Page 71 of Peppermint Bark

Alex

When I walked out of that boardroom two days ago, I’d spent the cab ride fantasizing about a week with Grace.

None of those fantasies had been in a claustrophobic attic, with slanted ceilings so pitched I couldn’t stand up straight. They certainly hadn’t been in twin beds, several feet apart.

Without a doubt, my fantasies hadn’t included walls so thin that I could my dad and sister's laughter carried from two floors below, meaning they might hear anything above a whisper.

Yet here we were. And there was nowhere else I'd rather be.

I’d driven my parents to open the cabin early, and the girls’ truck arrived in time for dinner. We hadn’t had a chance to speak without an audience … but when they carried in their luggage, Grace went up that extra flight.

She’d gone to bed early, claiming exhaustion. To be fair, I had woken her up two nights ago, then she’d worked all day yesterday, and who knows when she’d had time to write her answers in my notebook — I’d still been asleep when her text arrived to check the mailbox.

I'd climbed back into my bed with my coffee, reading her answers about her transitions and anecdotes about her milestones, like her first invitation to a 'Girl's Night,' and the first time somebody asked her for a spare tampon.

Every word made me marvel at her resilience.

If I’d been kicked out at nineteen, would I have finished college? Would I still have gone to law school, or instead settled for whatever job paid the bills? I contemplated the graduations and promotions I’d celebrated, imagining them without Mom and Dad to call. I thought about missing Nick’s big break and meteoric rise to fame. How much I’d already missed with Mallory.

But Grace hadn't given up or gotten jaded. Every time life kicked her ass, she stood back up stronger.

Now she waited in my bedroom. After a ten-minute head start, I stretched my arms in an exaggerated yawn. Mallory and Kate rolled their eyes.

I climbed two flights of stairs to the attic I’d shared with Nick, flooded with memories of staying up late into the night talking. All afternoon I missed him like a phantom limb. Was this how Grace always felt, missing Elijah?

I hadn’t been here in a decade, yet time hadn’t stopped. I considered this room mine and Nick’s, yet Kate and Grace had slept in it more. How had that transition gone for my parents? There had been a few years when Mallory had been traveling that none of us kids had been home for the holidays. When she’d moved home four years ago, had my parents been so thrilled to have the girls’ laughter filling the house again that they hadn’t felt their sons’ absence?

At the very least, the room certainly smelled better.

I stood in the doorway, pausing at the sight of Grace in Nick’s bed. The attic was less insulated so she wore her Vermont sweatshirt, and even under layers of blankets she looked cold. But when her head tilted up to meet mine, her gaze was hot and hungry. Nervous — always nervous when she first saw me — but she couldn’t hide her desire. When that hesitation lingered, I tempered the urge to grab her face and kiss her, like I’d wanted to do for days, instead leaning against the door frame.

“How does it feel to be in the bed of the Sexiest Man Alive?” I straightened and moved to the closet, lifting another blanket from the top shelf.

She rolled her eyes. “Somebody thinks highly of himself.”

“I meant my brother. The People Magazine rankings,” I unfurled the blanket over her lap. “Relieved you’re not thinking of him right now.”

“Are you kidding? When you’re in the room, I can't even …” Her face flushed at her truncated confession.

“Goddamn, you’re cute when you’re nervous.” I tugged off my sweater, enjoying her wandering gaze before I pulled on a Stanford Law hoodie and swapped jeans for flannel pajamas. “So the conversation went well today?”

Since she left me yesterday with the promise to talk to my sister, I’d worried she’d arrive and say, ‘Mallory spent the whole three-hour drive convincing me that you’re the world’s most selfish, arrogant prick.’

And she’d wouldn’t be wrong.

But her presence here meant Grace went toe-to-toe with Mallory … and won.

Even I wouldn’t have wanted to take on that negotiation.

“She’s worried that you’re going to break my heart,” she said, tracing her book title, A Lady for a Duke, “but I told her about the pinkie swear.”

The pinkie swear. Right. I’d forgotten that ridiculous moment when we promised not to fall in love, but I guess it helped ease Mallory’s mind.

“Well now that that’s out of the way …“ I said. She looked so comfortable in the twin bed, tucked into the slant of the A-frame roof. Altogether too comfortable. “This is the only room Mom hasn’t redecorated, so ….”

I wrapped my hand around the frame below her hip and hauled her bed toward the center of the room. She squealed as it scraped the floor loud enough to wake the whole house … if anybody but Grace went to bed before 9.

I pushed my bed to close the gap, enjoying her scandalized expression. “They’re going to know we —”

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