face blanched and Jeremiah thought she might actually say something that would reveal their inappropriate encounter, but she recovered well and simply shrugged as if to say this is me—take it or leave it. He had to respect the way she was handling things and was happy to take his cue from her.
“No, she’s right. We all have plenty of work to do and I’m keeping you from it to blather on about my past when what’s really important is the future. I’ll trust you to get to your regular schedules and I will work to catch up. So for now I’m going to lock myself in my new office to try and get my bearings. We can reconvene at lunch. Sound like a plan?” There were murmurs of assent as everyone began to disperse, and Miranda wasted no time in disappearing. The fact that his stare wanted to follow wherever she went was troubling but he had bigger issues to deal with and that included establishing himself as the new director of the Homer Department of Fish and Game, above and apart from his personal dilemma. Work had always had the power of distracting him from whatever was happening in his life. This new complication would be no different.
* * *
MIRANDA WANTED TO PUKE. She’d never been so wretchedly embarrassed by an encounter with a one-night stand and that included the unfortunate nuisance of Luke Prather trailing her like a lovesick hound after their one night together. If her mother had been counting on karma to bite her in the ass for all of her past bad behavior it was coming to pass right at this moment. Miranda couldn’t disappear into her office fast enough but, of course, locking herself away to wallow in her misery wasn’t on the agenda. Mary, the office mate who had been singing her praises so embarrassingly to Jeremiah, was quick to follow.
“Girl, you are running like the devil is on your heels. What’s gotten into you?”
Miranda wiped the dot of sweat that beaded her brow as her adrenaline raced through her veins and wished she could get a do-over for the past twenty-four hours. She should’ve listened to Russ when he’d said to stop drinking. She should have chosen to stay home instead of dropping Talen off at his grandmother’s so she could drink herself stupid. She should have read a book, watched a movie, dug a ditch—anything that would have kept her from bedding her boss. But it wasn’t as if she could tell Mary that. It wasn’t as if she could tell anyone. In fact, the one person she could talk to about this was the one person she didn’t want to talk to about it. “I’m just not excited about meeting the person who took my job.” Well, that was half-true. She’d thought for sure the director position had been hers and it’d been a nasty surprise when she’d learned that she had, in fact, not been selected. “What do you think of him?”
Mary, a middle-aged woman who liked to consider herself hip and cool because she tweeted on her phone every five seconds like the teenagers did even though half the time she did it wrong, considered the question for a minute then nodded decisively. “I like him.”
“Why?” The question popped from Miranda’s mouth before she could stop it and Mary graced her with a quizzical expression for her sour reaction. Miranda tried to do some damage control. “I mean, how do you know that he’s good for the job? I can’t imagine anyone would do a better job than me. I know this place like the back of my hand, and that’s saying a lot considering how big Alaska is.” She was babbling, throwing out excuses for her odd behavior, but Mary didn’t seem to notice, which didn’t say much for her usual behavior. “I’m just saying, just because he’s nice on the eyes doesn’t mean he’s the right man for the job. You know what I mean?”
Mary frowned. “I think you should give him a chance. I know you’re disappointed that you didn’t get the job, and you would have been a great director, but the fact of the matter is, unless you want to start job hunting, you’d better start getting on board. You’re not going to make any points by cheesing off the new boss.”
Miranda fought to keep her expression from revealing the turmoil churning her brain but she felt off-kilter, which was something that rarely happened to her. If only Mary knew how many points she may have made between the sheets last night, not that those points could help her now. Crap. What a mess. Why couldn’t the new boss have been a troll? Someone more like their old boss. Virgil Eckhart had been a short, squat, balding man with a barrel chest and a fondness for cheap cigars that he only got the opportunity to smoke when he was ice fishing because his wife hated the smell. There was no way in hell Miranda would’ve ever wanted to sleep with him. Not even if it had meant a promotion. But then, Virgil had become something of a father figure when her own father simply checked out emotionally. She slowly refocused when she realized Mary was waiting for a response. “Don’t worry,” she said, trying to put Mary at ease. “I’ll make nice with the new boss.” Cringe. “I have no interest in job hunting anytime soon.”
Mary’s relief was evident in her wide smile. “Thank God. I was worried that you were going to be a bit of a pill with the new boss. I should have known you’d be mature about it. I’m sorry for not giving you the credit you deserve. Honestly, I don’t know what I was worried about now that I think about it. You’re not the hotheaded kid you used to be. You’re a mother, for crying out loud. Sheesh. Sometimes I embarrass myself. Jim is always telling me to stop being so dramatic.”
Miranda laughed, the sound hollow to her ears, yet Mary remained oblivious to her distress, thank heaven. “You worry too much, Mary. Now, don’t you have work to do?” she teased. “Go on, get out of here.”
Mary left the office and Miranda expelled an audible sigh. “Of all the rotten luck...”
Was karma kicking her in the ass for everything she’d been doing over the past years? It hardly seemed fair when karma had already kicked the shit out of their family.
Laughter rang in her memory, pulling her away from her present pickle and into a time before her sister had died.
“Your snowboarding skills are about as good as your cooking skills,” Wade had teased Simone as he slowed to a stop beside her with a laugh. She’d landed on her rear for the third time as she’d tried unsuccessfully to slow down properly and instead simply tumbled to her behind in a spray of snow.
“Stop laughing and help me up,” Simone grumbled, then wobbled and lost her balance, falling again. She slapped the snow and pouted. “I hate snowboarding. I want to go back to skis.”
Miranda pulled up alongside her baby sister as Wade and Trace followed on their boards. They’d all switched from skis to boards except Simone, and she was having a difficult time making the transition. “Don’t give up, Simone. We all fall when we’re learning. Are you going to be a quitter just because it’s hard?” she asked. “Give it a chance. Besides, if you don’t want to be left behind, you need to learn.”
“Come on, klutz,” Trace said as he and Wade helped Simone to her feet. “You got this. Try again. It’ll get easier.”
“It won’t. I suck at it.”
“It’s true. You kinda do,” Miranda agreed, earning a black look from her twelve-year-old sister as Simone wiped the snow from her snowsuit. “But,” Miranda added with a wink, “at least you look good doing it.”
At the small compliment, Simone broke out into a reluctant smile, which seemed to bolster her courage and firm her determination. “Okay. I’ll try one more time but that’s it.” She sighed and looked to Trace and Wade. “Show me again how to stop....”
But Simone wasn’t a quitter in spite of her complaints, and after plenty of ribbing, lots of laughter and more than a few tumbles, Simone finally caught on. After that the Sinclair family had been unstoppable on the slopes. In fact, in time, snowboarding had become Simone and Miranda’s favorite pastime together.
Miranda
