A Fairbanks Affair (An Odds-Are-Good Standalone Romance, #3) Read online

  On the day I got my driver’s license, Harriet lost her first tooth.

  When I graduated from undergrad, she was just finishing grade school.

  And when our parents passed away, I was too busy with school and dealing with my own terrible grief to help her with hers.

  When she was between the ages of twelve and eighteen, I made sure she had annual doctor and dentist appointments, wonderful summer camp experiences, and capable babysitters to be her companions whenever she was home for longer stretches. But are we close? No. We’re not. We never have been.

  “You’ve got your ticket for Vail?” I ask her.

  “Mm-hm. Carlene e-mailed it to me.”

  Carlene is my assistant, and I’ve overheard them on the phone together more than once. I’m fairly certain that she and Harry are more like sisters than Harriet and I will ever be.

  “First class?”

  “I didn’t check, but...oh yes. Thanks, Faye.”

  “Of course. I sent your gifts to the address you gave me,” I tell her. “And I included a host gift, as well. It’s a Tiffany vase. Please see that your friend’s mother receives it.”

  “Sure.” She pauses for a second. “Are you—I mean, do you have plans? What are you going to do for Christmas?”

  Across the room I spy my purse, sitting on the desk in my bedroom where I opened my laptop a few hours ago. “I may travel a bit.”

  “Oh! Oh, that’s great, Faye.”

  There’s relief in my little sister’s voice, and it surprises me a little.

  “Were you worried about me, Harriet?”

  “Not really. You’re so...independent. I just—well, I’m glad you’re going somewhere, doing something. To celebrate. It’s good. Where are you headed?”

  “We’re trying to acquire a distillery in Alaska,” I say. “I may go have a peek at it.”

  Her tone dips drastically. “Oh.”

  “What?”

  “You’re working.”

  “A little, yes.”

  “I thought—I mean, I hoped—you were doing something just for you.”

  “I am doing something just for me.”

  “Actually, it sounds like you’re traveling for Findley Imports.”

  “Is that a bad thing?”

  My sister pauses for a second before speaking. “Not bad, per se. But it’s your whole life. It has been, ever since Mommy and Daddy passed away.”

  “I think our father would have wanted it that way,” I tell her. “I could have shirked my responsibility, I suppose, but think of how disappointed he would have been. He and Grandpa built Findley Imports from the ground up. The least I could do is—”

  “Fine, Faye! You win. You win.”

  I furrow my eyebrows. “Is this a win-or-lose situation?”

  “No. It’s just—forget it,” she says. “I hope you have a nice time wherever you’re going.”

  “Me too.”

  “You said Alaska, right? Where? Anchorage?”

  “Fairbanks area,” I say, taking another sip of wine and reminding myself to speak to Carlene about having our acquisitions department reach out to this vineyard. It’s damn good. We should be selling it.

  “You seem busy,” says Harriet. “I’ll let you go.”

  “Right. I’ll call on Christmas...Not to bother you. Just for a quick hello.”

  “It doesn’t bother me when you call,” she says, her voice soft and frustrated.

  “Well, I wouldn’t want to interfere with your plans,” I tell her. Something inside me pinches a little, but I don’t know why, and I’m really not interested in rooting around in my psyche to create a problem where there is none. I make sure my voice is crisp and upbeat when I add, “Be a good houseguest.”

  “I will.”

  “And safe travels.”

  “You too, Faye,” she says. “Merry Christmas.”

  “Yes, of course. Merry Christmas, Harriet,” I finish, lowering the phone from my ear and hanging up.

  I place the phone on the arm of the loveseat, staring at it for a second as I realize how quiet the house is.

  I live in a Greek Revival mansion, built in the 1870s, when Newton became one of the first bustling suburbs of Boston. Two years after my parents died, I finally decided I’d had enough of apartment living, and when this house, located on Valentine Street and sporting original murals in the upstairs hallway, became available, I snatched it up right away. But with three floors, five bedrooms, and six thousand square feet of space, it’s a ridiculous size for a single woman.

  I should sell it, I think.

  But where would I go then? Back to the city? Ugh. No. Maybe just to a smaller house in Newton, with just enough space for me and Harriet, on the occasional weekend that she wants to come and visit.

  A dreadful melancholy washes over me as I consider the prospect of downsizing.

  I don’t know that I ever thought of getting married and raising children in this house, but maybe I did—somewhere in the back of my mind—when I purchased it. I was naïve at the time, however, and didn’t realize the sheer number of hours it would take to keep my father’s company alive and thriving. Well...that, and I quickly learned that men are intimidated by powerful, successful women. My dating life since taking over Findley Imports as CEO and president has been...negligible.

  Again, my eyes land on my purse, and I cross the large bedroom to open the bag and pull out the magazine I stole from Dr. Lafferty’s office this morning. Opening it properly, I learn from the cover that publication is called The Odds Are Good, and the tagline reads, “The goods are odd, but the odds are good!” Indeed.

  Flipping through it as I finish my glass of cabernet, I quickly gather that this is a publication for Alaskan men seeking all manner of company from women in the Lower Forty-Eight. There are ads seeking girlfriends, sex partners, boyfriends, and even wives. I read a three-page story about a salmon fisherman in Ketchikan who’s ready to settle down, and a two-page spread about a state trooper in Sitka who successfully found love via an Odds Are Good ad.

  Finally, I flip to the end, where smaller ads are arranged in Personals and Classifieds, and my eyes are immediately drawn to Mr. Fairbanks’ short and neat proposition.

  My cheeks flush as I consider writing back to him, but I already know I’m going to. I have the same fluttering in my stomach that I sometimes get before I make a huge acquisition or substantial investment. Excitement. Fear. The thrill of making a brash decision that could pay off big. It’s just that I generally make such bold moves in business, not in my personal life.

  Not that I won’t, like any good businesswoman, take some steps to mitigate my risk:

  First, I don’t plan to use my real name. I’ll use a variation on my first name—Faith, instead of Faye—and my mother’s maiden name, Crawford, as a surname. Since Crawford is also my middle name, it isn’t really lying, right? Right.

  Second, If I’m chosen, I will insist on seeing actual medical records to back up Mr. Fairbanks’ claims of being “clean,” and I will offer to send the same to him, not that he need worry.

  And third, I do not require any remuneration for my travels, though he’s welcome to pay for our hotel room if it pleases him.

  My feelings about my virginity are...complicated, but I’ll not allow them to shanghai this experience away from me. I’ll answer the ad tonight and deal with them between now and meeting Mr. Fairbanks. After all, I might not even be chosen.

  Luckily, I have just the right picture to send. It was taken by Harriet last summer while we were sailing off the coast of Nantucket. I’m tall and tan, with my rosewood-colored hair unbound, the dark tresses flying back in the breeze as the sun picks out the natural red highlights. Because my sailing clothes had gotten soaked, necessitating a change I’d forgotten to bring, I’d borrowed an outfit from Harry: I’m wearing my white oversized Chanel sunglasses, with Harriet’s white bikini top and cutoff denim shorts.

  On a regular day, I look nothing like the girl in the ph
oto whatsoever.

  But it is my favorite picture of myself.

  I keep it in my desk, and sometimes I take it out and look at it, knowing it’s me and yet marveling at how completely different I appear: young and fun and carefree. And sometimes, when I’m being completely honest, I’ll admit to myself that the girl in the photo looks like someone I wish I could be.

  I pull my laptop from the coffee table in front of me, trading it for my empty wineglass, and settle the computer on my lap as it boots up. Then I open the internet, click on my e-mail program, enter in the address accompanying Mr. Fairbanks’ ad, and begin typing.

  Chapter 2

  Trevor

  Of all the responses I received to my ad—and there were over a hundred—there is one that captures my attention more than any of the others.

  It arrived yesterday, later than the rest, and the woman who wrote it used careful, grammatically perfect English, giving a thoughtful response to my ad without being crude or tawdry. Bearing in mind that most of the other responses eschewed tasteful euphemisms for “dirty” language—perhaps the frankness of my proposition led them to believe I would embrace such vulgarity?—hers stands out among them.

  I stare at the picture of the girl on the boat for the twentieth time today.

  There’s something about her, standing on the front deck of a sailboat with the wind blowing through her hair. I can’t tell where the picture was taken, but it doesn’t matter. I just wish I was standing beside her.

  My brother Baz walks into my office at North Star Spirits. “Did we decide on the label for the vanilla-infused vodka?”

  “Not yet.”

  He holds up two differently designed vodka bottles. “Vanilla bean or ice cream cone?”

  I glance up. “Neither. I hate them both.”

  “Want me to try whipped cream?”

  “Yuck. It’ll look cheap, Baz. Our product is high end. Classy.”

  “Then we go with the vanilla bean. Stoli, Skyy, and Smirnoff do the bean on their vanilla bottles.”

  “Then it’s being overdone.”

  “A thousand problems and not one solution,” my brother gripes.

  It was my grandfather’s favorite catchphrase when someone had a lot of complaints but no suggestions for making things better.

  “Just...give me a second.” I close my eyes and think of vanilla...sweet, festive, a little bit sexy. I open my eyes and snap my fingers. “How about...cream-colored silk?”

  “Like a ribbon?”

  “Or a scarf. Yeah. Circling the bottle.”

  “Could work,” says Baz. “And I don’t think anyone else is doing it.”

  “There we go. My work here is done,” I say, sliding my eyes back to Faith Crawford.

  “What have you been doing in here all morning?” asks Baz, circling my desk before I can minimize the photo. “Whoa. Who’s that?”

  “Faith Crawford.”

  “How do you know her?”

  “I don’t,” I say too quickly. Shoot! I do not need for my brother to know that I placed a personal ad for female companionship. He’d never let me live it down. “The, uh, the PR company in San Francisco sent over some headshots for a possible spokesperson.”

  “Hmm. Well...I get the appeal, but I don’t think she works. She’s too young and flirty,” says Baz. “We need someone with more gravitas. Weren’t we leaning toward the middle-aged man concept they pitched us?”

  “Yeah,” I say.

  He’s correct—Faith Crawford is young, flirty, and utterly mouth-watering but is not right for our upcoming campaign whatsoever.

  “She’s pretty,” he adds.

  Actually, she’s not pretty. She’s beautiful. One of the most beautiful, effortlessly classy women I’ve ever seen.

  Baz leans closer. “But she looks really expensive.”

  “What does that mean?” I ask, though his answer is irrelevant. I don’t care if she’s “expensive.” She’s the woman with whom I want to spend New Year’s weekend.

  He flicks his fingers at the screen. “Chanel sunglasses. And unless I’m mistaken, which I’m not, that watch is a Longines with a diamond bezel. If Chanel or Longines is paying her to do their ads, she’s probably out of our budget, bro.”

  “How do you have room in your brain for all that random shit?” I demand.

  He shrugs. My little brother’s photographic memory means that he is full of extraneous information.

  “Then again,” Baz continues, “if you want to go in a different direction, and go for a more sexy campaign, Cez and I won’t stand in your way.”

  I own fifty-one percent of North Star Spirits, but the other forty-nine percent of my company is split between my twin brothers, Basil, whom we call “Baz,” and Cecil, whom we call “Cez,” pronounced like “cease.” They each have an almost one-quarter share in the company I started.

  “Speaking of the devil’s spawn, how’s he doing?” I ask, minimizing Faith Crawford’s photo and moving on to less pleasant matters.

  “If he’s the devil’s spawn, then we are too. We were all spawned in the same place,” says Baz, stepping away from my desk to sit in one of the guest chairs across from me. I stare at Baz until he squirms and says, “I’m not on his side, Trev.”

  “Are you on mine?”

  “What Cez did was wrong, but—”

  “But he’s your twin. I’m just your brother.”

  “You’re both my brothers!” Baz’s face registers frustration before he looks away from me, taking a deep breath and sighing. “Wasn’t it—at least partially—Marlena’s fault too?”

  I nod. “Yep. Sure was.”

  “But Cez is the one you banished.”

  “I didn’t banish him, Johnny-drama.”

  “You broke two of his ribs, said that you weren’t brothers anymore, and told him never to show his face in Fairbanks again as long as you lived.”

  “I said never to show his face in my distillery again.”

  “Same difference.”

  “Baz! He slept with my fiancée—”

  “I know.”

  “—on the night before my wedding—”

  “I know.”

  “—and got her pregnant!”

  “I know!” yells Baz, clenching his jaw before looking away from me. “It sucks.”

  “Cez sucks,” I say. “He is—was—my brother! He should have kept his hands off what was mine!”

  “‘What was mine’? Do you hear yourself? What woman wants to be with a man who thinks of her as his property, Trev?”

  My eyes pop out of my head. “Oh, so this is my fault?”

  “Maybe. Some of it. Are you sure you and Marlena had the healthiest relationship?”

  “I don’t know, Baz. All I know is that I didn’t fuck my brother’s fiancée.”

  Baz’s shoulders slump as he sighs.

  “Cez was my brother...my flesh and blood!”

  I blink at Baz, my chest aching and eyes burning. It’s been over six months, but discussing Cecil’s betrayal still cuts deep and hurts really fucking bad.

  “So is the baby she’s carrying,” says Baz softly. “He or she is your flesh and blood too.”

  I inhale sharply. I don’t know if I’ll ever be ready for a conversation about Cez and Marlena’s child. I can barely talk about what my brother and fiancée did, let alone the result. I exhale slowly and flick a glance at the two bottles Baz deposited on the corner of my desk.

  “I want to see a mock-up of the opaque bottle with the cream silk. When can you have it ready?”

  Baz leans forward. “Trevor. Can we please talk about this?”

  “Why?”

  “Because...I know you hate him right now, and I know he deserves your anger. He betrayed you. It’s true. There’s no way around it. But Trev, he’s our brother. He’s sorry. He wants to talk.”

  I stare at Baz with dead eyes. “No.”

  “Come on. It’s almost Christmas. You haven’t seen him since June.”

  �
�I don’t give a shit.”

  Baz purses his lips, then says, “I promised I wouldn’t say anything, but...Mom and Dad invited Cez and Marlena to stop by on Christmas Eve.”

  My mouth drops open. “What the fuck? They invited him?”

  He shrugs. “Marlena’s carrying their grandchild, Trev.”

  I can’t handle this. My head’s going to explode.

  “Well, then you can tell Mom and Dad I won’t be there for Christmas Eve.”

  “Come on,” says Baz, sighing long and hard. “Mom’s going to kill me for telling you.”

  “Luckily, you’re her favorite,” I say. “I’m sorry to get you into trouble, but thank you for letting me know.”

  “Reconsider, Trev. Just think about coming?”

  “No,” I say again, shuffling around some papers on my desk. “Get me that mock-up when you can, huh?”

  My brother stands up, pushing the guest chair under the lip of my desk and taking his two bottles with him. When he gets to the door of my office, he turns around.

  “He loves you, Trev.”

  “Fuck him.”

  “He does. He loves you.”

  “He has a funny way of showing it.”

  “You can’t hate him forever.”

  “Maybe not,” I say softly, “but I can’t ever trust him again either.”

  Baz winces, then nods like he understands, pulling the door shut behind him as he leaves.

  I spin around in my chair, looking through a large plate-glass window over the North Star Tasting Room, where we welcome visitors to try our various vodkas. Right now, there are four women clustered on one side of the bar and a couple sitting side by side on two barstools. I stare at the couple for a second, remembering not so long ago when I was half of a couple too.

  Marlena Hopkins and I met in the emergency room of Fairbanks Memorial Hospital three years ago, when I came in with a dislocated shoulder and she was one of the nurses on duty. With blonde curls and bright-blue eyes, set off by the ice-blue color of her scrubs, I was smitten before the doctor even came in, and I had her number in my pocket before I left.

  Twenty-two to my twenty-seven, Marlena was bubbly, sweet, and young. Though she’d grown up in Portland and graduated from the University of Oregon, she’d taken a job in Fairbanks because she thought Alaska would be exciting.