Good elf gone wrong a ho.., p.15
Good Elf Gone Wrong: A Holiday Romantic Comedy, page 15
Grace swallowed.
“Are you going to collapse on me?” I asked her.
“No.”
“Good girl. Now get decorating. We want done, not perfect.”
Gracie hurried back to the venue then paused and glanced back at me over her shoulder.
“You’re pretty good at motivational speeches.”
“Your tax dollars at work,” I said dryly.
Through the large factory windows, I watched Gracie determinedly decorate for her sister’s holiday wedding.
The sky was quickly darkening—the sun went down early this far north—and I moved the logs into the cone of light from a nearby light pole. I could chop wood in my sleep. When I was a teenager, I basically had. It got cold in New England. The wood-burning fireplace in the ancient mansion was our only source of warmth. We’d had to sleep like puppies to keep from freezing, and I’d always had to set alarms to make sure to feed the fire.
“That’s not you anymore,” I reminded myself.
Yeah, because one Christmas Eve the fucking house had burned down.
I brought the axe down hard on the log, splitting the cold air with a sharp crack.
I shouldn’t be thinking about it. I should just get over it.
That day had been the last time I’d seen my mother. She had been screaming, throwing things at me as the firemen had milled around, spraying the giant hose on the flames.
I hadn’t known what to do. She kept telling the police I’d burned the house down on purpose, that I was a murderer.
“You are a bad person,” I reminded myself as the axe fell on the half-moon of log, covered by a light dusting of snow.
“You’re going to take some innocent girl’s virginity.”
You don’t have to.
But I did.
The thing with blending in was maintaining expected patterns. If walking into an office, pretend like you belong, wear an orange vest, a button-down shirt with a name patch, and carry a clipboard and a ladder.
People expected maintenance men to be around and were trained to ignore them, even if they seemed slightly confused, because, well, that’s normal. If, by contrast, you showed up in a suit at a banking office and started wandering around then, people were going to notice and home their attention on you, ask you who you were, if you’re there for a meeting. Scrutiny ruined missions.
If Gracie’s family thought we weren’t sleeping together, if they never saw me kiss her or saw us with our hands all over each other, then we would be going against the expected pattern of a bad boy and good girl gone wrong.
It was clear I wasn’t going to get in her laptop anytime soon. I had to escalate in order to not blow my cover.
“Gracie is not a girl. She’s a grown woman,” I reminded myself.
Yeah, a full-grown woman with huge tits and soft thighs.
If she doesn’t lose it with you, I tried to rationalize, she might with James. She’s so desperate for a husband and family, she’s got blinders on.
Snow crunched behind me, and I jumped out of my skin.
I strangled a curse and whirled around, furious that I’d allowed myself to be so consumed with thoughts of Gracie that I hadn’t noticed someone sneaking up on me.
“I don’t have the fucking patience,” I snarled.
Gracie skittered backward, almost falling down.
I grabbed her before she could trip over a nearby piece of firewood.
“I just wanted to see if you were hungry. I can see if Uber Eats delivers out here.”
“They won’t.” I stated, swinging the axe and splitting another log. “There’s a great Philly cheesesteak place near here,” I told her, trying to keep my tone even. “They serve the few factory workers left in the area, plus they stay open late after servers get off the restaurant shifts. It’s likely the only place open. It’s not a fancy new caviar dish, but they have pretty good fries. They’re not going to deliver for just anyone, but Gio and I go way back.”
Gracie reached up on her toes and wrapped her arms around my neck.
“Thank you. That sounds wonderful.”
I had a sudden awful desire to kiss her right there in the swirls of snow.
I pushed her off.
She seemed slightly hurt.
“There’s no audience,” I said, my tone harsh to my ears. “So don’t pretend to be my girlfriend.”
“Right,” she said. “Well, thanks for the food.”
“I’ll bill you your half.” I turned back to the wood.
“Oh, of course.”
You are such an asshole.
20
GRACIE
I shouldn’t have been so taken aback that Hudson would want me to pay for my share of dinner. He’d just heard my mom talk about eating caviar at the country club, not to mention he was telling me about a cheesesteak place only people who worked minimum wage jobs knew about. This was all after I’d spent way too much money on dog treats.
“Hudson thinks I’m a spoiled princess,” I said miserably.
“You can’t seriously be falling for this guy,” Dakota said. “He is not at all your type. He must really have a magical D.”
The dull thudding sound of Hudson chopping wood outside in the cold sounded through the windows.
I sat down on a bench and looked around the venue. We’d made progress, just not enough.
“I’m going to tell my mom to make everyone come back,” Dakota told me.
“It won’t help. I’m going to have to chase after everyone to make sure they’re doing it right then have to redo it myself anyway,” I said dejectedly.
Thud.
Outside, the axe continued to fall.
“Just peace the fuck out,” Dakota insisted. “We can steal Hudson’s truck and just drive. Shoot, we could go back to the city, give Kelly a taste of her own medicine.”
We both looked out the window to where Hudson was in his T-shirt, chopping wood.
“I feel like he’s just showing off,” Dakota mused as we watched him, body twisting like a dancer’s as he split the heavy logs.
“He’s had a stressful day,” I said, wincing as the log split with a crack. “He probably needs to blow off the steam. Or maybe having him chop several cords of wood is the thing that is going to send him over the edge. Who knows?”
“Aw, so you weren’t losing the V-card. Or wait—did you, and that’s why he’s stressed out?”
“Shhh,” I hissed at Dakota. “No one can know.”
Though I had promised my parents to not give it away like my sister did, I assumed that they and the rest of my family thought that I had lost my V-card eventually.
Little did they know that I carried that bit of repressed toxicity with me. Now I was coming up on thirty, and I was sure they would like to believe I’d already lost it because otherwise it was a pretty big red flag on my part. Yet here I was, all alone at my sister’s wedding venue, lusting after a man who I had paid to be my fake boyfriend.
“Does he know?” Dakota asked, eyes wide.
“Yes,” I admitted, “and I think he hates me for it.”
“You hired him, so what does he care?”
“I don’t know,” I whimpered, remembering the coldness in his eyes.
Gran was thankfully asleep, the eggnog and rum doing their job.
“I don’t want to sleep with him. At all. Like you said, Hudson is not my type. I do not find him attractive, and, unlike the rest of the women in this town, I don’t stare at a photo of his naked penis.”
Dakota snickered.
“You said penis.”
“Two master’s degrees, and she’s an eight-year-old boy at heart.” I stood up and grabbed a nearby box of Christmas lights.
Dakota sighed and climbed back on the ladder.
“You slept next to his naked body. I cannot believe you didn’t cop a feel. If you’re going to go to the trouble of paying a hot guy to be your sexy motorcycle-leather-wearing daddy, then you should get your money’s worth.”
“It would be completely unethical and immoral to sleep with Hudson,” I told her in a low voice as we strung up the Christmas lights in even loops along the brick walls. “He works for me.”
“Weren’t you telling me how he seems very insistent that you two needed to do the nasty?”
“That was before I told him … you know.”
My cousin shook her head. “You seriously need to keep that information under wraps. You cannot keep telling your boyfriends you’re an inexperienced virgin.”
“Hudson is an employee of sorts. He needed to know.”
“James didn’t.”
“I had to have a reason I wasn’t putting out,” I hissed.
“Or you could have taken it as a sign that the two of you were not meant to be together.”
“He thought it was exciting that he was going to deflower me on our wedding night.”
“Gross. Big waving bright-red flag, Gracie,” Dakota warned. “If you had told me that last year, I would have run over him with my car.”
The door to the venue opened, letting in the winter chill.
Hudson stalked over to me, large paper sack in hand.
“Dinner’s here.” He set the bag on the table and opened it.
My mouth watered at the smell of french fries, fried beef, Cheez Whiz, and fried onions filling the air.
“I got everyone a Coke,” he added.
“A Coke,” Dakota said dreamily beside me.
“Is there any more rum?” Granny Murray sat up from one of the velvet couches.
“Gran, come have some french fries,” I urged the elderly woman as, bones creaking, she slowly stood up.
“I ordered her a cheesesteak,” Hudson told me, still cold and distant, not like how he was earlier that afternoon, where if you squinted, he almost felt like a boyfriend.
Not your type. Bad boys are not your type, I repeated, moving the garland off of one of the tables, spreading out a table runner, and making a quick centerpiece from sprigs of garland and a few candles. “Where’s the cigarette lighter?”
Hudson pulled a metal one out of his pocket. “This is unnecessary.”
“Just because it’s cheesesteak doesn’t mean we can’t be civilized,” I argued.
He snorted and pulled out a cheesesteak, unwrapped it, and took a huge bite.
“But where’s the rum?” Granny Murray mumbled, sitting down at the table.
“She masturbates to Pirates of the Caribbean,” I told Hudson, handing out the Christmas plates and cloth napkins. “Just ignore her.”
Hudson inhaled the bite of cheesesteak.
I whacked him on the back while he coughed.
“That’s why you need to sit down and eat.”
He pulled out a chair next to Granny Murray.
I gave each person a helping of fries.
“Damn, these are better than sex in the back of a pickup,” Granny Murray said, stuffing several in her mouth.
“Gran, this is a nice dinner,” I warned.
“Damn right. I love cheesesteaks,” Granny Murray said happily as I handed her a sandwich and sat down, spreading the cloth napkin over my lap. “My ex-husband, that bastard, hated them. I think they’re great because I don’t need my teeth in to eat them.”
She popped her false teeth out of her mouth and set them in a snowman candy dish.
Hudson stoically ate his food. He was unlike the soft, refined young men I’d gone to private school with who used fish knives and got mad if their wine was the incorrect vintage.
I gave him more fries, and he wolfed them down like someone was going to take them from him.
“Does he eat pussy like that?” Granny Murray stage-whispered to me.
“This is the worst Christmas ever,” I said to the ceiling.
Hudson wiped his mouth with the back of his sleeve, took a long swig of Coke from the paper cup, then stood up.
I had barely made it through a third of my cheesesteak.
“Heading back to work already? Don’t you want me to give you a back massage first?” Granny Murray offered, pouring the rest of the bottle of rum Hudson had brought into her Coke cup.
“I’ll have to finish up,” he said, “to keep up with Gracie. Did you secretly blackmail Santa’s elves to come help you?” He inclined his head to the decorations.
“Oh!” I said brightly. “We still have a lot to do, but do you think it looks nice?”
“Nicer than your sister deserves,” Granny Murray said loudly.
That earned her a small smile from Hudson.
“It wasn’t too difficult to get all the bones in,” I said. This was how I decorated for my wedding around this time last year.
Hudson’s face was cold.
He didn’t have to say it; I could practically hear him thinking it:
Pathetic.
21
HUDSON
“It is the great irony of our time that you are making more progress on the fake job as opposed to the one I am paying you real money for.”
Grayson sounded, not angry, but just a knife’s edge away from it, which was somehow more unnerving.
I knew who his father was: I made a point of knowing all my clients before taking their money, and the ability to do terrible things to people was hard-coded into his DNA.
“It’s part of the plan.”
“Jake tells me that you went shopping with her yesterday and spent all night decorating. Are you having a midlife crisis?”
“I’m not middle-aged.”
“In your line of work you are.”
“My brothers aren’t supposed to be interfacing with you,” I said tersely, trying to keep the anger out of my voice.
Even though Jake was technically a grown man, he was always going to be my little brother, and no one fucked with my little brothers. I didn’t care how much money they had.
“Relax,” Grayson said. “Whatever you think of me, I’m not coming after your brothers. However, I want you to deliver me EnerCheck with a stake through its heart.”
While Grayson might sneer at decorating a wedding venue, after seeing her interact with her family then pull magazine-worthy décor out of thin air, it was more clear to me than ever that I was on the right track, and Gracie was the key to taking down her family. The rest of them were completely useless.
She’d have to go into her family’s office eventually. They couldn’t resist making her do free work. If I hung around her, with a little bit of a nudge, she’d invite me along too. Then I’d grab all the evidence and send Grayson a bill for a seven-figure amount.
Merry Christmas to me.
Speaking of Christmas ...
“What are you going to wear?”
“Get off of my bed,” I yelled at Talbot as I toweled my hair.
“You’re not wearing a suit?” Anderson asked as I threw a pair of black jeans on the bed.
“I don’t know why you all are here. Do you not have anything to do?”
“It Christmas, Mr. Scrooge,” Jake said in a terrible British accent.
Lawrence stuffed a handful of condoms in the jacket pocket. “I am not ready to be an uncle yet.”
I sighed and pulled them back out before shrugging on the jacket, letting it settle around my shoulders like armor. I’d gone to a high-society party before, real Manhattan high-society parties, not Maplewood Falls high society. Still this was my hometown, and old childhood hurts never seemed to heal.
They were going to look down their noses at me.
That’s the point. The best disguise is other people’s prejudices.
“Not the hat, please. Have some class,” Talbot said as I reached for the black ski hat.
“I’m working, not going on a date.”
“We know how irresistible you are to women,” he said as I tied up my boots.
“Besides, you’ve been on edge lately. It could be a win-win. You could hurry this job along and blow off some steam.”
Hook up with Gracie?
No, that wasn’t what virgins did, right? She would be expecting me to, I don’t know, make love to her, tell her how precious she was to me, make her feel safe and cared for.
That was not the kind of sex I had.
It was not the first time I’d done sexual stuff in the pursuit of a security contract. It might be the first time I felt bad about it.
“I don’t think so.”
“Come on. That’s what your target is expecting. She hired you for your looks. She’s clearly attracted to you,” Lawrence said with a smirk. “I bet you could convince her to spread her legs for you in the back of your truck.”
I punched him in the stomach, and he doubled over, sinking to the floor.
“Fuck you,” I enunciated and zipped up my jacket.
“Don’t drink too much eggnog! Be home by ten,” Anderson called as I stalked to the front door.
“Go to hell.”
22
GRACIE
“What a lovely party,” my great-aunt Myrtle was gushing at the top of her voice. Every so often, her hearing aids gave a loud, long beep.
“Where is the man of the hour?” her sister asked.
Good question. Where was James? Maybe he had found someone to cheat on Kelly with, and I could politely tell Hudson that his services were no longer needed.
“Kelly likes to make a big entrance,” I reminded my aunts. “She probably has James backstage with her.”
“That sentient lump of dried whale sperm? No, I meant him.” She lowered her voice to what I’m sure she thought was a whisper. “The one from the photo that you had sex with in a gas station dumpster.”
“Good news and misinformation sure do travel fast in our family.”
“I haven’t seen a member that big since they banned Playgirl,” her sister, Lottie, said to me. Both elderly women fanned themselves. “My sugar went sky-high when I saw that photo.”
“Aunt Myrtle!” Dakota kissed her on the cheek. “Don’t call it a member.”
“We started charging because so many of our neighbors at the retirement community wanted to see it,” Aunt Myrtle said.
