A Fairbanks Affair (An Odds-Are-Good Standalone Romance, #3) Read online

  “Maybe I was hoping to meet a rich gold miner,” she’d joked on one of our first dates.

  “Would you settle for a distiller instead?”

  “Are you gonna be rich?” she’d asked, her pretty eyes bright and sparkling.

  “Yes,” I’d promised her. “If that’s what you want.”

  At the time, I was in the process of building our first distillery. Having grown up on the largest potato farm in the state of Alaska, I’d always had a notion of expanding the family business to include spirits. I just had no idea how widely and warmly our vodka would be received, first in Alaska and then in the Lower Forty-Eight as well.

  Am I rich? Turning around in my chair, I nod my head before leaning back with a sigh. Yes, I am.

  On my desk is a picture of the home I built last year: six thousand square feet on ten acres. It’s got five bedrooms, four bathrooms, a full deck and patio, and a top-of-the-line kitchen with every cutting-edge toy and convenience. It has four fireplaces—one each in the great room, sitting room, master bedroom, and my office—and a three-car garage. There’s a sauna and hot tub inside, with massive windows for watching the northern lights, and a game room in the basement with a TV so big that it practically takes up a full wall. Anywhere on earth it would be a showplace, and I built it for her...all for her.

  Marlena.

  I clench my jaw and rub my chin, remembering the night before my wedding. The rehearsal dinner at a Portland hotel had ended, but my future bride was nowhere to be found. I asked her friends if they’d seen her and even swung by her parent’s house to see if she’d decided to spend the night before our wedding at home. Unable to find her, I’d given up the search, assuming she was staying at the apartment of one of her sisters.

  When I knocked on Cez and Baz’s hotel room door, hoping to share one last toast with them before retiring to bed, I could hear voices in their room. I pressed my ear to the door and heard the distinct sound of moaning. Growling. The squeal of mattress springs. The clap-clap-clap of one body slapping into another.

  And then there was the soundtrack, which wasn’t even muffled through the wooden hotel door: Ah-ah-ah...Ohmigod, ohmigod...more, Cez! More, baby! Keep going! I need you! I love you! Oh, Cez!

  At first, because the voice was so similar to Marlena’s, my brain automatically assumed it was one of her sisters.

  Wow, I thought. Like big brothe...like little brother. You go, Cez.

  For a second there, I was rooting for him.

  And then I turned to see Baz walking down the hall toward me. And the thing about Baz? His face can’t keep a secret. It can’t. It doesn’t know how.

  All the color drained from his cheeks as he approached me.

  His easygoing smile disappeared.

  His eyebrows knitted together over wide, worried eyes.

  He walked faster but looked away—at the corridor walls, at the carpet—anywhere except at me.

  My skin might have prickled a little, but I still didn’t suspect what was going on. I’d had a few drinks. I was getting married in a matter of hours.

  “Baz!” I’d greeted him. “Drink with me!”

  “TREVOR!” he’d shouted in way too loud of a voice.

  “We need one more toast!”

  Baz shot a concerned look at the door, from which all sound had suddenly disappeared. He cocked his head toward the elevator bank at the end of the hallway. “Let’s go to your room.”

  “No way! We need Cez too.” I’d banged on the door. “Cez, you done? Ha ha ha! Come out! Have a drink with us! Come on, bro. Come on—”

  The door opened and my jaw dropped.

  It wasn’t Isabella or Camila Hopkins who opened the door.

  No.

  It was my blushing bride-to-be, Marlena, wearing barely there pajamas, a sheen of sweat on her forehead.

  “Hey,” I said, grinning at her. “What are you—”

  “Trev,” she whispered, staring up at me.

  And still it didn’t register. Almost like my mind wouldn’t allow it to be true.

  “What’re you doing in there? I heard Cez getting busy with one of your sis...ters...”

  Behind her, my brother suddenly appeared, shame etched into his face as he stood with his arms crossed over his chest, clad only in a pair of boxers.

  That’s when an icy chill slid down my spine. I flicked my eyes from Cez to Marlena, from Marlena to Cez.

  “No. No, you didn’t...oh, my God,” I whispered.

  “Trevor,” said Cez, pushing past Marlena to get to me. “Wait!”

  But I was already backing away, my stomach roiling and churning, my fists balling at my sides.

  “Cez, go back inside!” cried Baz.

  “No!” yelled Cez. “I have to explain! He deserves to understand!”

  Fuck this. Fuck this. Fuck this. I was practically running toward the elevators, when I turned around and stalked back toward my brother.

  “Understand?” I bellowed.

  “Please, Trev. Please, let me—”

  “WHAT. THE. FUCK?” I demanded. Out of the corner of my eye, I could see Marlena, still standing in the doorway of my brothers’ hotel room, with tears sliding down her beautiful face. But it was Cecil—my baby brother, whom I loved, whom I had fucking loved since the day he was born—that I was looking at. “How could you fucking do this to me?”

  Cez ran a hand through his thick dark hair and stood there in the hotel hallway in his underwear, shaking his head. “I didn’t mean for it to happen, Trev.”

  “You didn’t...mean to? FUCK YOU, CEZ! Your dick just happened to slide into my fiancée?”

  His head twisted slightly to look at her, then he faced me again, but my fists had a mind of their own. I barreled into my brother, sitting on top of his chest and punching him relentlessly. His head. His face. His neck. His shoulders. Everywhere. A flurry of forward motion and every word punctuated with the smash of my knuckles into his flesh.

  “YOU. ARE. NOT. MY. BROTHER. ANY. MORE! I hate you! I hate you! Don’t ever show your face near me again! I fucking hate you forever!”

  Baz was trying to pull me off of Cez and told me later that Cez hadn’t landed one punch, hadn’t even tried to hit me back, had just laid there on the hotel carpeting, accepting my fury.

  With two other hotel guests—some Hopkins cousins from Seattle woken up with the fracas—Baz was finally able to pull me off Cecil, who curled up into a bloody, battered ball. Marlena knelt beside him, eventually helping him to his feet and driving him to the hospital.

  As for me?

  Still fighting against the men holding me, I was somehow maneuvered into the elevator and then into my hotel room, where Baz poured so much vodka down my throat, I slept through the time when my wedding was scheduled to take place.

  I found out later that Baz had knocked on every hotel room door, telling our guests that the wedding was off. Then sometime after noon, he returned to my hotel room, woke me up, waited as I vomited my guts out, drove me to the airport, and put me on a plane back to Fairbanks.

  When I got back to my dream house, every trace of Marlena was already gone: her clothes, toiletries, throw pillows, decorations—all of them had been hastily removed by my parents, who’d arrived in Fairbanks several hours before me.

  To this day, I haven’t seen or spoken with Cez or Marlena.

  But when Baz told me last month that Marlena was pregnant, I threw up into the garbage can under my desk before asking how far along she was. To my eternal confusion, I was both relieved and—how fucked up is this?—disappointed to realize that her baby couldn’t possibly be mine.

  The house in the picture is on the market now.

  The only problem is that $1.2 million houses in Fairbanks, Alaska, don’t sell too quickly. There just isn’t a big market for them. So I live there—in the dream house I built to start a life with my brother’s now-fiancée. And if that’s not fucked up, I don’t know what is.

  Honestly, I think, reaching into the fridge un
der my desk for a bottle of beer and taking a nice, long sip, Marlena and Cez’s betrayal has already had consequences I never could have imagined. I cannot think of a scenario in which I ever allow myself to fall in love again. Fuck love. Fuck loyalty. Fuck trust and honesty and forever.

  They obviously weren’t in the cards for me.

  I make the best vodka in the state of Alaska, and it sells like it’s the last batch I’ll ever make. I’m rolling in dough.

  Let that be enough, I silently pray.

  Because if you can’t trust your own brother, you can’t trust anyone. And if your fiancée isn’t loyal enough to keep her twat to herself, fuck the idea of a fairytale forever.

  Fairytales are for chumps and children, idiots and dreamers.

  And me? I’m none of those things.

  Not anymore.

  ***

  I pay a local woman, Inez Hernandez, to clean my house, do my laundry, pick up my dry cleaning, and make my meals. She comes over twice a week to stock my refrigerator with Tupperware containers that read “Monday Breakfast” or “Thursday Dinner,” which means I get a home-cooked meal every morning and every night.

  Tonight’s meal is Mexican lasagna, which I’ve had before and like. I pop it in the microwave and head to my bedroom to change into shorts and a T-shirt. I’ll get on the treadmill for an hour after dinner.

  My conversation with Baz made me a moody fucker for the rest of the day, and so I didn’t return any calls and basically limited my interactions to no one. Since Cez and Marlena’s betrayal, I’ve sent our marketing advisor, Penny, home in tears more than once, much to Baz’s consternation. I’m pretty sure he has a thing for her, though he moves at the speed of glacial crawl, so it’s unlikely that anything will happen between them this century.

  I change into workout clothes just in time to hear the ding of the microwave downstairs telling me my dinner’s ready. I begin to eat, alone at the kitchen counter in my way-too-big kitchen, wishing that I had company, then narrowing my eyes at my own weakness.

  I don’t want to talk to someone—I don’t want to get to know them or, God forbid, care about them. I don’t want them to mean anything to me. I just...I miss having someone around. And God in heaven,

  I miss sex.

  I miss it so bad sometimes it actually fucking hurts.

  I haven’t had sex since two months before the-wedding-that-never-happened, because Marlena had read an article in the Knot that said wedding night sex was unbelievably awesome when you make yourself wait for it. Little did I know, that was just an excuse. If my suspicions are correct, she’d started fucking my brother in April: right around the time she’d dipped out on our sex life.

  None of which changes the fact that I haven’t had sex in eight long months. At first? I didn’t want to. My libido tanked after what happened and pretty much stayed that way all summer. But as summer turned into autumn? I don’t know. I’m thirty-one, male, and stupid. My dick started making its needs known. And yeah, I guess I could’ve booked an escort, but I’m a respected businessman, and paying for sex can get you in hot water. So if I didn’t pay for it, I’d have to find a partner. And my mind had trouble figuring out how find someone when my heart refused to be a part of the act.

  The bottom line is that I want it—I need it—to be on my terms. The very terms I laid out in my The Odds Are Good ad.

  Anonymous. Short-term. With someone I’ll never see again.

  Someone like Faith Crawford.

  Leaving my dinner for a second, I grab my laptop out of my bag and open it on the kitchen counter, taking a big bite of lasagna as it boots up.

  I open my e-mail program and click on Faith’s response to my ad.

  I stare at her picture again while I finish eating my dinner on autopilot.

  Unlike Marlena, she’s a brunette, which instantly appealed to me. Also unlike Marlena, who had big tits and a very grabbable ass, she’s lithe. She’s about five foot eight and probably weighs a buck thirty. She’s willowy. Feminine. Young. And she’s not stupid. Her message proved that she grasped the nuances of my ad and would accept my terms without asking for more. That meant more to me than anything else—that we were on the same page.

  I scroll up to read her message:

  Dear Mr. Fairbanks:

  I understand that you are seeking a woman with whom to spend your New Year’s holiday and that you seek a casual relationship of an intimate and discreet nature.

  Like you, I am clean, safe, and solvent, so I do not require your financial assistance to convey me to Fairbanks, though I would like a companion with whom to ring in the new year. I find you an apt candidate.

  Should you be interested in furthering our discourse, I would welcome a reply complete with the assurance of your good health by a medical professional and an address and time at which to meet you on January 29 in Fairbanks.

  With kind regards,

  Faith Crawford

  It’s not sexy, I think, grinning at the screen. That’s for damn sure.

  But that’s partially what makes it so perfect—she proves her discretion in the language she uses and her understanding of my requirements in a manner better suited to the boardroom than the bedroom...which is great. Per my wishes, she’s treating this entire arrangement like a business transaction, not the first chapter of a love story.

  I’m physically attracted to the girl in the photo, and her message checks every box for me. Perhaps we’ll even have some interesting, intelligent conversation during our time together. Though I have zero interest in love, I have nothing against pleasure, and what’s better than a decent chat over dinner followed by a good fuck? Frankly, just reading her response has put me into a better mood than I ever could have imagined.

  My decision is made.

  Dear Miss Crawford, I type in response.

  I would love to welcome you to Alaska...

  Chapter 3

  Faye

  All that jazz about how “adorable” North Pole, Alaska, is?

  Lies.

  I look out the taxi window at the drab, white-gray landscape off the highway, waiting for the big reveal. Surely a place called North Pole will have an abundance of Christmas charm, as per Dr. Lafferty’s rhapsodizing, but it simply doesn’t materialize. There’s a sign alerting me that we’ve arrived in North Pole and advertising Santa’s house “1/2 mile up on the right,” but that’s it.

  As we turn off the highway and into a strip mall, I realize I’m here.

  I’ve arrived.

  This is it.

  With the exception of some candy cane–striped lampposts, I’ve arrived in a very tiny American town that appears to consist of a strip mall and motel.

  Dr. Lafferty is a first-rate liar.

  That’s all I can think as my taxi pulls under the modest porte cochere of the North Pole Inn and stops beside the front door. Well, that...and that my assistant, Carlene, must have had the laugh of her life when she booked this trip for me. Since she claimed I was booked at the “nicest place in North Pole,” I now must consider that this establishment is the only place in North Pole. Little better than the motel-style lodgings that line most highways, this hotel is no “inn.” It’s small, generic, and unimpressive, set back behind a Safeway grocery store and a far cry from the sorts of charming places in which I’m used to staying.

  That said, however, I left from Logan in Boston at five this morning, had an eight o’clock meeting in Manhattan, left from Newark at ten, and arrived in Fairbanks at six forty-five, after a short layover in Seattle. Bearing in mind the time change, I have been traveling for approximately twenty hours, and I’m exhausted.

  Praying for clean sheets, I heft my laptop bag higher onto my shoulder and pull my large rolling suitcase into the annoyingly kitschy lobby, wondering what the hell I’m doing here.

  “Welcome to the North Pole, where every day is Christmas!” exclaims the elf-dressed desk attendant as I approach. “Except for today. Today is Christmas Eve!”

  “Yes,
it is,” I confirm, stopping in front of the counter that separates us.

  “Merry Christmas Eve, weary traveler! I’m Elf Nikki!”

  “Um...thank you.”

  “Checking in?”

  “Yes, please.”

  “How about some hot cocoa?” asks Elf Nikki, reaching under the counter and pulling out a ceramic mug in the shape of Santa’s hat.

  “No, thank you.”

  Undeterred by my lack of enthusiasm, she puts the mug away and winks at me. “How long are you staying in Santa’s favorite hotel?”

  If her smile gets any wider, I think, she might hurt herself.

  “Er, um...two nights? I believe?”

  “Christmas Eve and Christmas night! Wow! How wonderful!”

  Wonderful?

  I give her a weak smile then glance over my shoulder at the lobby Christmas tree, which is so metallic and shiny, it makes me long for a pair of sunglasses. That it spins on a base and plays “Holly Jolly Christmas” in electronic tones isn’t helping things.

  “Oooo! You’ve booked one of our Santa Suites, Faye...Kringle!”

  “My last name is Findley,” I say, turning back to her.

  “Not anymore! Everyone’s a Kringle here!” Elf Nikki crows. “We’re one big happy family in the North Pole.”

  “I see.”

  “Will you be joining us in the dining room for Christmas Eve dinner?”

  My mouth waters, reminding me it’s been a while since I last ate. “Yes. Thank you.”

  “We ask folks to prepay on busy nights. That’ll be $12.95 for the buffet.”

  “What buffet?”

  “The Christmas Eve dinner buffet,” she says, still grinning at me.

  For the first time, I wonder if she’s not actually human but rather an automaton of some kind. Her smile hasn’t dipped or wavered since I entered the room.

  “Christmas Eve dinner is a...buffet?”

  “Yes indeed! Baked ham, whipped potatoes, boiled green beans, chicken nuggets, fries, and mac ’n cheese. Oh! And unlimited soft drinks!”

  “Did you say ‘chicken’?”

  “Nuggets! The crispy kind that kids like.”