Seventeen
Chase was in the shower when the gate’s call button rang. Miriam sent a glance up the staircase and dashed for the door, wondering if she should answer it. Who was up here in the middle of a blizzard?
She depressed the button labeled Speaker and hoped that was the right one. “Yes?”
“Good morning, ma’am. My partner and I are plowing driveways and I noticed yours needs clearing,” came a slightly southern accent. She backed away from the box and studied the video screen. The black-and-white picture showed a man in the cab of a pickup truck, a woman in a scarf and ballcap in the seat next to him. His face was pleasant, his goatee neatly trimmed. Young. She guessed him a twentysomething. She had a soft spot for hardworking twentysomethings. “The main road’s done,” he said with a glance in his rearview mirror. “We can have you cleared in thirty minutes tops.”
She remembered her own climb up the driveway. His must’ve been treacherous.
“How’d you climb the hill to the gate?”
A slightly chagrined smile decorated his handsome features. “Cleared free of charge, ma’am. We’re taking the chance you’ll hire us to finish.”
Well. She couldn’t say no to that. She’d planned on giving Chase her friend Rodney’s number to call about removing the snow, but these two were already here. Who knew if Rodney was even available? She couldn’t turn away budding entrepreneurs.
After a brief discussion of price, she agreed and buzzed them in. Feeling proud for handling it by herself, she called upstairs. “Snowplow guy’s here!”
It was a safe guess that her voice hadn’t carried all the way to his bedroom. This house was enormous. He needed one of those damn speaker boxes for each floor.
She made a fresh pot of coffee, intending to take some out to the two working in the driveway, but a knock at the door interrupted her task.
“That was fast,” she said to herself, encountering Chase at the bottom of the stairs.
“What was fast?” His hair was damp, and he was dressed in a sweater and jeans. He looked so good she was struck dumb for a beat. “Did I hear a knock?”
“Lucky for you, I was here to answer your gate. We are being shoveled out as we speak.” She climbed to her toes, taking a handful of his cable-knit sweater and kissing his firm mouth. Mmm. He always smelled good. “I negotiated a fair price.”
She walked for the front door, Chase on her heels. “How’d he get to the gate?”
“Don’t be alarmed, Mr. Mayor, I asked that, too. He cleared it in the hopes we’d say yes to his offer.”
“Mimi, wait.”
But she’d already yanked open the door. There she found the pair of entrepreneurs, the goateed guy holding a video camera and the blonde aiming her cell phone. The sound of electronic shutter snaps told her that the other woman was taking pictures. Questions from both of them came flying at her.
“Miriam Andrix, is it true that you and Chase Ferguson are rekindling your romance?”
“How do you plan to make it work being on opposite sides of the oil debate?”
“Mr. Mayor, are you planning on moving to Bigfork permanently or will Miriam be relocating to Dallas?”
Chase grabbed Miriam’s arm, tugging her roughly behind him. To the pair spouting questions, he growled, “Get the hell off my property or I’m calling the authorities.”
The snowplowers-slash-reporters...or whatever they were made one last attempt, shouting, “Chase, are you and Miriam in love? Will you be planning a wedding here in Montana?” before Chase shut the door with a slam. Snow swirled in from the porch and gathered in the entrance. He turned and melted Mimi’s skin off with a laser-hot glare.
“I didn’t know...” she started, but her voice trailed off.
“I know.”
He pulled his phone from his pocket and opened the door, shutting himself outside. She listened at the door as more machine-gun-fire questions sliced the air, but one voice was louder than the others—Chase’s. He was addressing someone on the phone, the police if Miriam had to guess, and saying that two unwanted guests had trespassed on his property. She watched out the window as the fakers scampered to the truck and backed down the driveway.
Chase came back inside, his damp hair dusted with snow that had frozen into icicles. He punched the Gate Closed button.
“What was that?” she asked. That insanity had happened right in front of her, yet she still couldn’t make sense of it.
“That,”he said as he pocketed his phone, “was your official welcome to my opponent’s political campaign.”
* * *