Good Elf Gone Wrong: A Holiday Romantic Comedy, page 14
“All I’m saying is we don’t have to have sex,” I whispered.
“Half your family wants me strung up on the North Pole, and the other half thinks I’m a homeless drifter whom you hired to be your fake boyfriend.”
“Homeless drifters don’t know how to use whom properly,” I said, “so I highly doubt that.”
Something akin to apprehension seemed to flash in his face.
Probably related to his sudden obsession with my virginity.
“Fine. But we could fake it, right? We could pretend?”
“They’re going to know we didn’t actually do it,” he countered. “Fuck. We got lucky that they didn’t ask prying questions before. I mean, fuck, you think a penis is covered in hair.”
“They could be.” I felt sick.
“No,” he said, shaking his head. “No, they are not.”
“You think that just because I made a choice that works for me that it means there’s something wrong with me,” I cried. “I mean, I know there’s something wrong with me. James said so. He said he was going to tell everyone. That’s why I didn’t make a big stink about him and Kelly.”
Hudson blew out a breath, cursed, closed his eyes, mumbled something about killing James, opened them, and laid his palms flat on the table.
“Look, Sugarplum,” he said carefully. “I don’t care if you wanted to wait to ride a cock until the dinosaurs came back. Your life isn’t that important to me. But you have put me in a shitty position.”
I winced.
“That’s why I think we could just, you know, stage something,” I said awkwardly. “Like jump up and down on the bed and make loud noises.”
Those silver-gray eyes bored into me.
“Sure, but first tell me, what’s your favorite way of getting fucked?”
“Um, I—” I stammered, reaching for my coffee to give me something to do. “Doggy style?” I said weakly.
“I’m not convinced.”
“It’s an awkward question.”
“Tough shit, Sugarplum, because that’s going to be a question your grandmother or one of the other thousand female sex-obsessed family members you have is going to ask.”
“We can watch some porn together,” I said, reaching for a solution, “and we can get our stories straight on our favorite sex positions.”
“God help me.”
He rested his elbows on the table, his hands sliding over his mouth.
“We are going to have to have sex, right?” It sounded like the question was directed to himself more so than me.
“Do we really have to?” I croaked. “I was sort of saving myself for marriage.”
“I need to quit,” Hudson said.
I pushed over the spiked hot chocolate to him.
He took a deep swig.
“Can they put more alcohol in it?”
“Eat this. You need some sugar.” I handed him the fork.
He cut off a chunk of Rudolph’s ear then swore loudly as red currant custard oozed out.
“This is a very popular item on TikTok,” I told him, stabbing the booze-soaked cherry that made up the reindeer’s nose.
He pushed the plate towards me.
“I’m pretty sure I can fake an orgasm,” I said determinedly.
“You’ve never”—he gestured at me—“made yourself come with a snowman-shaped vibrator?”
“Look, mister, I don’t need your judgment,” I said hotly.
I took a big swallow of my coffee and licked the whipped cream off my mouth.
“I was trying to be not like my sister,” I said, cutting off a big hunk of Rudolph’s head and shoving it in my mouth, the whipped cream, currant custard, and chocolate cake doing very little to calm my frayed nerves. “Kelly started having sex when she was thirteen. Convinced one of the teacher’s pets to do it with her in an empty classroom. His parents flipped out and showed up at the house. Kelly lapped up the attention and made everyone think she was pregnant. My mom and dad sat me down and read me the riot act about how sex can ruin your life and that I needed to wait until marriage. They begged me to have some self-control because they couldn’t have two children going off the rails. I was just trying to be a good daughter.”
The server came back over.
Hudson was still staring at me, horrified, through his fingers.
“Could I have a Candy Cane Crunch Frappuccino?” I asked the waitress.
“Can I have another Christmas Spirit?” Hudson asked the server. “But without the Christmas part? Just the spirit part.”
“No,” she said, shaking her head. “You can’t just have the alcohol by itself. We do have a rum-spiked eggnog cheesecake. I can put extra rum on it for you.”
“I’ll take it,” Hudson said.
“Look, Sugarplum,” he began when the server was safely out of earshot.
“Please don’t quit,” I begged.
“I wish I could quit,” he muttered then straightened up. “Part of the rules you agreed to were that you did what I say.”
I drained the rest of my coffee.
“I agreed to those terms before I knew what I was agreeing to,” I rasped out.
His silver eyes narrowed.
“Why can’t you just try harder to break up my sister and James?” I wheedled. “I saw the way she was all over you this morning.”
“Kelly wants the hunt,” he said simply. “If I sleep with her now, she’ll just whine and cry to your parents and James that it was a mistake, that the bad boy seduced her. I bet she turns it around and blames you somehow. No, we need to make it spectacular, irrefutable, then we hack the AV system and play the video of her cheating on James at the wedding ceremony.”
My eyes bugged out like Pugnog’s.
“After the big explosion, you and I will get engaged at your sister’s reception. Maximum pain.”
“You’re evil,” I said after a moment.
“You in or out?”
“Does being in mean I have to … you know?” I was sweating. My tank top under my sweater was drenched.
Hudson’s face softened ever so slightly.
“I really don’t want to be the person to take your virginity. I’ve done a lot of bad things but … shit. I’ll figure something else out.”
“I’m pretty sure I can give you a hand job,” I offered. “I’m not totally inexperienced. One time James asked me to dress up in lingerie and humped my leg.”
Hudson growled low in his throat. “I’m going to fucking murder him.”
The server came by with the next round, winked at Hudson, and handed him a scotch.
“I think it’s only fair, considering all the community service you do.”
“Right,” I said faintly. “Are there veteran’s discounts here or something?”
“Not that. The photo.” The server winked at him again.
I slid down in my seat.
Hudson blinked and took in a deep, long breath.
“I am so sorry, Hudson,” I said my chin barely above the edge of the table. “I swear I didn’t send that photo to anyone.”
Hudson twisted his neck, cracking it.
“Gosh, I’m a terrible person,” I babbled. “I shouldn’t have shown anyone. I am so sorry.”
“That was the point of the photo,” he said, voice tense. “To prove to your family that we were the real deal.”
“It was still wrong of me. I should have kept better control.”
I pulled out my phone. “I bet Violet freaking forwarded it to herself. She is getting coal in her Christmas stocking,” I promised. “Oh fuck.”
He gave me a questioning look.
“Fuck, fuck,” I said as I scrolled through the phone. I had a thousand missed calls and messages.
“I’m hours late for decorating. Everyone is so mad at me. Oh my gosh. What am I going to do?” I wailed, wishing I could just go home and hide except …
“I forgot about the vegan eggnog.” I stuffed a big forkful of Hudson’s cheesecake in my mouth.
“What the—”
“You don’t like desserts,” I said hysterically. “And I need this cheesecake.”
19
HUDSON
“Stop panicking,” I ordered. “You need a plan.”
“I had a plan,” she said pulling out an overstuffed white notebook covered in feathers from her large bag.
“That’s not a plan. That’s an abomination.”
What I needed to do was not get involved in her family’s wedding drama, but everything in me was screaming out for something, anything to distract me from the fact that Gracie was a goddamn virgin. She was almost thirty, for fuck’s sake.
“What are your goals?” I asked, taking the glitter pen from her and opening a blank page in the overstuffed notebook.
“I need to make that eggnog.”
“Wrong. Eggnog simply needs to be at the venue to taste test. We’re going to stop at the store and buy some. Next.”
“But Kelly said—”
“I don’t care what she said. You lie,” I ordered, enunciating the words, “and tell her what she wants to hear.”
“They’re going to know,” Grace said nervously.
“People are never as perceptive as they think they are,” I told her. “Trust me.”
Or actually, don’t.
“Next goal.”
Gracie reached over for another bite of the cheesecake. I finally just pushed it over to her.
“Kelly wants a winter wonderland theme for the welcome party. Everything has a specific place. I have a diagram. Oh gosh, it’s going to take me all night to decorate.”
“I supposed it’s too much to ask if your family is going to help,” I said dryly.
“I mean maybe?”
“Yeah, and maybe I’ll win the lottery,” I said. “Kelly just needs a nicely decorated party. Turn the lights down low, serve lots of booze, and no one will know the difference.”
“But if it’s not exactly like she wants—”
I sat back in my chair. “Who planned the wedding?”
“Me,” she admitted.
“Just you or you and Kelly together?”
“Kelly told me what she wanted, and I showed her sketches. She was so nitpicky.”
“Were her requests random and contradictory?” I pressed.
“My sister can be flighty.”
“Kelly didn’t actually have an opinion,” I said confidently. “She was just trying to fuck with you. She’s not going to know that the inflatable Frosty the Snowman was supposed to go in the corner with the Christmas trees or by the front door.”
“This party will not feature an inflatable Frosty.”
“I feel like you sold me a bill of goods on your love of Christmas, Sugarplum.”
We were on the back side of the Canning Factory venue, and I was emptying jugs of almond milk eggnog into the drink dispenser. I wasn’t a chef, but the mixture seemed a little gritty.
“This doesn’t look anything like eggnog.”
I dumped in cinnamon, nutmeg, and, of course, half a bottle of rum.
“Now it does.”
“I can’t handle this,” Gracie fretted. “You know I’m terrible at lying.”
“Oh, I know,” I said, picking up the beverage dispenser off the bed of the forest-green pickup, then headed through the service entry into the venue where Kelly’s party was being held.
You would think with thirty people already at the venue that more would have gotten done on the decorating front, I thought when I carried in the tureen. There were tangled strings of lights lying near the stairs up to the mezzanine, a tipped-over glass of eggnog was drying on the floor, and I was no decorator, but the way the tinsel had been dumped all over one of the trees was not—I was pretty confident—what Gracie had imagined for a winter wonderland.
The whole place smelled like boozy eggnog, and the wedding party was lounging on several overstuffed red velvet couches.
“Where’s the rest of it? The tasting is supposed to happen after decorating,” Gracie cried as she saw the empty jugs of eggnog on a nearby table.
“You weren’t here,” Kelly snapped at her. “You abandoned me, and Miranda didn’t get any eggnog.”
I set the heavy drink dispenser on the table.
“Vegan eggnog for her pleasure.”
The drunk bridesmaids let out wolf whistles.
“There rum in that nut sludge, sonny?” Granny Murray slurred.
“I’m sorry, Kelly,” Gracie apologized. “I lost track of time.”
“If I had a man like that at my beck and call,” Granny Murray hooted, “I’d lose track of time too. Shit. I wouldn’t have even shown up, and let him come down my chimney all night long.”
“Funny,” Dakota said, loud enough for all of us to hear. “I’m pretty sure that’s how Kelly got engaged.” As apparently the only person who could actually do anything, Dakota was stringing up a garland on the balcony up above.
“Aunt Babs,” Kelly raged.
“Girls, why don’t we all go eat dinner at the country club tonight,” Gracie’s mother said. “They have cilantro soup, Kelly, for your wedding diet. Also, Mitsy said that the chef created a new caviar dish that we absolutely must try. Gracie can finish up the decorating. The party is tomorrow, and we’re under the gun.”
I tried hard to resist the urge to yell, What the fuck at her family, but Dakota beat me to it.
“You all suck,” she said, pointing at the bridesmaids, who were knocking back shots of vegan eggnog.
“We’ve been here all afternoon. We need a break,” her cousins complained as Bethany herded Kelly and the bridesmaids to the door.
“They only decorated half a tree, for chrissake!” Dakota hollered.
“It’s fine,” Gracie pleaded. “They’re too drunk to be useful anyway.”
“I’m going down with the ship,” Granny Murray called after them then saluted Gracie, almost falling over.
“How much eggnog have you had?” Gracie wrinkled her nose.
Granny Murray elbowed me.
“The question is how much rum did I have with my eggnog.” She poured herself some vegan eggnog, took a swig, and smacked her lips. “That hippie nut sludge shit is pretty good.”
She offered me the cup.
“What the hell.” I took a sip. “It just tastes like rum.”
“Damn right.”
There was beeping outside and a crunching noise. It sounded expensive.
I’d invested a fair amount of my military reenlistment bonus into fixing up this former canning factory, and at the rate this mission was going, I wasn’t going to have extra money to devote to fixing whatever the hell had just been broken.
Gracie hurried after me as I jogged outside. She skidded to a halt beside me as a dump truck was emptying out a dumpster’s worth of round logs in front of the venue, all over the dormant flowerbeds.
“Hey, man, what the hell? You can’t dump this here,” I shouted at the driver. “You need to take all this back to whatever construction site you hauled it off of.”
The driver sighed and made a big show of pulling out the shipping manifest.
“This is a delivery, man.”
“Who orders unsplit cut-up tree trunks?” I growled.
“This is Ms. Gracie O’Brien’s order.”
He tipped his hat to Gracie, standing behind me.
“Would that be you, miss?”
“I didn’t want all of this,” she cried. “We just needed a cord of firewood. It’s supposed to be for atmosphere.”
She waved the overstuffed white notebook at him.
“I have the order here,” she said and flipped through the notebook.
“Ma’am, we ran out of seasoned firewood. This is all we got. We understand that it’s for a wedding and didn’t want to let the bride down.” He pressed a button on the truck, and the dump-truck bed swung back into place.
“No, you can’t leave,” Gracie begged, pushing her way around me. “Take this wood back. This is not my order. What am I going to do with it?”
“Well,” the driver said, pulling out an axe with a bow on it. “Since it’s Christmas and you’ve been a wonderful customer, here’s your Christmas present.” He handed it to her. “Maybe you can convince the groomsmen to show off some muscles.”
He put the truck into gear and rumbled off, turning onto the industrial road that led to the interstate.
Gracie picked up the axe and dragged it over to the nearest log.
“Gracie,” I said as she swung the axe down on a log. It hit it unevenly and bounced off, flying back up.
She raised her arms to strike the log again.
“Gracie, stop. You’re going to cut your foot off. Put the axe down.”
Her eyes were watering, and her chin was trembling.
“This party is going to be a disaster.”
“Hey,” I said, taking the axe away from her, “remember what I said? It doesn’t have to be perfect. It just has to be done.”
“But all this wood …”
It was a lot of wood.
I shrugged off my jacket and dumped it on a nearby log.
“I’ll take care of it,” I promised her.
What are you doing? You are way too enmeshed with her.
With practiced ease, I swung the axe, bringing it down parallel with the wood grain. The log split easily in two.
I turned it and split it again, tossed the firewood into a pile, and moved to the next log.
“Where do you want all of this?” I asked, hefting the axe again.
“We can just artfully pile it around the venue,” she said. “I’ll have to figure out where. Gosh, this is such a disaster. Maybe Dakota is right and I should just buy a plane ticket and spend Christmas in Aspen.”
And have all the work I’d done, the bus ride, the shopping trip, the dealing with her overbearing family, go to waste? No fucking way.
I dropped the axe and stepped up to her.
“What did I say?” I told her. “Man the fuck up. No prisoners. You want to get back at your sister? Or do you want to be here two years from now when she’s cheated on James and everyone is simultaneously telling you to plan her second wedding, take care of her kid for free, and go back to being James’s little hand-job robot, while you stand there and take it? Stop being weak.”
