Elkin Brothers Christmas: The Complete Series

by Leslie North

  The driver made a turn, and she craned her neck to keep looking back. The Elk Lodge was big and solid, like Gabe’s family. A family that had managed to stick together for years and years, unlike her own. Anna’s family home was nothing but a constantly changing apartment according to her mother’s latest husband’s whims and had standards that were too low, rather than too high.

  The Elk Lodge finally disappeared behind a thick stand of pine trees, and a few minutes later, they burst out onto the highway. It was a slow escape. She wished for frenzy and speed and longed to tell the driver to step on it, but enough snow had fallen to make driving a little dicey and he was rightfully cautious all the way to the airport.

  They finally arrived at the airport, the driver casting a questioning look in her direction. “You sure you want to get dropped here?” He hefted her suitcase onto the sidewalk. “There might not be any flights out for a while on account of the storm.”

  “I’m sure.” She thanked him, paid with an extra-large tip, and headed inside.

  The woman at the ticket counter gave her an apologetic frown when she asked about the next flight to Vegas. It had been scheduled to depart in two hours, but on account of the snow there was a delay. Which meant she would be forced to camp out at Gate 11 for eight hours before being able to board the plane.

  It wasn’t like she had a choice. Anna paid for the ticket and made her way to the gate for the long wait. Eight hours became nine, and then ten, and the day fell into a dark winter evening. Anna put her head back on the chair she’d claimed as her own and closed her eyes. At least with it dark outside, she couldn’t see the snow and the road back to the Elk Lodge. Small blessings.

  It had been twelve hours by the time the screen at the gate lit up and the agent announced they would begin boarding the flight to Las Vegas in fifteen minutes. Anna pulled herself out of her slump and checked to make sure she had everything. Waiting in the airport didn’t break her. Freddie didn’t break her. And Gabe Elkin wouldn’t break her either, no matter what.

  18

  Gabe replayed a livestream of every memory he had with Anna. The highlight reel started at their first meeting together after he’d hired her to work with him. She’d laughed so hard at something he said that her can of Diet Coke had fallen from her hand and splashed on the floor of his office, and he hadn’t cared. Not at all. Memory after memory assailed him.

  “You still with us, Gabe?” Chase’s voice cut into Gabe’s trip down memory lane, slamming him back into his present body. The one that ached with missing her.

  “I’m right here,” he said, trying to keep the edge out of his voice. This was not how he’d planned for the holiday to go. Anna was gone and his family royally ticked off at him.

  They’d gathered in his grandmother’s apartment after Anna had gone, the hours passing like years. Shame swept across his face in a hot burn, and then it was gone in a flash of shock. She’d left.

  Gabe rubbed a thumb across his forehead and thought about running back to Vegas to hide behind the corporate wall. The snow had stopped coming down. If he wanted, he could have the private plane prepared for departure. But if he did that, he’d be turning his back on his sick grandmother—something he couldn’t do.

  The silence grew heavy in the living area of the apartment. The place was decorated in shades of burgundy, its leather furniture and cozy rug arranged to perfection. She kept no clutter on any of the surfaces and it reminded Gabe of a pristine museum with its recreated rooms from the past in full detail, and this room was from his past. And he couldn’t see any part of his future here. None. His future had taken a taxi to the airport and presumably flown back to Nevada. Gabe hadn’t sent her a message yet. His phone felt almost radioactive in his pocket. Soon it would swallow him whole, and then where would he be?

  “I just don’t get how you could have done something so crazy,” Jonas said. He leaned back on the sofa across from Gabe and stared at him with a searching glare. “Getting a woman to pose as your fiancée is worse than abandoning us in favor of living in Las Vegas.”

  Gabe let out a bitter laugh. “Nothing I do has been the right decision for the family.” Anna’s voice whispered in his ear again, talking him down and reminding him that this was the Elkin way of expressing affection. “I love all of you, and I’m lucky to have been raised here, but it’s been difficult.” Some of the anger went out of him at the uncomfortable movement Chase made as he glanced at Tana. Jonas looked at the floor. His grandmother patted her hands on the arms of her chair.

  “I think it’s time for me and Gabe to talk privately for a few minutes,” she said, her tone brooking no opposition.

  “I agree,” Jonas said, quickly rising to his feet. He kissed their grandmother on the cheek, and then he was gone, heading for the door at top speed.

  Chase took more time as he and Tana each bent to embrace their grandmother and then left the room together.

  A pang of envy shot through Gabe. It would be better if Anna were here to hold his hand, but it hadn’t panned out that way. Alone with his grandmother, he was wildly uncomfortable. His skin felt raw, and so did his heart. It had been displayed for his family without a single thing to hide behind, and it wasn’t a sensation Gabe ever wanted to get used to.

  His grandmother gazed directly at him. “I’m sorry, Gabe.”

  “What?” He’d expected her to have lots to say on the subject, but not that. “I should be the one apologizing for what I did to you.” Another wave of emotion crashed into him, shameful and awful. “I lied to all of you.”

  She held up a hand. “I know I was hard on you when you were growing up. On your brothers, too.” She put her fingertips to her lips, her eyes momentarily glazed over as if deep in thought. “I wanted to do right by you, and at the time, that meant making sure you were the best you could possibly be. Obviously, that backfired.”

  “It didn’t.” Gabe didn’t want her to think she’d done a lousy job of parenting them—far from it. “It didn’t backfire, Grandmother. You set us all up to be highly successful. And I am.”

  “That may be true, but it also resulted in one of my grandsons moving far away.” He opened his mouth to protest, but she continued. “I don’t judge you for it, Gabe. It’s only natural to want to get out in the world and make your own life. I should have been more accepting of your choices years ago, before they had so much time to wound you like this.”

  I’m not wounded, he tried to say, but the words wouldn’t come out. “It’s not that I didn’t want to be here,” he said gruffly. “I did. But I also needed a place to call my own.”

  “And you made a wonderful one.” His grandmother’s eyes misted over. “It’s me who wanted something different. I wanted you home for the holidays—all of you—because when you’re here, I feel like I’m keeping you safe. You and your brothers are everything to me. Sometimes, an old woman lets her feelings get the better of her.”

  “Nobody can possibly blame you for that.” Gabe reached over and took her hand. “After the way we lost my parents, it’s perfectly understandable.”

  Grandmother shook her head. “What’s not understandable is how blind I was to your unhappiness. I did this to you. I’m at least partially responsible because I didn’t understand the real you. And all those years and all those girlfriends, I thought they didn’t understand you, either. That’s why I disapproved of them. Not because I thought they weren’t good enough for you—any of them could have been your wife. But I didn’t get the sense they loved you for who you really were. But all along, I didn’t understand either.”

  “What about Anna?”

  She let out a short laugh. “I like Anna. She made you happy, and you’ve been so desperately unhappy since she left. She seemed to genuinely care about you, flaws and all.”

  “I’m in love with her,” he said wretchedly. “But I don’t know what to do.”

  “What would she tell you to do?”

  Anna had her own issues with family, but she hadn’t le
t that stop her from moving on with her life. She’d risen from the ashes of a family that had sorely disappointed her, to become a success. And more than that, she understood what it was like to have that nagging sense she didn’t fit in.

  But she hadn’t let that stop her, had she? Not in her job, where she approached every meeting with the confidence of a CEO. And not in life, where she was always up for an adventure. Anna had come here with him and jumped into their little game with both feet.

  “What are you thinking, Gabe?” His grandmother squeezed his hand.

  “I’m thinking of the time we made you those cookies. They were so strange looking, but they tasted so good. But all I could focus on was how weird they looked.”

  “They were delicious,” his grandmother agreed.

  “We were happy,” he admitted. “While we made them. Everything with Anna was like embarking on a mission. Getting the ingredients turned into a major trip into town, and then she took me through all the steps of making the cookies. She knew you would like them, and she just—she was so enthusiastic. It was impossible not to be excited when I was with her, no matter what happened afterward.”

  “Would she tell you to get back in the kitchen?”

  “I don’t know about that.” Heartache slashed across his chest. “She knew I wasn’t very good at baking.”

  “And yet she also knew how determined you can be.” He met his grandmother’s eyes, and she smiled at him—a soft, tired smile. “She knew how determined we all can be, and she put her own twist on it. That’s the thing about women like Anna. They’re kind, but they forge ahead and make changes.”

  She had made changes. In Gabe. In the Elkin family. Anna had stood her ground when it came to her own boundaries, and she’d stepped up to help them in a crisis, and she had been there, every time he asked her to be.

  She’d held his hand.

  She’d kissed him.

  They’d done so much more.

  Even if they’d intended it to be fake, it had taken on its own reality. But Gabe hadn’t been able to step into it. Not entirely anyway, because he’d been too concerned with what his family might think. He’d been waiting for disapproval and it hadn’t come. His grandmother was sitting here right now, telling him she liked Anna.

  And what did it matter if they disapproved? Gabe had spent so many years bracing for that uncomfortable feeling of not being a real part of the family—bracing for it, and then letting it take him over. He hadn’t been able to see what was right in front of his face because of his fixation on what he wasn’t within the Elkin family.

  Anna had seen it. Seen all the love between them, even with the ridiculous standards and the way they tiptoed around talking about deep things. Of all people, Anna had had a clear-eyed view of what really mattered in his family, and it wasn’t the luxury resort or the fact they had lots of money. It was the way they showed up for one another.

  He couldn’t keep her on the outside anymore, couldn’t hold her at arm’s length.

  “She would tell me to take action,” he finally answered the question his grandmother asked. “And she would tell me to stop sitting here and do something to show how I felt.”

  His grandmother smiled and patted his hand. “Go do it, Gabe. Whatever it is, go do it.”

  He stood and then bent down to pull her into a hug. Oh, his grandmother seemed so much smaller than he remembered, her shoulders delicate and almost fragile under his touch.

  “Bring her back,” she said into his shoulder.

  “I will,” he said. “If I can bring Anna back, I will.”

  19

  Three days of nothing but bingeing on Netflix hadn’t done a thing to cure the ache in Anna’s heart. After returning home, she’d showered and dropped into bed, exhausted. And once there, she hadn’t wanted to leave. Instead, she opted to take the blanket off the bed and drag it to the couch, where she’d camped out. She hadn’t even bothered getting dressed. Pajamas were good enough for bingeing on TV. Three days, and still she missed Gabe.

  And not just him. Anna missed the Elk Lodge, and even the way Gabe bickered with his brothers. She missed baking cookies with him in that little hotel kitchen. She missed sitting down with Elin in her beautiful apartment. And she missed—

  A knock at the front door of Anna’s one-bedroom apartment was the first thing to jar her from the routine she’d fallen into. But she wasn’t ready to return to the real world. Better to ignore it.

  Another knock, this one louder and more insistent. “Anna? I know you’re in there. I can hear the TV.”

  Elena. “I’m coming,” she hollered, but didn’t lift her head off the pillow. It was so far from here to the door, and her limbs felt tired and achy like she’d recently finished running a marathon. Anna had run a marathon once, just because it had seemed like something she should try. Something she could make conversation about with clients. This was worse.

  But after a few more heartbeats, she took a deep breath, hauled herself out from under the cocoon of blankets and headed for the front door. Even the lock seemed to resist her, sticking a few times before it finally came open.

  The doorknob turned before she could open it. Anna stepped back out of Elena’s way as her friend barged in the way she always did. Elena stepped into the kitchen, separated from the living room only by one countertop, and set an armful of bags from her restaurant on the counter.

  Turning back to face her, Elena gave her a once-over look from top to bottom. “You look terrible,” she announced. “I thought you might be dead.”

  “I’m not dead.” Anna shrugged.

  “Your phone hasn’t been on in days.”

  “Yeah, well—” She gazed off into the distance. Leaving the phone off had seemed like the far better idea. If her phone stayed off, she wouldn’t be forced to acknowledge Gabe hadn’t called to make things right. The flip side was she couldn’t see if anybody else called, but that was a small price to pay. “I didn’t feel like talking.”

  “You can’t send a single text that says, ‘flying back sooner than expected, lots of work’ and then go off the radar for three days,” Elena scolded. “People worry about you. Namely me.”

  Anna pushed a hand through her hair.

  Elena seemed to read her mind. “Go take a shower and change into some fresh clothes. I’ll be here when you get out, and we’re going to talk.”

  Anna did as she was told, knowing it was useless to argue with Elena once she started down the motherly path. The hot water felt good. Even the steady draw of the brush through her hair felt good. She twisted the locks into a neat bun and pulled on a pair of yoga pants and a top. Her suitcase sat glaring at her from the corner of the room, a painful reminder of what happened. “I’ll return you soon enough,” she muttered. “Wow. I must be losing it. I’m talking to a suitcase and myself.”

  She headed back to the living room, only to discover Elena had cleaned up the place. Her stackable washer rumbled in the background, Elena obviously washing the blanket since it was nowhere in sight. She’d also swept the minimal food wrappers away and lit a candle. But best of all were the plates on Anna’s coffee table.

  Two enormous burgers with all the condiments and a generous stack of fries greeted her like a long-lost friend. Two containers with slices of cake decorated the corners of the table. The smell filled the apartment, and for the first time since she’d gotten home, Anna’s stomach growled with a genuine hunger.

  Elena bustled out of the kitchen with a wine glass in each hand, put them carefully on the table, and dropped onto the couch. She patted the seat next to her. “Have something to eat. You’re so pale.” It didn’t matter that she and her friend had disagreed during their last phone call, Elena’s voice still held raw concern.

  Anna sat down next to her and reached for a plate.

  “TV or talk?” Elena asked.

  Anna bit into the burger. It was perfect—medium-well with sweet onions and the homemade ketchup that Elena made in huge batches at the restau
rant. It flooded her mouth with something like comfort. “Talk,” she said around the food. Of course Elena would wait patiently until she was ready to explain, but waiting seemed worse than getting it out in the open. Far worse. “Obviously, I’m back in town.”

  “Obviously.” Elena ate a few bites of her own burger. “What happened?”

  Anna’s chest squeezed. “Well, I didn’t tell you the whole story about the holiday vacation.”

  Elena made a noise. “I figured as much.”

  “The reason I went is that Gabe asked me to pose as his fiancée.”

  “He asked you to do what?” Elena exclaimed, the burger only making it halfway to her mouth as she froze, her eyes wide in surprise.

  “We’ve been working together for a while and he took me out to celebrate the success of the conference.” That night at the Top of the World restaurant seemed like a million years ago now, but it hadn’t been. “While we were there, he got some bad news about his grandmother—who raised him. Cancer. She wanted everybody home for the holidays, and he didn’t want to show up without proof that he would be all right in the future. That he was happy and in love, something his grandmother desperately wanted for him. So, he asked me to pretend to be engaged to him for the holidays.”

  “And you said yes?” Elena shook her head.

  “I did say yes. I like Gabe and his family owns a luxury ski resort that goes all-out for Christmas.” This earned her a smile from Elena.

  “What, my little fake tree doesn’t do it for you?”

  “I wanted to see what it was like.” Anna swirled a fry in a pool of ketchup and popped it in her mouth. “It was gorgeous. I mean—really, absolutely gorgeous. The winter isn’t like anything we have here in the desert. It was like something out of a movie. Even the way I... started to fall for Gabe.”

  “Oh, Anna.” Elena bit her lip. “You didn’t.”

  “I did. And Gabe fell for me, too. It was so easy because we had to do all these things to make it look right—we had to hold hands, pretend to be in love, and then behind closed doors—”