Page 94 of Wrapped with a Beau

“Close.” She glances at her family, unable to restrain her full-blown grin. Whatever secret they share is seconds away from coming out, and all of them look on with anticipation. Still, no one hustles him as he neatly removes the wrapping.

It’s a photo album. He opens it, coming face to face with dozens of pages filled with pictures of himself. In the earliest, he’s a baby swamped in a lacy white frock, professionally posed even though he can barely hold up his own head. In later ones, he’s a well-dressed toddler sitting in his mother’s lap, his father standing stiffly behind them. He doesn’t remember ever seeing these at home.

But what truly knocks the air out of Ves’s lungs is the overexposed photo of a seven-year-old him in what is clearly the Chocolate Mouse, face screwed up because of the younger girl next to him grinning into the camera, dangling a milk-chocolate mouse by the tail in front of him. Elisha. A rascal even then.

And after that are a few more pages of him as a child at the Christmas House; excitedly holding the reins of a stationary sleigh; reading some enormous medical tome with a look of intense concentration...

Finally, he raises wet eyes to the Rowes. “How did you get all these?”

“I went through all the old albums,” says Elisha. “Maeve and Grandma Lou took a lot of pictures when I was growing up. I figured that Maeve would have some of you, too, over the years.”

Ves turns to the last page. There’s him and Maeve. She’s just given him the red scarf and he remembers pulling out his phone for a quick snap. She’d waved him off, pulling out an old disposable camera, insisting a real picture was better. She was right. If he’d taken a picture with his phone that day, it would be uploaded and forgotten in cloud storage. He probably wouldn’t have looked at it again.

He closes the book with reverence. “Thank you,” he says hoarsely.

When they get ready to go back to his house a couple of hours later, Grandpa Dave takes them aside for a second. “Are you planning to meet up in the city for New Year’s Eve?” he asks. “I have to head up that way to pick up some reclaimed barnwood. We could coordinate.”

“Oh, Grandpa.” Elisha glances at Ves before answering. “He always spends New Year’s with his best friend’s family. We’re actually not going to do the whole long-distance thing. It’s too complicated.”

For the thousandth time that day, Ves is second-guessing her decision and his earlier agreement. But he doesn’t want to disagree with her publicly, so he shuffles silently into his shoes.

Dave shakes his head. “There’s nothing complicated about love, Elisha. It’s you kids who are making it complicated. Everything is possible with a little gumption.”

Chapter Forty-Eight

Elisha

The day after Christmas, Ves leaves at an ungodly hour of the morning. The whole street turns out to wave him goodbye, even Marcy in her terry bathrobe and hair curlers piled high on top of her head. Elisha joins them, but she and Ves already said their private goodbyes last night, between feverish kisses and gentle thrusts.

It’s harder than she thought to see his luggage disappear into the trunk of his Uber, Thor and Thorin in the back seat, plaintively mewling. Long after everyone else goes back inside, she stays on the porch, staring down the road even though his Uber has already disappeared.

And for the first time, she feels cold.

“Pancakes or Belgian waffles?” her dad asks when she groggily makes her way back into the kitchen, blinking back tears. Her eyes sting from the wind, from not enough sleep, from possibly making the biggest mistake of her life.

“Pancakes, please.” She clambers up on a barstool and groans, holding her head in her hands.

“How are you, sweetie?” Jamie asks, looking sympathetic. “I hope the cats don’t give him too much grief on the journey... they’re not used to the carriers. You can call and check up on all three of them. Should only be a couple of hours as long as his Uber doesn’t get stuck in holiday traffic.”

“No, we decided not to—” She stops herself. She doesn’t want to talk about Ves right now, not when it’s still so raw. It’s the last thing she wants to put into words. But in her haste to change the subject, she instead blurts out the very thing she had been trying all week to keep from her parents. “Do you remember Veronica Fox? My old boss in the Georgia Film Office?”

She immediately wants to take it back. The pan sizzles with the first pat of cold butter Jamie tosses in, quickly melting enough that he can coat every inch. “Sure,” he says.

Elisha takes a deep breath. She started this, she might as well see it through.

“I met up with her while I was in New York.” Elisha watches as the batter hits the pan, immediately sizzling. “She offered me a job. And I... have to decide if that’s something I want.”

“You’d have to live in the city?” Jamie flips the pancake. It’s a little thicker and browner than usual, the way first pancakes often are. “But that’s great, right, honey? You’d be closer to Ves.”

Which is exactly why she can’t let that be a factor in her decision. She can’t base her career decisions around a guy who she’s only casual with. What if she accepts Veronica’s offer, thinking he’ll be stoked to have her closer, only to find out down the line that he’s not into it?

She doesn’t think he’d be like that, but she’s been wrong before. And she doesn’t want to uproot herself, even if it’s just a couple of hours away, for something that could be nothing. Especially since she came back to her hometown for a reason, and that reason hasn’t changed. She wants to be near her family. And Veronica can offer her a lot, even a fifty-fifty partnership, but the job will take her away from something irreplaceable: home.

“I think that’s partly why I’m hesitating,” Elisha admits. “I don’t want to be tempted because of him.”

“But it is a temptation?” Jamie clarifies, getting to work on the second pancake.

“I’d be lying if I said it wasn’t. But it’s not just him. I adore Piney Peaks. I think I’m doing something good here. There are already a ton of film and TV opportunities in New York. I can’t help but think that I’m kind of unnecessary there. Anyone can do what Veronica wants me to do. But unearthing gems like our town all over Pennsylvania? That’s... that’s like magic, Dad. And there are plenty of towns that want to do what I’m trying to do here. With Danica’s support, who knows where this could go?”

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