Page 4 of Wrapped with a Beau

Elisha’s right eyelid twitches. “Friday happy hour drinks are getting less happy by the minute.”

“Sorry, sorry! I’m back to being optimistically supportive BFF.” Solana gestures for Adam Lawson, her bartender boyfriend, to bring them both a second fruity Grinch cocktail. “You’re good at wooing, so woo. You know how tight my mom is with the annual budgets, but you still managed to convince Madam Mayor to literally create our town’s first-ever film liaison position in the Chamber of Commerce.”

“You know that’s different. Your mom loves Sleighbells almost as much as I do, and attracting more productions here is a super-smart way to boost our economy. Plus, she’s known me my whole life and knew I’d already wanted to come back home, especially after Grandpa’s heart attack.” Elisha fixes her with a knowing look. “And you were keeping her updated on the work I was doing in Atlanta.”

Lana grins, unrepentant. “What, like I’m not supposed to brag about my best friend?”

“You were doing the groundwork to angle for me to come home, admit it.”

“And what, may I ask, is so wrong with that?” Lana waves her hand in the air. “You should be using your superpowers for your hometown. Atlanta doesn’t need you the way Piney Peaks needs you.”

“And we missed you,” Adam chimes in, over two decades of friendship packed in his words. “Everyone did. You’re the heart and soul of this place.”

Elisha’s taken aback at the matter-of-fact way he says it. Apparently, by some unspoken understanding, Maeve’s mantle has passed on to her. Her heart lodges in her throat and she has to clear it several times before she can speak. “Yes, yes, you all love me. But Ves Hollins is a stranger.” She sighs, seeing the disdain on his handsome face with horrifically vivid recall. “Honestly, Lana, I get the feeling he’s immune to any wooing from me.”

Solana and Adam share disbelieving glances. Their faith in her is flattering, but what strikes her even harder is how their shared expressions just drive home how much Elisha wants that kind of relationship for herself. Where all it takes is a look to communicate. Her friends have it, her parents have it... even her grandparents. The last time Elisha did was... Her brow furrows. Wait.

Has she ever?

“Dunno, Lisha, it’s pretty hard to stay mad at you.”

Adam hums his agreement, pouring Grinch ingredients into a massive cocktail shaker like he’s concocting a potion. A bit of this, a dab of that. His movements are practiced and confident, almost mesmerizing. “And when you tell him how much it meant to Maeve, I’m sure he won’t turn you down,” he says. “I mean, she left him the home she adored. She must have trusted him to look after it.”

But now that Elisha thinks about it, Ves had seemed weirdly indifferent to the history and charm of Maeve’s beloved Christmas House, carelessly tossing mementos to the floor and muttering to himself like this was the last place on earth he wanted to be. Plus, while there had been the odd anecdote or two over the years about a great-nephew who lived in New York, Maeve, who had lived here longer than Elisha’s been alive, never had any family come visit. Unlike the other older residents on their street, there were never any vanloads of nieces, nephews, and assorted munchkins. Maeve had been— No, not alone.

She’d had the Rowes: Elisha’s parents, Jamie Rowe and Anita Rowe née d’Costa; Grandma Lou, before she passed; and Grandpa Dave, Lou’s husband and recent retiree, who always had time to fix a leaky tap or snowblow the driveway for Maeve.

“If wooing fails, you can always try begging,” says Solana.

Elisha makes a face. “You can’t be serious.”

“Whatever works, babes. You’ve worked so hard to get all your French hens in a row that it would be a shame to tell Hollywood it’s a no-go.”

Elisha grins at the holly-jollied idiom, then slumps. “And kiss my reputation for coming through in a crisis goodbye? Not to mention Greg will finally have the ammo he’s been looking for to really be insufferable, compared to the garden-variety sufferable he is right now. I wish it would penetrate his thick skull that my competence is not a threat to him.”

Solana snorts. “Competence is always a threat to people who are used to skating by on mediocrity.”

“Especially middle-aged white men,” Adam quips as he shakes their cocktails, the silver of his cuff bracelet reflecting off the shaker.

“True,” says Elisha. That’s her boss to a T.

“Is it weird that you saying that kind of turns me on?” Solana crooks her pointer finger into the V of his black tee, tugs him in for a kiss.

Elisha’s used to their PDA, even envies them for it a bit. They’re a gorgeous couple: Lana with her warm golden skin and cloud of ochre curls, courtesy of her Black mom and Spanish dad, and Adam, who, despite being white, is often tanner than his girlfriend. In summer, when he’s not working, he’s almost always outdoors, helping out at his family’s painting business or going on shirtless runs, showing off his impressive abs and the tattoo sleeve on his left arm.

At the familiar sight of their passionate lip-lock, one of Adam’s buddies from high school, sitting farther down the bar with his work friends, wolf whistles. “There goes Adam, kissing the customers again!”

Adam breaks the kiss to scowl. “Only one of the customers, asshole!” he calls back, but the laughter drowns him out. With an eye roll, he returns to their drinks. To Elisha, he says quietly, “However you decide to handle things with the new owner, you do need his permission. Not to put too fine a point on it, but literally everything depends on the film crew using Ves’s house.”

He’s right, but the reminder that a stranger holds their fate in his hands makes Elisha groan. It’s Piney Peaks’s Christmas House. Not his. “I know, I know.”

“No pressure or anything,” Solana quips, but the levity doesn’t quite land. Without the house, there’s no movie sequel, but there’s more than just Elisha’s reputation at stake, and all three of them know it.

Nearly every single mom-and-pop business on Main Street was featured in the 1974 classic Sleighbells under Starlight. In the romantic comedy, an English duke from the previous century travels through time in his sleigh, getting caught in a Christmas-week blizzard, only to be saved from hypothermia by a spunky hippie waitress in Piney Peaks. Hijinks ensue when the bewildered and achingly proper duke is mistaken for her respectable—and completely fake—fiancé, who she needs in order to prove she’s grown up enough to take over the family diner. It only gets more bonkers from there.

But despite its quirks, it’s hilarious and wholesome and, most importantly, sweepingly romantic. There’s something about that will-they-or-won’t-they energy of the culture-slash-era clash that socks Elisha right in the heart, along with the rest of America. A quintessential Christmas classic, it’s one of the few movies so iconic that it hasn’t been remade in recent years with a hot new cast and cool CGI effects.

During the original filming, nearly everyone in town was either an extra milling about in the background or knew someone who was. Maeve’s dad, Doc Hollins, gave permission for their house to be used as the waitress’s family home. Elisha’s own grandparents both had speaking roles as owners of the Chocolate Mouse, the local sweetshop where one of the most romantic scenes of the movie took place. The credits are full of familiar, if a little small and fuzzy, last names.

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