I’m not wounded, he tried to say, but the words wouldn’t come out. “It’s not that I didn’t want to be here,” he said gruffly. “I did. But I also needed a place to call my own.”
“And you made a wonderful one.” His grandmother’s eyes misted over. “It’s me who wanted something different. I wanted you home for the holidays—all of you—because when you’re here, I feel like I’m keeping you safe. You and your brothers are everything to me. Sometimes, an old woman lets her feelings get the better of her.”
“Nobody can possibly blame you for that.” Gabe reached over and took her hand. “After the way we lost my parents, it’s perfectly understandable.”
Grandmother shook her head. “What’s not understandable is how blind I was to your unhappiness. I did this to you. I’m at least partially responsible because I didn’t understand the real you. And all those years and all those girlfriends, I thought they didn’t understand you, either. That’s why I disapproved of them. Not because I thought they weren’t good enough for you—any of them could have been your wife. But I didn’t get the sense they loved you for who you really were. But all along, I didn’t understand either.”
“What about Anna?”
She let out a short laugh. “I like Anna. She made you happy, and you’ve been so desperately unhappy since she left. She seemed to genuinely care about you, flaws and all.”
“I’m in love with her,” he said wretchedly. “But I don’t know what to do.”
“What would she tell you to do?”
Anna had her own issues with family, but she hadn’t let that stop her from moving on with her life. She’d risen from the ashes of a family that had sorely disappointed her, to become a success. And more than that, she understood what it was like to have that nagging sense she didn’t fit in.
But she hadn’t let that stop her, had she? Not in her job, where she approached every meeting with the confidence of a CEO. And not in life, where she was always up for an adventure. Anna had come here with him and jumped into their little game with both feet.
“What are you thinking, Gabe?” His grandmother squeezed his hand.
“I’m thinking of the time we made you those cookies. They were so strange looking, but they tasted so good. But all I could focus on was how weird they looked.”
“They were delicious,” his grandmother agreed.
“We were happy,” he admitted. “While we made them. Everything with Anna was like embarking on a mission. Getting the ingredients turned into a major trip into town, and then she took me through all the steps of making the cookies. She knew you would like them, and she just—she was so enthusiastic. It was impossible not to be excited when I was with her, no matter what happened afterward.”
“Would she tell you to get back in the kitchen?”
“I don’t know about that.” Heartache slashed across his chest. “She knew I wasn’t very good at baking.”
“And yet she also knew how determined you can be.” He met his grandmother’s eyes, and she smiled at him—a soft, tired smile. “She knew how determined we all can be, and she put her own twist on it. That’s the thing about women like Anna. They’re kind, but they forge ahead and make changes.”
She had made changes. In Gabe. In the Elkin family. Anna had stood her ground when it came to her own boundaries, and she’d stepped up to help them in a crisis, and she had been there, every time he asked her to be.
She’d held his hand.
She’d kissed him.
They’d done so much more.
Even if they’d intended it to be fake, it had taken on its own reality. But Gabe hadn’t been able to step into it. Not entirely anyway, because he’d been too concerned with what his family might think. He’d been waiting for disapproval and it hadn’t come. His grandmother was sitting here right now, telling him she liked Anna.
And what did it matter if they disapproved? Gabe had spent so many years bracing for that uncomfortable feeling of not being a real part of the family—bracing for it, and then letting it take him over. He hadn’t been able to see what was right in front of his face because of his fixation on what he wasn’t within the Elkin family.
Anna had seen it. Seen all the love between them, even with the ridiculous standards and the way they tiptoed around talking about deep things. Of all people, Anna had had a clear-eyed view of what really mattered in his family, and it wasn’t the luxury resort or the fact they had lots of money. It was the way they showed up for one another.
He couldn’t keep her on the outside anymore, couldn’t hold her at arm’s length.
“She would tell me to take action,” he finally answered the question his grandmother asked. “And she would tell me to stop sitting here and do something to show how I felt.”
His grandmother smiled and patted his hand. “Go do it, Gabe. Whatever it is, go do it.”
He stood and then bent down to pull her into a hug. Oh, his grandmother seemed so much smaller than he remembered, her shoulders delicate and almost fragile under his touch.
“Bring her back,” she said into his shoulder.
“I will,” he said. “If I can bring Anna back, I will.”
19
Three days of nothing but bingeing on Netflix hadn’t done a thing to cure the ache in Anna’s heart. After returning home, she’d showered and dropped into bed, exhausted. And once there, she hadn’t wanted to leave. Instead, she opted to take the blanket off the bed and drag it to the couch, where she’d camped out. She hadn’t even bothered getting dressed. Pajamas were good enough for bingeing on TV. Three days, and still she missed Gabe.
And not just him. Anna missed the Elk Lodge, and even the way Gabe bickered with his brothers. She missed baking cookies with him in that little hotel kitchen. She missed sitting down with Elin in her beautiful apartment. And she missed—
A knock at the front door of Anna’s one-bedroom apartment was the first thing to jar her from the routine she’d fallen into. But she wasn’t ready to return to the real world. Better to ignore it.
Another knock, this one louder and more insistent. “Anna? I know you’re in there. I can hear the TV.”
Elena. “I’m coming,” she hollered, but didn’t lift her head off the pillow. It was so far from here to the door, and her limbs felt tired and achy like she’d recently finished running a marathon. Anna had run a marathon once, just because it had seemed like something she should try. Something she could make conversation about with clients. This was worse.
But after a few more heartbeats, she took a deep breath, hauled herself out from under the cocoon of blankets and headed for the front door. Even the lock seemed to resist her, sticking a few times before it finally came open.
The doorknob turned before she could open it. Anna stepped back out of Elena’s way as her friend barged in the way she always did. Elena stepped into the kitchen, separated from the living room only by one countertop, and set an armful of bags from her restaurant on the counter.
Turning back to face her, Elena gave her a once-over look from top to bottom. “You look terrible,” she announced. “I thought you might be dead.”
“I’m not dead.” Anna shrugged.
“Your phone hasn’t been on in days.”
“Yeah, well—” She gazed off into the distance. Leaving the phone off had seemed like the far better idea. If her phone stayed off, she wouldn’t be forced to acknowledge Gabe hadn’t called to make things right. The flip side was she couldn’t see if anybody else called, but that was a small price to pay. “I didn’t feel like talking.”
“You can’t send a single text that says, ‘flying back sooner than expected, lots of work’ and then go off the radar for three days,” Elena scolded. “People worry about you. Namely me.”
Anna pushed a hand through her hair.
Elena seemed to read her mind. “Go take a shower and change into some fresh clothes. I’ll be here when you get out, and we’re going to talk.”
Anna did as she was t
old, knowing it was useless to argue with Elena once she started down the motherly path. The hot water felt good. Even the steady draw of the brush through her hair felt good. She twisted the locks into a neat bun and pulled on a pair of yoga pants and a top. Her suitcase sat glaring at her from the corner of the room, a painful reminder of what happened. “I’ll return you soon enough,” she muttered. “Wow. I must be losing it. I’m talking to a suitcase and myself.”
She headed back to the living room, only to discover Elena had cleaned up the place. Her stackable washer rumbled in the background, Elena obviously washing the blanket since it was nowhere in sight. She’d also swept the minimal food wrappers away and lit a candle. But best of all were the plates on Anna’s coffee table.
Two enormous burgers with all the condiments and a generous stack of fries greeted her like a long-lost friend. Two containers with slices of cake decorated the corners of the table. The smell filled the apartment, and for the first time since she’d gotten home, Anna’s stomach growled with a genuine hunger.
Elena bustled out of the kitchen with a wine glass in each hand, put them carefully on the table, and dropped onto the couch. She patted the seat next to her. “Have something to eat. You’re so pale.” It didn’t matter that she and her friend had disagreed during their last phone call, Elena’s voice still held raw concern.
Anna sat down next to her and reached for a plate.
“TV or talk?” Elena asked.
Anna bit into the burger. It was perfect—medium-well with sweet onions and the homemade ketchup that Elena made in huge batches at the restaurant. It flooded her mouth with something like comfort. “Talk,” she said around the food. Of course Elena would wait patiently until she was ready to explain, but waiting seemed worse than getting it out in the open. Far worse. “Obviously, I’m back in town.”
“Obviously.” Elena ate a few bites of her own burger. “What happened?”
Anna’s chest squeezed. “Well, I didn’t tell you the whole story about the holiday vacation.”
Elena made a noise. “I figured as much.”
“The reason I went is that Gabe asked me to pose as his fiancée.”
“He asked you to do what?” Elena exclaimed, the burger only making it halfway to her mouth as she froze, her eyes wide in surprise.
“We’ve been working together for a while and he took me out to celebrate the success of the conference.” That night at the Top of the World restaurant seemed like a million years ago now, but it hadn’t been. “While we were there, he got some bad news about his grandmother—who raised him. Cancer. She wanted everybody home for the holidays, and he didn’t want to show up without proof that he would be all right in the future. That he was happy and in love, something his grandmother desperately wanted for him. So, he asked me to pretend to be engaged to him for the holidays.”
“And you said yes?” Elena shook her head.
“I did say yes. I like Gabe and his family owns a luxury ski resort that goes all-out for Christmas.” This earned her a smile from Elena.
“What, my little fake tree doesn’t do it for you?”
“I wanted to see what it was like.” Anna swirled a fry in a pool of ketchup and popped it in her mouth. “It was gorgeous. I mean—really, absolutely gorgeous. The winter isn’t like anything we have here in the desert. It was like something out of a movie. Even the way I... started to fall for Gabe.”
“Oh, Anna.” Elena bit her lip. “You didn’t.”
“I did. And Gabe fell for me, too. It was so easy because we had to do all these things to make it look right—we had to hold hands, pretend to be in love, and then behind closed doors—”
“He was good behind closed doors, too?” Elena asked, seizing on the comment.
“Very good.” Anna’s face heated. He’d been better than any other man she’d ever been with. Gabe was on another level and she craved more time with him even as she sank into the sadness of never being able to see him again. “But then Freddie showed up.”
Elena did a double-take. “What? At the resort?”
“Yeah. For a vacation with his family and his new girlfriend. Everything blew up in my face.” Anna took Elena through the reception desk scene, feeling like she was living through it all again. It wasn’t any better now. “Gabe asked me to stay, but I left. It was too embarrassing..”
“But if he asked you to stay...”
“We spent the whole time working on things with his family.” Anna’s throat went tight, but she thought it through. “Gabe had spent all his life thinking he wasn’t good enough, and nothing he did would be good enough, but while we were there, I think he...he came to see that wasn’t right.”
“What about you?” Elena said pointedly.
“What about me?”
“Did you figure out that you belonged there, too?”
Anna shot her friend a look. “I don’t belong there. Never will. My dad—”
Elena shot her a sharp gaze, her brow furrowing with intensity. “Your dad what? What your dad did doesn’t have to define everything for you,” she ground out.
She put the burger down. After Gabe had found out about her dad, he’d hesitated. Hadn’t followed her out when she left. Hadn’t spoken to her since. Gabe might have had issues with his family. Who didn’t? Not even money could buy your way out of some family drama. But he’d tried to help her and show her he cared. And he’d protected her.
Anna had been so aware that their arrangement came with an expiration date that she hadn’t been able to see the situation clearly. Gabe’s painful expression when he found her packing made her believe he cared, but it didn’t change anything. He’d let her go.
“Yeah,” Elena said softly. “See?”
“I’m a little annoyed at you for pointing it out,” Anna said, but it wasn’t Elena she was irritated with—it was herself. How long was she going to fixate on the things her dad had done? She could leave those things in the past, where they belonged, and keep living the life she’d built for herself. In fact, that was her only option.
The one thing she couldn’t do was turn back time and fix things with Gabe.
“You can be mad at me.” Elena popped a fry in her mouth. “I know you’ll get over it when you taste the cake.”
“Speaking of cake...” Anna held out a hand, and Elena passed her one of the containers. Chocolate cake—her favorite. The thin layer of white icing on the top would burst on her tongue with so much sweetness it brought tears to her eyes. Anna scooped up a fork from the table and stabbed it into the dessert. Cake, unlike herself, never let her down. Cake was always there for her. “What am I going to do?”
“What do you want to do?” Elena blew out a breath. “I’ll be behind you, no matter what. I know I was...maybe unnecessarily harsh during our phone call, and I hope you know I’m sorry for that, and I’ll support you with whatever you want to do.”
Anna reached out and patted her friend’s hand. “I do know that. You were worried, and you had every right to be. It did turn out to be a disaster.”
“Disasters can be fixed,” Elena said briskly. “You can clean up and start again. Starting with the icing on your face.”
Anna used her finger to wipe off the icing and then licked it off her finger, not wanting to miss a single drop. Somehow, half the cake had disappeared without Anna realizing it. “Even with people, though?”
“Oh, please. You work with disasters all the time. I’ve never heard of a situation you couldn’t fix.”
Anna thought of all the times there’d been sticky negotiations with hotels and last-minute itinerary changes and freak accidents with equipment and scheduling. Over the years, she’d come to think of those things as part of the job and not anything to be especially shaken by. What would she say to a client who’d had a curveball thrown at them? Things happen. We’ll get through this. Well, things had happened. And she would get through it. But the next thing she did after reassuring her clients was to take action.
�
��You’re right,” she said softly. “I can at least try to fix this.”
“In the meantime, are you going to come over on Saturday?”
Anna blinked at her. “Come over for what? And when’s Saturday?”
Elena sighed. “You’ve really been out of it, haven’t you? It’s Thursday now. Tomorrow’s Christmas Eve. You’re invited to my family’s Christmas dinner, just like you always are.”
The dinner at Elena’s house would be a family affair, and a crumbling feeling in her chest told her she’d never make it through. Not unless—and until—things with Gabe were all patched up. Everything felt too sensitive and raw. Showering for a burger was one thing; getting dressed up for a Christmas dinner while she was supposed to be at the Elk Lodge was quite another. Not this year.
“I—I don’t think so,” she admitted. “You know I love you and your family. I just don’t think—”
“It’s okay,” Elena said quickly. “There’s always next year, or really any year. But I just need you to know that you’re welcome. No matter what happened in your past.”
Anna reached out and hugged her.
“I know you’ll figure things out,” Elena said into her hair. “You always do.”
“I think that’s what I’ll do on Christmas,” she said, letting a small smile escape. “Figure things out.”
“A gift to yourself.”
“Yes.” Anna laughed. “You didn’t just come for burgers, did you?”
“No way.” Elena released her and tucked her feet up under her on the sofa. “I came for movies, too. As long as you didn’t watch everything available on Netflix already.”
“Not everything,” Anna said. It would work out, she told herself as Elena browsed through Netflix, finally choosing a sci-fi movie with lots of aliens and no romance. Yes, it would all work out.
The Billionaire’s Fake Christmas Engagement: Elkin Brothers Christmas Book Two Page 12