Chapter 16
While waiting for my father to arrive, Elizabeth stares in awe at the fifteen-foot Christmas tree in the middle of our living room. An enormous noble fir fills the space with the fresh scent of pine. Elizabeth rubs the short needles of a bough and sniffs her fingers.
“There is nothing better than the smell of fresh pine. I make a mean pine needle tea with honey. It’s really easy.”
I grimace at the thought. “I’ll pass but thank you.”
She walks around the evergreen, touching individual ornaments, some purchased, others homemade. The twinkle of the lights makes her face glow and her green eyes sparkle. A large crystal star sits at the top, catching the light and breaking it into prismatic colors.
Mom goes a little crazy decorating for the holidays.
Okay, that’s a lie. Mom makes everyone else crazy as she directs and micromanages the staff, making sure they follow her decorating instructions to the letter.
If there is a wall, a table, a chair, a fixture, or any other surface, it’s bedecked with something green and red and Christmasy.
“I like this one,” Elizabeth comments, and I walk over to see which ornament she’s referring to.
She’s dressed in skinny jeans and a rose-colored, long-sleeved blouse.
The pink matches the tips of her hair which she recently colored again.
I like it. It’s like having a part of New Elizabeth back.
The adventurous girl she was when she had no memory.
The girl who wasn’t afraid of me anymore and opened up her heart to allow a friendship to bloom between us.
“I think I made that one in the second grade.”
She’s fingering a pinecone reindeer with glued-on red jingle bells for eyes and a nose, and brown pipe straws for antlers.
“I’ve always wondered what you were like as a kid.”
“Trouble,” I reply, and she smiles.
“I like trouble.”
“I would have been the boy who pulled your pigtails and pushed you down on the playground. Maybe dropped a frog in your shirt or put gum in your hair.”
She snorts at that. “If you tried, Jayson, Julien, and Ryder would have beat you up.”
“I could’ve taken them. I was a sneaky, crafty, little pain in the butt.”
“You were adorably cute, too. I’ve seen the family photo on the mantle of you in tiny suspenders and a bowtie.”
Groaning, I hang my head. “I absolutely hate that picture.”
“I love it.” She pats me on the cheek, and I blush, which is a first.
“Shut up.”
“Someone’s grumpy because they haven’t had their favorite chocolate caramel latte,” she says, and I use one of her signature moves and roll my eyes at her. She said almost the same thing at the hotel in New York City.
“Do you ever miss it?” I ask her, tucking a strand of her hair behind her ear.
Elizabeth touches the pinecone reindeer again, trailing a finger along the soft fuzz of the antlers.
“All the time.” She tilts her head up at me, chewing on her bottom lip.
“This may sound really stupid, but I wish I could capture those moments in every city you took me to in a snow globe. Then, whenever I wanted, I could hold Paris or Iceland or Barcelona in my hand and remember it all again.”
“You know, I never got to take you to Australia.”
“If you tell me you’re taking me to Australia as my Christmas present, I’m going to ream you.”
“For your birthday, maybe.” I laugh when she punches me in the arm.
“Speaking of birthdays, I did make a birthday wish.” Her eyes spark with mischievousness.
“From the devil-may-care look on your face, I’m afraid to ask.”
“You know that YOLO list I made? Along with the recording studio—which by the way, thank you for setting that up. I’m really excited about it.”
“My pleasure.”
“Anyway, I get to tick another thing off the list, and you better come.”
“Seeing as I have no clue what you’re talking about, fill me in first.”
“Oh! Sorry. I challenged Ryder to a race at the Fields this Friday. Hellcat versus Hellcat. Teacher versus student.” She’s bouncing up and down on her toes excitedly.
Elizabeth being all badass driving her cherry red Dodge Hellcat SRT. You couldn’t keep me away. “I call shotgun.”
She and the guys are on holiday break for the next two-and-a-half weeks.
I still have to work, but I do get nine days off from Christmas Eve through the New Year.
I want to take her and Ry somewhere after Christmas.
Maybe skiing. Wintergreen is in Virginia and only a few hours’ drive north. An easy daytrip.
We both look up when Christmas music starts playing softly from the hidden inset speakers in the ceiling. I take her hand and twirl her in a circle to the beat of “Jingle Bell Rock” and Elizabeth’s face lights up.
When I was twelve, Mom made me take dance lessons.
She said every gentleman needed to know how to waltz.
In our elite circle of wealth and money, being able to lead a girl across a dance floor is a must. It’s archaic and, frankly, dumb as hell.
But seeing Elizabeth’s happy face and hearing her laughter as I spin and dip her makes all those embarrassing and mortifying lessons worth it.
“You’re my second dance partner in as many days.” She giggles as her blonde hair flows out around her in a swirl.
“Who was your first?”
“Ryder, the night before last. We danced under the stars.”
My boy still has game. And he’s still clueless about what’s going on with Elizabeth. She told me what happened. How she was prepared to tell him, and then he hit her with some emotional bombs that left her doubting everything again.
“Oh, I forgot to tell you. I spoke with Tatiana today,” she says as we slow down to “Silent Night.”
Tatiana is my older sister who now lives in Spain with her husband. Elizabeth met her and Eduardo when we flew to Barcelona last month. Apparently, Elizabeth and my sister are now digital pen pals, whatever that means.
“Seeing as she’ll soon be going into her third trimester, I kind of told her about my situation and asked if I could pepper her with questions. Get a first-person rundown on what to expect. I hope you don’t mind.”
“Why would I mind?”
She shrugs.
I don’t like this unsure version of her. When our trip ended, Elizabeth came back strong and capable. The weeks that have passed since then have dealt her one blow after another. How many hits can one person take before it becomes too much?
Because I need to, I hug her to me, and she literally melts in my arms. Whatever I have to do, I’ll do it. For her. If Ryder and the twins can’t man up and help shoulder some of the weight she’s carrying, I absolutely can.
“Any idea what your dad wants to talk to us about?”
That’s why she came over. My father said he needed to speak with us both. “I’m assuming it’s about the internship.”
“I still haven’t decided about that. And please don’t say anything but I got accepted to CU.”
I make her jump when I give a loud whoop and lift her off her feet, spinning her around. “That’s incredible!”
I guess the decision has been made about whether I’m going to college. The decision I told myself I would make once Elizabeth figured out what she was going to do.
I put her down on her feet. “Wait. Why not say anything?”
“Not say anything about what?” my father asks, sauntering in, still wearing his business clothes sans the jacket.
Elizabeth gives me a pleading look to keep my mouth shut.
“If I told you, Santa would cancel Christmas,” I tell my father.
My dad cocks a brow at me. “Right,” he replies.
Walking up to Elizabeth, he kisses both of her cheeks and motions for us to take a seat on the beige and paisley rolled-arm love seat on the other side of the Christmas tree. He sits down in the adjacent Queen Anne.
I haven’t been able to figure out why my dad has taken such an interest in Elizabeth. Maybe it’s because of me. Maybe he sees my own interest in her, our friendship. The way I can’t stop smiling whenever she’s around.
Once we’re settled, his gaze silently roves between us, his eyes going from me to Elizabeth then back to me. Holding up a cylinder of several sheets of rolled paper, he says, “I had an interesting phone call from accounting today.”
Confused as to why he would have to talk to Elizabeth about Montgomery Pharma accounting business, I reply, “Not understanding where you’re going with this, but okay.”
“I’ll make it very clear and to the point then, Fallon. They wanted to know why my son used the company credit card to pay for a two-thousand-dollar obstetrics visit to a Dr. Katherine Culvers, including bloodwork and an ultrasound.”
“Two thousand dollars!” Elizabeth shrieks and swats me on the arm, giving me a glare that says I’m in big trouble.
“Dad, let me explain.”
“Did you get Elizabeth pregnant?”
And holy shit, the shock that statement causes. Elizabeth and I are speechless, our mouths agape at his assumption. She turns her head and looks over at me and the expression on her face is priceless. I know it matches the one on mine.
“Away in a Manger” starts playing over the speakers and Elizabeth snorts at the irony of it.
She covers her mouth with her hand as my lips begin to wobble.
We can’t help ourselves. It’s funny. Then we burst into hysterical laughter.
Loud, booming, belly laughs where we collapse against each other, clutching our stomachs as tears stream from our eyes.
“I don’t find any of this funny,” Dad chastises us, bewildered by our reaction.
“I’m so sorry, Mr. Montgomery,” Elizabeth gasps, trying to catch her breath but failing miserably as she dissolves into another fit of giggles.
“Dad, you don’t have to worry about becoming a grandpa.”
“Oh, thank God,” he wheezes, his shoulders sagging as he sighs loudly with relief. “I knew it must have been an error. I’ll get accounting to sort it out and contact the credit card company.”
“Dad, the baby isn’t mine.”
He squints at me. “Hold on. You’re really pregnant?” he asks Elizabeth.
Our laughter dies a sudden death.
“Yes.”
He points at me. “But you’re not the father.”
“No, Dad.”
“And Daniel doesn’t know, I presume.”
Now he’s catching on. “That would be an affirmative.”
“I need a drink.” He gets up and walks over to the wet bar, grabbing the decanter of bourbon.
Elizabeth aims that gorgeous face of hers at me and leans over to whisper in my ear. “Secret for a secret. That wasn’t so bad.” She sits back, tucking her legs under her. “I hope Daniel is as calm when I tell him later tonight.”
We both give each other a yeah, that’s not likely to happen look.
“Want some company?”
She takes my hand and threads our fingers together. “I was hoping you’d offer.”