Chapter 3 Reindeer Games
REINDEER GAMES
DECLAN
“Ihave eyes on Prancer.”
“Jules, I swear to god—”
“It’s your call sign.”
I was going to need to have a serious conversation with my sister about the appropriate use of authority.
When I drew Jules’s name in the best man lottery, I had felt a very specific kind of relief. Because if there was anyone who could help me pull this switcheroo super secret sneaky surprise wedding of Kelsey’s dreams off, it was my terrifying baby sister.
That said, I was starting to have regrets.
“What’s my call sign supposed to mean?” I asked.
“This is a delicate, finely tuned operation, Declan Hunter Kingman. We need call signs.”
“Fine. What’s yours?”
“Vixen. Obviously.”
“Obviously. The girl reindeer.”
“Technically,” Hayes said, ambling up the path toward us with his hands in his pockets and a look on his face that suggested he was about to say something he wished he didn’t know, “all the reindeer were girls. Male reindeer lose their antlers in winter.”
“Really?” Huh. Who knew? Hayes. Obviously. He knew everything.
“That explains how they got so much accomplished in one evening.” Jules nodded, satisfied. “Girls rule the world.”
I looked at her now, in her game-day outfit, and I couldn’t argue.
She’d shown up today in a forest green three-piece suit that matched the vest of my own tuxedo exactly, which she had coordinated without telling me, because that was just how Jules operated.
She had one of Chris’s old wristband playbooks strapped to her forearm and an earpiece like a Secret Service agent.
She had been in constant communication with our amazing wedding planner Ciara Mosely Willingham, and the wedding team since before sunrise, running today like a master’s level chess game with full confidence she was going to win.
I had drawn the right name out of that helmet. There was no version of this day that worked without Jules. I was never going to tell her that.
“Speaking of reindeer,” Hayes said, his voice dropping, his eyes going to somewhere in the middle distance.
Jules turned to look at him.
“We might not know the exact current location of the, um. Reindeer.”
The silence that followed was the kind that had weather patterns.
“And how did that happen, Hayes?” Jules asked, in a voice that was sweet and completely deadly. Like poison in a crystal glass.
“Maybe Flynn tried to put a light-up nose on the reindeer and it spooked and ran into the woods?” Hayes offered. “Maybe?”
Jules took a long, slow breath. She tilted her face toward the sky like she was requesting patience from something much larger than the rest of us. She exhaled through her nose, cued her earpiece, and said in a completely level voice, “Dasher. Dancer. Go for Vixen. Stat.” Then she stepped away.
I looked at my second-youngest brother. “Why did they send you instead of telling her themselves?”
“Because they figured she wouldn’t kill me,” Hayes said sagely. “And they weren’t as sure about themselves.”
“Because you’re Sweet Baby Hayes.”
“Because I am Sweet Baby Hayes,” he confirmed.
“Flynn Montana Kingman.” Jules’s voice carried across the mountain with the clarity of a woman who coached linebackers for a living. “I swear if you don’t find that reindeer I will roast your chestnuts over an open fire. Do you understand me?”
Hayes and I both winced.
“I don’t care how many sweet little ninos you and Tempest want to have, Flynn. Over. An. Open. Fire. Find it. Now.”
She straightened her jacket, turned back to us, and said with a smile that would eviscerate lesser men, “It’s fine. Everything is under control.”
“I’m sure it is,” I said, mostly to make myself believe it. Truthfully, a lost reindeer was small stakes. With the number of moving pieces today had, if that was the biggest problem we encountered we were going to be fine.
Everett and Chris came jogging down the path from the ski lodge. “Just heard from Penny,” Everett said. “They’re on the bus. They’re headed here.”
“Vixen to the White Witch,” Jules said into her earpiece.
“Who’s the White Witch?” I asked.
“Ciara Mooselips Willowtree. The wedding planner.” Chris looked at me like this was obvious. “Did you not study the wedding playbook Jules distributed?”
“Not as thoroughly as I should have.” I paused. “Also, her name is Ciara Mosely Willingham, Chris.”
“I’m pretty sure it’s not,” Chris said, with the absolute iron confidence of a man who was absolutely wrong and had no idea. Only older brothers could pull that off. It was honestly something.
“I just received confirmation from Cupid that the Snow Queen and the Sugar Plum Fairy are en route,” Jules said, looking at her phone. “ETA T-minus forty-six minutes.”
Forty-six minutes.
I don’t know what happened exactly. One second I was standing upright and the next my hands were on my knees and the world had gone slightly sideways.
“Whoa,” Everett said, and then he and Chris were at my sides, hands on my shoulders.
“Declan.” Jules’s voice shifted immediately, going soft in the way it only did when she was actually worried. “What’s going on?”
“What if she hates all of it?” The words came out before I could think them through. “I hijacked our wedding. She thinks we’re doing some celebrity wedding for her fans and the press. What if she gets here and she hates everything and she’s so angry at me that she doesn’t want to marry me anymore?”
There it was. The thing I hadn’t let myself say out loud until right now, standing on a mountain in a tuxedo with forty-six minutes on the clock.
Jules stepped in front of me.
“Declan,” she said. “What’s the first song Kelsey ever learned to play on guitar?”
“Jingle Bells, but—”
“What was the name of the first song she ever wrote?”
“’Queen of the Snowball Fairy Princesses,’ she was six, but that doesn’t—“
“What’s Kelsey’s favorite number?”
“Eight.”
“Why?”
I took a breath. “Because it looks like a snowman.”
“What’s Kelsey’s favorite month?”
“December!” Everett called out, delighted, like this had become trivia night.
“No,” I said, and I could feel the answer settling me down as I said it. “January. Because it gets the most snow and she used to get to spend more time with her parents after the Christmas rush at the store.”
Jules was smiling now.
“And what is her middle name?”
“Noelle.”
“So why, Declan Kingman, would you think that your winter-obsessed fiancée wouldn’t absolutely love the intimate winter wonderland you have planned for her today?”
“She’s going to love it,” I said.
“You’re damn right she will.”
I stood up straight. The dizziness was gone. My sister had relocated my spine and I was grateful for it. I socked her in the arm just so she knew it too.
My dad came marching up the path, holding each of the twins by one arm. Isak trailed behind them filming everything, which he was allowed to do as long as it never saw the internet.
“You boys have something you want to say to your brother?” Dad said, in the voice that meant there was only one right answer.
Flynn looked like a man at his own sentencing. “I’m sorry I lost your reindeer. I really did just think the nose would be cute. I had no idea he was going to freak out like that.”
I looked at Gryff.
“I’m only here because I look like him,” Gryff said. “I had nothing to do with this. I’ve been framed.”
“It’s true,” Flynn said. “This was entirely me.”
Dad released Gryff’s arm immediately. “Sorry, son.”
“It’s fair, Dad.” Gryff straightened his tie. “It usually is both of us.”
“The reindeer trainer’s looking for him now,” Isak said helpfully. “Apparently he has a special horn.”
Jules stepped directly in front of Flynn and made the I’m-watching-you gesture, two fingers to her eyes, two fingers at his.
“I wouldn’t trust my Cheerios for a while if I were you,” Hayes added.
Flynn had genuine fear in his eyes. Smart man.
“Wedding guests start arriving in thirty minutes,” Dad said, turning to me. “You ready, son?”
“Not even a little,” I said. “But only about the wedding. The marriage part is locked. I just hope all of this makes Kelsey happy.”
He looked at me for a long moment. Then he tilted his head toward the path that led away from the lodge, toward the ridge that looked out over the valley. “Walk with me for a minute.”
I followed him.
We walked until the noise of the operation fell away behind us, and there was just the mountain, and the two of us, and the view of Bear Claw Valley spread out below.
The ski resort glinted in the sun on the far side.
In the middle of the valley, barely visible through the trees, was the roofline of Tex’s hardware store.
Dad stood with his hands in his pockets for a long moment, looking down at it.
“I met your mother right down there,” he said finally. “She came into the hardware store wearing a coat and high heeled boots, that were completely wrong for the weather. She knocked her basket over on my feet and looked up at me like I was the most entertaining thing she’d ever seen.”
He was quiet for a second, and so was I. I couldn’t say anything if I wanted to. Not past the grief-sized rock in my throat.
“I was the meanest player in the league. The press called me everything but a good man. And your mother looked up at me like she wasn’t even a little bit scared.” He glanced over at me, the corner of his mouth turning. “I was a dead man from the second she looked at me.”
“That’s exactly how Kelsey looks at me.” I said.
“I know.” He smiled at me and looked back at the valley.
“I proposed to her up there.” He nodded toward the mountain, toward the top where mom’s cabin sat. “She’d bought that little wreck of a place and she was going to fix it up, she had all these plans, and she used to say—“
He stopped and swallowed, then gave his lips and bearded jaw a small, slow swipe.
“She used to say if you can’t fix it with duct tape, it can’t be fixed.
” He said it quietly, like he was handing me something fragile.
“She believed that about everything. Houses. People. Love.” He paused.
“She would have loved Kelsey, Declan. She would have thought Kelsey was the funniest, most extraordinary thing.”
“I told you on Thanksgiving,” I said quietly. “That I felt like Mom picked her out and sent her my way.”
He nodded. “I’ve been thinking about that ever since.” He looked over at me. “I think you’re right. I think she absolutely did. And I think she’s been watching you figure that out, real pleased with herself about it too.”
“At all of our big family events, from graduations to weddings,” he said. “every time were celebrating, there’s a moment when I look around for her. Just for a second, the way you look for something you’ve set down somewhere and can’t find.” He breathed out slowly. “It never stops.”
Missing my mom never went away for any of us. We’d lost our mother far too young. But he’d lost the love of his life, and knowing how much I loved Kelsey, I didn’t know how he did it. How he went on and held our hold damn family together.
“But I want you to know, that doesn’t make me sad, for the most part. Because I look around and I see what she built. All of you. Every one of you ridiculous, wonderful idiots.” He glanced at me. “And I think she knows.”
I had to look at the sky for a second.
“She used to talk about your weddings,” he said.
“When you were all small. She’d say, Bridger, when Declan finds someone, she’s going to have to be tough enough to handle all that quiet of his.
She’s going to have to know how to get through it.
” He smiled. “She said only a person who felt things very deeply could be that quiet about it.”
I kept looking at the sky. That had to be the reason my eyes were wet. Rain. Or snow. Definitely not tears.
“That cabin up there,” he said, nodding again toward the peak.
“She said she knew she was going to marry me because the mountain showed her who I really was when all the other noise fell away.” He looked at me steadily.
“You proposed to Kelsey there. You’re getting married here.
Your mother’s fingerprints are all over this day, son, even if you can’t see them. ”
I cleared my throat.
“You got a tissue or a hanky or something?” I asked.
My dad laughed. A real one, low and warm.
“Not a chance,” he said. “Manly tears of joy are to be appreciated for what they are, kid.” He grabbed the back of my neck and pulled me in for the kind of hug that was over too fast but landed for a long time after.
“Your mother picked the right one for you. You know it, and she knows it too.” He let go and straightened his jacket.
“Now pull yourself together. You’ve got a wedding to get to. ”
We headed back up the path.
“Has anyone seen Jessica?” Great Aunt Yvaine called from somewhere near the tent entrance. “She went back up to the hotel for my shawl. I thought she was on the other bus.”
Nobody had seen Jessica.
Isak’s voice came from right beside me. Low and urgent.
“Declan.”
I looked at him. He was facing the road, and there was something on his face I hadn’t seen before on him. Something that looked a lot like awe.
“She’s here.”