her Chapstick and regarded him.
“Right about my career. I hadn’t been thinking about it this summer.” He faced her, his expression tender, his voice low and filled with regret.
She felt the hard kick of her heart against her ribs and forced a smile. Reaching for his hand, she said, “She’s not right. She’s wrong. You’re going to be an incredible politician and no one, especially Mimi Andrix from Bigfork, Montana, is going to hold you back. The public will see us together and know what we have is real. How could anyone miss it?”
Squeezing his hand, she kept the smile on her mouth but he continued to look distraught.
“I wish that was true.” He pulled his hand away and wrapped his fingers around the steering wheel. “Unfortunately, the position I’m in with my parents owning one of the biggest oil conglomerates in the state, I’m not at liberty to push back on any of this. My responsibilities to them, my interests in politics—having a say about how the people are treated in my city—matter.”
She wanted to ask him if she also mattered, but was half afraid of the answer. It was like his mother had slapped a script in his hand. This wasn’t Miriam’s Chase. Her Chase had stripped her out of her dress and made love to her long and slow on a private jet hurtling them toward Texas. Her Chase had lain in that same bed and told her how beautiful her body was, before placing a kiss on each part he mentioned.
“You’re scaring me,” she confessed.
“We can’t know so soon.” His lowered eyebrows communicated regret at the words coming out of his mouth—words echoed from his mother, who’d said that exact phrase at dinner. “What happens from here on out, Mimi?”
She swallowed past the lump in her throat threatening to choke her. “What do you mean?”
“Do you move here from Montana? Leave your family? Marry me? What happens when I run for governor or mayor in the future? What happens when my opponent digs up proof you experimented with pot or a girlfriend in college? Or if we find out someone has photos of the night we skinny-dipped in the lake? Or made love on the shore?” he added darkly.
“I don’t care about any of that.” Her voice took on a desperate quality, but she didn’t care. In no way would she entertain this line of thought. What they’d shared in her hometown wasn’t tawdry or dirty. It was beautiful—the start of their forever. “I care about you.”
“You’ll care when the press involves your parents. Your siblings. When a smear campaign starts and—”
“You’re borrowing trouble, Chase. Right now, you’re finishing law school. You could end up working for Ferguson Oil the rest of your life.”
“And that would be okay with you?” He drilled her with a look that roiled her stomach. She’d never been a fan of the corrupt oil monopolies, but neither could she deny that she loved Chase too much to let his family ties keep her from him.
“I care about you, too,” he said, and she heard the unspoken “but” that was about to follow. “Too much to let you go down this road.” He captured her chin between his thumb and forefinger. Hot tears rolled from her eyes and scalded her cheeks. “Let’s slow down. Think things through.”
“There’s nothing to think about!” Her shout was shrill in the closed interior of the car. It was September in Texas and plenty warm. The AC blew gently against her face, chilling the trails her tears left behind.
“We didn’t think at all this summer,” he said, gaze once again on the windshield. “I didn’t think.”
The argument had escalated from there, Chase closing off and her growing more emotional. Before she knew what was happening, he was on the phone with the pilot who’d flown them in earlier that day.
“Good night, Chase,” she said now, her mind on that fated night, her voice rigid from spent grief and too many regrets to count.
There were so many things they should’ve said. So many things they shouldn’t have said. Once, she’d considered him her everything, and now he felt as remote as a desert island.
But none of that mattered anymore. He’d made his decision to toss what the
y had aside, and she’d boarded the plane home willingly.
Memories weighing down her limbs, she trudged to her bedroom—toward the sweet relief of an empty mattress, and away from Chase’s hurtful words—to be alone with her heart that still mourned the loss of what could’ve been.
* * *
Chase propped his hands on his hips and dropped his head back, studying the ceiling, or perhaps seeking advice from the Almighty.
“Got anything?” he asked the beamed ceilings.
No answer.
He hadn’t meant to traipse down bramble-strewn memory lane. He’d meant to tell her that now that she was here, in his house, he wanted her in his bed again. He was going to follow that up with a promise that she’d never regret saying yes.
They should at least be kissing, if not half-naked, his lips wrapped around her nipple, his fingers in her underwear.
They should be exorcising the demon that had been unleashed, not arguing about why it existed at all.
Nostrils flared in frustration, he forced himself to stop thinking. He’d done too much thinking already. He followed the path Mimi had taken to her bedroom and stopped outside the door, fist raised to knock.
Before he could rap on the wooden panel, it opened. Mimi jolted in surprise. She wasn’t expecting him. He lowered his hand, keeping it balled into a fist at his side.
“Hi,” he said.
“Hi.” She folded her arms over her small breasts. “I forgot to grab a bottle of water. I like to keep one on the nightstand.” Her eyes flitted to the side, making him wonder if she was telling the truth.
“I didn’t mean to hurt you back then.”
He hadn’t wanted to send her home. He’d selfishly wanted to take her home with him and soothe her. Stroke her hair and tell her everything would be okay. But there’d been no way to know if anything would be okay. There’d been no way to know she wouldn’t wind up hating him for dragging her away from her life of pine trees and shorelines and into one teeming with politicians and oil tycoons. Keeping her at his side would have been about him, and he had forced himself to think of her—of who he’d have to ask her to become if she stayed.
She’d loved him then. He’d foolishly thought she’d continue loving him through her heartbreak. Long enough for them to see how his career would shake out. Long enough for her to decide for sure if she wanted to be a part of that life.
“I hate that I hurt you, but I had to—”
“Don’t. Don’t say that you had to focus on your career or your business or any other multitude of things that were more important than me at the time.”
His scowl hardened and not in his own defense. He had done that. But he’d done it to protect her. For her. Evidently she wasn’t ready to hear that.
“I can take care of myself, Chase. You don’t need to worry about me now. I’m a big girl, and I’m not afraid of bad publicity.”
“That’s because you haven’t been the target of it. You don’t know what they’ll say about you to get to me. I’d lose the election after the press learned I was beating the hell out of anyone who verbally attacked you.”
He’d expected at least a half smile in response to that, but he didn’t get one.
“I agreed to leave that day. It’s not like you tied me up and dragged me into the plane.”
“You only agreed to leave because I asked you to.” Regret wasn’t a familiar feeling, but it took residence in the center of his chest now. “I pushed you away.”
Her dark eyes swept up to meet his. “It would be a hell of a lot easier to blame you for everything, but the truth is...” She licked her lips before she finished. “I was starting to wonder if I was right about us or if I’d been caught up in the fantasy. I didn’t want to lose you, but I didn’t want to leave Montana. In the car when you were shattering me—and make no mistake, Chase, you shattered me—”
He winced, hating hearing it but knowing it was true.
“—I was courting second thoughts.” She laid her palm softly against his sweater and her warmth eased the sting of her words. “I can’t let you shoulder all the blame. The lion’s share maybe, but not all.”
Instinctively, he cupped her hand with his own. The speed of his breaths increased, his heart rate ratcheting up along with them, a thumping they could both feel.
“This is so dumb,” she said, her voice barely above a whisper.
He stepped closer, his other hand wrapping around one petite shoulder. He wasn’t sure if she meant that talking about their past was dumb, or considering kissing him was dumb. Either way...
He ducked his head, pleased when she lifted hers to receive the kiss he was angling toward her plush mouth. In the split second before he closed his eyes, he watched her lids sink and felt the soft tickle of her breath against his mouth.
Their lips touched, his firm and solid against hers pliant and giving. He gentled her open and stroked the tip of her tongue with his. A sigh of longing mingled with loss coated his mouth when he moved to deepen the kiss, and that was the instant Mimi pulled away.
She lowered from her toes to her heels, eyes still closed, hand still on his sweater—now bunching the material.
“Dumb,” she whispered again.
“Oh, I don’t know. It wasn’t so bad.”
That earned him the hitch of her mouth: the smile he’d been gunning for. He swept her dark hair aside, the waves silky and oh-so-touchable.
“I’ve been thinking of kissing you since the day I saw you at the supermarket,” he said.
Her eyebrows lifted like she was amused. “That would’ve been awkward.”
“Timing is everything.” He took a breath and spoke the words he’d wanted to say all night. “I swear, Mimi. If you come to my bed tonight, you will not regret it.”
His voice was low and lethal, tight with the sexual tension that had strung his balls to his spine like a cable car.
Her expression shuttered. She yanked her hand away.
Too soon.
“Hang on. That’s not—” He tried to backtrack but she cut him off.
“Let’s pretend that last part didn’t happen.”
He braced his hands on the doorframe, effectively blocking her in as he leaned close to say, “Not what I was going to say.”
She ducked under his arm and walked down the hallway toward the kitchen. He turned his head, resting his cheek on one outstretched arm to watch her go. Those round hips swishing away from him, her hair bouncing halfway down her back.
Damn.
Damn.
Ten
Outside Miriam’s bedroom window, snow fell as hard and fast as ever. It was a beautiful inconvenience—a minor interruption in what was an already amazing life. She had much to be thankful for. Something she’d tried to remind herself last night while she lay awake feeling complete FOMO about missing out on Black Friday shopping with her sisters.
It wasn’t the shopping itself she was mourning, but the time she’d miss spending with them. Dining out and then grabbing lattes for dessert. Juggling the to-go cup and a plethora of shiny shopping bags while one of them dug the keys from Wendy’s purse so they could find the car.
She’d tried to reach either Kristine or Wendy on their cell phones. No luck. There were probably wrestling a discount television away from a grown man at a big box store, or maybe they’d opted for an early breakfast complete with mimosas.
After sending a group text—Buy me something of high value with a low price tag!—and tossing the phone on the bed, Miriam pulled on her jeans and layered a few long-sleeved shirts for warmth.
The house was cozy. The bed was a dream. She’d slept great once she’d finally fallen asleep.
When she’d returned to her room with the water bottle, Chase had no longer been looming at her doorway looking sexy and slightly rumpled and thoroughly kissed. He’d gone up
stairs, she’d assumed. The house was large enough he could’ve been literally anywhere save the room she’d just come from. He hadn’t said goodnight.
She’d lain in her bed and wondered if he was in his own bedroom reliving the smoldering lip-lock they’d shared in the doorway. If he still tasted her on his tongue the way she tasted him on hers. If he was considering coming back downstairs to sample her mouth again...
But he hadn’t.
And now that she was awake and en route to the coffee maker, she tried to convince herself she was glad he hadn’t come downstairs to finish what he’d started. Relaying those thoughts to her heart was easy. Getting them past her raging hormones and that irritating fluttering at the V of her thighs was another matter altogether.
It’d been a while since she’d had sex. It’d been even longer since she’d had really good sex. It made sense that the physical reactions in her body were shouting Hell yes! Her nipples had hardened and pressed against the T-shirt she slept in, begging for attention. She’d resisted the urge to relieve that pounding pulse between her legs herself, balling her fists in the blankets and squeezing her eyes shut. She thought about camp budgets and depleting rain forests and other unpleasant topics, but no matter how she’d tried to distract herself, memories of Chase—from last night and ten years ago—led the pack.
It was simply him. He had commanded her full attention since the first time she laid eyes on him. There was a pull surrounding him and whenever she was in his atmosphere she couldn’t keep from being drawn in.
“As evidenced by my ending up snowed in here,” she said to herself. What other than the idea of Chase Ferguson alone on Thanksgiving would have convinced her to come out in a snowstorm?
She paced to the kitchen, located the coffee and made herself a single-cup serving. After only three hours of sleep, she needed it. No sign of her housemate yet, but she could guess he hadn’t slept well either.
She opted to give herself a tour of the house while sipping her coffee. She started with the main floor, most of which she’d familiarized herself with last night. The living room where they’d played Monopoly, the kitchen where Chase had heated his delivered dinner, and of course, her bedroom.
A Snowbound Scandal (Dallas Billionaires Club Book 2) Page 7
