Christmas at Holiday House

by RaeAnne Thayne

  He tapped another picture of an elegant-looking but unsmiling woman. “William founded the town of Silver Bells, brought his childhood sweetheart out from Boston, not coincidentally also named Lucinda, and built the house for her.”

  “How romantic,” she said, though the woman didn’t look particularly appreciative of the gesture.

  “I don’t know if I would go that far. She hated it here in Colorado, especially the winters. She hated the mine, she hated the weather, she hated the people. Lucinda was a snob, and after a few years she left with their children and insisted on living in Boston, which she considered far more civilized. They stayed married, probably so she could spend his money, but lived apart for most of the year. At her husband’s insistence, she agreed to spend summers here with their children, hence the name.”

  “Holiday House. So the name really has nothing to do with Christmas.”

  He shook his head. “No, which makes Winnie’s obsession with the season rather amusing.”

  “Okay. The original owners were Lucinda and William. What about subsequent inhabitants?”

  “They left the house to their oldest son, Howard. By that time, thirty years after William struck it rich, the mine was played out. Howard did his best to waste what was left of his family’s fortune on wine, women and song. The old story. He ended up marrying a woman from his mother’s Boston set and rarely came to Colorado, so the house fell in disrepair.”

  “How sad.”

  “Some silver barons managed to hang on to their fortunes while some ran through it with frightening speed. The Lancasters were in the second category. By the time my great-grandfather came along, the original miner’s grandson, they had very little left. They did, however, have this house and the land. After World War I, Great-grandfather Thomas had the grand idea of turning the mountainside into a ski resort. This house was the first hotel in town. I guess you could call it the first ski lodge.”

  He pointed to another picture of people in old-fashioned clothing with long skis clustered around what she assumed was an early ski lift and another next to it that showed Holiday House with a fire blazing in the great-room fireplace and people clustered around it looking tired and happy.

  “There were thirty guest rooms, and skiers would be taken to the slopes in a horse and sleigh.”

  “Oh, how charming.”

  “I’m sure it was for a few years. Except then the Great Depression hit and nobody could afford to go skiing, especially not to come all the way out here for it. The town was dead or dying because all the mines had dried up. And then World War II came, and people had more important things on their mind than winter recreation. At that point, Holiday House was used to house recovering soldiers injured in the war.”

  He pointed to another picture that showed row after row of cots down in the great room.

  “Finally after the war, Thomas, along with his sons Thomas Jr. and Clive, my grandfather and Winnie’s husband, reopened the ski resort and used what little was left of their fortune, along with a mortgage on this house, to build an actual lodge closer to the slopes. Things took off from there.”

  “What a story Holiday House has to tell.” The house really was exceptionally lovely. She admired the thick gleaming woodwork around the windows, the elaborately scrolled hardware on the door hinges and knobs. “It sounds as if this place is inextricably tied to your family’s history.”

  “For good and bad. My great-uncle and my grandfather did a great deal to repair the family fortunes. They were the ones who transitioned from owning a ski resort and lodge to focusing almost exclusively on the hotel business. In the sixties, they started buying small hotels in other strategic travel locations around the globe. Clive ran the company until he died while I was in high school.”

  She heard the sadness in his voice and sensed how much he must have cared for his grandfather.

  “You couldn’t have been old enough to start running the company after he died, were you? Did your father take over?”

  He made a scoffing sort of sound. “My father? No. There would have been nothing left if Rick had been left in charge of Lancaster Hotels.”

  It had been a stupid question, she realized in retrospect. She knew enough of the grim details of his family life from what Lucy had told her to guess his father wouldn’t have taken much interest in the family business, other than to spend his trust fund as quickly as possible.

  “No, my great-uncle Thomas, Clive’s brother, ran the company after Clive’s death. He was brilliant and expanded the hotel operations exponentially.”

  He pointed to a picture of two men together that looked like it was from the sixties. One was larger, nattily dressed and more confident looking. The other was younger and looked like a beatnik.

  “Is he gone now, as well?” she asked, though she suspected the answer from the stark grief on Ethan’s features.

  “Yes. He died of a heart attack three years ago and I miss his wisdom every day.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  She certainly knew enough about grief to fill several sets of encyclopedias.

  “While Thomas had a longtime partner, whom he married as soon as gay marriage became legal here in Colorado, the two of them never had children. He became a mentor of sorts to me and helped groom me to fill his role.”

  He must have been extraordinarily young to take over as CEO of the company after his great-uncle died. She knew he was only three years older than Lucy, who would be thirty in the spring.

  He gave her a rueful look. “And now that I’ve bored you endlessly with my family history, I suppose I ought to show you the house.”

  “You didn’t bore me at all. I love hearing other people’s histories, probably because I don’t know much about my own.”

  He gave a short laugh. “Everyone has a history. We all come from somewhere.”

  “True. But not everybody is lucky enough to know all those details. I don’t know anything about my father’s side. I don’t even know his name. My mother would never talk about him. And while my great-aunt sometimes shared stories about her childhood growing up poor in Texas, I don’t know much beyond her parents, mainly because she didn’t know. Someday I might have to do some research.”

  “Is that why you’re moving to Austin after the holidays? To find out more about your heritage?”

  How did he know she was moving to Austin? Had she told him? Maybe Lucy had mentioned it to him.

  “Not really. I haven’t given that much thought, though I suppose that might be an unexpected benefit. No. I just needed something new.”

  She didn’t tell him how tired she had grown of living with the memories, of feeling as if she was stagnating in the mire of her pain.

  “I decided that if I was going to make a change, I should do it before Christopher starts elementary school. He’ll be in kindergarten next year so I knew time was running out.”

  “Yeah. I get that. I moved around a lot in elementary school and middle school. It wasn’t easy. Finally, when I was starting my final year of high school, I told my parents I was done. Lucy and I needed to stay in one place. We ended up living here with our grandmother during the school year and trading custody with our parents during the summer, which made life much better.”

  “That couldn’t have been easy for you.”

  “No. There was a healthy amount of drama. I want to think maybe our parents both realized how their constant fighting was hurting us, but I suspect Winnie probably laid down the law and threatened to cut them off if they didn’t agree.”

  At least their grandmother had stepped up to give them something of a stable home.

  “Now that I’ve rambled on, I suppose I ought to show you what you’re up against.”

  She wanted to protest that he hadn’t rambled at all, but she knew their time was limited. She would have to help Winnie to bed shortly.

 
“We can start here.” Ethan opened the closest door. “This is one of the many bedrooms in the house and is a good example of what you will encounter throughout the rest of the house.”

  He flipped on a light and stepped aside so she could look in. She brushed past him, aware as she did of that expensive soap scent she had first noticed the day before, masculine and outdoorsy and delicious.

  She forgot all about how good he smelled when she caught a look inside the room.

  “Oh, my.”

  He gave a rough laugh that made her shiver despite herself. “Yes. Exactly.”

  “Is every room like this?” she asked faintly.

  Everywhere she looked were nutcrackers of myriad shapes and sizes and colors. Scores of them. Probably hundreds or even thousands. The furniture in the room was lovely, a standard bedroom set, but every flat surface, along with several areas of the floor, was covered with wooden statues.

  “No. This is the only nutcracker room.”

  “Whew. I guess that’s something.”

  “And next door is the angel room. Picture this room, only with wings. The room after that I believe is one of several crèche rooms. My grandmother loves to collect things. Can you tell?”

  She had no answer, overwhelmed with the enormity of the collection. The nutcrackers alone could fill a museum.

  “Winnie isn’t a hoarder, at least not in the classic sense. Or, who knows, maybe she would be if her house wasn’t a vast historic mansion with plenty of room to store her various collections.”

  She picked up a nutcracker that was about twenty inches tall with a thick hairy mustache and a bushy black beefeater hat. “Are they antiques?”

  “Some of them are. I think a few of them are museum quality from the 1700s. But Winnie always says the beauty of her collection is that no one can tell the valuable pieces from those she bought at yard sales and thrift stores. I’m not sure even she knows.”

  The longer she was here, the more she found it charming. She could imagine some people could spend hours looking at each whimsical creation.

  Winnie had talked about putting up Christmas trees in some of the bedrooms. There was an empty space next to the window that would be perfect, and some of the smaller nutcrackers would look charming as ornaments. She jotted a note down and then turned back to Ethan.

  “I suppose you had better show me the rest.”

  His teeth gleamed with his smile. “Prepare yourself.”

  He led her to the room next door and flipped on the light. This time, Abby was prepared for the sight that greeted them—hundreds of angels, large and small. A few appeared to be suspended in air around the giant four-poster bed. When she looked closer, she saw they were hanging by clear fishing wire. Still more angels graced the top of several antique-looking tables around the room.

  Even the paintings on the wall contained angels in various poses.

  “When I was a kid, I never wanted to sleep in this room, even if Winnie would have let me. It creeped me out. I don’t mean angels. I’ve got no problem with them, but one or two are enough for me, thanks. An entire flock is a little much for a ten-year-old boy.”

  “I can imagine,” she said, though she had a hard time picturing him as a boy running through these halls.

  She had a feeling one problem the Silver Belles would have with their plans for Christmas at Holiday House was the time element. People would want to linger in each room to examine all the treasures contained inside.

  “She must have been collecting these things for years.”

  “Winnie likes to say that if she has the money and spends a good percentage already on charity, why can’t she use some of it to buy things that bring her joy?”

  “Good point.”

  “I can’t argue. I mean, my father spends plenty on yachts and vacation homes in the Caribbean. Winnie spends maybe twenty dollars a Saturday at yard sales and thrift stores around the area.”

  The angels definitely made a statement. She was particularly drawn to three cherubs on top of a display case who looked down with varying expressions of interest.

  “I don’t have words,” she said honestly.

  He laughed. “Yeah. It’s a lot to take in. And we’re not done yet.”

  The next room contained a huge train that ran on a track around a multilevel Christmas village made up of houses, churches, ice-skating ponds. She made a note that she would definitely have to bring Christopher into this room, though she would have to supervise him closely.

  The room after that was entirely ringed by shelves that contained at least a hundred Nativity scenes. The crèche room, Ethan had called it.

  “These are actually mostly valuable,” he explained. “All of Winnie’s friends and extended family members know she collects Nativities. As long as I can remember, everyone sends them to her from their travels. My grandfather started it and my great-uncle Thomas and his husband carried on the tradition. I imagine Lucy alone has probably sent her at least a dozen from around the world.”

  “They’re gorgeous, especially all clustered together in here.”

  “She has a few larger Nativities she likes to set up downstairs. I imagine she will direct you where they go.”

  “I could spend all day looking at them.”

  “When we were kids, Lucy and I always loved to look at the Nativities. Our favorite is the one in the coconut shell.”

  She liked this version of Ethan so much more than the somewhat autocratic, commanding man she had met the day before. She remembered his sweetness with Rodrigo and felt that tug of attraction again.

  Back out in the hallway, she scribbled a few more notes down in her book.

  “The other bedrooms on this level aren’t as kitschy and won’t take nearly as much time to go through. Winnie has left many of the original Victorian furnishings from the time the house was used as a summer home by William and Lucinda.”

  “What I’ve seen is remarkable. People will want to spend hours looking at everything she has. I wouldn’t be surprised if they want to come back again and again.”

  “Don’t think I haven’t thought about that. My biggest concern is security. She’s basically inviting people to come see what she has so they can come back and rob her.”

  “She might. But she has a security system, right?”

  “When she remembers to use it.”

  Fear was a topic she had spent two years thinking about in great depth. Her inclination after Kevin died had been to hide away with Christopher where nothing bad could touch them, but she had decided she couldn’t deprive her son of all the good and bad that came from embracing life.

  “Appropriate caution is necessary in life. Only foolish people go blithely forward without thinking about potential consequences. But over the past few years, I’ve learned that fear can be paralyzing.”

  He studied her, his blue eyes searching. She suddenly wished she hadn’t said anything. “Because of your husband’s death?”

  Of course he would know about Kevin. His sister was one of her closest friends. She would have been more surprised if he hadn’t known.

  “Yes. After he was killed, it would have been too easy to hide away in my apartment, but I didn’t want that for Christopher and I knew Kevin wouldn’t have wanted it, either.”

  “Totally understandable. And admirable.”

  She swallowed, uneasy with the intensity of his expression. “Unless we want Winnie to send a search party after us, we should probably keep going.”

  “You’re right. We have quite a few rooms to go, but the rest shouldn’t take as long.”

  Six

  Walking through these rarely used parts of the house always left Ethan feeling a little hollow. He wouldn’t call it melancholy, exactly, merely a certain sadness that the house wasn’t being used to its full potential.

  He couldn’t have said what
purpose the house would better serve. A reception hall, perhaps, or maybe even a cozy bed-and-breakfast.

  This time, seeing it through Abby’s eyes seemed different. She had a genuine appreciation for every detail that he usually overlooked. She spent a great deal of time admiring the woodwork, especially the intricate carvings around the doors and windows. The tile work around the fireplace mantels in several of the bedrooms sent her into ecstasy. He thought she was going to cry when he took her to the bedroom on the third floor that contained a slipper tub right in the bedroom.

  “This place is incredible,” she said after they had briefly toured all the rooms on the second and third floors. “I could spend a lifetime wandering through it, and I would still find new and wonderful things to discover.”

  He had to smile at her enthusiasm. Abby Powell didn’t seem to hold anything back. Her eyes were a bright green, glowing with light and life, her smile radiant.

  He could have spent the remainder of the evening enjoying her company.

  He did not want to be so drawn to her. What was the point? He certainly couldn’t start anything with the woman. She was a sweet, vulnerable widow.

  He remembered Brooke’s last words to him. Something is broken inside you. I hope you truly fall in love someday, but I’m not sure you’re capable of it.

  Over the past year of self-reflection, he had come to admit the truth of her words. He had never loved a woman with the kind of fierce passion his grandparents had had for each other or that he had seen in other happy relationships. As Brooke had said, he wasn’t sure he could—which meant soft women like Abby Powell were off-limits.

  He would have to do his best to ignore this growing attraction to his grandmother’s temporary nurse. He should probably try to avoid more situations where he was forced to spend extended time alone with her. That would be a good start.