Page 10 of Coming for Her Brother’s Best Friend (Coming For Christmas #4)

SIDNEY

I woke to the quiet that only comes after a blizzard. Everything outside was muffled by a thick blanket of snow. Heat prickled along my spine. Hayes’s arm looped around my waist, heavy and sure. For a few heartbeats, I didn’t move.

Last night came back in flashes: the lobby emptied of music, the wind clawing the glass, the door closing behind us, his mouth, my hands, the way the world narrowed to a circle of firelight and breath and yes.

My cheeks heated. Then the reality of what we’d done crashed in: the unspoken rule, the brother who’d kill me for breaking it, the fact that Hayes had a life waiting for him that didn’t include me.

I slipped out from under his arm and tucked the covers back over his shoulder.

He made a quiet sound, found my pillow, and went still again.

It was barely after seven, and it was Christmas.

I pulled on leggings and his flannel, rolled the sleeves, and padded to the window.

Ice feathered across the glass. A plow had carved a narrow path toward the lodge, two walls of snow shouldering up on either side like guards.

“Don’t run,” he said, voice rough with sleep.

I looked back. His hair was wrecked, his eyes still heavy, and a sheet slanted across his hipbones. I tried to keep my voice light. “I have a lobby full of sugar-cookie maniacs who need carols and cocoa. Running implies speed.”

He smiled. “Then don’t disappear on me.”

There were a hundred smart-ass ways I could have responded if I wanted to keep things light and play off last night as a one-night stand.

Instead, I moved to the tiny kitchenette and fiddled with the coffeemaker because it felt easier to face boiling water than the truth in his eyes.

When he came up behind me, he didn’t crowd.

He just bumped a shoulder gently into mine and slipped a stolen hot cocoa packet into my hand like he was passing off a secret.

“Two parts coffee, one part cocoa,” he said. “You can thank me later.”

The first sip loosened the knot in my chest a little. We drank at the window while the mugs warmed our hands, watching morning settle over the buried pines.

“Tell me what needs to be done this morning,” he said after a minute. “Your list.”

“Extend checkouts, coordinate meals with Banquets, convince the quartet they’d rather play by the fireplace than hate their lives at the airport, send engineering cocoa and hero medals for the generator, write thank-you notes for the crew, push our photos before the influencer sets the narrative, and… ” I exhaled. “Brace for fallout.”

“From?”

I just looked at him.

“Stetson,” he said, and nodded once. “I’ll tell him.”

“He’s going to take a swing.”

“Then he’ll take a swing.”

“It’s not just between you and him,” I said. “This will affect everything… my family… Iron Spur.”

He stared into his mug for a long beat. “I know.”

I wanted to ask him if he’d stay anyway, if Alaska was just a job or a plan, if last night was a detour or a destination, but the questions jammed somewhere behind my ribs. So, I set my mug down and reached for my boots. “We should go.”

The lodge had already remade itself into Christmas.

The tree glittered, a fort of presents for decoration only piled underneath.

Someone had set up a cookie table with bowls of red-and-green sprinkles and enough frosting to put a yeti into a sugar coma.

The quartet tuned their instruments by the hearth.

The second I stepped into the lobby, three different staffers beelined toward me with questions.

I started answering on instinct, the work sliding over my skin like familiar armor.

“Ms. Kincaid?” The front desk manager waved me over with a look in his eyes that said he was relieved to see me standing.

“We’ve extended checkouts and added complimentary brunch until two.

Engineering says the east wing power is stable again.

The county plows are hitting the main roads in town, and we should see a second pass before noon.

” He dropped his voice. “The influencer’s already posted candlelight aisle shots. She tagged Bluebird.”

“Good,” I said. “We’ll post our own in five.” I lifted my chin toward the quartet. “Can I steal two stools from the lounge and a high-top to use as a music stand?”

“You can have my desk if you want it,” she said, already motioning a bellman.

We pushed the morning into shape: carols, cocoa, extra blankets draped over the arms of couches, thank-you cookies smuggled to engineering, a plate delivered to Harper and Rand with a note that told them to sleep in.

Hayes moved through it all, hauling wood, carrying trays, lifting a little girl to put a paper snowflake on a too-high branch.

He didn’t touch me. He didn’t have to. I could feel him, steady as a heartbeat, at the edge of everything.

Around nine-thirty, the plow rumbled by again. People drifted to the windows to watch, cups steaming in their hands, voices dropping. The road beyond the gate was still buried, but the drive itself was clear, two tracks of wet black cutting through white.

“That’ll bring in stragglers,” the manager murmured at my shoulder, eyes on the lane. “And late arrivals.”

“Or one very determined big brother,” I said before I could swallow it back.

He blinked at me, then shivered. “I’ll make more cocoa.”

It didn’t take long. A pickup nosed in under the portico, Montana plates iced, hood powdered white.

The driver’s door opened. Stetson Kincaid swung down in a storm coat and a scowl, hat low, boots already caked with salt.

He was taller than Hayes, broader through the shoulders, with Kincaid-green eyes under dark brows, and my father’s jawline stamped on his face like a signature.

“Stets,” I breathed, and then I was moving toward the door.

He scooped me up in a hug that knocked the wind out of both of us, then lifted me clean off my feet and laughed into my hair in a way that said Damn it, kid, I missed it and I’m angry about it and I love you enough to break something . When he set me down, his hands framed my face. “Are you okay?”

I nodded.

“Rand and Harper?”

“Still in bed,” I said. “You missed the wedding but not the mimosas.”

“I would rather have been here for your big event.” He groaned as he tugged me toward a low loveseat. “Come on, tell me everything.”

I gave him the fast version, including the power outage, the candlelight, the cake scare I had fixed, the snow swallowing the world and spitting out magic.

Stetson swore quietly at intervals and muttered that he knew I’d pull it off.

Then he got up to check in, grabbed an envelope with a room keycard, and stopped when he saw something, or someone, behind me.

His entire face lit up. “Granger.”

I didn’t have to turn to feel the change in the air, but I did anyway.

Hayes stood ten feet away, hands in his coat pockets, his stance relaxed and steady. They’d grown up together in uniform and knew each other on a deeper level than I could even imagine.

They clapped each other on the shoulder in a half-hug. “I didn’t know you got leave,” Hayes said.

Stetson grunted. “I should have left a day or two earlier. The roads were a parking lot from the airport. You look like shit.”

“Not any worse than you,” Hayes volleyed back.

They both grinned, easy and familiar… the calm before the storm. I could feel the ground under my boots shift while I waited for the inevitable eruption.

Stetson’s gaze swung back to me. “I heard Bluebird killed it. I’m proud of you, Sid.”

For a second I couldn’t speak. Getting praise from my family was like finally catching a horse I’d been chasing all morning. “Thanks,” I managed.

A housekeeping supervisor beelined toward us with a clipboard and a crisis about towel inventory.

I excused myself to deal with it, and when I turned back, I caught only the tail end of a sentence.

Stetson said something about Alaska, and Hayes’s jaw ticked like a bomb about to go off.

Both their faces shifted when they saw me coming.

Stetson smiled, but Hayes glanced down at his boots.

“What’s in Alaska?” I asked, even though I already knew.

“A high-dollar contract,” Stetson said, oblivious to the tension. “Granger’s starting in a week. You’ll love the area around Anchorage. You might even get to sleep more than three hours at a time.” He shot a look at me. “I told him he’d better get a real coat. He thinks Texas winter counts.”

“Hey, Texas winters count,” Hayes said.

The front desk manager, who had impeccable timing in every way but this one, called across the lobby.

“Mr. Granger? Housekeeping wanted me to ask. Do you want them to turn down the Timberline Suite for you and Ms. Kincaid again tonight, or should they prep a second room now that the east wing is back online?”

The lobby didn’t go silent. That only happens in movies. But Stetson’s head turned toward the desk like a gunsight snapping to a target.

“Come again?” he said, not loud, not soft.

The manager’s smile slipped. His gaze bounced between Stetson and me. “Oh—oh, I’m sorry… I just… since Ms. Kincaid’s pipe burst the first night and we moved her into Mr. Granger’s suite?—”

“Since when?” Stetson asked, still looking at me.

Two days. Two nights. One entire life. “The twenty-first,” I said. “The lodge was at capacity. My room flooded. There wasn’t anywhere else.”

“So you stayed with Hayes.” His eyes narrowed as he swung to face his best friend. “You want to explain this one to me, brother, or should I guess?”

“Stet—” I started.

“Don’t,” he snapped, not at me, not exactly.

Hayes didn’t move closer, but he also didn’t step back. “We kept it professional,” he said. “Until last night.”

The truth was out there. Like he’d just lit the fuse on a stick of dynamite that was about to blow.