Kiss & Tell. Alison Kent

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      April…

      “AN APPELLATE RULING has paved the way for a retrial in the case of Baltimore businessman E. Marshall Gordon. The CEO of EMG Enterprises was the fifth member of the board of directors to face charges of conspiracy to commit fraud related to EMG’s off-the-book partnerships. More on that in our national news segment after the break.

      “And coming up in our celebrity beat, we have the latest from Max Savage on Colorado congressman Teddy Eagleton’s recent divorce from his wife of twelve years, and his romantic connection to Ravyn Black, the lead singer of the chart-topping emo band Evermore—”

      “Enough, already.” Corinne Sparks reached to flip off the small television set she kept in the back room at Under the Mistletoe, almost knocking over a glass vase of hyacinths and lilies as she did.

      Miranda Kelly, Corinne’s employer and owner of the flower shop in the resort town of Mistletoe, Colorado, had been seconds from doing the same thing. Neither one of them enjoyed seeing pieces of their lives on the news, and to be mentioned that way, one on top of the other—first her ex-husband, then Corinne’s estranged daughter—was too much.

      “Tell me about it.” Miranda had been intent on using the quiet spring day for bookkeeping, but the specter of her past impinging on her present allowed room for little else in her head. “I left Baltimore so I wouldn’t have to be bombarded by the media’s obsession with everything related to Marshall. I sure don’t want to think about him while I’m paying bills.”

      Frowning, Corinne resituated two of the lilies that had slipped in the close call. “I thought you left because the SOB couldn’t keep his zipper zipped.”

      Well, there was that, thought Miranda, swiveling on the bar stool she used at the short end of the long L-shaped worktable that served as a desk. “That’s why I divorced him. And seeing his face every time I turn on the news these days reminds me how stupid I was to marry him in the first place.”

      “He wasn’t a cheater when you married him,” Corinne reminded her.

      “Pfft. He obviously had it in him to be one.” Miranda paused and tapped her pencil on the table’s surface, feeling an unexpected pang of hurt at the memory of Marshall’s infidelity. Logical or not, that pained her more than his criminal acts. “But I can tell you for a fact that the gossip sheets got it wrong. He did not go looking for sex elsewhere because he wasn’t getting any at home.”

      “You’re preaching to the gossip-loathing choir here,” Corinne said, setting the finished arrangement in the refrigerated storage case for a late-afternoon delivery. “I know firsthand how much garbage gets printed as truth. Then again, in Brenna’s case, a lot of the garbage is the truth.”

      Corinne had been working at the flower shop for five years now, ever since Miranda had moved back to the small Rocky Mountain town where she’d grown up, and bought the business from its retiring owners.

      She and Corinne had been good friends long enough for Miranda to know the extent of the conjecture printed about her employee’s daughter, as well as the grief Brenna Sparks—the very same Ravyn Black mentioned in the Max Savage news segment—had caused Corinne. It was enough grief to bring about mother and daughter’s current alienation.

      But since the television mention gave Miranda the opening, she took advantage and voiced what had been on her mind. “I’d been wondering when the congressman’s divorce was going to be final.”

      “Such a proud moment, too,” Corinne said with a snort, “having to face that your daughter lacks the decency to keep her hands off a married man.”

      And now Teddy Eagleton wasn’t married. Miranda sighed. “Ravyn—Brenna’s an adult. She’s been on her own for a long time now. And she’s the one who’ll have to answer for the things she’s done.”

      “Really? Because she hasn’t had to answer for much of anything yet.” Corinne returned to her end of the worktable and flipped through the rest of the sale tickets to make certain she’d completed the day’s most pressing orders. “And, unlike your ex, I wonder if she ever will.”

      Miranda knew Corinne was talking about the money she’d sent her daughter for college expenses—four years’ worth of lab fees, textbooks, tuition for extra classes when Brenna had pretended to change her majors, as well as room and board. The money had been spent instead on funding her band.

      Brenna had paid for equipment and instruments, a practice room, stage clothes and traveling, not even completing her first semester, and making Corinne feel like a fool—especially since Brenna had bribed her little sister Zoe to intercept mail sent by the university in Washington State in order to keep their mother from discovering the truth.

      Miranda knew, too, that several times over the past six years—since Evermore’s first album had hit it big—Brenna had tried to pay back her mother the money she’d stolen, and that Corinne had refused it, wanting nothing to do with what she called her daughter’s ill-gotten gains.

      It wasn’t hard for Miranda to understand Corinne’s feelings…except that it was. Brenna’s “unexpected needs” had depleted the girls’ college fund, and Corinne was now struggling to find what Zoe would require for the basics as a freshman next year. She was struggling, too, with trusting Zoe, who’d been just as culpable as Brenna.

      “Will you have to testify at the retrial?”

      Corinne’s question snapped Miranda out of her reverie and dropped her back into the pit of worry she’d been doing a fairly good job of steering clear of. “I don’t know. My attorney says there’s a good chance I will, but he’s doing all he can to keep it from happening. Trust me, if I have to fly into Baltimore, I’m going to fly out as fast as I can.”

      “You know, I’m surprised there haven’t been more reporters snooping around, seeing how this is your family’s home.”

      “You and me both.” Not that they’d have an easy time finding her; when she’d returned to Mistletoe, she’d legally taken her mother’s maiden name for her own—a protective measure she’d felt necessary at the time.

      Corinne went on. “I figured the ones hungry enough for a statement would at least make the effort. Especially considering the scope of your ex’s crimes.”

      A scope that had cost thousands of EMG employees their pensions and almost as many investors everything they’d owned. “Marshall was always a big believer in the grand scale. The more money, the more power, the more covers on Forbes the better.”

      “Or at least he was a big believer until he was sentenced to all those big years. I guess that was one grand scale he never saw coming.” Corinne tore her copy of the next ticket from the order book and turned to study the shelf of vases, choosing an elegantly flared one of cut crystal. “You think the outcome will be any different this time?”

      Miranda turned back to her laptop. Like her employee, she had work to do. “As far as him being guilty or innocent? No. But it better be different in that this time it sticks. I don’t want to look up every five years to find a reporter sticking a microphone and camera in my face.”

      1

      November…

      MISTLETOE, COLORADO’S

       THE INN AT SNOW FALLS

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