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.
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?