Good Elf Gone Wrong: A Holiday Romantic Comedy

“Relax, Sugarplum, I’m just kidding,” I said as she stammered. “I hate Christmas, and like I said, you look like you’d be a terrible lay. How about I put you on a payment plan? First date’s free.”

Grace O’Brien—Gracie as her family called her and the name she used to register for store loyalty programs, according to the file I’d put together on her—stared at me with wide brown eyes.

You pushed too hard.

I didn’t allow the fear to skitter across my face; I was too well trained for that.

She’s going to balk, and then you’re going to have to go back to HQ, tail between your legs.

And after I’d given the other guys so much shit about getting thwarted by one dumpy little office girl and her overweight pug.

I read her file. I knew her, knew her better than she knew herself.

Trust the plan.

Gracie wavered.

I gave her a derisive look.

“Deal.” She stuck her hand out. It was small and soft in mine as I shook it.

“Let’s talk strategy,” Gracie said, pulling out a notebook covered in green, red, and white fuzz that immediately began shedding all over my black canvas work pants.

She wrote in a loopy cursive at the top of the page:

Fake Boyfriend Operation

I grabbed the notebook from her and ripped out the page, crumpling it up.

“First rule, don’t write anything down. No creative notes, no lists, no text messages, no emails.”

Gracie saluted.

“Got it. No evidence, no witnesses.”

“Second, you do what I say, when I say it. No questions. ”

“What if—”

“No questions,” I interjected.

“But what’s the plan?”

“The plan is total annihilation, by any means necessary.”

She gulped.

“Do you want to win? Do you want to wipe the floor with your ex’s corpse?” I demanded.

“Um, no. No, that is not what I hired you to do,” she said, waving her hands.

“Metaphorically, I mean.” I gave her a toothy smile.

She shivered.

Pugnog drooled.

“Third, you need to keep that dog away from me. He smells bad, and his eyes are pointing in two different directions. He’s an affront to intelligent life.”

“He didn’t mean it, Pugnog.” Gracie scooped up the pug and squeezed it hard.

His eyes bugged out of his head so far I thought one of them was going to pop out and start rolling around on the bus floor.

You are getting a very lucrative payday out of this, I reminded myself. Just play the part that she wants you to play.

Grace squirmed in her seat. “Do I need to tell you about my family, you know, give you an information download?”

“No,” I said then mentally hit myself. She didn’t know I’d spent the last few months digging up dirt on her family. Or trying to anyway.

“I’ll know what I’m working with when we have our first family gathering together,” I backtracked.

Sloppy.

“Don’t worry, Sugarplum. I’ll break up your sister’s relationship, and you can have you ex back.”

“I don’t want James back,” she said in a rush.

“Of course you do,” I said, crossing my arms. “It eats at you that he chose her over you, that he loves her and not you, that he wants her and not you.” I lowered my voice to a whisper. “You want him to wrap you in his arms, tell you you’re his one and only, to beg for your forgiveness, tell you he loves you and beg you to take him back.”

“No, I don’t,” Grace said forcefully, but the slight tremor in her voice told me she was lying.

“Don’t feel bad, Sugarplum. It’s because you have low self-esteem.” I rubbed my thumb on her chin.

“Asshole.” She faced the window.

“That’s why you hired me.”

I turned back to my book.

Love was a weakness. And Gracie was weak.

Unlike me.

I wasn’t motivated by love. I was motivated by money. When my father left my mom and siblings to run off with the family’s money one Christmas—what was left of it anyway—I saw love for the scam it was. Love made people irrational and ineffective. That was why I’d been able to wrap Gracie around my finger, because she had been weakened by her love for her ex.

I glanced over at her. She was staring dreamily out of the window, watching the snowy Rhode Island countryside pass us by. Other men would probably find her soft femininity alluring, but not me. Gracie’s only attractiveness was as a means to an end.

I mentally plotted my next steps as the bus rumbled into the small town of Maplewood Falls. The bus terminal was on the wrong side of town, the side where I grew up.

I’d signed up for the military as soon as I had turned eighteen, needing to escape the town by any means necessary. Yet I had never been able to completely shake its hold on me.

Gracie, as I knew from her file, had grown up on the right side of town, gone to the good school, lived in a nice house in a desirable neighborhood. What I hadn’t been able to figure out, when I’d been compiling my research, was why her parents made her take the bus home.

Guess you’re about to find out.

Gracie was awkward when the bus pulled up under a 1950s-style awning. The terminal numbers had fallen off years ago, leaving only the shadow of the number five on the peeling white paint.

“I’ll let you know when the first family event is,” Gracie said quietly as the passengers jostled to escape the cramped bus.

“Call me,” I reminded her, taking her notebook and jotting down the number of a burner phone I’d bought for this specific purpose.

“Wait,” she said and looked around furtively. “What’s your name?”

“Hudson,” I replied, “Hudson Wynter.”

“Grace O’Brien, but everyone calls me Gracie.”

I knew that, of course, but said, “We’ll be in touch, Gracie.”

The much-smaller woman struggled to extricate herself, her dog, and all of the shit she’d brought with her.

“Aren’t you going to help?” she grumbled.

“Helping is extra,” I breathed in her ear, just in case someone her family knew overheard. “Besides, no one told you to pack this much. Are you moving home?”

“I haven’t sunk that low yet,” she muttered.

Pugnog yelped as Gracie accidentally banged him in the head with her laptop case.

I took pity on her and grabbed the overstuffed carry-on from the overhead rack then slung my rucksack on my back. I didn’t have much in it—it was just for show. Everything I needed had already been stashed in town.

“You don’t have more luggage than that?” Gracie asked me as she followed me off the bus, her bags thumping against the empty seat backs as she passed.

“I travel light,” I replied, setting her bag on the icy sidewalk.

The bus driver was standing beside the open underbus storage, smoking a cigarette.

“I have a small animal,” Gracie said defensively as she headed for the storage bay to retrieve another overstuffed bright-pink suitcase, sliding on the icy asphalt as she tried to drag it out.

I strangled a curse, stalked over, and grabbed her roughly before she and Pugnog could crash to the sidewalk.

My client was not going to be pleased if I couldn’t fulfill the contract because I’d let Gracie crack her head open on the pavement.

“I’ll get it,” I growled.

“Oh, look. He does have manners.” Gracie sounded slightly breathless.

Probably all that cheese she ate.

“You have anyone coming to get you?” I asked as I picked up both of her bags.

“They have wheels,” she huffed as I carried them toward the dilapidated, small-town bus station.

I ignored her.

“My family is busy,” she said, trotting after me, “but I called an Uber.”

Inside the too-warm building, a bored bus station employee was watching sports on his phone. Christmas carols played, tinny over the ancient speakers in the terminal.

“An Uber,” I repeated.

“Do you have anyone coming to get you?” she asked behind me.

I did, but I didn’t need her to know that.

“I work around here,” I lied.

“Oh.” Her phone chimed with a notification from Uber.

“Come on, Pugnog, we need to go to the store.” She was talking to the pug in a high-pitched voice.

I threw her bags into the trunk of the Uber then slammed the car door closed when she was safely inside.

“Call me.”

“Are you …” she began in a small voice. “Are you sure you want to do this?”

“We shook on it,” I said and smacked the side of the car.

As I watched her drive off, I pulled out one of my burner phones and dialed a number from memory.

“I assume you are calling me with good news.” Grayson Richmond’s voice was dry, emotionless.

“I’m in,” I reported. “We’re still on schedule.”