“Abby seems great,” José said as Ethan struggled for an answer. “I met her before when I went with Lucy to her husband’s funeral, but that was a tragic situation. I never really had a chance to talk to her one-on-one much except since she’s been here in Silver Bells. I liked her a lot when I was there for Thanksgiving. I also went over one night last week with just my mom and Rod when Sofia took tamales over for dinner. We all stayed and ate together and had a great time.”
Why hadn’t anybody invited Ethan over for tamales? He felt a little left out, until he remembered he had been out of town.
“Rod is pretty taken with her and I always consider him an excellent judge of character,” José went on. “Plus, my mother said Abby has single-handedly saved the Silver Belles fundraiser at Holiday House. In fact, Sofia has been talking about her so much, I get the distinct impression she wants me to ask her out.”
Would Abby be able to kiss José without feeling sick? Ethan didn’t want to know the answer to that. In fact, thinking about the two of them together made Ethan feel vaguely ill.
“What about Lucy?”
José seemed to freeze, his features going stiff. “What about her?”
Why had he said that? His sister was the one taboo topic of conversation between him and José. He knew they were friends, too, that they hung out overseas. He knew they had met up in Thailand a few months earlier when José took a rare-for-him-these-days trip for Lancaster Hotels to a new property.
He suspected something had happened there, judging by José’s dark mood when he returned and Lucy’s careful avoidance of the topic. Just as well. He didn’t want to know.
He picked his words carefully, wishing he hadn’t opened his big mouth. If there was something between José and Lucy, neither of them wanted to talk about it.
“Nothing. Only that she’s coming home this weekend and I know you guys usually hang out when she’s home. I guess I just assumed you would again this year. Am I wrong?”
“Yes. You’re wrong,” José snapped. “Contrary to popular opinion, I am not stuck in limbo, waiting for your sister to come home from whichever exotic destination has caught her fancy currently. I have a life. It’s a damn good one.”
Ethan wasn’t quite sure how to respond. He had obviously touched a nerve. What was that about?
“Sorry, man. I shouldn’t have said anything.” He paused, then decided to broach the subject they never talked about.
“I guess over the past few years, I’ve sort of hoped you and Lucy might get together. You would be good for her.”
José’s fist clenched around the door frame, and for an instant Ethan saw stark, desolate pain in his eyes.
“Not happening, bro. Lucy has made up her mind that she doesn’t want anything serious. Not with me, not with anyone.”
Sometimes Ethan wanted to punch his parents in the throat for what their constant romantic drama had done to his sister.
“I’m sorry,” he said, the words completely inadequate.
José shrugged. “It’s my problem. A woman who doesn’t want anything serious would probably be fine for some guys. They would see it as a dream come true. I’m not one of those guys. I want forever.”
José was in love with Lucy. The truth stared at Ethan through bleak, dark eyes. His best friend was in love with his baby sister, who had sworn for years that she would never let herself be vulnerable enough to love anyone.
His chest ached all over again. José was one of the best people he knew. Caring, funny, hardworking. Brilliant at his job and passionate about his family. Look at the career sacrifices he had made so that he could come home and help his mother with his differently abled brother.
That Lucy was blinded by the scars of their past to what was right in front of her made Ethan infinitely sad for his sister and what she might be missing out on.
José looked embarrassed and seemed to collect himself. “I didn’t mean to dump all that on you, man. Lucy is her own person, right? She’s always done her own thing. I get that. I’m doing my best to accept what she wants and move on, you know?”
José deserved the best possible future. He deserved someone sweet and kind and open to love.
Someone like Abby Powell.
Though it again made him a little nauseous, he forced a smile. “I get it,” he said. “Listen, I could take Rodrigo and his friends for pizza, if you wanted to take Abby and Christopher tubing tonight. I would be fine with that.”
It was a blatant lie, but what else could he say? “She seems like a great person and I’m sure the two of you would really hit it off, if you spent a little more time together.”
José appeared to consider the offer but finally shook his head. “Abby seems great, but she’s also Lucy’s best friend. I couldn’t do that. Anyway, Rod is counting on me. Thanks, though. Have a good time.”
“Another time, then. Enjoy your evening.”
José still looked miserable, but he nodded and headed out of Ethan’s office.
Ten
As dinners went, she had to say it was one of the more awkward of her life.
Throughout the meal—a delicious chicken noodle soup and freshly baked bread a neighbor had brought over—she was painfully aware of Ethan. He talked to all of them, but she knew he had to be remembering the scene that had played out in the next room the night before.
Their kiss and the humiliating aftermath seemed to play through her head like an internet video stuck on repeat.
She ended up stirring her spoon around the noodles in her soup instead of actually eating any.
“Do you believe in Santa Claus?” The question from Christopher to Ethan finally yanked her out of her thoughts, stopping the video replay in her head.
Ethan glanced at her, his expression obviously seeking guidance. She could only give an almost invisible shrug, not quite sure how to respond.
“Why would you ask that?”
“My friend Jake at our old apartment is six years old, one year older than me, and he said his big sister told him Santa wasn’t real. I said he was too. Jake said I was a baby and I told him if he said Santa wasn’t real, Santa wouldn’t come give him presents.”
“That sounds about right,” Ethan said. “What did, er, Jake say?”
“He said the moms and dads give presents on Christmas and I said, well, I don’t have a dad only a mom and he said I would probably only get half the presents, then.”
Christopher took a bite out of his bread, obviously having no idea how his words broke his mother’s heart. That Jake. She had never much liked him anyway and wasn’t sorry they were moving away.
Unfortunately, no matter where they went, there would be other Jakes with other big sisters. Kids only too willing to destroy a little boy’s illusions. She wanted to wrap her five-year-old’s heart in Bubble Wrap to keep him safe from thoughtless, unkind children.
Before she could answer, Ethan spoke up. “If you talk to Jake again, you tell him for me that Santa doesn’t work that way. And anyway, the number of presents a kid gets doesn’t matter much. Santa looks at how he acts toward other people all year round to decide whether he deserves any presents at all.”
It was apparently the right answer for Christopher, as well. He beamed at Ethan as if he were Santa Claus. “I will. That’s just what I’ll tell him.”
She didn’t want Ethan to have to solve any more of her son’s existential crises. “Christopher, if you’re finished eating, take your plate into the kitchen and then go find the boots and snow pants Dakota lent you.”
“Okay.” He happily took his plate and carried it into the kitchen.
“Sorry about that,” she murmured to Ethan. “The existence of the real Santa Claus seems to be the question of the week. We went to see a mall Santa downtown yesterday at lunchtime and it seemed to spark all kinds of questions.”
“He basicall
y asked me the same thing earlier today,” Winnie admitted. “I told him to ask his mother.”
“He brought it up when we were making cookies and I kind of brushed him off by distracting him. I guess I had better have a talk with him.”
“He’s only five. It’s okay for him to believe a little longer,” Ethan said.
“When kids want to believe, it doesn’t matter what any neighbors say,” Winnie said. “My older brother believed until he was twelve, until I finally had to advise our mother that she had to tell him the truth because he was starting to get into fights at school over it. I think I was eight or nine myself.”
Abby smiled as she cleared Winnie’s bowl for her. She reached for Ethan’s bowl.
“You don’t have to clean up after me,” he said. It was probably the most direct thing he had said to her all evening, and for some reason she could feel herself blush.
“Were you done?”
“Yes. But you still don’t have to do that.”
“I don’t mind,” she answered as she carried everything over to the sink. She should be putting on her own winter gear. Was she trying to avoid going for as long as possible?
A moment later, her son returned to the kitchen.
“I’m all ready,” he said gleefully. She heard a snicker of laughter, quickly quashed, from Winnie and turned around from the sink to find that Christopher had the pants on backward and his boots on the wrong feet.
Maybe she should have been supervising him a little better instead of angsting over spending the evening with Ethan.
“Good job, bud. You might be more comfortable if we reposition things a little. Come on. You can help me get ready.”
She took him back to their bedroom.
“I like Ethan. He’s nice,” Christopher informed her as she was helping him out of his boots so they could twist the bib pants around.
“He seems to be,” she agreed. Not to mention a great kisser.
“Do you like him, too?”
Too much. Far more than she should. She forced a smile. “Sure. He’s Winnie’s grandson, so of course he’s nice.”
“I love Winnie. And I love her dogs. I wish we could live here all the time.”
“But then we wouldn’t be able to move into our new apartment in Texas, and you wouldn’t be able to start at the new school we looked at already.”
“I guess.”
She tried to ignore the little pinch in her heart as she finished helping him into his snow clothes, then put on her own borrowed snow pants and boots. When they were sufficiently bundled, she returned to the kitchen.
“You two look like you’re ready to hit the slopes,” Winnie said cheerfully. “You should be warm all night.”
“Are you sure you’ll be all right on your own?” Abby asked.
Winnie didn’t exactly roll her eyes, but her expression said the same thing. “I’ll be alone for all of thirty minutes before a half dozen of the Silver Belles drop by to practice their number. I’ve lived here alone for almost sixty years. I think I could manage not to burn the house down in thirty minutes.”
“What about falling down the stairs?” Ethan asked pointedly.
Winnie sighed. “I’ll sit in my comfortable chair in the great room and read a book until everybody gets here. Will that make you happy?”
“As long as you don’t get a paper cut.”
She laughed and shooed him away. “Don’t worry about me for a minute. Go on and have a great time.”
“Are you guys ready?” Ethan asked.
“When you are,” Abby answered.
“All right. Let’s go play in the snow.”
* * *
A short time later, Abby stood with her stomach in knots, looking at the enclosed moving sidewalk that carried both people and inner tubes up the tubing hill at the ski resort.
Everyone here seemed to be having a great time. People laughed and shrieked with excitement as they sailed down the hill.
All she could think about were the ER visits that might result from those few minutes of fun.
“If you’re not into this, I can take Christopher up the hill and you can wait for him down here.”
Her own fear frustrated her so much. She found it so odd that she had never been bothered by heights until around the time Kevin died, which made no logical sense. He hadn’t fallen any great distance. He had been shot by a mentally unstable patient in a random assault on what had otherwise been a routine night in the ER.
She had been at work that night at the children’s hospital, tending to Sami. Maybe somehow her subconscious juxtaposed those two things—Kevin’s attack and the girl she had been caring for when she found out about it.
The two things had to be related. She should probably ask the grief counselor she had seen for the first year after his death.
None of that helped her right now when her son was waiting for her to take him tubing.
“Seriously. I don’t mind,” Ethan said.
She shook her head, swallowing hard. She could do this. “I can’t simply dump my child on you.”
“I’m happy to take him. You can watch us the whole time from down here. They’ve even got a covered seating area there by the fire pit, where you can keep toasty and warm.”
Was this her future? Always afraid to take risks for fear of some nebulous consequence?
She gazed at Christopher, who was just about jumping out of his snowsuit with excitement for the coming adventure. She wouldn’t disappoint him. Not about something as silly as tubing down a small mountain.
She released a breath and forced a smile. “Let’s do this.”
Ethan wasn’t fooled by her attempt at cheerfulness. “Are you sure?”
She really wasn’t sure of anything, other than that her palms were sweaty inside her gloves and her knees would have been knocking together if she wasn’t wearing so many layers.
She wouldn’t let this fear rob her or her son of the memories they might build together. The past two years had been about finding the requisite courage to tackle the next thing. Going back to work. Christopher’s first birthday without his dad. Facing their wedding anniversary on her own.
This was a small thing. And anyway, it helped to know Ethan was there.
“Let’s go,” she said, hoping he didn’t hear the quaver in her voice. “This will be fun.”
“Yay!” Christopher did a little shuffling dance around her and she had to laugh. This was why she could tackle her fear. She didn’t want to raise a timid child who never wanted to try new things. The only way to ensure that was to show him by example that she wasn’t afraid.
Ethan led the way to the attendant at the bottom of the lift, a young man with blond dreadlocks and a goatee. “Hi, Mr. Lancaster,” the guy said, with a sort of awed reverence in his voice.
“Evening, Luke,” he answered with a smile. Abby could tell the kid hadn’t expected the big boss to know his name. “This is our first time. From what I understand, we can choose the speed of both our tube and the run we pick at the top, right?”
“Correct. The faster tubes are the yellow ones. Blue ones are slightly slower.”
“Three blue tubes, then. Thanks.”
“Coming right up.”
The kid went to a pile of tubes and came back with three blue ones. “You know what to do from here?”
“Walk us through it, why don’t you,” Ethan suggested.
“Sure thing. See that big tube right there with all the lights on it? There’s a moving sidewalk inside it that will take you up the hill.”
“Like a magic carpet?” Christopher asked.
Abby had to smile. Right now the Disney movie with the magic carpet was his absolute favorite.
“Just like that, bud,” the guy said with a grin. “We even call it the magic carpet. Except you’re all standin
g on the same magic carpet and it’s only going to one place, the top of the hill. Hold your tubes on the lift in front of you. Once you get to the top, you just step off and my pal Becky will be there to direct you to the run you want, which all depends on how fast you want to go.”
“Slow,” Ethan said at the same moment Christopher said “Super fast.”
“You can work that out at the top. That’s all you need to know. You can go down as many times as you want. Especially when you’re with the boss who owns the whole mountain, right?” he said with a grin toward Ethan.
She supposed that did carry a few privileges.
“All right,” Ethan said. “Thanks for your help, Luke. Say hi to your mom for me.”
“I’ll do that,” he said, still sounding a little awed.
“Do you know all your employees’ names?” Abby asked as they headed toward the large tunnel illuminated by red and green neon lights.
“I should. But not even close,” he said. “Luke’s mom has worked at the front desk at the main Lancaster Silver Bells hotel in town since before I was a kid. Jolene is kind of a fixture.”
“That’s nice,” Abby said, her nerves jumping again as they approached the tunnel.
Ethan gave her a careful look. Could he see her fear written on her face?
“How about this, Christopher,” he said. “I’ll hold your tube and take it up for you while you hold your mom’s hand.”
“Okay,” her sweet son said happily, holding out his mitten for her. She grasped it tightly. Holding her tube in front of her with the other hand, as Luke had instructed, she stepped onto the moving sidewalk, which made a gradual ascent up the side of the mountain.
Once they reached the top, they were met by another attendant in the same official ski-resort jacket.
It was much easier to focus on her than on how far they had to tube down.
“Hi, Mr. Lancaster.” The young woman at the top of the lift was obviously expecting them, probably warned by her cohort below through the two-way radios they carried. “How fun to see you up here!”
“Hi, Becky,” he said courteously. “How have you enjoyed working up here on the tubing hill?”
Christmas at Holiday House Page 14
