Author's Note: I'm back! I know this seems like a pitifully short update after such a long time, but don't get upset—there will be a total of five updates, one for every day of the vacation. And most of them are longer than this one.

Also, I know Will's supposed to hate coffee. But it's been over a year since he and Lizzy started going out, and a lot has changed. Plus, I'll explain how Lizzy got addicted to coffee in the next update.

1.

Fitzwilliam Henry Darcy hated airports. Of course, he had done his best to disguise himself with mirror-lensed sunglasses and a Vickroot University cap that Lizzy had once lent him. But he still knew that at some point, someone was going to ask for his autograph, a question that was sure to attract a great deal of attention, which would then force Will to escape with a well-timed trip to the men's restroom. To make matters worse, the airport was crowded, but that was to be expected. It was bound to be crowded three days before Christmas.

Will would have, of course, preferred another mode of transportation, any other mode of transportation for that matter. He had, however, managed to piss Maggie off recently (he'd never thought skipping a phone conference with their recording label would be such a blunder), and since Maggie was the one who organized all of the B.F.D.'s trips, there Will was—in the Minneapolis-St. Paul airport, on the second stopover on his trip from England to Montana.

There was only one part of this trip that would make it worthwhile, and she wasn't answering her cell phone. He'd left three messages on her answering machines, and he still hadn't heard back. Granted, he'd been in flight for fifteen of the last eighteen hours, but it wasn't as if Lizzy couldn't leave word on his voicemail.

Then, just as Will decided to risk standing in line at the food court for lunch, his phone rang. He answered it irritably, "'Lo?"

"Hey." It was Lizzy. Of course, it was Lizzy. "What's wrong?"

"Why didn't you bloody well call me back?" he asked, noticing right in front of a Chickfila checkout a couple teenage girls eyeing him and suddenly deciding that he wasn't so hungry after all.

Lizzy snorted. "Well, I missed you too. It's so nice to hear your voice."

Will sighed heavily and turned away from the food court and toward the C concourse. "I'm sorry. It's just—I'm in the airport."

"Poor baby," Lizzy teased as Will stepped onto a moving sidewalk. "Did they detain you at Customs again?"

"No," Will said, leaning against the rubbing railway briefly and adjusting the phone against his ear. "But I'm already tired of airplanes and crowds, and I have another three hours before I make it to my destination."

"Bummer."

Will sighed. He didn't know anyone but Lizzy who could say "Bummer" and sound both compassionate and mocking at the same time.

"Knowing you, you're probably trying to play incognito and are the only man in sunglasses and a hat in the entire terminal." Will scowled, uncertain as to how Lizzy knew him so well. "You've probably managed to look even more famous by carrying a very expensive guitar on your back."

"I can't help it," Will told her, adjusting the guitar case on his shoulder self-consciously. "Maggie wants four new songs by the New Year."

Lizzy laughed so hard that even Will had to smile. "To answer your question, I lost my phone charger somewhere during that Alaskan shoot. I went ahead and bought a new one, but I couldn't check my messages for a few days while my battery was dead."

"You shouldn't do that," Will told her, stepping off the moving sidewalk. "What if something happened? What if—"

"Wow. First you bite my head off, and now I get a phone lecture. Maybe I should hang up while I still can."

"Don't," Will said quickly. The last time Lizzy said something like this and Will had scoffed at it, she'd actually hung up and left Will gaping at the phone. "I need to tell you something."

"Okay…?"

"You need to check your mail," Will said, stopping to let a family of six pass in front of him, the children linking hands in a four person train.

"Which mail?" Lizzy asked. Will heard an intercom announcement in the background, and he wondered where she was. "Snail mail or email?"

"Email," Will replied. He could almost hear the sounds of her purse rustling, probably as she pulled out her Palm Pilot to check.

"Uh-oh."

"What?" Will asked, noticing suddenly that he was in the D concourse, and wondering how he'd managed it.

"Can you tell me what I'm looking for?" she asked hopefully.

"It's a surprise," he explained briefly, glancing above him for signs back to the C concourse.

"Well, Aunt Diana put me on the Keefe-Moore employee mailing list again, so my Inbox is full of about eighty memos," Lizzy replied. "It'd really help if I knew what I was looking for."

Will grimaced, then noticed a giant "C" and an arrow pointing left, and promptly headed left. "It should be an itinerary. Forwarded from Maggie."

"Flight itinerary? Am I going somewhere?"

"Bozeman," Will said. "Montana. For the ski trip."

"What ski trip?"

"We're renting a cabin with my sister, your sister, Charlie, Fitz, Maggie, and Zarine," Will explained, beginning to smile. (This was, after all, the surprise.) "And possibly one of Giana's friends if she got around to inviting someone."

"Well, it's news to me," Lizzy reminded him.

"We always go at Christmas. Remember we invited you last year? You wanted to go to your father's wedding instead."

"Hey," Lizzy protested, "I was also moving out of my apartment.—Bingo! Found it. I'm pulling it up." Will waited. "Shit."

"What? What's the matter?" Will asked. He was in the C's by now, but he couldn't remember which number gate he was supposed to find.

"The ticket's for tomorrow," Lizzy informed him. "From Laguardia."

"I know. I told Maggie to book it that way," Will said, glancing over the half dozen television screens showing the departing flights and noticed that he was supposed to be at gate C13. "Is that a problem?"

"Yeah. For one thing, I'm not in New York," Lizzy said. "I'm traveling. I had a job."

Will froze. "But it's Christmas, Lizzy. How can you bloody well work during Christmas?"

"It's not Christmas yet," she told him curtly. "And don't yell over the phone."

"Bloody hell," Will muttered glancing around. He was in the twenties, over ten gates away from where he needed to be. Not that it mattered much, now that Lizzy wasn't coming.

"Don't give me that shit, Will," Lizzy snapped back. "You can't just send me a plane ticket and expect me to get on it. I have a schedule too, you know."

"Yes," Will murmured, quickly striding past an older couple strolling along ahead of him. He noticed, with annoyance, their wedding rings glinting in their linked hands.

"Surprises don't work with us," she reminded him. "We found that out when I came to surprise you for your birthday, and I just sat around because you were stuck rehearsing for the MTV Music Awards all day."

"Yes," Will replied, passing gate C17 with another sigh. "You're right, of course. Quite stupid of me, actually."

It was quiet between them for a long moment. All Will heard on the other end was the thud of Lizzy laying her hand over the mouthpiece and the sound of her voice whispering to somebody else. She seemed suddenly much farther away.

"You have definitely been back to England," she said finally. "Your accent's really strong now."

Will couldn't think of a response except to smile briefly, which he realized belatedly that Lizzy couldn't see.

"Will?" she asked hesitantly.

"I wanted to spend Christmas with you," he told her, walking on. "I would have brought Giana home to Pemberley if I'd know that you weren't coming."

"Who said anything about not coming?" She was laughing. "This itinerary just needs tweaking, that's all."

"Oh," Will said, brightening considerably. Then he noticed he'd reached gate C9. How had he missed 13? "Oh, shit."

"Wow," Lizzy snorted. "That's the fastest mood swing I've heard in a while."

"Lizzy, listen: can I call you back?" he asked, turning around to glance down back the way he came. He spotted a sign for C12 and C14, even C11, but not C13. "I'm having a bit of trouble locating my gate."

Lizzy laughed again. "Look left."

Will glanced automatically to his left, and there it was: Gate C13—with service to Bozeman, MT at 3:14 PM. "How did you—" he began to ask Lizzy, but he heard her phone click off and then felt someone grab him from behind.

He froze, immediately thinking crazed and perhaps stalker-like fan—until he noticed that one of the hands at his stomach was sporting the engagement ring he'd convinced his girlfriend to wear, even if was only on the wrong hand.

"Lizzy?" he asked incredulously and turned around just in time to catch her laughing at him.

"I am so sneaky," she informed him with a wide, smug grin, her arms still around his waist.

"You said you weren't coming!" he said, pressing a delighted kiss to her brow.

"No, I said that I was traveling, that I couldn't make the flight you picked, and that your itinerary needed to be changed," Lizzy reminded him with the same smug grin. "You are extremely lucky to have a manager who knows her stuff. She called me in October to get all this worked out."

"And you didn't tell me," Will complained, but he was smiling.

"I wanted to surprise you," Lizzy replied slyly.

Her hair had fallen into her eyes, and Will brushed it back and kissed her. "Well, very often you don't even need to try."

Lizzy beamed and then told him in a voice that was as stern as she could make it, "I did have something scheduled, though. I just barely had time to change it in time so that Maggie could get me on your flight."

"I must say, I am rather fond of Maggie right now," Will told her, returning his phone to his pocket.

"And not me?" Lizzy asked smirking and taking his hand.

"That rather goes without saying," Will asked and would have kissed her again, except for the fact that she was drinking from a quite large cup of coffee. He snorted. "I see I wasn't your first stop."

"Want some?" Lizzy asked, offering it to him.

Will took it warily, as they started toward the grey seats around gate C13. "It isn't a mocha, is it?" he asked, remembering the coffee drink she handed to him in August. It was so syrupy that Will felt like he was scraping a film of sugar off the roof of his mouth for days.

Lizzy laughed. "No, just a latte."

Will risked taking a very small sip and immediately made a face. "You sweetened it," he complained.

"Sorry," Lizzy said blandly, taking the cup back. "I didn't think one little packet of sugar would bother you."

"Where is it?" Will asked.

"What? The coffee?" she asked, frowning at him. "Right here."

"No, Starbucks," Will replied, glancing around. "I could use an expresso. I've been up most of the night."

"About ten gates back that way," Lizzy said, using her thumb to point behind her toward C1. "Wanna go?"

"No," said Will, unslinging his guitar and collapsing into the nearest seat. "I'd rather not walk so far."

"Do you want me to go get it for you?" Lizzy asked, pulling her wallet out and setting her satchel at Will's feet and dropping her camera bag next to it. "If you watch my stuff, it won't take me but ten minutes."

Slouching so that his head leaned against the back of the seat, Will shook his head smiling. "Stay," he told her, and she smiled back, taking a seat directly opposite him.

Will frowned. "You're much too far away."

"I thought it'd cut back on the PDA," Lizzy told him.

"PDA?" Will repeated frowning.

"You don't have PDA back in England?" Lizzy asked with a wide smirk. "Stands for Public Displays of Affection. Standard Middle School lingo."

Will looked at her sharply, rolled his eyes before picking himself and his guitar up so that he could sit beside her. "I'm all right with PDA," Will informed her and proceeded to nuzzle her neck.

"I think the photographer that was following you like PDA too," Lizzy commented, nodding over at the adjacent gate.

Will glanced over, and a young man in jeans and a hoodie quickly redirected his lens someplace else. "Damn," Will said, pulling himself to a sitting position. "I'll go talk to him."

Lizzy caught his arm smiling before he managed to stand up. "Don't bother. I explained to him that I'm planning to write a piece on the paparazzi—since you and I have so much experience. And while he was trailing you, I got almost a whole roll of him. He knows that if he tries to publish a picture of you, I'll find a way to work him into my article."

Will paused to work this out in his sleep-deprived brain. "So, when I was on the phone with you, that man was following me and you were following us both and taking pictures and talking to me at the same time?"

Lizzy graced him with a smug answering nod. "Multi-tasking."

"Brilliant," Will said, slouching again so that he could rest his head on her shoulder.

"Yep," said Lizzy proudly, slouching slightly so that she could rest her head on top of his. "I bet you wish that all your other girlfriends were as smart as me. Maybe then there'd be that many less pictures of you on the internet."

"What other girlfriends?" Will asked. "You're the only woman I've found who'll tolerate me."

"Yep," Lizzy chirped again, kissing the top of his head, "and don't you forget it."

"What was it?" Will asked after a moment.

"What was what?" Lizzy asked laughing. "Did you already forget the thing I just told you not to forget?"

"What was the job you had to reschedule to come?" Will said patiently, grabbing her right hand and inspecting the ring on her third fingers. He was rather proud of himself. He'd made a good choice, even Lizzy admitted it: a platinum band with curly etchings on either side of a modest, if blue, diamond.

What Lizzy didn't know (and Will wouldn't tell her yet), but he had already bought the wedding rings that matched it. They were back at Pemberley.

"A promotional calendar shoot," Lizzy replied.

"A bit late for that, isn't it?" Will asked. "Only eleven days until the New Year."

"It's one of those eighteen month ones. It starts in July," Lizzy replied.

"So you've got to take eighteen shots of those tacky, topless women?" Will teased. "Preferably on top of cars or some other nonsense?"

Lizzy snickered. "No. There will be eighteen shots and women will be in all of them, but breasts won't be pictured."

Will frowned, wondering if it was one of those artistic calendars, where they showed only the backs of individuals, a gesture toward anonymity.

"Most of my models have had mastectomies," Lizzy explained. "The calendars will be sold for breast cancer research."

"Non-profit? Again?" Will said startled. He knew she had enough offers coming in so that she could pick and choose which jobs she took, but he couldn't understand why she most often took the ones that did pay. "They are paying you though?"

"Yeah," Lizzy said, shrugging just enough so that his head slipped a little on her shoulder, and he had to readjust it. "Not much though."

"Don't be such a starving artist," Will scolded. "You make us millionaire celebrities look terribly shallow."

Will felt Lizzy smile into his hair as she traced the guitar callouses on his fingertips. "So Maggie's pushing you to write the fourth album already? That didn't take long. You only finished the Accidents tour about three months ago, right?"

"Three months and a half," Will corrected. "And yes, she wants us recording in March. April at the latest."

"Slavedriver," Lizzy said with a sympathetic smile.

"If Aunt Catherine was still our manager," Will said quietly, "we would be recording next month."

"Hmm," Lizzy replied, lazily prodding his guitar case with one extended finger. "I still can't believe that you tried to disguise yourself with this."

"What do you mean?"

"Only a professional musician would carry an instrument around an airport," Lizzy said.

"That isn't true," Will said.

"Yes, it is."

"Plenty of other people carry guitars through the airport," Will said firmly.

"Should I call you on your bullshit now or later?" Lizzy replied.

"Look," said Will, pointing to a young man, in his twenties, about two and a half gates away. His black guitar case rose about a foot above his head. "There's someone now."

Lizzy snorted. "Will, you need glasses."

"What? No, I do not need glasses."

"Will, that's Charlie," Lizzy told him.

Will squinted at the approaching figure. "It is not. Maggie would've told me if Charlie and I were sharing a flight."

"Wanna bet?" Lizzy asked smirking.

"Sure," said Will, still watching the figure—who was definitely not Charlie—approach. "Name your terms."

The approaching, guitar-clad figure seemed to be of medium build and terrible posture.

"Backrub," Lizzy demanded, sticking out her right hand.

"Back massage," Will replied, shaking it.

Hand still linked, the couple waited. When the man was only a gate away and recognizably blond, Lizzy turned to watch Will smirking, and a second later, Charlie noticed them and waved.

"You should start reading Maggie's memos," Lizzy told Will, waving back, "and I'm totally holding you to that backrub."

Will scowled, as Charlie stepped smiling out of the way of a young mother and two twin toddlers before threading his way toward them.

"Hey, Charlie," Lizzy said smiling. "How was the flight from Boston?"

"Fine. A little turbulence at takeoff but not bad," Charlie replied, unhooking the guitar from his back. Then he noticed the glare Will was giving him. "What's with him?"

"Sore loser," Lizzy explained, pleased with herself, and Charlie nodded, taking a seat next to his bandmate.

"I do not need glasses," Will grumbled.

"Okay," said Charlie with a brief smile, rubbing the back of his neck.

"Cheer up, Will. If you're play nice on the flight, I'll still give you that massage," Lizzy offered with a grin, which did serve to brighten Will's mood considerably.

2.

Almost everybody knows, or at least suspects, that older brothers tend to develop a severe dislike of their younger sisters' boyfriends. Most younger sisters hope that this is only a stereotype. When Fitz brought Giana and her boyfriend Jimmy to the Bozeman airport to pick the others up, however, it became very clear that Will didn't just dislike Jimmy. He hated him. On principle. He expressed this hate with such a harsh glowering glare in poor Jimmy's direction that even Fitz couldn't think of anything to say. It probably didn't help that Will had squeezed his way into the middle seat, right between Giana and Jimmy. The only one who seemed immune to Will's terrible mood was Lizzy, sitting in the passenger seat next to Fitz, her lens pressed against the window as she snapped pictures of the scenery.

"It's so pretty here," she said excitedly, framing another shot, of the snowy valley dotted with homes, and the huge tree-strewn mountain range behind it.

Then silence reigned in the car again, except for the occasional click of Lizzy's camera. Will continued to glare at Jimmy. Jimmy continued to look out the window, as far away from Will as possible in a large SUV.

Giana made the next attempt at conversation. "Charlie," she said, turning around in her seat to look at Charlie, cramped in the back with luggage on either side. "Where's Jane? I thought she was coming."

"She's coming. She had a few more things to take care of in Boston," Charlie explained with a slight smile, "but she's flying in tomorrow."

"What sort of things?" Giana asked.

"Um…" Charlie replied, glancing at Will.

Will continued glaring at Jimmy.

"Jane's starting her internship next month," Lizzy explained, framing a shot that tried to take in the height of the looming mountain next to the road and the frozen river beside it. "At some big deal allergy-asthma clinic that I can't remember the name of. She's under the top guy in the area."

"That's nice," Giana said with a small smile toward Lizzy, and silence took over the car again.

Fitz tried next. "Me and Mags took set-up duty yesterday," he said, grinning into the rearview mirror, trying to catch Will's eye, "so we get first dibs on the guest cottage."

"We're staying someplace with a guest cottage?" Lizzy asked, noticing from the white crosses edging the road, wondering if she'd ever manage to get a shot of them with the car winding around the bends at fifty miles an hour or more. "I thought Maggie told me it was a log cabin."

"It is a log cabin," Giana said slowly, "but—"

"Obviously you've never seen the Yellowstone Society's version of a log cabin," Fitz said with a grin.

"What do you mean?" Lizzy said, prying her lens from the window to pay attention.

"You'll see when we get there," Fitz said with a smile that worried Lizzy.

"What's so great about the guest cottage then?" Lizzy asked suspiciously. "Gold toilets or something?"

"Privacy," Fitz said with another grin, "for any and all of our favorite activities."

Giana giggled. "Maggie told me that you guys are in the guest cottage, because Zarine still doesn't always sleep through the night and Maggie doesn't want her to wake anyone else up."

Fitz hunched over the steering wheel, scowling. "That, too."

Lizzy grinned and turned her camera back to the window, trying to figure out a way to capture the white snow under the dark trees and the blue-white ice in the river.

"Mags also said to tell you she'd have dinner ready tonight," Fitz added, shoulders still slumped toward the steering wheel in a pout, "but dinner duty's a rotation. Giana, you get tomorrow."

"Me?" Giana protested. "What did I do?"

"You hurt my feelings," Fitz said, settling back into his seat smugly.

Lizzy snorted. "She did not."

Fitz shrugged. "Give me a minute. I'll think of something."

"Well, you're only punishing yourself," Giana grumbled, folding her arms. "My cooking's quite terrible. Even Auntie Cindy says so."

"I'll help you," Jimmy said, turning briefly away from the window. It was the first thing he'd said since "nice to meet you" after Giana introduced him to Will.

Will took the opportunity to re-establish the status of his dislike and glared viciously at Jimmy, and Giana looked between her brother and her boyfriend worriedly.

"Hurrah for Jimmy!" said Lizzy, her face pressed to her lens, at the craggy stones peeking out from a snowy cliff. "Giana's cooking really is shit—I know from experience. We should all get down on our knees and thank Jimmy from the bottom of our hearts." When no one responded, Lizzy looked up from her camera and glanced over at the driver, who was busy concentrating on the road as they came to a sharp bend, well-marked with bright yellow and black arrows. "I was serious, you know. We might even go ahead and award him sainthood for saving our tastebuds." When the car was still silent, Lizzy turned to look in the back, straining to look around her seat, and noticed Will glaring at poor Jimmy and Jimmy staring back with resigned patience. "Okay," Lizzy asked, "what's the problem, boys?"

Giana grimaced and explained, "Will."

Will turned his glare from Jimmy to his sister.

"Okay, Will—what's your problem?" Lizzy asked exasperatedly. "You told Giana she could bring a friend."

"He's said that every Christmas actually," Giana said quietly, edging way from Will's scowl and pressing herself against the door behind her. "This is the first time I've managed to invite someone."

"You couldn't before, though," Charlie pointed out, reaching over Giana's seat to pat her on the shoulder comfortingly. "Since we were all trying to keep the Darcy-Darlington secret and all."

"I might've last year," Giana replied. "Perhaps that has quite a bit to—"

"You know," Fitz said, drumming his index fingers on the steering wheel as the road straightened out, "I'm pretty sure it's 'cause you brought your boyfriend, Giana."

Giana scowled, and Fitz shrugged, grinning at her through the rearview mirror and adding, "Just a guess."

Giana leaned forward, reached over the seat in front of her, and swatted at her cousin's red crest.

Fitz jumped, and the car swerved slightly, luckily just toward a nearby turnout. "Oww! Watch it! I'm driving here. Your lives are in your hands, you should remember that."

"Is that it?" Lizzy asked Will, but he didn't answer. He only continued to scowl, and his gaze had returned to Jimmys.

"You're being ridiculous," Lizzy informed him matter-of-factly. "You can't seriously expect Giana to be the only one on the trip without her significant other."

"Besides, Zarine," Fitz reminded Lizzy. "And the Bingley sisters. Louisa's divorce just went through."

"Ugh—they're not staying with us, are they?" Lizzy asked, turning back just long enough to wrinkle her nose.

"There wasn't room," Charlie said sadly, untucking his arm from beneath the luggage next to him and stretching over the seat behind him. "They're staying at the lodge."

"Closer to the spa," Fitz explained to Lizzy with a knowing grin, and Lizzy grinned back.

"What I can't understand," Will said with a scowl, "is how I didn't know that Giana was dating anyone at all."

"Well, that's Giana's fault," Lizzy said.

"Lizzy!" Giana complained.

"It wasn't Jimmy's responsibility to tell your brother that you two were going out," Lizzy reminded Giana, and Giana sulked.

"I also don't understand how Lizzy managed to meet your boyfriend before I did," Will asked his sister.

"That's because I've made more trips to visit Giana at NYU than you have," Lizzy told him smugly. "Since I live in New York, and you live at Pemberley."

Will didn't feel the need to respond to this.

So Lizzy glanced back to him and grinned. "Now, you're pouting. Cute."

"Why didn't you tell me?" Will accused.

"Uh-oh," said Fitz, glancing over at Lizzy's face, her eyes narrowed to slits, her jaw set. "Okay, kiddo," he told her, as he slowed the Suburban down beside a small shopping center and a gas station and turned up a narrower road, one that wound up the mountain with a nice steep drop-off on the passenger's side. "We're kind of entering the dangerous, icy curves section of the drive, so if you could postpone your ass-kicking until we exit the vehicle."

Lizzy continued to glare at Will.

"But you know, no pressure. I just thought it'd be nice to survive the drive," Fitz said off-handedly. "Zarine might miss me. Mags, too."

Will dropped Lizzy's glare to glance at Fitz, a little worriedly.

"Fine," said Lizzy with a snort. "Just let me know."

For the next three minutes of the trip, Lizzy and Will stayed exactly where they were, only moving when Fitz hugged a curve and their bodies swayed with the momentum. Lizzy gripped the side of her seat with both hands to stop her movement. Will pressed himself hard into the back of the seat. Giana giggled nervously once, but Charlie stopped her with his hand on her head, saying "I wouldn't. You'll only make it worse."

"Just about a minute more," Fitz announced, as he turned onto a small road with tire tracks beaten gray into the snow. "This is the driveway."

"The house is rather pretty," Giana told Charlie as the car went through the trees. "Much prettier than last year. Maggie found a good one. It's mostly logs, but it has three stone chimneys. There's the front porch—we really can't spend time on now, much too cold—but it also has these huge windows that face right up the mountain. It's absolutely beautiful; it's—"

"Right there," Fitz said, pointing with both hands still stuck to the top of the steering wheel, and even Lizzy turned to look.

"It's huge!" Lizzy said, groping for her camera again and framing a shot of the sprawling log cabin, its windows glinting gold against the sunset, its porch stone and wide.

"Didn't I mention that?" Giana asked, frowning thoughtfully.

"No," Jimmy replied with a slight grin, which Will promptly rewarded with another glare.

"Fitz, could you maybe drive a little smoother?" Lizzy asked, her face at the lens. "You're ruining all the shots."

"How 'bout I brake, and you get out and walk?" Fitz replied as the vehicle bumped along the end of the drive. "Would that help?"

"Just get us there," Charlie pleaded. "I can't feel my legs."

Lizzy turned back around, mouth open. "I offered you the front seat, Charlie."

"But kiddo," Fitz said, braking beside the front steps and putting the car in park, "Charlie always has to be the gentleman. He wouldn't sleep well at night knowing he took a seat from a lady."

Giana was already out of the car and running up the snowy front steps, her green puffy jacket open and flapping behind her. "We're here!" she shouted, beating on the front door.

Jimmy made his discreet exit on the Suburban's other side, and Lizzy tumbled out too, adjusting her lens.

"Lizzy, you can kick Will's ass now," Fitz offered hopefully, unbuckling his seatbelt as the wind helped the cold creep inside the vehicle.

"In a minute," Lizzy replied, backing up and taking shots of the house.

"Aww," complained Fitz, grinning at Will as they both climbed out of the car. "I was looking forward to that."

"Fitz, you—" Will started darkly.

"Will, you need to take five deep breaths before you finish that sentence," said another voice from the top of the steps.

"Hey, Maggie!" Lizzy said waving.

"Lizzy," Maggie replied with a smile and a nod. "How was your flight? Will didn't ruin it, did he?"

Will's mouth opened to answer, his breath coming out in an angry white puff in the cold, but Lizzy only said, "No, he basically slept the whole time."

"Why is it that everyone seems to think it's all right to tease me when Lizzy's around?" Will complained scowling.

Lizzy shrugged, snapping pictures and grinning. "I have that effect on people."

"It's a gift," Fitz assured her, opening the back hatch.

"Lizzy, which one's your bag?" asked Jimmy, leaning around the side of the suburban to look at her. "I'll take it inside for you."

Lizzy shook her head grinning. "I'll get it, thanks. It's got a whole bunch of unwrapped Christmas presents in there, and Giana'll weasel it out of you." She glanced slyly at Will where he stood, leaning against the car and zipping up his jacket, and she added, "You could take the guitars inside; it's not good for them to stay out in the cold."

"Real smart, Lizzy," Fitz said, heaving Charlie's duffle from the trunk. "Making the poor kid touch Will's guitar. You know how much he hates that."

To prove it, Will glowered, and Jimmy hesitated. Fitz only grabbed another smaller suitcase and headed inside.

"Go ahead," Lizzy told Jimmy. "And you," she told Will, catching his arm, just in case, "chill out. He's doing you a favor."

"That's my livelihood—" Will started with a glare.

"Don't give me that shit," Lizzy snapped. "It's a guitar, and it's not even your favorite one."

Will scowled. Jimmy retreated, a guitar case in either hand.

"I don't like him," Will said, just as the boy entered the cabin with both suitcases.

"Really?" Lizzy replied, looping her camera strap around her neck and grabbing hold of her giant suitcase, its leather scratched and discolored. "I hadn't noticed."

"I don't understand what Giana bloody sees in him," Will said, rubbing his eyes. But now that everyone else was gone, Lizzy noticed that Will relaxed a little, just enough so that his shoulders slumped and his mouth drooped a little with exhaustion. "He hasn't got any personality at all."

"You can't expect him to be real talkative with you breathing down his neck all the time," Lizzy said, struggling with her ancient suitcase.

Will grabbed the handle with a sigh, lifted it, and set it between them in the snow. "How did you meet that boy?"

"He has a name, Will. You should use it," Lizzy said sternly.

"Jimmy then," Will said, glancing at the house again and squinting against the glare of the windows.

"Giana and I ran into him when I visited her last month," Lizzy explained. "I didn't tell you, because Giana said she'd handle it. Obviously, she's being a wuss about the whole thing, but—" Lizzy shrugged and started dragging her suitcase toward the steps.

"I still don't like him," said Will, pulling the last duffle out, his own.

Lizzy stopped, looked back at Will with a slight, thoughtful frown. "He's not Wickham," she told him quietly. "He's a good kid, and he'd do anything in the world for Giana. Even brave her pissy brother for Christmas," Lizzy added with another grin.

Will sighed, looking at the tracks in the snow, and Lizzy noticed the dark smudges under his eyes. Then he heaved his duffle over his shoulder, so that he could help Lizzy with hers.

"Thanks," Lizzy said, after he brought it up the steps, kissing him swiftly. "And just so you know," she added as she hauled it toward the door, "You're not allowed to ruin this vacation for everyone else. So cut it out," she told him firmly.

Will nodded with a tired smile. "All right."

"Good answer. Don't worry; I'll handle everyone else for now," Lizzy promised and entered the cabin.

The fireplace was the first thing she noticed, standing in the middle of the back wall like an slate and stone altar, built all the way up to a ceiling at least three times taller than the one back at Lizzy's apartment. In front of it was a sitting area, a huge red rug and coffeetable with two sofas and three armchairs, all overstuffed and covered with the same shade of light brown leather. To the left, there was the kitchen, with red and brown granite surfaces, wooden cabinets, and copper pans hanging from the ceiling—all of it polished and sparkling. A carpeted staircase lead up to the second floor just behind it. To the right of the room, there were two wooden doors, about twenty feet apart, and just in front of them was a giant window, a stone guest cottage in the backyard and the mountain peak looming above it.

"Wow—nice place, Maggie," Lizzy said. "Look," she added, pointing at the piano in front of the window, "it even has a Baby Grand."

Over at the stove in an apron, a wooden spoon in her hand, Maggie beamed.

"Anything else?" asked Jimmy, backing away from the door so that Will could enter.

Will didn't glare. This time, he didn't even glance toward Jimmy.

"No, we got it," Lizzy replied. "Thanks, Jimmy."

"I'm going to unpack," Jimmy said and disappeared into one of the two doors at the right of the living room.

"Look, Zarine!" said Fitz from the floor, where he and the baby were rolling a ball around the red rug. At the sound of her name, Zarine looked at her father and then looked where he was pointing, toward his cousin. "Will got out of timeout."

Will dropped his bag from his shoulder, leaned against the kitchen counter, and declined to comment.

"Okay, everybody but especially Fitz," Lizzy said, sitting on her suitcase, arms crossed, eyes fierce. "Lay off Will. He's been traveling for way too long for anyone to give him anymore shit."

Fitz raised his eyebrows and watched Zarine bend down and pick up the ball. Maggie bent over the stovetop, fighting a smirk.

"You know, do you even want to eat?" Lizzy asked him. "Or sleep? If I were you, I'd just want to go to bed."

"Bed," Will agreed, picking up his bag again.

"Never mind, Zarine," Fitz said, taking the ball that his daughter was handing to him. "Will's being sent to bed without supper."

"Drop it," Lizzy snapped.

"Ooo, now I've made the bossy Mother Hen mad," Fitz told Zarine.

"Fitz," Lizzy warned.

"Cut it out, Fitz," Maggie said sharply, "or I really will send you to bed without dinner."

Fitz sulked but was quiet. Zarine reached up to his face with little fingers, grabbed his pouting lower lip, and laughed.

Will turned to Maggie, eyes half closed and sleepy. "You and Lizzy are on the left," she told him, pointing with her wooden spoon, stained red with spaghetti sauce. "Next to Giana and Jimmy."

Lizzy winced, as Will's eyes snapped open very wide. "What?"

"It's fine," Maggie told him, stirring the sputtering spaghetti. "Their room has twin beds and everything."

"No, it's bloody well not fine," Will said, striding across the living room quickly, side-stepping leather couches and side-tables. "Absolutely not."

"Will…" Lizzy started but winced again when Will threw open the door on the right side so quickly that it smashed into the wall behind it. The two college students inside it jumped, staring at the man in the doorway.

"Don't mess up the house, Will," Maggie said warningly. "The damage fees suck."

"You," Will said, pointing at his sister. Giana froze, then leaned slightly back, eyes wide. "Out. Take your bag. You're staying with Lizzy."

"Booo," Lizzy said pouting, getting up and dragging her suitcase across the living room.

"Wha? Will," Giana protested. She held a dark red turtleneck in her hands.

"Don't argue," Will said, throwing his duffle on the nearest bed.

Jimmy watched the bed bounce under the duffle's weight and then turned to Giana.

Giana changed tactics. "Lizzy."

"Don't look at me," Lizzy replied. "If you wanted this trip to go smoothly, you should've started prepping Will as soon as you'd invited Jimmy."

Giana scowled and started throwing her clothes back in her suitcase, muttering "I am an adult, if you lot don't remember. I don't need to take this shit from other adults."

Jimmy watched her stomp out with her duffle in her arms. Lizzy felt for him, but he seemed mostly resigned.

"Sorry, Jimmy," Lizzy said. To Giana, she offered, "My advice is to let him sleep off some of his crankiness, and then make your case in the morning."

"I can still hear you," Will informed her through the open doorway, stripping off his jacket and tossing it in a corner.

"I don't want to talk to you, Lizzy," Giana sniffed. "You didn't even try." With that, she stomped into the room next to her previous one and slammed the door.

"Are you staying or going?" Will asked his new roommate impatiently. "Because I'm going to sleep."

Jimmy took two quick steps and escaped to the living room, and then Will slammed his door.

"They definitely managed to inherit a lot of the same genes," commented Lizzy, leaving her suitcase next to her bedroom door and deciding to give Giana a little time to herself.

"You're never going to act like that, are you, Zarine?" Fitz asked, stroking his daughter's hair.

"Just you wait," Maggie told her husband. "If she's anything like me, her teen years are going to be hell for us."

"She didn't mean it," Jimmy said quietly, and Lizzy turned to him surprised. "Giana, I mean."

Lizzy smiled; it was almost a smirk. "Will doesn't mean it either. He just doesn't know it yet."

After Jimmy made an effort to smile back, she called into the kitchen, "You need help in there?"

"You want to set the table?" Maggie asked, as both Jimmy and Lizzy stood up. "I think the plates are there," Maggie added, pointing to the cabinet on the right of the sink, "and the silverware's underneath."

Charlie appeared then, trotting down the stairs, his hair wet but clean, a towel around his neck. "I heard yelling," he said worriedly. "What happened?"

"Vacation," Fitz answered, leaning away as Zarine climbed into his lap and started tugging at the collar of his shirt. "With the Darcys."