Good Elf Gone Wrong: A Holiday Romantic Comedy

A father?

Gracie was pregnant?

My brain spun, trying to do the math. I hadn’t been with her that long; it literally couldn’t be mine, right? Right?

I pulled out my phone trying to keep it together enough to ignore all of Grayson’s missed calls. He was too careful to leave a text message or voicemail, but I was sure I could feel his fury from two states away. In the background, I could hear the loudspeaker from Kelly’s wedding.

He was going to fucking kill me, I thought as I googled how soon you can determine a pregnancy.

“Eight days, seven days,” I counted backwards. “This website said five.”

“Could be … fuck.” I sat down on the curb outside of the country club, getting strange looks from well-dressed wealthy people out to enjoy their holiday in splendor.

My boss came running after me.

“Where the hell are you going? Aren’t you here to work? We’re short-staffed. Go get your vest on.”

I felt dazed.

“I’m not. I’m not on the schedule for today.”

He blew out an angry breath. “Then you can’t sit here.”

“He’s my guest!” a woman trilled. Kelly.

Why was she out here? Didn’t she just say she was pregnant? Shouldn’t she be with James?

“All right, ma’am,” my boss said warily.

I knew I was going to hear about it at my next shift, if I survived that long.

Tick-tock.

Grayson called me again. I declined the call.

There was a reason people didn’t fuck with billionaires. They were, in many ways, above the law. I knew several people I used to serve with in the military who Grayson could call and have me taken out. Shit. He had probably already called Crawford Svensson and had a hit out on me right now.

“You poor thing,” Kelly said, stroking my back.

“I’m fine,” I replied, pressing my fingers to my temples.

Wrong.

I was panicking.

Do not panic. You’re being hysterical. You haven’t had any sleep. Panic is dangerous. You can fix this; you can fix anything.

Maybe there was something in her apartment I’d overlooked?

I knew though. There was nothing.

I’d tried every avenue, rifled through every potential source.

I’d failed.

Grayson was not going to take “sorry I screwed up” for an answer.

“Kelly,” I said, glancing at her then away. “Just go back inside.”

She ignored me.

“My awful sister did this to you.” She gave me a sympathetic look. “You must be in shock.”

Could there be a way to spin this to Grayson, ask for some sort of mercy, give him a credit on the next job?

Maybe. If the stakes hadn’t been so high.

What if I could use the baby? Gracie was pregnant. I could beg Grayson for leniency because I was going to be a father.

Now there was an idea.

I needed to find Gracie.

“Gracie—she’s always been the jealous type, not just of me, but of everyone,” Kelly was saying as her fingers carded through my hair. “I wouldn’t worry if I were you. I honestly don’t think she’s pregnant. She totally just made it up for attention.”

“Made it up? Why would she …”

Of course.

You underestimate her.

She had played the damsel in distress on the bus, needing a big, strong bad boy to ruin her sister’s wedding, but I’d flaked, left her in the dust, and she’d come up with another plan.

I let a hollow laugh escape my throat.

And yet …

“I wish she was pregnant.”

“Why?” Kelly wrinkled her nose. “She’s immature. She’d be a terrible mom. Do you know,” Kelly scoffed, “she keeps a Festivus book?”

“A what?”

“A book of grievances,” Kelly said in a mocking tone. “Anytime people don’t listen to her or ignore her terrible advice, she just writes it all down in this little book. I found it in her room once. It has stickers all over it and everything. She has a whole bunch of them. Sometimes if I’m bored, I sneak in there and read them. She keeps them in this fake hidden drawer in her bookcase, like she’s twelve or something.”

Kelly tossed her hair, letting it flick in my face. She linked her arm with mine, leaning against me. “My sister is obsessed with James—she’s constantly writing down things about him. Anytime she thinks he’s mean to her at work or doesn’t want to implement her stupid ideas, she just writes it all down. Can you believe it? She’s crazy. Gracie is so not over James. He moved on to someone better, and it seems like you are too.”

She ran her finger over my lower lip as I stared at her, her words locking into place.

“I could kiss you right now,” I breathed.

“Can you?” She shimmied her shoulders.

I stood up.

“I have to go.”

“You can’t just say that to a girl then leave.”

“I have something to take care of,” I said brusquely. “I’ll see you later.”

I didn’t dare to hope as I drove right under the speed limit over to Gracie’s parents’ house.

It was dark, the front door locked, but I picked it easily then crept past Pugnog sleeping in his basket up the stairs, up to the attic, up to where I’d made love to Gracie in her bed the other night.

I allowed myself a fleeting moment to breathe in her scent, remember her, then I searched the room for the secret drawer.

It was stupid. I should have found it earlier. I’d searched her apartment but never thoroughly searched her childhood bedroom. Because what twenty-nine-year-old woman keeps work-related paper journals hidden in her childhood bedroom?

Gracie, that’s who.

They were right where Kelly had said they’d be.

Notebook after notebook—bless Gracie, each entry dated and time-stamped. It was all there—everything I had been searching for. She had logged every time James did something shady with accounting, every time her father farmed out some aspect of the coding to a Chinese firm against her advice, every time EnerCheck hired an illegal foreign student to work part-time. It was all there.

“Merry Christmas,” I breathed.

My phone rang again. I pressed the green button.

“Where,” Grayson said, cold anger laced in his voice, “are you? It is almost midnight, and I do not have what you promised, what I paid you to provide to me.”

“You need to have a little faith in the magic of Christmas.”

“You better not fuck with me.”

“I just found it,” I said in a rush, and I stuffed the notebooks in my messenger bag. “I have it here. I found it, everything—there’s enough to bury the whole company. I’m bringing it to you now.”

There was a long pause.

“Huh,” Grayson said. “Really?”

“Of course,” I said, forcing my voice to steady. “I told you. I always deliver.”

“So you do.”

I hung up the phone and buckled the straps in my messenger bag, the seams practically bursting.

“Just get out, get to Manhattan, don’t stop driving until you hand these off,” I told myself.

My footfalls were light as I made my way down the stairs.

This had to be a dream. Maybe Grayson had already killed me and I was in purgatory.

I patted the messenger bag, feeling the books there, solid under my hand. No. This was real. I’d done it.

In the living room, there was the telltale sound of slobbering, snorting, and dog paws. Pugnog stumbled out into the foyer, whimpering.

“You need to go out?” I asked him.

Just leave.

But I couldn’t just leave the dog like that.

“Okay, come here, buddy,” I said, setting the messenger bag on the floor. “Come on.” I picked up the dog. “I’m going to let you out, but this is not a tasting-menu situation. You need to take a piss where I tell you to.”

Pugnog yipped as I unlatched the door.

“Oh, fuck!” I yelled as the dog peed all down my shirt, jacket, and pants.

“What the hell, Pugnog? God damn it.”

I dumped the dog out in the bushes and tried to clean off the worst of it.

“I said when I tell you to, Pugnog.”

The dog’s eyes rolled in his head, and his tongue fell out of his mouth.

“Fine. Fuck it,” I said, gingerly stripping off my clothes. I shivered slightly as the freezing-cold winter air hit my bare skin.

“Towel, towel,” I muttered as I dumped the little dog back in the house, leaving the filthy clothes in a pile by the door. I hurried to the kitchen, opening drawers, grabbed a towel, and ran it under the faucet.

“There’s my bad boy,” Kelly purred.

This is a fucking horror movie.

“Kelly, I can’t do this right now. God, where are your clothes?”

“Same place as yours,” she said and tweaked the nipple rings on her boobs.

She stretched up against my bare chest, grabbed one of my hands, and forced it down her panties, grinding against it and moaning.

“I can’t wait to have your huge cock inside me. You feel how wet I am for you, Hudson?”

“You’re engaged,” I hissed at her.

She licked her lips then bit me on the pec. “I know you like to fuck another man’s woman. It makes you feel powerful.” She grabbed my jaw and kissed me.

“Don’t pretend like you don’t want to come in my pussy. I could feel it as soon as we first locked eyes. Every time James stuck his puny little cock in and I had to pretend to enjoy it, I was thinking about you. I know you were putting on a show for me. You’re so sick of my sister. I bet she’s like a dead starfish.”

“You’re pregnant, Kelly,” I snapped.

She let out a wild laugh.

“Right, ‘pregnant,’ and a few months from now, I’m having a miscarriage, and everyone will feel sorry for me. I’ll get lots of presents.”

“What about James?” I asked, trying to extricate myself from her.

“I just have to stay married to him for three years, then I get a big payout. I’m going to have a little fun before I’m shackled to that loser.”

She was like a killer octopus, her limbs latched around me.

“I want to feel that big cock in my pussy, Hudson,” she said and made a porn-star moan. “Come down my chimney, Santa. I’ll be your good little reindeer and let you ride my sleigh all night long. You can hold the reins.”

She rubbed the nipple rings along my chest.

There was a heartbroken cry, and the kitchen lights flicked on.

“Hudson?” Gracie said. Her brown eyes were horrified and filled with tears.

“Damn,” one of her cousins said, taking a swig from a bottle of champagne. “Lost your man again on Christmas.”