Free Mistletoe and Montana by Anna Small

 
    Chapter 1
     
     
    “Mommy, Mommy, you’re on TV!”
    Joely Burbank glanced up from the apples
she was slicing to glance at her seven year-old daughter, Molly, who stood in
front of the TV, her finger jangling as she danced up and down. Her own face
stared back at her in vivid color; her hand was raised to prevent the paparazzo
from taking her picture. The footage was a few nights old already, and showed
her leaving the swanky restaurant after her boyfriend that the media had
affectionately termed her boy toy broke up with her. She’d thought he was going
to propose, and had bought a new pair of heels she couldn’t afford. Boy, did
she feel stupid when he’d spoken the dreaded, short words right after dessert.
    She forced herself to put the knife
down. Deep breaths . But her yoga instructor’s stress relief aid didn’t
help.
    “Mommy?” Molly’s little voice cracked.
    “I’m ok. Mommy’s ok.” She opened her
eyes and smiled brightly at Molly, who’d appeared at her side. She handed Molly
a bowl of fruit and took the TV clicker from her. She changed the channel and
Molly quickly became engrossed in the cartoon that replaced the trash she’d
been watching.
    Numbness replaced the sickening fear
that had grown in the pit of her stomach since last Friday. How could she have
mistaken a break up for a proposal? Wasn’t Matt ready to start a world tour,
promoting the next installment of his teen-targeted hot vampire movie
franchise? He would never have considered throwing all that away on a
twenty…okay, thirty-something year old soap opera actress who hadn’t even made
a feature film yet.
    Her agent had assured her dating Matt
was the best thing for her career. All the tabloids wanted the inside scoop on
their life together, made glamorous by careful styling and invitations to the
hottest parties and clubs in town. Still young-looking enough to pass for her
mid-twenties, Joely plastered a smile along with her make-up and did her best
to look adoringly at Matt whenever the cameras were rolling. But inside, she
secretly wished she was still in the bleachers, cheering on her high school
sweetheart; a megastar NFL player in his own right.
    “When are we going to Daddy’s?” Molly
asked.
    Joely snapped back to the present. “In a
few days. I’m waiting to see if Sarah can take you and Ian.” Her assistant had
recently remarried, and Joely wasn’t sure if the biannual jaunt to Montana had
lost its appeal yet.
    “I want you to take us.”
    Ignoring Molly’s pout, which was hard to
do when the pout in question had a milk mustache, Joely flipped through the
contacts on her phone. “That reminds me, I need to call Daddy. Do you want to
say hello to him?”
    Molly shook her head and went back to
her cartoon. Taking a deep breath as if she were about to jump off the high
dive at the Y where she grew up, Joely pressed the call button.
    “Hey.” Ben doled out words with as much
frugality as he handled money. She imagined he glanced at his phone when her
name popped up. How was her number stored? Bitch? or Joely? Baby Mama?
    She wasn’t in the mood to pick up where
their last fight ended, and steeled herself for her four times a year phone
call to her ex-husband. “Hi, Ben. I just wanted to make sure you had the kids’
flight info. I emailed it to you…”
            “Yeah, I got
it. I’ll be there at 4pm to get them, just like I always do.”
    She hated it when he cut her off, but
couldn’t really blame him. Their divorce, when it finally came after five years
of fighting, had been ugly and hateful and splashed all over the front pages of
every supermarket tabloid in America. She didn’t understand why the private
life of a B-actress and a former NFL jock concerned anyone.
    Refusing to rise to his tone, she
mentally nodded. “OK.” She didn’t know what else to say, but added, “Ian and
Molly are really looking forward to seeing you.”
    “Like I’m the reason they only see their
dad a