Christmas at Holiday House

by RaeAnne Thayne

  She shook her head. “I became an emancipated adult at that point for my final year of high school. My mom and Aunt Elizabeth had left me a little money. Not a huge amount but enough to cover my rent and tuition to nursing school.”

  “That took grit,” he said, unable to keep the admiration out of his voice.

  He could see color rise on her cheeks. “You do what you have to do. I met my husband halfway through nursing school in Alabama and moved out to Phoenix to be closer to him while he was in medical school. That’s where I met Lucy.”

  “So you always knew you wanted to be a nurse?”

  She laughed. “Oh, no. I never wanted to be a nurse. I wanted to be a ballerina. Unfortunately, I have ankle problems, so that wasn’t in the cards for me.”

  “A ballerina. Wow! Were you good?”

  “To my preadolescent brain, I was brilliant. To everyone else, probably not.”

  Her wry self-reflection made him smile. He was fiercely drawn to her, even though he knew it wasn’t smart.

  “I was good at caring for sick people. Between my mother and my aunt, I had plenty of experience. Somewhere in there, I realized I found much more satisfaction in helping other people than anything else I had done. It made sense to pursue a career in it.”

  He knew many people who would have whined and complained about the cards they had been dealt if they had been in Abby’s situation, orphaned, alone. Instead, she had turned her pain outward to help others.

  He twisted the garland around a branch and fluffed it out a little.

  “That’s perfect. You’re very good at this.”

  He made a face. “Please don’t say that too loudly. I don’t want Winnie to commandeer me into helping her next year.”

  “Your secret is safe with me,” she said with a smile.

  He gazed down at her, feeling an odd tug in his chest he didn’t recognize.

  She was the first to look away. “Okay. I can reach the garland from here and do the lower branches.”

  He bent down to hand her the spool of ribbon. As she reached up to take it from him, the alluring scent of her swirled around him, mingling with the evergreen garlands in the room: vanilla, almond, cinnamon. Luscious.

  He wanted to kiss her. Ethan closed his eyes and willed away the urge.

  “What about you?” she asked as she moved away. “Why don’t you like the holidays?”

  “Who says I don’t like the holidays? I’m here decorating for holiday-palooza, aren’t I?”

  “Only because your grandmother conned you into it.”

  He laughed. “You’ve been here for more than a week and probably know how good Winnie is at convincing people to do what she wants. I seem to be overly susceptible.”

  Her smile lit up the room. “Only because you love her so much,” she said softly.

  His hands were actually shaking from fighting the urge to pull her into his arms. That had never happened before. Ever.

  He cleared his throat. “Okay. My part of the garland is done. What’s next?”

  “Ornaments. Hundreds of them. Let’s start by putting the giant balls on, which take up a lot of real estate on the tree. We can fill in the holes with all the other ornaments after that.”

  “Fine. Point me to the giant balls.”

  He couldn’t say that without discovering a twelve-year-old boy still lived inside him who found that sentence hilarious.

  She pointed him to several large boxes. “Take one box up and then I can hand you more as you need them. We need to space them out as much as possible so we have enough for the whole tree.”

  Fortunately, the giant balls were light and he was able to carry two boxes in one hand as he ascended the ladder again. He set one on the top of the ladder and held the other box while he hung the huge glossy red and gold baubles on the tree.

  There was an odd sense of satisfaction in the work, he thought after hanging the balls and then going down the ladder for more ornaments.

  He would never have expected it. Maybe this was why people enjoyed decorating the house so much for the holidays, this sense of adding something new, something beautiful. The Christmas music and the flickering firelight contributed to his mood as did the lovely woman working below him.

  “I am not disliking this is much as I expected I would,” he said.

  Abby gave him a startled look.

  “Don’t get me wrong. I would still probably rather be plucking out my eyebrows, but the result is nice.”

  “It looks good, doesn’t it? I’m glad I didn’t have to pick the decorations out, I only had to put them up.”

  He wanted to ask her a hundred questions. Why were she and Christopher starting over in a new town where they knew no one? How was she handling the death of her husband, two years after? How did she continue to be so cheerful after she had endured a string of terrible losses?

  Ethan didn’t want to ruin the moment by bringing darkness into it. He was enjoying himself too much.

  He even found himself humming along to some of the familiar songs.

  He could only hope his grandmother didn’t wander out to find them or she would probably fall again, in shock this time to find him showing a little holiday spirit.

  * * *

  Abby had spent more than a week decorating Holiday House for the season. She had strung countless ornaments on countless boughs, twisted together pine branches, tied ribbons, created ornaments.

  She should be tired of it by now, but something about this huge tree in Winnie’s great room was different. Or perhaps her enjoyment of the moment had more to do with her companion. She found a soft, bewitching sort of peace in Ethan’s company, which she found both unexpected and odd.

  Something seemed to have changed between them and she wasn’t quite sure what.

  He wasn’t enthusiastic about his grandmother’s plans to open her house to strangers. Ethan had made his position abundantly clear. Yet he was still willing to step up and help Abby decorate the big tree, simply because she was too afraid of heights to tackle the job on her own.

  “Your son is sleeping, I would guess.”

  “Yes. He put in a big play day with Dakota Raymond. I’m keeping track of him with the baby monitor.”

  “Smart.”

  “It’s not really necessary. He turned five last month and is old enough to know how to come looking for me if he wakes up, but I’m a bit of an overprotective mother, I guess.”

  “Not overprotective at all. No need to traumatize the kid by having him wake up and not know where his mom is.”

  She gave him a sharp look, unable to help it. He didn’t look at her, though she couldn’t tell whether he was avoiding her gaze or simply busy hanging ornaments.

  She knew enough about his childhood to know there was something autobiographical in that statement. Lucy hadn’t wanted to talk much about her life growing up, but she had said enough that Abby understood their complicated history.

  Lucy had processed that pain by frequently saying she wasn’t interested in the complications of romantic love. Had Ethan taken the same attitude? No. He had been engaged, she remembered, but it hadn’t worked out.

  She wanted to ask him about it but sensed Ethan wouldn’t welcome her curiosity.

  “I think that’s everything,” she said after she hung the last ornament from the final box, except for a few broken bulbs that hadn’t survived the year.

  “I’m out here, too.” He held up an empty box.

  “I think that means we’re done.”

  “Well? What do you think?”

  She stepped away to take a better look at the entire massive Christmas tree, which had been pretty enough with only the white lights. Now, with the star and garland and the ornaments, it quite literally took her breath away.

  “Oh, Ethan,” she exclaimed softly. “It’s beautiful.”<
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  He climbed down the ladder. “Any bare spots?”

  “Not that I can tell. You did a wonderful job. Almost like a pro.”

  “Turn the main lights down so I can see the full effect, would you?”

  She crossed to the wall and flipped off the main chandelier in the room so that only the tree and a lamp in one corner illuminated them. The lights on the tree reflected off the shiny ornaments, magnifying their glow.

  “It’s lovely. Don’t you think so?”

  “Absolutely.”

  His voice sounded oddly intense. When she looked over, she met his gaze and discovered he was not looking at the tree at all, but at her.

  She felt warm everywhere and those butterflies returned to flit around inside her.

  He could not be attracted to her. The idea was laughable. She was bedraggled and dusty, her hair falling out of her messy bun. Any trace of makeup she had put on that morning, only mascara and a quick brush of lipstick, had likely worn off hours ago.

  Still, she couldn’t deny that expression in his eyes, hot and hungry, or her answering reaction. She fiercely worked to fight it down.

  “Thank you for your help,” she said into the silence. “I honestly would not have been able to tackle this job without you. There’s a chance Winnie could have found a Silver Belle to help, but if not we would have ended up with a half-decorated tree, completely bare above about seven feet.”

  “I enjoyed it. But, again, please keep that between us.”

  “Well, if you enjoyed that, I have plenty of other decorating jobs you could help with. Tomorrow evening after the grounds are decorated, we’re hanging more greenery around the windows outside.”

  He frowned a little, as if doing some mental calculations. “I could maybe swing by after work again tomorrow. I have a meeting in the afternoon but could come after that.”

  She didn’t know what to say, touched that he would be willing to come again despite his opposition to the fundraiser.

  “You don’t have to do that. I was only teasing you. A couple of the Silver Belles are bringing their husbands tomorrow. We should have enough people to finish the job.”

  “Well, if anything changes, let me know.”

  “Thank you.”

  That heady moment of mutual attraction seemed to have passed. Or maybe she had imagined the whole thing. She was relieved, Abby told herself, as they spent a few moments picking up the empty boxes and loading them into the elevator.

  “I can take them up tomorrow,” she told him. “Christopher loves to push the button on the elevator and help me stack the empty boxes where we can find them again after Christmas.”

  Except she wouldn’t be here after Christmas, she reminded herself, feeling a little pang. Someone else would have to take all the decorations down for Winnie. Maybe Ethan would send a crew from his hotel to earn more overtime by helping out.

  “Oh, look,” she said. “It’s snowing!”

  She hurried to the window so she could look out at the sight that still enchanted her every time.

  He followed her to stand next to her, gazing out at the giant snowflakes that fluttered softly to the ground. “This is the Rockies. Snow isn’t exactly a rarity around here.”

  “I grew up in Alabama and have been in Arizona for the past ten years. Snow still feels magical to me.”

  “Almost makes you have a little Christmas spirit, doesn’t it?”

  “Almost. Not quite.”

  He laughed, a low, husky sound that had her toes tingling again.

  “You’re a fraud, Abigail Powell. You said you didn’t want to put up a tree but I think you’re secretly into all this holiday decorating. The snow, the ornaments, the lights. All of it.”

  She nudged him with her shoulder. “I am not the one who just admitted he enjoyed decorating his grandmother’s Christmas tree.”

  He smiled down at her for a moment that seemed to stretch out between them, soft and seductive.

  His gaze locked with hers and his smile slowly slid away. The music on the speaker shifted to something slow and entirely too sultry to be on a Christmas playlist.

  She opened her mouth to make some kind of a meaningless comment. Before she could, he leaned down and brushed his mouth against hers, just as she had been imagining him doing since that day up in the attic.

  She froze for a moment, the memory of the last time a man had tried to kiss her flashing across her mind.

  She waited for that first hint of nausea, the overwhelming urge to rush away and be sick.

  It didn’t come. At all. She wasn’t sick in the slightest. Far from it. She wanted him to keep kissing her for the rest of the night.

  When her fear that she would make a fool of herself again began to recede, she was so elated she kissed him back.

  Oh, she enjoyed kissing. And Ethan was exceptional at it. His mouth danced over hers and his arms wrapped around her, making her feel safe and warm and protected while the snow fell softly outside.

  They kissed for far longer than they should have, until her thoughts were whirling and she was beginning to feel the delicious flutterings of desire, feelings she thought were long dead.

  She didn’t want him to stop, but after several moments Ethan pulled away, his expression torn between desire and confusion.

  “Sorry,” he said, his voice low and rough. “That kind of came out of nowhere. One moment we were talking about snow and the next I knew I had to kiss you. I hope you don’t think I’m the kind of guy who steals kisses every time he decorates a Christmas tree.”

  If he did, she imagined women across Silver Bells would be inviting him over to help them trim the tree.

  “You don’t have to apologize. Really. I’m, um, actually glad you kissed me.”

  “Glad?”

  “Yes. I didn’t throw up.” As soon as she heard her own words, she couldn’t believe she had just blurted out those words. She might as well have been sick. Oh, she was an idiot.

  As she might have expected, he drew away farther, blinking a little. “Always the reaction I’m hoping for when I kiss a woman.”

  Abby’s face felt hot. She should just stop talking now. That would be the sensible thing to do, but she felt like she had to at least try to explain such an odd statement.

  “Since Kevin died, I’ve been afraid I would never be able to endure another man’s touch. That probably sounds stupid to you.”

  His astonished expression seemed to ease a little. “Not at all. It sounds as if you loved your husband very much.”

  It seemed odd to be talking about her late husband five minutes after she and Ethan had just been exploring each other’s mouths, but she didn’t know how else to explain.

  “Kevin was a wonderful man. Once I fell for him, I never looked at anyone else.”

  He raked a hand through his hair. “Now I feel even more like a jerk who took advantage of you in a weak moment. I shouldn’t have kissed you like that. I’m sorry.”

  She met his gaze and held it. “You weren’t a jerk, Ethan. Far from it. I’m glad you kissed me. Just as I said. Kevin has been gone for two years. I miss him and part of me will always love him. He gave me Christopher, my greatest joy.”

  She folded her hands in front of her. “As much as I loved him, I’m not prepared to wrap my heart in tissue paper like one of Winnie’s fragile ornaments and tuck it away on a shelf somewhere for the rest of my life. I’m ready to move on. That’s one of the reasons I’ve decided to relocate to Austin.”

  “To move on?”

  “I’ve been on two dates since Kevin died. Both of them were with perfectly nice men. The first one I wouldn’t let kiss me, though he wanted to. Just the idea of it made me feel sick. The second man I dated, I decided to let him kiss me good-night so I could see what would happen. It wasn’t pretty. As soon as he kissed me, I seriously had to th
row up. Like, right that minute. I ended up literally shoving him out the door and barely made it to the bathroom in time.”

  Was she really telling him this? If there was anything guaranteed to make sure he didn’t try kissing her again, this story would certainly do it.

  “I was convinced something was wrong with my psyche and I probably would have to go through some heavy-duty therapy or something.” She smiled. “Thanks to you, now I don’t think so. I’m happy to report I didn’t feel a hint of nausea when you kissed me. In fact, I very much enjoyed it. So thank you.”

  “You’re...welcome?”

  He still looked extremely uncomfortable with the entire situation. She felt a pang of regret that she had just given him ample reason not to ever kiss her again.

  “I should...probably go,” he said, gesturing to the door.

  She wanted him to kiss her again but knew that wasn’t likely to happen again. Just the fact that she wanted him to still felt like a victory.

  “Right. Well, good night. Thank you again for helping out with the Christmas tree. Winnie will love it.”

  “That’s the important thing,” he said with a lopsided smile.

  She was glad he had kissed her, she thought as he grabbed his coat, wished her good-night and walked out the door. Ethan wasn’t the man for her, she knew that. But at least she had learned she was capable of feeling desire again.

  The only downside was that she suspected she would be aching for more now every time she saw him.

  Nine

  “The big tree looks marvelous, darling. Thank you so much for helping Abigail last night, especially after you had been traveling. I can’t tell you how much it means to me that you were willing to help, despite your personal feelings about the fundraiser we’re throwing.”

  Ethan fought the urge to roll his eyes. He said one thing about worrying for his grandmother’s safety and everybody made him out to be some kind of ill-tempered ogre, stomping around in protest of the Silver Belles and their efforts to raise money for a good cause.

  “You are a hard woman to say no to,” he told his grandmother into the speakerphone. Outside the windows of his corner office, it was snowing again. He had a mental image of Abby’s sheer joy in the snowfall the night before. And then he remembered what came a few moments later, the heat and delicious taste of her, and had to turn away from his office window.