Page 9 of Wrapped with a Beau

“What do you have to lose? You have to charm him for the house, anyway. Might as well get a few dates out of it while you’re at it. No one Christmas-parties like Piney Peaks.”

That’s true, Elisha muses. And if this year is anything like the last, she’s going to spend every single party panic-sweating and dodging mistletoe.

But relying on Ves? A stranger? Who she kinda-maybe-sorta tried to clobber?

Elisha wrinkles her nose. “Lana, I don’t even know if he’s available,” she admits. “I mean, maybe he’s with someone. But even if he’s single, he has zero reason to help me out.”

“That you know of. You just need to work out all the angles like you do when you’re liaising. Find out what he wants so you know how to get it for him. Then you can have your fruitcake and eat it, too.”

Okay, yes, she’s undoubtedly attracted to him. Yes, she wants to redeem herself. Yes, she needs to get her mom’s Christmas ornament back. It might be a lost cause, but she has the grit and gumption to see this through. She knows it. Like her boss back in Atlanta was fond of saying, Elisha excels under pressure.

She taps her finger against the rim of her glass, thinking. “Not to use ‘Ves’ and ‘perfect’ in the same sentence, but I have to admit, Ves would be the perfect guy to piss Bentley off. I mean, he owns the house from my favorite Christmas movie of all time. It would be amazing to rub it in Bentley’s face after how dismissive he was about it just now. He obviously thinks this town is just a footnote in movie history and that I have no chance in hell.”

Her best friend grins delightedly. “I just talked you into doing it, didn’t I?”

“If Ves wants a proper Piney Peaks welcome,” says Elisha—mind already buzzing with ideas involving festive cellophane wrapping, homemade cookies, and a much cuter outfit—“he’s going to get one.”

Chapter Five

Ves

As he stands in the living room of his great-aunt’s cluttered, cross-stitch-everywhere frou-frou house, Ves Hollins thinks this is, quite possibly, the worst day of his life.

Even before he met Elisha Rowe, his morning was off to a bad start. After doing school visits in Chicago and giving away classroom sets of his middle-grade fantasy books, which had been delightful, he’d booked a red-eye flight to Pennsylvania so he could deal with Maeve’s estate. That was the first mistake: he should have returned home to New York City instead of coming straight here.

It all started when he’d been forced to spend the night stuck at his departure gate at O’Hare International Airport, waiting out weather delays and nursing overpriced single-malt whisky while halfheartedly thumbing through one of the books he’d picked up at the airport bookstore. And when the plane had eventually taken off, the turbulence was terrible. The child behind him had kept kicking his seat, the mother said nothing even when Ves politely asked her demon spawn to stop—and then, if all that hadn’t made him cranky enough, the rental agency had given his car away.

All so that when he finally arrived in Piney Peaks via Uber, nose annoyingly bleeding from the high altitude, a woman broke into his great-aunt’s house and attempted to decapitate him with a giant candy cane. Near-death by Christmas ornament. Joy.

On top of that, most of the food in the fridge had spoiled, the kitchen stank of the curdled milk he’d poured down the drain, and the ancient coffee machine looked older than he was, sputtering out liquid that smelled burned and tasted even worse.

And after an absolutely wretched start to the day and a shower in a bathroom that reeked of rose-scented potpourri and set off a pulsing migraine, the latest indignity: an apologetic voicemail from the valuation house canceling his appointment and letting him know that because of family emergencies, backlog, and the holidays, they would reschedule for the new year.

If only he’d known earlier, he would have flown straight to JFK from O’Hare...

But it’s too late, now. He’s here, and his schedule is all fucked.

“It sounds terrible. You should come back home,” Arun Iyer says consolingly over the phone when Ves is finished regaling him with the events of his first full day in Piney Peaks. “Spend Christmas with us.”

This is why his best friend and literary agent is Ves’s favorite person, but third-wheeling on another holiday sticks in his craw. “It’s your first Christmas with Cade as a married couple.”

“But I literally already hung your stocking on our mantel.”

“You didn’t.”

Arun immediately sends him a pic. “Ye of little faith.”

Ves allows himself to bask in the soft glow of warmth in his chest when he sees the bright-red stocking with his name on it. “I’m here now. Might as well get a head start sifting through all the junk in this place. I don’t think Maeve or her dad threw out a single thing in the last hundred years.”

“Surely that’s an exaggeration?” Then, without skipping a beat, Arun asks, “Want me to take a few days off to come down to Pennsylvania?”

Ves flushes. “I wasn’t fishing for help, but I appreciate it, anyway. No, I’ve got it.”

“Okay, but the offer stands. So, is everything how you remember it?”

Ves scoffs. “Be real, the last time I was here I was seven.”

And twenty-three years have passed since then. But to his horror, the truth is that all his repressed old memories are attempting to scale his glacial walls: Being dumped at the doorstep of a great-aunt he’d never met with a suitcase so heavy that the grunting taxi driver had to drag it to the front door himself before taking off without a goodbye. Realizing with a sudden shock exactly how long his one-month “holiday” would really be. Watching the taillights fade into the distance and regretting that he hadn’t chased after the taxi and begged to be taken back to the airport. Remembering his father’s stern Behave and that his mother had forgotten to pack all his favorite things and absolutely none of his comfort-read books.

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