Unwrapped

by Jessica Gadziala

  Contents

  Dedication

  Title Page

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Ten

  Eleven

  Twelve

  Thirteen

  Epilogue

  Don't Forget

  Also By Jessica Gadziala

  About the Author

  Stalk Her!

  Dedication:

  To all the women of my family who filled me with the Christmas spirit from an early age and had me so excited for the holiday in AUGUST that I had to sit down and start to write this story.

  Unwrapped

  Jessica Gadziala

  One

  Lyra

  I was determined to break the tradition of bad Christmases.

  I was born to two people who dove into a bottle and spent their lives trying to find the bottom of it. As such, whatever money there was laying around generally went to lining the liquor store owner's pockets and not to buying a tree and gifts that they wrapped in festive, happy paper and forged Santa's name on. When I was ten and they got drunk and plowed into a guard rail two days before Christmas, killing themselves and leaving me alone in the world, well they didn't exactly have anything for little traumatized me at the group home.

  From there, I went to a few foster homes over the years. Unfortunately, the money they made from the government for the upkeep of me and the other kids very rarely went to buying us stuff and more likely went to buying themselves flatscreen televisions and paying their mortgages. Then, of course, I aged out of the system. And, well, I always thought it was far too depressing to celebrate a holiday all by myself. So, instead, I took the ever-dreaded shift manning the emergency room reception desk on both Christmas eve and day, making holiday pay that I socked away and told myself that some day, one day, I would use it for Christmas.

  Well, my thirtieth birthday was one month away and I couldn't, I absolutely could not be on the Earth for three decades and not know what a proper Christmas was. So, with that thought, I cashed in my three years' worth of vacation days at the hospital, grabbed every last penny of holiday cash I had stashed in a savings account, and set the plan into motion.

  That put me in my car in a snowstorm on some backwoods, nowhere part of Vermont, land of maple syrup and, if the fact that I hadn't seen another living soul in over forty minutes was anything to go by, little else. Forty minutes. I couldn't walk four seconds anywhere in New York without seeing another person. Or, at the very least, a rat. Something.

  My hands were a death grip on the wheel, so unaccustomed to driving in any kind of severe weather. I reached over and turned down the Christmas playlist on my radio, remembering reading somewhere that if you dull one sense, the others make up for it. Which was why people automatically turned their radio down when looking for a street sign when they were lost... without knowing why. My heart was lodged pretty thoroughly in my throat as the hill just kept going up up up, never seeming to end, taking me up into the mountains toward Coral Cabins.

  I hadn't been stupid; I had checked the weather report before I made the reservations then again before I hit the road that morning. They had said there was a chance for flurries.

  Flurries, my Aunt Fannie.

  It was like Jack Frost was having a snowball fight with Elsa from Frozen.

  It was taking everything in me to keep my little, beat-up clunker of a car on the road. It was too late to go back down. I had been on the road for way too long. Forty minutes since I saw another car, sure, but it had been almost twice that since I saw a town. In this weather, it would be stupid to be on the road any longer than absolutely necessary. Coral Cabins was only supposed to be another half an hour away. Granted, that was all uphill. But it was still shorter.

  In my backseat and trunk was, well, several thousands of dollars worth of Christmas supplies. When I said I wanted to do Christmas, I meant do it all. I wanted to decorate a tree so I had lights of varying kinds and about a dozen boxes of different ornaments. I wanted to bake so there were a ton of bags filled with supplies needed to make cookies and gingerbread houses as well as books to teach me how to do such things. I wanted to have a big, sprawling Christmas dinner so there were groceries and pans and tableware. I wanted to open presents so I bought myself some and, despite knowing what they all were, I was going to wrap them and put them under the tree and open them with a cup of cocoa like everyone else got to do. Just because I was alone did not mean I couldn't have a heck of a holiday.

  If I made it there, of course.

  Honestly, the snow aside, it was really kinda eerie to not see people. Maybe a part of me that watched way too many horror movies was half-expecting some crazy lumberjack to come out of nowhere, take me, keep me in his specialized torture room, and maim and rape me until he killed me and maybe made a flesh suit out of my skin.

  "Keep it together," I told myself, tossing another empty cup onto the passenger side floor where there were already at least a dozen others resting. Out of coffee was never a good way to be in my humble opinion. It was almost a bad omen.

  But... Coral Cabins had coffee pots in each cabin; I had checked. I hadn't thought to ask about if they had a place to do laundry, but I had asked about the coffee pot. Worst case, I could hand wash my clothes in the tub. I couldn't make coffee without a machine. I had also asked if there was anywhere nearby where I could cut down a tree. That made the guy on the phone laugh and inform me that the entire place was surrounded by pine trees and I could help myself.

  I took another deep breath.

  But it got caught in my throat.

  Because I saw a bright light to the right of my car. And it didn't seem to be stopping.

  The impact was to the center of the passenger side of my car, making my airbag deploy and my head slam hard against the window to my left.

  I guess I had always expected accidents to be loud. You'd swear they had to be with all the damage. But all I heard was a quick crunch, the shatter of glass, the pop of my airbag, then nothing but the labored sound of my own breathing. The world, blanketed with snow, was freakishly quiet.

  I let out a whimper as I lifted my head from the glass, feeling the gash and the drip of blood down the side of my face, trying to convince myself to stay calm. I worked in a hospital; I had seen people missing limbs who kept their emotions under control. But there was a sledgehammering sensation in my temples and my eyes felt like icepicks were being driven into them as I turned my head.

  It was probably a concussion. And head wounds always bled dramatically even when they weren't bad. I was alright. I needed to make sure that whoever hit me was too. I glanced out my shattered passenger window, seeing nothing but a giant, very slightly bent grill to a huge truck. But that was it. I couldn't see past that.

  There was a gust of frigid air and I turned my head quickly to see the source, the pain in my head blinding me for a second.

  "Hey. Hey, you alright?" I heard a deep, gruff male voice ask.

  My vision cleared and I felt a mix of fear and humor spark inside. Fear because, well, I was a woman alone in the middle of nowhere, hurt, and there was a strange man beside my wrecked car. Humor because, yeah, it seemed like my worst nightmares were bringing themselves to life. Because the man leaning in my doorway with snow steadily falling on him? Yeah, he was a lumberjack. But in the very lumbersexual way. Meaning, he was tall and broad with dark hair and a dark beard and there were little charming crows feet next to his eyes like he spent a lot of time squinting at the sun. But his hair and beard were kempt, his jeans and red and black flannel jacket were clean, and he had the most hypnotic brown eyes I had ever seen in my lif
e and they were, of course, framed with thick dark lashes.

  "You don't have a torture room where you bring young women you hit with your truck on the side of the road to rape and kill, do you?" I blurted out without thinking, as was my nature. My mouth always ran away from me.

  "I think that is a bit specific for a torture room," he said, lips twitching the barest bit, drawing my attention for a second.

  "That's not a serious answer."

  "It wasn't a serious question," he shot back. "What's your name, dollface?" he asked, surprising me with the pet name, effectively wiping my mind blank for a long second.

  "Lyra," I answered when it came back to me. "You?"

  "Jack." To that, I laughed, even though the action sent sparks of pain all through my brain. And it only seemed to make his handsome face twist up in concern.

  "A lumberjack... named Jack," I let him in on, shaking my head and wincing at the movement.

  He shook his head right back at me. "Can you get your belt off?" he asked and I sat there dumbly for a second. When I didn't respond, he reached in past me and did it for me, the clicking noise seeming to make my brain finally start working properly.

  "What are you doing?"

  "You're in a wrecked car in the middle of an epic storm with a busted head. I am getting you out of here."

  "Are you taking me to the hospital?" I asked.

  "No," he said, shaking his head a little regretfully. "The closest hospital is almost an hour from here. It's only getting worse out. We'll never make it."

  "Can you maybe bring me to Coral Cabins?" I asked, my voice a little defeated like I knew it was a long shot.

  He was shaking his head before I even finished speaking. "Coral Cabins is another forty in good weather with how steep this road is. In snow, even in my truck, we'd end up stranded in twenty more up this hill."

  "So then... where are you taking me?"

  "My place," he informed me, reaching out to touch the side of my face, making me let out a hiss of pain at the contact. "I can clean this up and get some butterfly strips on it. Get you warm and dry. As soon as the roads clear up, I will take you up the hill if it's safe or back down if you want. But we have to get going before this gets worse," he informed me as I brought a hand up to press into my eyes, hoping pressure would help the stabbing sensation.

  The next thing I knew, an arm was slipping under my knees and across my back and I was moving. My side collided with the wall of his chest and Jack took his feet easily, leading me around the front of my car and to the side where I got a good eye-full of how screwed I was on the automobile front. Jack's truck, however, looked like it maybe tapped a tree, not plowed into me. He led me over to the passenger side, set me on my feet, opened the door, and let me inside.

  "Hey," he said when I rested my head against the headrest and closed my eyes. "Hey," he said, a little louder, making my eyes slowly slide open. "Don't fall asleep on me."

  He went to close my door as one of the shiny rolls of silver wrapping paper in my backseat caught my eye. "Wait!" I shrieked, trying to move back down onto the step rail, but Jack's hand reached up and pressed me back into my seat. "I need my stuff out of my car," I explained.

  "I'll get it," he said with a shrug.

  I had a feeling he was going to regret that offer as soon as he saw just how much I had in my car. But, that being said, I was going to go ahead and let him do the nice thing while I focused on trying to keep myself from throwing up thanks to the migraine that wanted to completely separate both hemispheres of my brain.

  Two

  Jack

  The last thing I wanted to do was head down the hill and hit the grocery store. I had been on a five day long hunting trip that was only supposed to last two and all the perishables in my place had, well, perished. I had considered putting it off, waiting until the storm blew over. But Christmas was a couple days away and the longer I waited, the closer it would get, and the store would be mobbed.

  Besides, the snow hadn't been so bad when I left my house.

  The accident, yeah, that was completely my fucking fault.

  Fact of the matter was, no one was ever on these back streets. That was because I owned the entirety of it, just over two-hundred acres all around. So when I hit the stop sign, I rolled on. And I fucking T-boned her shitty little sedan.

  I didn't know who I had been expecting to see when I rounded the back of the car and pulled open the door. Like I said, there was little to no traffic around these parts. Coral Cabins was way up the hill, on ten acres I had sold to the owners because, being as high as it was, it was useless to me and they only had plans to build six small cabins that were mostly un-rented most of the time. I swear they stayed in business thanks entirely to the weird writer who rented the sixth cabin, as far from the others as possible, holed up with some groceries, and did not come back out again for four to eight weeks, until he finished whatever book he was writing. I knew this because he bought from me and I, in turn, bought his books. Aside from him, I rarely saw another car on the road. So maybe a part of me was worried it might be him in a different car and I might have fucked up what had been a decent, albeit distant, friendship.

  What I absolutely did not expect, was the prettiest friggen girl I had seen in a long time. Granted, I lived and worked alone, a true recluse by nature and it had been so long that I might have found a female leper with one short leg and a bald head attractive. But, Lyra was, well, stunning. She had one of those delicate faces with the soft features of a doll. She had giant blue eyes framed in dark blonde lashes, a small nose, sweet little cupid's bow lips, and white-blonde hair that looked like it would pass between your fingers like silk.

  Also, well, it looked like Christmas threw up all over her. She had on a red and green striped beanie on her head, matching fingerless gloves, and a green sweater with a giant red reindeer across the chest.

  Then she opened that sweet mouth of hers and in that honeyed voice asked me if I was going to torture and kill her. Of all things.

  She was alright. The head wound wasn't bad, but judging by the pain in her eyes, she had a wicked migraine from the impact and maybe a concussion. Her car, though, was likely to be totaled. The entire side was bent inward and it had been a shitty car to begin with, not worth whatever work would need to be put in to fix it. So I had to add car shopping to the long list of shit I didn't want to have to do as soon as the weather cleared.

  See, Vermont being the constantly snow-covered state it was, had a really good reputation for clearing the roads. That being said, those were public roads. And way up in the mountains with only the cabins and my house to worry about, my roads didn't often get cleared for the better part of a week and usually by then, the sun had done the lion's share of the work. So, the snow keeping on like it was, chances were, we would be stranded at my place through the holiday. As I opened her trunk and saw that not only did Christmas throw up all over her, it threw up all over her car, I felt a pang of guilt. She was headed up to Coral Cabins to have an all-out Christmas experience. And because I had been reckless, she'd be holed up with me instead in the house with the least amount of Christmas spirit possible.

  In fact, I hadn't even celebrated it in over a decade.

  Nothing but bad memories there.

  But at least, among all the Christmas junk in the car, she also had a ton of groceries. We would be all set on that front.

  I climbed up into my truck to see that she had cranked up the heat and was steadily rubbing her eyes with the palms of her hands. "Come on, let's go get you cleaned up and some aspirin in you so you can get some rest."

  "Sounds good," she said, her voice a pained grumble.

  "Just about another fifteen or twenty," I promised, putting all my focus on the road as I turned it around and went back in the direction I had come from.

  But as we drove, the snow just came down harder, looking like the storm of the decade was piling up.

  Jesus Christ.

  Forget Christmas.

/>   She might be in my place well into the God damn New Year.

  Three

  Lyra

  The fifteen or twenty turned into half an hour as the roads just kept getting dumped on by the snow. Normally, I would be delighted. There was nothing like a good snow storm, how it made the whole world look fresh and new. Unfortunately, in the City, the white only stayed pretty and clean for all of minutes before the taxis and street plows and people turned it into ugly brown sludge that became a lot less magical instantaneously and a lot more like a nuisance. But out there in the boonies, it was from a Thomas Kinkade painting. That being said, my head hurt and I was just barely keeping the contents of my stomach down with the migraine. So the snow that made it take us twice the time to get to Jack's suddenly found itself silently cursed with every foul word I knew. Which, given that I worked in a place where a lot of people were yelling in pain, was a lot.

  We pulled off the side road and into what, I imagined, was a driveway underneath all eight or ten inches of snow. We followed it for a long time before his place came into view. And, well, it was the last place in the world I would have thought he lived.

  I had been expecting (and dreading) the idea that he lived in some tiny log cabin he built with his two hands with no indoor plumbing.

  But his house was, well, stunning. Picturesque, might have even been the right word.

  It was a two story wooden chalet-style house with one steep gable and giant floor-to-ceiling windows. The front had a huge deck, perfect for drinking morning coffee and taking in the vast land the house sat on. With the snow blanketing the roof and deck and everything around, it looked like a picture from a catalog for a vacation in the alps.

  I had been so busy admiring the house that I missed the fact that Jack had cut the engine, gotten out, and came to my side. I only realized it when I felt the cold gust of wind from the open door and felt him reach out and snag my bicep to help me down. I let him and stopped outside the car as his hand stayed on my arm, both firm and gentle at the same time, a combination I didn't know existed before. And as he led me up the short stairs to the deck and toward his front door, I thought that gentleness was not something a man as big as him should have been capable of.