Page 111 of The Holiday Grump
“Really?”
I loved the excitement on her face. I’d do anything to keep it there.
Fredrik: Please bring small twigs and as many pine cones as possible, as well as beeswax. Pretty please.
Jackson: Two pleases? Is this for a woman?
Fredrik: How did you know? [tongue-out emoji]
Jackson: What? Did she crawl out of her hiding place? Did you close the deal?
Fredrik: She’s with me, and we’re driving to my place. Need pine cones and beeswax, stat. She wants to make fire starters. [eye-roll emoji]
Jackson: I’ll make it happen.
“He’ll bring everything,” I told Noelle.
“So far, so good,” said Grace from the back seat.
Noelle gave me a cautious sideways look. “You know we’ll be taking over your kitchen and probably ruining a perfectly fine cooking pot or something. And then I’ll need your help driving around, dropping them off. I don’t know where anyone lives.”
“That’s okay.”
She’d be in my house, making it feel like a home. If that meant she’d open the door to a hundred other people I had to tolerate, it was still worth it. She was worth it.
CHAPTER 37
Noelle
“You ready to go?” I asked, tying a ribbon around the last bunch of kindling and attaching it to a bag of wax-coated pine cones. “We should drop these off before we go shopping.”
We were all up well before sunrise, having barely slept, and still had a lot to do before our families arrived for Christmas Eve dinner, including baking more pulla. Grace leaned on the kitchen island next to me, making a shopping list.
We’d somehow managed to warm up the cones in his oven so they opened and melted the wax without destroying anything, but the general mess was still evident all around us.
“Are you adding a note?” Fredrik asked, admiring the row of pretty packages.
I shook my head. “Why?”
He smiled like I was being funny. “What if they’re not home? They won’t know it’s from you.”
“You can use these.” Grace handed me a stack of gift tags.
I let out a nervous laugh. I was so used to doing my good deeds in the dead of night that it felt more natural that way. Putting my name on a card felt icky, like I was expecting something in return: recognition, praise, something.
“It’s okay.” I scrunched up my nose, feeling awkward. “I’ll just write ‘Happy Holidays’ or something.”
“Or…” Fredrik leaned across the island, a subtle smile on his lips. “You could write ‘Happy Holidays from the Hideaway Elf.’”
My eyes flew wide open. “The… what?”
Grace giggled. “I think he knows your secret.”
I stared at him in disbelief. “But… how?”
Fredrik took one of the gift tags, turning it in his hands. “Remember how I had the whole town on the lookout, reporting to me on your whereabouts?”
“Yeah. But I didn’t do anything in the last two nights.”
