Grump Hard (Silver Bell Falls #1)

Chapter 1

One

Luke Landon Ratcliffe

A billionaire with a bad attitude about the holidays.

(And just about everything else…)

“Silver Bell Falls. More like Silver Hell…” I sink lower on the sleet-dusted park bench in Silver Bell—Hell—Falls town square, glaring at the massive tree twinkling by the gazebo.

Tomorrow, the decorating committee will cover the monstrosity in gaudy, oversized ornaments. By tomorrow night, the entire town will have gathered to sing carols, swill hot chocolate, and pretend there’s a reason to believe there might someday be peace on earth.

I know better.

One of the most successful subsidiaries of my multi-billion-dollar conglomerate manufactures electrical wiring for nuclear arms facilities. If there were a reason for hope, the company would be on the verge of bankruptcy.

But business is booming.

“Pun fucking intended,” I slur to the tree, lifting my cup of spiked eggnog in a grim toast. “You, energy-wasting bastard.”

“Easy there, Holiday Monster, or you’ll set the tree on fire with your eyeballs.” My brother, Elliot, appears at my side, his messenger bag swollen with whatever maple-flavored, flannel-covered, Vermont-themed garbage he picked up at Kathy’s Kountry Store.

“That’s another thing I hate.” I intensify my glare at the “holiday magic” vomited all over the gazebo, the tree, and the businesses surrounding the square.

Even the Victorian town hall on the hill behind the graveyard is so covered in garland and giant bows, you can hardly make out the historic architecture underneath.

“The deliberate butchering of the English language. Neither Kathy nor her Kountry—with a K—store are cute. If I were in charge, people who called country stores, ‘kountry’ stores, would be dragged out into the street and pelted with snowballs.”

Elliot clucks his tongue. “Yet again, you choose violence. Why must you always choose violence during the holidays, big brother?”

“Fuck off,” I grumble.

“I will not,” he says. “It’s the happiest time of the year, and we’re honoring our grandfather’s dying wish by spending the season together in the beautiful home he left us.

” He thrusts his arms into the air. “And we all like each other! How many brothers and sisters with crap parents like ours can say the same?” He pats his bag with a grin.

“And I have enough Santa-shaped cookies, chocolate drizzled peppermint popcorn, and triple maple fudge to keep all four of us wasted on sugar until morning.” He nudges my shoulder.

“Now, come on. We should head back up the mountain before the weather gets any worse. Ashton and Bran will be worried.”

Elliot glances over his shoulder at the mansion high above town, where our younger siblings are busy decking the halls, even though Christmas isn’t for another month.

“Snow we can handle, but they’re predicting sleet before midnight,” he continues, as I slug down another gulp of eggnog and wish my sister weren’t an interior decorator, highly skilled in blanketing sixteen-thousand-square-foot estates in wreaths and reindeer.

“We might lose power before the night is over.”

My lips curve in a grim smile. “Then we should stay here, where they have a generator to keep the fairy lights glittering every second between now and whenever they’re finally giving up on Christmas these days.

January 3rd? The 15th? Valentine’s Day? When do these monsters finally un-deck the halls and let the rest of us weather the winter in peace? The Fourth of Fucking July?”

“You’re going to freeze to death if you stay here,” Elliot says dryly, ignoring my rant. “A suit is hardly winter clothing, you forgot your hat, and your heart is at least five sizes too small.”

I shift my glare his way.

He lifts a hand in surrender. “Don’t kill the messenger. I’m just saying—people with cranky, holiday-hating hearts are more susceptible to the cold. It’s been proven by science. Half of all hypothermia deaths occur in people with Grinch-itis.”

Arching an unamused brow, I take another slow sip of my whiskey-soaked nog.

The Grinch…

I remember the cartoon about the grouchy green creature who hates the holidays, but only the broad strokes.

The last time I spent Christmas with my brothers and sister in the mountains, watching cartoons and frolicking in the snow, I was ten years old.

The next year, my father decided it was time for me to learn the family business, and playtime for this Ratcliffe was through.

I haven’t ‘frolicked’ a day since, and I’m not about to start now.

When Dad had his midlife crisis, running off to Tahiti with Stepmom Number Four, it was my rigid, structured, some might say “humorless” personality that held our family together.

Bran and Ashton were still in high school when I was granted custody of my siblings.

I was the one who ordered groceries, scheduled doctor appointments, and took over the reins at Ratcliffe Universal.

I funded both Elliot and Bran’s start-ups, as well as Ashton’s six years at an Ivy League University.

I learned to put foolish things aside in the name of taking care of my family, and I see no reason for that to change.

And no reason to budge from this bench…

The only thing worse than staring down this tree in the bitter cold would be staring down my siblings as they trim the nearly-as-massive fir in our home, while listening to them recount memories from which I am conspicuously absent.

I don’t want to think about all the summer vacations and winter holidays I missed while trailing my father around New York City, from the offices to the warehouses and back again, while my brothers and sister retreated to the mountains with Gramps.

I don’t want to think about how much time I lost with the people who matter most, or the fact that my grandfather singled me out in his will as “the brother most in need of a full month surrounded by nature, peace, and loads of holiday cheer.”

I’m not in need of anything—except another eggnog.

“Sounds like I should definitely stay, then.” I lift my empty cup into the air. “And drink until my Grinch side is under control. Go ahead without me. I’ll find my way home before the sleet sets in.”

Elliot rolls his eyes. “Oh, come on, Luke. The shops and the café are all closed, and you know I was only teasing. I just want you to loosen up and enjoy yourself.” His tone grows more pointed as he adds, “Or to at least stay alive to ring in the New Year. It’s not safe to sit out in the cold, getting drunk by yourself.

Silver Bell Falls hasn’t had a corpse in the park since Captain Herbert and his parrot kicked the bucket in 1812, and I, for one, think we should keep that trend going. ”

My lip curls at the mention of the Captain, the founder of Silver Hell, whose rancid peg leg serves as the town’s tree topper every year.

“And whose idea was it to shove a sea captain’s peg leg on top of a damned tree in landlocked Vermont?

” I demand, incensed all over again. “It looks like a giant middle finger. Or a prehistoric dildo.”

Elliot snorts. “It does kind of look like a dildo. Awfully splintery, though. I wouldn’t want to be on the receiving end of any peg-leg-dildo-love, that’s for sure. Or on the giving end, for that matter.”

“Someone should have torched that ridiculous thing a hundred years ago,” I insist, the fire in my chest blazing higher.

I don’t know if it’s the whiskey, the ghosts haunting this town, or truly the dildo tree topper that’s set me off, and I don’t care. I finally see a reason to be in Outer Bumfuck, Vermont, wasting five weeks away from my business concerns in the city, humoring a dead man.

I have a mission, a purpose, and I won’t rest until it’s been fulfilled.

I stand, clapping Elliot on the shoulder. “Send the car down in thirty minutes. Tell Arthur to wait for me by the gazebo.”

“Where are you going?” Elliot asks as I toss my cup into a nearby trash can.

I start across the empty square.

“Luke, seriously,” my brother calls after me. “Don’t do something you’ll regret.”

I pause, turning back to him with an arch of my brows nearly as icy as the frozen grass beneath my feet. “Regret? Who do you think you’re talking to?”

“To my responsible, hard-working, generous brother who’s grieving,” he says, his brow furrowed. “We all do dumb things when we’re grieving. Please, just come back to the house with me. We can skip the tree trimming and just…talk. Or play pool or whatever. You don’t have to go through this alone.”

But I’ve always been alone.

I’m the oldest sibling, the one singled out to be my father’s captain when I was still too young to see over the wheel, let alone steer the ship.

I bore the weight of his poor business decisions and numerous affairs on my shoulders, sheltering my siblings from the fear and uncertainty of those years before I took control of our family’s legacy.

I was the firewall between them and my feckless father, neither child nor adult, perpetually stuck somewhere between, guarding my secrets so fiercely I wouldn’t know how to share the burden if I tried.

And I don’t want to try.

I just want to get my hands on that stupid peg leg and hurl it into the closest fire. If I can make this ridiculous town even a fraction less ridiculous before I leave, then my time here won’t have been spent in vain.

“I’ll be home before midnight,” I say softly. “If the chauffeur doesn’t feel safe making the drive, don’t worry about the car. I’ll find my own way back.”

I turn and walk away, ignoring the sound of Elliot calling my name behind me.

Soon, I’m crossing the bridge, where the water rushing over the wheels of the old mill drowns out all other sound. The river is frozen at the edges but flowing freely elsewhere.

Old Man Winter is still playing his cards close to his vest this year.