Chapter 9
CHAPTER 9
Felix
“You didn’t tell her about Yvonne?”
Felix winced, following the path down from the resort to the parking area and his car. After he’d been looking around all day and being pointedly ignored by Misha, Penny had gotten on the phone and ripped into him. He wasn’t certain if she decided to wait or finally got Laurent’s phone when he was distracted, but she’d successfully laid out exactly what was going on.
And he snapped back when she got so many things wrong, which got Penny to shut up fast. She didn’t have the full story, and if she’d blabbed to Misha, it was no wonder she’d ghosted him. He’d be a little frigid too if he thought she was married in the background.
She just didn’t have his full story. After hanging up on Penny, it came as no surprise that the next call came from Laurent.
“It hadn’t come up yet,” he snarled. “We were supposed to talk more and your little girlfriend wasn’t supposed to snoop and tell her I was married.”
“If you told her from the start there would be no snooping.”
He ground his teeth together, fighting the urge to curse. “I was getting there. It’s not an easy subject. If you could quit being an asshole you would remember that.”
Laurent grew quiet on his end of the phone, and it was a damn good thing since the snow was coming down hard and fast. Felix hadn’t intended on following Misha off the Ranch like a stalker, but when she hadn’t returned by the time weather reports started saying it would be a bad storm, he’d felt the need to make sure she wasn’t broken down someplace. She could check out and ditch him if she wanted, but he needed her to be safe. So long as he was sure she was alright, he could find a way to tell her the truth. If she was in danger, then that was a completely different matter.
He narrowed his eyes as he followed the road. Most of Porter’s Corner seemed to be closed down for the weather, and that had to mean it was going to be a big storm. He knew from checking that there weren’t any hotel vacancies, but there was an Airbnb nearby if all else failed. He’d rather return to Rawhide tonight knowing Misha was safe, but with the way the snow was falling he wasn’t certain that he’d be able to drive back to the front gates let alone park his car and get inside.
“Where are you, Misha?” he muttered.
“Still haven’t found her?” Laurent asked, and despite his annoyance with his boss he could hear the concern. “Does she have a car made for that kind of weather?”
“It’s a sporty little car with no business driving in this kind of snow,” Felix snapped. “It’s probably front-wheel drive and I don’t even know if she has snow tires. She should’ve stayed at the Ranch.”
“You don’t control her,” Laurent reminded him. “She needs to know all your pieces as much as you need hers.”
It annoyed Felix how all-knowing his friend was acting. “Like telling Penny about your son and ex?”
“I didn’t hide anything from her because there’s no reason to,” Laurent replied sharply. “And with how things went, we were bound to learn a lot about each other very quickly. You’re trying to salvage more than a year's worth of meetings with a girl who seems to adore you. Stop hiding from her and just tell her the truth.”
“I’m trying to do that.” Felix scrubbed a hand over his face, adjusting his heat as he cracked a window. It was getting foggy in his car, and he seriously needed to figure out if Misha was still someplace around the Ranch and head back before the roads tried to ice over. “Do you know how hard it is to find someone in a snowstorm?”
“I… just–you…”
Felix played with the volume buttons, but as he feared, the weather was getting in the way of his signal. “Boss?”
Static, and nothing else. It was a good thing he already knew the path back to the resort, else he would be SOL once he did find Misha. Hanging up his phone, he continued down the road, and after driving carefully through Porter’s Corner and not seeing any sign of her car, he was close to giving up hope.
Then he looped down a backroad to start heading back, and he spotted a car parked a ways ahead, lights on and blinding in the storm. As he drew closer, there was no doubt who that was.
His mind ticked into overdrive, thinking the worst. But as he neared, he noticed she was parked, and it didn’t look like the vehicle had slid off the road. He thought maybe she’d realized that driving that thing in this weather was asking for an accident, until his gaze shifted to the snow-covered world.
There were a half dozen deer in the clearing in front of him. A stag and several does as well as a calf. The male seemed to hang out near Misha’s car, and he hoped she hadn’t done anything to set it off. At least it was a herd of deer, and not something more concerning like a mountain lion or a bear. Deer were manageable if they were careful.
His headlights sent two of them running, and the largest shifted but didn’t take off. It was still far enough back he wasn’t concerned about any of them running in front of his car unless one charged. He drove until his car was directly next to Misha’s before he rolled his window down further, ignoring the bite of cold.
After a beat, her passenger window slid down, and he found her leaning across the car toward his vehicle, mouth agape. She had her hat on, and he grew a little concerned seeing how foggy her windows were. Her eyes were narrowed as she glared at him.
“I don’t need your help!” she yelled, her voice almost getting lost between the sounds of two heaters and the wind. “I finally got back in my car and things are just fine! Go away!”
A muscle in his jaw twitched at her response. Misha was stubborn, but this was ridiculous. “It’s freezing out here! We need to go back to the Ranch before we can’t drive up the road.”
“I’m good, thanks!” she yelled back, and he watched as she moved what looked like a pot of flowers. Strange. She held up an energy drink and a bag of beef jerky. “I’ve got snacks!”
Of all of the…
His thoughts trailed off as he fought down his rising anger. They were in a real dangerous situation with the weather worsening, and he’d already received a warning to his phone about the weather again from one of those national alerts. She couldn’t just sit on the side of the road with some snacks and wait the storm out. If the car overheated, she was more SOL than the two of them currently were. They could still turn and head back up the road.
“Misha, we need to go back!”
“I’m not listening to you!”
She rolled her window up again, and in his frustration he half debated leaving her there. But the storm would just get worse not better, and it was his annoyance talking. She might be able to drive that rolling hazard back to the Ranch if she really wanted, but they needed to head back now.
Grumbling, he left his keys in the ignition, knowing the deer wouldn’t be stealing his ride. He stepped out into the bitter cold, glad he left some space between their vehicles, and popped open her passenger door. It wasn’t even locked. When the interior lights clicked on, he met her glare with one of his own.
“Are you serious?” His tone left no question to his disbelief as he lost the last of his patience. “There’s a blizzard moving in!”
“I packed a lot of snacks. I was planning to sit out here and veg for a little while.”
Felix growled, pinching the bridge of his nose. “Misha, I’m going to need you to be reasonable here.”
“Me?” she asked innocently, and he couldn’t believe how much sarcasm dripped from her voice. “Gee, I’m not the one lying about being married, so I guess I’m still the more reasonable of the two of us.”
“I’m not married!”
“Then where’s your divorce papers?” she growled, and he raised his brows. “Don’t look surprised. I did some digging.”
“You paid the Cloutier techie to look me up,” he countered, eyes narrowing. Penny had mentioned it when she was busy yelling at him. “You didn’t give me the option to tell you! You looked into it before I was comfortable talking about it.”
“Because you would have to admit to cheating?”
“Because my wife is dead,” he barked, and her eyes widened in horror. Her jaw fell open like it had when she rolled down the window, but now he could see the guilt mixed with her horrified surprise. “Now stop acting like I’m cheating on her and get out of the damn car.”
She hesitated, peering the other way, and he could see the blush as she turned. Obviously, she was very embarrassed, and he gave her a moment to burn in that reality. The wind beat against his side, and he glanced at the deer nearby.
Even they didn’t want to deal with the storm. He only saw one doe, and the others and the calf were already out of sight. The stag kept walking near the trees, and when they noticed him again, both animals took off to hide from the storm. When even nature took cover, that was a sign that they needed to get inside.
He ducked down again, and Misha was fiddling with the strap of her purse. It didn’t look like she’d dressed to leave the Ranch, and a quick scan didn’t show him any signs of a travel bag. Maybe it was in the trunk, but he somehow doubted it.
“You can feel guilty later when we aren’t going to freeze our asses off out here,” he said, his voice rising with the wind. The snow fell almost in a thick blanket now and he didn’t know if they could make it back to Rawhide anymore. “Your car have all-wheel drive?”
“Front.”
He grunted. “Do you know how to drive in snow like this?”
“Well, usually, someone else would drive me.”
That’s what he’d thought. “Turn it off. We can try to go back in my car.”
“We’ll never make it! This storm is too strong. We should go back to town!”
“Have you seen an inn someplace?” he growled. An Airbnb was out of the question with no signal. “We can’t stay in the cars in a blizzard like this.”
“Well, do you have a better idea?” she screamed. The wind slammed against the car, carrying the snow diagonally, and some of it spilled into her car. She gasped and grabbed for the flowers, tugging them to her like some sort of precious gift.
He spit out some snow. “Put something over those. We’ve got to go.”
Misha scrambled around collecting things in the car, and he eyed her coat. It didn’t look thick, and if he had to guess she hadn’t dressed with the intention of getting caught out in this much snow. She pulled everything he reached for out of his grip, and he all but threw up his hands when she gathered the items together in a bundle in her arms and killed the ignition.
He waited for her to round the car, helping her across the ice without being asked. She didn’t protest this time, and on the passenger side of his car the wind slammed into them again, hard enough it almost sent them to the ground. This was the type of storm that could turn deadly if they didn’t get moving.
She rolled into his embrace as they stiffened against the wind, and Felix cracked his eyes open to observe their surroundings. It was getting harder to see.
When the wind slowed down, he straightened up, dragging her with him. He managed to open the door and shove her inside before the next gust, and she pulled her legs in before he slammed the door and hurried back to the driver's side.
Misha stared longingly at her car as he climbed in. “Will it be okay?”
He scoffed. “As small as it is, it’s not going anywhere in this storm. The wind isn’t that crazy. But you’re not going to be able to drive it either.”
She nodded, and he glanced at the pile of stuff around her legs. The flowers were still tucked into her lap, and she had wrapped her arms around herself, kicking the heat up as high as it would go. He cracked a window, ignoring her little huff of protest, and slowly eased the car back on the road. The tires slid before finding traction, and he groaned as the radio completely cut out.
“Is this a good idea?” Misha hissed.
“Like playing in a field before a massive blizzard? No, not really.”
“I needed to let off some steam,” she sniped. There was a beat of silence as he maneuvered the SUV carefully toward the road, which was damn near impossible to see as the snow came down harder. If this turned into a whiteout, no amount of headlights or careful driving would make a difference. They would get stuck.
“I’m sorry about your wife,” Misha continued softly, and his hands flexed on the wheel at her words. “I didn’t know.”
“You aren’t supposed to. At least not yet. I don’t share my personal business for a reason.”
“But…” her voice trailed off, the little chatter of her teeth fading. “You planned to tell me?”
“Not like this!” he growled, pausing to pinch the bridge of his nose. He needed to focus instead of getting frustrated with her, because that was the only way they’d get back to the Ranch in one piece. “I don’t talk about her a lot. I love her but the memory is painful.”
“Was it recent?”
“No. We were married when I was nineteen, she was twenty-three. Yvonne shone everywhere she went. She passed when I was barely twenty-one.”
He heard her sharp breath, acknowledging that even though he was on the cusp of forty now, he hadn’t been married in almost two decades. “I’m so sorry.”
“I don’t want your apologies, Misha.” He sighed. “Or your pity or anything else. It was tragic, but it was a long time ago. Yvonne’s grave is in the UK. Her parents requested that since we only lived in the States part time. Occasionally during travel Laurent’s jobs take us close by, and I go visit her grave.”
The silence in the car spoke volumes. Finally Misha had nothing to say, and he almost wished she did again. Anything to drown out the feelings of pity and regret that started to pick at his brain. He missed Yvonne, but he’d made peace with the accident. Talking about it now though, with Misha, made it feel raw and brand new again.
Her hand landed on his wrist, and he stiffened at the touch. He was already struggling against the wind to keep them driving straight-ish up the road, and he knew there wasn’t much more to drive through but it was slow moving in the snow and ice.
“I’m sorry you lost her.”
The words were sincere, less awkward than a moment ago, and his chest tightened at her words. He didn’t talk about Yvonne with many people anymore, and listening to Misha speak of her was strange since he hadn’t gotten to tell her from the start.
“She passed in a car accident,” he admitted, carefully working the SUV around a bend. “A careless driver t-boned her. She died instantly from impact with a pole. It was mostly painless for her, which I’m grateful for. I was… away with Laurent. He was just starting to travel significantly more and Yvonne was busy with school, so she was okay with me traveling for a few weeks at a time to test the job. I was in Finland with him when it happened, and he jetted us home so I could identify her at the morgue.”
Misha hissed a breath. “I can’t imagine.”
“No, but it’s not the type of thing you want to do,” he continued. “And I don’t want you to know what that’s like. Yvonne is gone but I still think about her. She was an important part of my life.”
“And I threw a fit about her,” Misha replied, and he heard her groan in the passenger seat. “How mature of me.”
“You didn’t know,” he repeated. “But before you lose your shit on me over something, ask. I don’t have many secrets unless it has to do with my job, and that’s only because of security. Yvonne is a past that I loved, and still do, but she wasn’t going to ever be an issue today in the present either.”
“Of course.”
The wind whistled by, and in the distance he finally spotted the Ranch. The lights were on further away, and the big wrought-iron gate was covered in snow but still visible in the distance. The guard shack to check in had the light on, and he felt bad for anyone who had to sit out here in the storm. He glanced at Misha, but she’d grown silent. She’d said her piece like he had his, and now he needed to know if she could love him even with the truth laid bare between them.