Elkin Brothers Christmas: The Complete Series Page 17

  “I hope I wasn’t gone too long.” Gabe’s voice startled her, sending her hand flying to her chest. She had no idea how much time had passed. “It’s time for family dinner and we’ve got to knock this one out of the park. My previous girlfriends made either no impression or a negative one, and I’m not sure why, but—wait, did you put away all the clothes?”

  “I did.” She put a big smile on her face but saw concern flare in his eyes. “It was relaxing, if you can believe it.”

  “I don’t.” Gabe went to the closet, opened it up, and pulled out a jacket. “Did something happen while I was gone?”

  “Nothing. But I am surprised to find out you’re dressing so fancy for dinner. I can’t go wearing these pants. Give me thirty seconds.” Anna had an outfit in hand and on her body in far less time than she’d needed. In the bathroom, she ran a hand through her hair and gave herself a stern look in the mirror while she refreshed her makeup with a skilled hand. She was not going to slip up and let the false front of perfection drop. The stakes were high for Gabe and his family and she’d promised to do her best.

  It had taken her years after she left home to figure out how to act like someone with money and poise, and it wasn’t going to crumble today. Not today. This wasn’t about a luxury vacation or relaxation. Anna had a point to prove, both to herself and to Gabe.

  She swirled out of the bathroom, hands above her head. “How do I look?”

  “Gorgeous.” His eyes moved down over her body and flicked away, the glance so short she thought she might have imagined it. “Dinner is down one floor in my grandmother’s apartment.”

  “Lead the way.” Anna kept her chin up, tossing a lock of hair back over her shoulder, all while anxiety prickled in the pit of her stomach. If Gabe’s grandmother’s rooms were anything like the suite they were staying in, it would be a very fancy place. Anna was familiar with opulent hotels, but she mainly frequented the meeting rooms, not the private suites for the owners. On the next floor, her steps faltered.

  Gabe squeezed her hand. “You did so great in the lobby.” The familiar tone grounded her. It was the same way he’d praised her after a productive meeting or a killer presentation. “And I’ll be right there next to you if you need anything.”

  How close? She was so nervous she couldn’t quite believe it. And he was so comforting that she wondered who this man was she’d been working with all along. That man would never have squeezed her hand and coaxed her in to dinner. Anna took a deep breath and stood up straight, just as Gabe slid an arm around her waist and bent down to kiss her cheek.

  “I’m a professional,” she murmured. “I won’t embarrass you at dinner. Or myself.” He nuzzled into her neck, planting light kisses on her skin. “Gabe...” She put one hand up around his neck. It felt so comfortable with him. So terribly easy. Not to mention out of view of his family. This couldn’t be part of their performance. “What are you doing?”

  “Practicing for dinner.”

  The words made sense, but she blushed deeply, heat spreading across her cheeks. Anna let herself sink into him—just for one moment, just to see what it felt like—and wished as fervently as she’d ever wished for anything, that this wasn’t pretend.

  He broke away from her but stayed close enough for his hand to linger on the small of her back. Anna wanted to curl back into his arms, but not because it was a job. She needed to remember she was playing his fiancée and not lose herself in the role. “I’m good,” she said, as much to herself as to Gabe. “Let’s do this.”

  5

  Grandmother’s apartment—most of one floor of the big building they called the Elk Lodge—reminded Gabe of his childhood. It was only now that he’d been living in the desert of Vegas for so long that he could appreciate it for its simple, elegant beauty. There was something different about the quality of the light on Cardinal Mountain. The nights seemed to come earlier, making the glow of silver candlelight centerpieces warmer. She must have had the staff come in to help set the long table in her formal dining room, decorating the table runner with mistletoe. The family’s formal china gleamed the way it always had at Christmastime.

  “Good to see you.” Jonas was first to greet them, sticking out his hand to shake like old business associates and not brothers. Gabe and Anna made the rounds to greet everyone in the room. His grandmother’s silver shawl and black outfit did the heavy work of hiding how thin she’d gotten, but Gabe knew the truth, having talked to her this afternoon. Chase and his beautiful new ski director-instructor girlfriend, Tana, and her daughter Lindsey, added gaiety to the scene, their laughter echoing around the room. But the sound did nothing to help him relax.

  Gabe wanted to know what had made Anna so nervous earlier. It couldn’t have been the performance element of all this—she was too good at her job to let something like that shake her. The urge to take her into a secluded corner and lean in close to whisper questions in her ear got stronger every second.

  Maybe telling her about how his previous girlfriends had all traditionally bombed this portion of the family schedule had put her on edge. They either refused to eat anything but undressed salad, used their phones under the table to fire off social media posts or send business emails, or excused themselves to make calls. Gabe had nothing against salad—that wasn’t it—just the tension it caused with everyone else. He did have a problem with the phones. But he’d always found himself squarely in the middle, which meant he pleased absolutely nobody.

  The group sat down around the table, and his grandmother waved in uniformed waiters who came in with the soup course. Anna watched all of it with bright eyes and a big smile. “Jonas, tell me about running the resort,” she asked as one of the waiters ladled a delicate vegetable stew into their bowls. Anna made it a point to thank the wait staff as they stopped to take up her food or offer her a choice of fresh rolls and butter, taking the time to make eye contact.

  Jonas paused with his spoon halfway to his mouth. “What do you want to know?” Mild shock registered on his face. Of all Gabe’s girlfriends, not one had ever cared to ask Jonas about running the place.

  “Well, I’m a conference center liaison in my day job. Do you hold events like that here? Or is it mostly tourism-focused?”

  “We—” His spoon went back into his bowl. “We have the capabilities for it, but I haven’t had much time to attract clients interested in larger-scale events.”

  “Oh, that’s great. I mean, not that you haven’t had time to do it, just that you have the space for it.” Anna smiled. “I would love the chance to get in on the ground floor with conference events. It gives you a chance to set up great policies in advance instead of coming up with them as things happen.” She raised her hands in front of her. “I won’t bore everybody with the topic, but if you ever want to talk conferences, I’m your girl.”

  For once, Jonas didn’t frown, didn’t hesitate. “I’ll take you up on that at some point, I’m sure.”

  Gabe let out a breath he hadn’t known he was holding. So far, so good.

  “I’m so glad.” She’d started with Jonas, and not five minutes into dinner, they already had plans to talk business.

  “So, you’re a conference liaison? What does that entail?” Tana chimed in. “I spend most of my time on the slopes as the director of the ski program, so I’m not up on, you know, corporate events.”

  Anna looked tickled to be asked. “I work with companies or individual clients to either smooth out plans for an event that’s already in progress or with conference hotels to coordinate conferences with clients. Everything that has to do with conferences or big meetings—I’ve done it.” She laughed, and it was a lovely sound. “It doesn’t sound too exciting when I put it like that, but there’s rarely a dull moment.”

  “Is that how the two of you met?” His grandmother’s voice was soft but clear. She wore an unreadable expression in the candlelight, sitting there at the head of the table.

  Anna touched Gabe’s wrist and let out a low laugh. “I’
ve got this one. He’s good at presentations, but this story gets him all flustered.”

  “It does not,” he insisted, slipping his hand into hers, and oddly pleased at the way she’d been brave enough to tease him in front of his family. “Not compared to how flustered you got when you saw the ring.”

  “You’re getting so far ahead of yourself,” Anna said, and then cleared her throat. “We started talking about—oh, six months ago? When Gabe needed my help getting his latest app in front of the right people.” She winked, drawing laughter out of both Jonas and Chase. “We got pretty close, working together for all that time. And the rest is history. Very recent history.”

  Gabe relaxed into the rhythm of dinner. After the soup was cleared, the main course arrived—a pork tenderloin that melted on his tongue and tasted like comfort and holiday spirit. And then came dessert. The waiters brought out individual chocolate cakes. He glanced at his grandmother, who looked back at him with a subtle smile. She’d chosen it for him knowing it was his favorite.

  His throat went tight, taking in the little cake with its dusting of powdered sugar. He savored each bite. Anna’s, on the other hand, was gone by the next time he looked over. She put her spoon between her lips and heat shot through him, making him imagine way more than he should about her.

  “Oh, I’m so sad that’s over.” Anna sat back, her comment a testament to how much she’d enjoyed it.

  “Take the last bite of mine.” He scooped it up with his spoon and offered it to her. Gabe, who had always loved chocolate cake so fiercely his family had made fun of him, offered his fiancée the final bite. The room seemed to hold its breath as if he were on the verge of snatching it back. But Gabe wasn’t that desperate child anymore and hadn’t been in a long time.

  Anna leaned in and took the cake onto her tongue, making a low noise of satisfaction.

  “Wow,” Chase said, amazement lacing his voice. “I think you’ve got yourself a match. Have you ever seen anybody who loves chocolate as much as Gabe?” He directed this last part to Jonas, who silently shook his head.

  At the head of the table, his grandmother smiled. A genuine smile, calm and a bit reserved, the way she always was. Something in him untwisted. She approved. His grandmother liked Anna and therefore believed their act was real. Guilt followed hard on the heels of his satisfaction. She approved—except it wasn’t real.

  “Let’s go caroling,” Jonas suddenly announced, surprising everyone at the table. He looked Gabe straight in the eye, as if testing him. All the brothers were intimately familiar with how much Gabe hated singing carols. And they also knew how much their grandmother loved them. “We’ll go down to the lobby and sing there, so we don’t have to get cold.”

  “That’s a wonderful idea.” His grandmother took Jonas’s hand for extra support getting out of her seat. “The pianist will still be there from the dinner hour. He can accompany us.”

  Gabe fought down his own nerves on the way to the lobby, where a baby grand piano was tucked next to the Christmas tree. The family gathered around as the pianist greeted his grandmother and went through her preferred list of carols. The area had been done up to the absolute maximum with Christmas decorations in gold and silver with sprigs of holly and red berries. Everything was color-coordinated and came across as expensive, even to Gabe. The lodge wrapped up like this was a gift to everyone who entered it. The grand piano sported a giant red bow, the curls of the giant ribbon a stark contrast with the gleaming black surface.

  He couldn’t sing and his brother knew it. The last thing he wanted to do was to make a fool of himself in front of Anna. Taking his hand, she squeezed, leaning in close. “I love Christmas carols,” she whispered softly into his ear. “Do you?”

  “Tonight, I love Christmas carols,” he answered dryly, keeping his voice low.

  The pianist launched into the simple, and all too familiar number of Jingle Bells. After the first verse, Anna leaned in again. “Your family is so close. I kind of love it. Even if you and your brothers did argue over—what was that again?”

  “Who was the better skier. And it was just Jonas and me.”

  Anna laughed, but not loud enough to disrupt the singing. “Isn’t Chase the best skier?”

  “Was. But back then, Chase didn’t count when it came to internal contests.” He shot his brother an apologetic look. Tana must have had one heck of an effect on Chase because he didn’t seem bothered by the comment one bit.

  “Internal contests,” echoed Anna, and he could tell she thought it was funny. Yes. More of that. A familial warmth spread in the center of his chest.

  Gabe really did love his family, no matter how much time he spent trying to convince himself he didn’t fit in. Not in the way that everyone else did. Gabe had wanted different things out of life—he hadn’t wanted to sign on to a permanent position at the lodge just because his brother had taken over the management of the place. But now, standing around the piano and singing Christmas songs, he wasn’t sure.

  If he really were the black sheep of the family, and if he really were a disappointment to them—his grandmother wouldn’t have asked him to come home.

  Maybe fitting in wasn’t the only criterion.

  “You’re not singing,” Anna said, whispering in his ear. He put his hand on her waist and pulled her close. She leaned in, curvy and soft, and melted into him almost as if it were the most natural thing.

  He’d been wasting time. The thought came to him as clearly as the opening notes of God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen. The other women he’d brought home would have excused themselves from singing carols. They would have stood stiffly by his side, hands folded in front of them. He’d spent so long dating women who were utterly uncomfortable being around his family, or they were just too wrapped up in their own worlds.

  It had worked at the time because he’d been wrapped up in his own world. He had come here each time knowing that the goal was to leave as soon as possible, only putting in a token appearance.

  This could be his real life. A part of it, anyway.

  Anna rubbed her hand down his back, the gesture genuine. It unlocked an old feeling at the core of him. Belonging. That’s what it was. He felt like he belonged, like the circle of people around him would never close with Gabe on the outside.

  But he’d never get to that closeness without somebody like Anna at his side. His heart beat hard, a triple drumbeat of sadness for the day when they inevitably weren’t together anymore. Those were the rules of a fake engagement. They didn’t go on to become real weddings. So as wonderful as this moment was, it was doomed to end.

  Not yet.

  He straightened up. His family didn’t care if he couldn’t sing. They’d all known it when they planned to go caroling in the lobby. And they wouldn’t care now. The pianist went into the next carol—Silent Night. And Gabe, with Anna close by his side, opened his mouth and sang.

  6

  The wine at dinner had gone straight to Anna’s head, and the effects persisted long after the singing was done. It made her skin feel warm, almost overheated, as she and Gabe took the elevator back to their suite. He didn’t drop her hand when they stepped out into the hall. He held it all the way back to the room, giving a little squeeze as he pushed the door open and led her inside.

  He brought her knuckles to his lips, brushing his lips across them with a satisfied light in his gray-green eyes. “That felt good,” Gabe said, his voice husky. “Didn’t it?”

  “Felt pretty real to me,” Anna said breathlessly. The two of them had stood with his family in the glittering lobby of the Elk Lodge. The tree was nothing short of perfection with its red bows, glass ornaments, and warm lights suffusing everything with a homey feeling. The kind of holiday she’d seen in commercials and movies, but nothing she’d ever experienced.

  And Gabe was right in the middle of everything that made it perfect. There was a good chance the warmth she felt was not all wine and holiday, but instead, Gabe. And maybe it wasn’t just warmth, but a fierce
, hot want.

  He stepped closer, pulling her in with a soft touch on her hand, and Anna thought she’d never felt so much power concentrated in one tiny gesture. Gabe was strong. He scheduled enough gym time to keep himself lean and muscular, and he could have had her in his arms—but he didn’t. He waited, those eyes on hers, asking a silent question that she wanted to answer.

  Anna drew in a breath to say something, anything, but his lips hovered over her knuckles again. He lowered his mouth to the ridge of her fingers, drawing the pad of his thumb across the back of her hand. He kissed the place where his thumb had been, following it up to her wrist bone. “Yes,” she said breathlessly. And then, faster than she could blink, he closed the distance between them, and Anna was in his arms.

  She collided with the hard expanse of his chest, covered only in his dress shirt, and Gabe’s hand slipped down to her waist as her arms went around his neck. His lips met hers in a burst of heat and something like possession. Like they really were together, and it wasn’t all an act. Anna could taste it—a real holiday with him, a real heat in his touch.

  Gabe gave a low groan and his hands tensed on her waist. She pulled back, struggling to catch her breath. It was like a movie set, this hotel room, all sleek cream furniture and fancy touches, and Anna wanted to belong here. Wanted to be the kind of woman who curled up on the sofa with Gabe and watched the snow falling outside before family dinner. Wanted to go to bed with him at night, not because they were acting but because they needed to be together

  He was close now, his handsome face slightly flushed, and pupils dark with desire.

  Anna could kiss him again. And she knew, deep down, where that would lead. It would lead to clothes coming off and a rush to the bed, leaving all of her on display for Gabe.