So. Stinking. Sweet.
“I’m not inviting you to Montana.” Chase scooped more mashed potatoes onto his plate. “So don’t ask.”
“I don’t want to spend Thanksgiving with you, anyway,” she teased.
He pointed at her with his fork when he said, “Good.”
Her oldest brother had always looked out for her, had always been there for her. She could guarantee if she wanted to abscond to Montana with Chase, he wouldn’t hesitate taking her along. But he deserved a break, too. There’d been so much fatigue in his eyes tonight. Must’ve been a hell of a week in the mayor’s office.
“How are you spending the holiday, Emmett?” Elle asked.
“I’ll be on call. Security never sleeps.”
Stef eyed him over the rim of her water glass, trying to decide if that was true or not. She didn’t know Emmett that well, only that he and Chase had been friends for years, and that Emmett was part of the backdrop of nearly every big event in recent history. She assumed that behind those hulking shoulders and permanent scowl of his, she’d find a loner who worked 24/7, and not much else. He didn’t seem to have a life other than one involving the Ferguson family.
Not five minutes later, Penelope returned without Olivia, explaining her daughter had missed a nap and was too tired to deal with dinner.
“It’s Zach’s turn so I’m off the clock.” She refilled her wineglass with dark red wine and gestured to Stef with the tipped bottle. “Join me?”
“Always.” Stef allowed Pen to fill her glass, feeling a ping of loneliness. Stef was used to her family being around, to big parties and to-dos year-round. Save when Zach had lived in Chicago for a stint, they’d been together as a family most of the time. The business they held stakes in kept them in each other’s orbit.
So, yeah, Stef wasn’t used to being alone, but that didn’t mean she couldn’t be. This year she’d embrace Thanksgiving on her own and build that muscle.
It was time her family started seeing her as a twenty-nine-year-old anyway.
Bundled in her knee-length pea coat, Miriam Andrix marched up the asphalt-covered parking lot, her head down to thwart the icy wind. She was born and raised in Montana, but every winter she experienced here made her a bit less tolerant of the cold. Which was ridiculous. She was only thirty-three, for Pete’s sake. It wasn’t as if she was her seventy-five-year-old grandmother who kept the thermostat set on eighty degrees at home.
She peeked up from her trudge so that she didn’t mow over a shopper who’d just overspent on groceries, and then tucked her chin again and watched her laced boots move her forward. Her destination? Whole Foods Market in search of fixings for sweet potato pie, as assigned by her mother. This was the first year Miriam had been placed in charge of dessert. Typically, she made a side dish like potatoes au gratin or cranberry sauce.
Mom’s rules were anything but simple when asking her four children to participate in the preparation of Thanksgiving dinner: no canned ingredients, organic if you can. She also provided the family recipe cards for the requested dish—tweaked by each generation to add an extra dash of cinnamon here or an additional crushed garlic clove there. And since Miriam was responsible for a dessert she wasn’t comfortable making, she wasn’t taking any chances on shopping at the corner market. She might well spend her entire paycheck in here, but at least she could guarantee that only the most beautiful sweet potatoes would go into her pie.
At the entrance of Whole Foods, the automated doors swished aside and the fragrant scent of mulled cider wafted out. She lifted her head and closed her eyes to inhale her most favorite scent—autumn—when a competing smell mingled with the cider.
Sandalwood. Pine. A touch of leather... And eerily familiar. As was the voice that crashed into her like a runaway shopping cart.
“Mimi?”
She snapped her head up and her gaze collided with a man taller than her by several inches, his devastatingly handsome face broken up by the frown on his forehead and additional lines at the corners of his gray-green eyes. His jaw sported a barely-there five o’clock shadow, and his hair was in the same disarray she remembered from ten years ago—the one crooked part of Chase Ferguson that couldn’t be tamed.
“Chase. Hi.” She blinked again at the man in front of her, having the half-crazed thought that she’d summoned him with her mind. A week ago she’d received a photo of herself in an envelope she’d had to sign for. Along with the photo was a letter from the mayor of Dallas’s office—Chase’s office—that was signed by a woman’s hand. Miriam had read the two neatly typed paragraphs and tossed the letter into the trash. There was no action step for her, merely a “making you aware” note that she might be mentioned in Mayor Chase Ferguson’s upcoming campaign and “may be called upon in the future” for her cooperation.
But throwing the letter into the wastebasket hadn’t removed the memories of Chase from her head. For a solid week, she’d reflected on the summer they’d spent together, fumed anew at the senseless way he’d cast her aside and played out a few scenarios wherein she’d enjoy humiliating his mother—whom Miriam blamed in part for Chase breaking things off.
“I didn’t expect to run into you while I was here,” the man from her past was saying. It was the same deep, silken voice she remembered, but his Texas drawl was diminished, no doubt due to rigorous training from a speech coach.
“That’s my line,” she said with a flat smile, stepping aside to allow a woman pushing a stroller to go in ahead of her.
Chase palmed Miriam’s arm and physically moved her to the side of the automated door, and if she was still twenty-three and over-the-moon crazy about him, she might have said that his hand was warm and brought back memories of the summer they spent with each other, most of those days wearing as little clothing as was legal. Sometimes less.
“Yes, I suppose that would be your line.” His smile hitched at one corner and dropped like it’d never been there. He adjusted the paper grocery bag in the crook of his arm.
“What are you doing in Montana?” She had to ask. Because seriously—what?
“My annual break from the political hoopla.”
Annual?
A brisk wind cut through her coat and she pulled her shoulders under her ears. “I received a letter mentioning said hoopla.”
“Good. It’s only fair for you to know. We suspect someone on my opponent’s camp dug that photo up.” He sounded so distant standing not a foot away from her. The same way the letter had sounded—probably because it’d been written by a member of his staff and not Chase himself. Too many years had passed for that to hurt, but part of her had felt the sting of loss that he hadn’t bothered with a personal note.
“Where are you staying?”
“I have a place here.”
“You do?” News to her.
“On Flathead Lake.”
Another memory hit her—one of her cajoling him into skinn-dipping in that lake. On the shoreline on private property in the middle of a warm July night. The water had been cold despite the calendar’s date, but Miriam had talked him into it. Watching Chase undress and dive in ahead of her had been one of the highlights of her summer. He had a great ass.
She studied his broad shoulders and tall form, feeling that same commanding presence now. The pull he had on her might have shrunk, but he sure hadn’t. If anything, he’d grown both physically and figuratively. Hell, he was as big as Texas in a way—in charge of part of the gargantuan state with