Christmas at Holiday House

by RaeAnne Thayne

  The moment she asked the question, she wished she hadn’t. She should be trying to find some kind of common ground to regain what she could of their friendship, not jumping in with a question destined to antagonize him.

  A muscle seemed to tighten in his jaw. “It was good. Quinn is a lot of fun to be around.”

  Lucy could be fun. She was a good conversationalist, she could tell jokes in many languages, she knew how to belly dance.

  She let out a breath, reminding herself that, despite the distance between them right now, he was still her friend and she wanted him to be happy. She hadn’t had the opportunity to meet Quinn yet as their paths hadn’t crossed, but others seemed to like the woman.

  Not that she had said anything outright to anyone else about her, but there was a chance Lucy might have unobtrusively steered a few conversations in that direction.

  “Great. I’m glad to hear it.”

  “Are you?”

  “Yes. You’re my friend, José. I care about you and want you to be happy. If you like this Quinn person, I think that’s great.”

  “I hear a definite but in your voice.”

  She should walk away right now. She had no business pushing things between them when he had made his point clear. A wise woman would smile, say good afternoon and go back to work.

  When had she ever been wise?

  Right now, she wanted to lock his office door, sidle around his desk and splay her hands across that broad, gorgeous chest of his.

  She did one of the three, closing his door and locking it behind her.

  “I just...can’t forget that kiss in Thailand,” she said, her voice husky. “No one has ever kissed me like that. Ever.”

  He gazed at her for a long moment, his pupils widening and his breathing suddenly ragged. Finally his mouth tightened.

  “I’m not doing this with you, Lucy.”

  He sounded weary, and she suddenly felt like a stupid, cruel girl, poking a bear with a stick.

  “Doing what? You started it when you kissed me.”

  “And you ended it when you made it clear you don’t want the same things I do. It’s not enough for me anymore to be friends with you, content to wait in the nice, safe box you have shoved me into. Your good buddy José, fun to FaceTime when you’re bored or hang around with for the week or two out of the year when we get together.” He shrugged. “I want forever and you don’t. It is as simple as that. We have a basic disconnect we can’t get past.”

  Lucy hitched in a breath, feeling perilously close to tears. What was wrong with her? She never cried. They were angry tears, she told herself.

  “We only have a disconnect because you insist on being a...a typical obstinate, arrogant male who has to have things your way.”

  He shook his head. “I refuse to sleep with you unless we’re actually dating with an eye toward a future together, and that makes me an arrogant male. Really?”

  She knew he was right. If their roles were reversed and she was on the outside looking in, she would consider a man who only wanted sex without commitment an ass.

  She knew she was in the wrong. That was what kept her tossing and turning each night since she had come home. She told herself it was jet lag, but she knew better. It was confusion, guilt, pain.

  She couldn’t hurt him. That was the overriding emotion taking center stage right now.

  “You’re asking the impossible of me, José,” she finally said quietly. “I am not capable of giving you what you want. A commitment. You know the chaos I came from. You saw it from the outside. My parents were a mess. The boyfriends, the girlfriends, marriages and divorces, with new people coming in and out of my life. All because of love. If I had a quarter for every time one parent or the other would tell me he or she was in love, I could buy my own ski resort.”

  “Your parents were and still are two childish, irresponsible people who should never have brought offspring into the world. Their core problem is that they have no idea how to be happy, how to think about someone else’s welfare before their own. You and Ethan are not your parents. You don’t use people like they do.”

  He circled the desk and sat on the edge of it, legs outstretched and his hands resting on the edge behind him.

  “I think you’re using Rick and Terri and the wreck they’ve made of their lives as an excuse. A crutch. I think you know in your heart what you truly want, you’re just afraid to reach for it.”

  She wanted to reach for him. The urge to throw her arms around his waist and hold on forever was so powerful she almost gave in.

  But then what? He would end up hurt, and she would end up hating herself.

  “I think you don’t know what you’re talking about,” she snapped, fumbling behind her for the door lock and stomping out before he could respond.

  So much for scintillating conversation, she thought as she hurried back to her temporary office, hot, angry tears burning in her eyes.

  She shouldn’t have said anything. She didn’t know how it was possible, but instead of clearing the air between them she had only managed to make everything so much worse.

  * * *

  “You don’t have to do this,” Ethan said Wednesday afternoon. “I can take him on the lift by myself.”

  Abby was so very tempted, her fear ballooning as she looked at the ski lift overhead. “I know. But I’ve come this far. We did fine on the bunny slope. I might as well go on an actual ski run.”

  For the past hour, she and Christopher had been receiving private lessons from a man who obviously knew what he was doing on the slopes—and looked gorgeous doing it. He had a lean, natural grace that somehow didn’t surprise her. She was surprised by how much she enjoyed his lessons.

  He was patient, encouraging, knowledgeable. Somehow in the space of an hour, Ethan had done a marvelous job of teaching them the basics of skiing—a nervous woman afraid of heights and a five-year-old boy who had never been on a ski hill.

  Christopher was a natural. Abby, not so much, but she thought she could possibly make it down the most basic hill without falling more than two or three times.

  “I honestly don’t mind taking him by myself,” Ethan pressed. “You can watch from down here or even go into the lodge.”

  “I know. But someday, when you’re not around to take us, he might want to go skiing again. I would like to be able to say I had at least tried it.”

  He gave her that unreadable look again, the one that made the butterflies jump around like crazy in her stomach. “All right. If you’re sure, we can all ride the lift together.”

  They got into the fairly short line and a moment later reached the front. “Okay, just ski to the line and the chair will come and scoop you up. Christopher in the middle. That’s it.”

  Somehow she made it on without panicking, but the moment the lift chair headed away from the ground and up the small hill, Abby’s stomach seemed to plummet.

  This was insane. Who invented this? No human should ride something like this without seat belts or anything. She was going to fall out. Or, worse, Christopher was going to fall. She clutched his arm so tightly, he scowled at her.

  “Mom. That’s too hard,” he said.

  To her relief, Ethan pulled down a safety bar and then reached an arm out and grabbed her arm. “I won’t let you fall,” he said quietly.

  It was as if she had taken an instant anti-anxiety pill. Her breathing seemed to slow and she could feel calm wash over her. She could do this. Ethan would be there to make sure nothing happened to her.

  Dismounting the chairlift at the top was a little tricky, but she managed to stay upright and didn’t humiliate herself.

  Christopher skied off as if he had been doing this forever. She remembered Winnie saying that younger children often took to the sport far more easily than older people.

  Ethan guided her over to the top of the slope. �
��This is no different from what we’ve been doing on the practice slope. Remember what I taught you. We’ll take it slow. Go ahead. I’m right behind you.”

  Christopher didn’t wait—he immediately started down the hill. If she didn’t want her son to ski down this big mountain by himself, she would have to follow. She drew a deep breath and launched herself down the mountain.

  This was no different from the tubing, she told herself. Except she was standing up on thin pieces of wood and trying to keep her balance at a high rate of speed.

  She tried not to think about what she was doing. Instead, she leaned into the moment.

  She wouldn’t believe it possible, but after the first four or five turns, she got into the rhythm of it. If she only focused just ahead of herself on the hill and didn’t look all the way to the bottom, she didn’t even remember that she was afraid of heights.

  At the bottom, she almost forgot how to stop until she saw Christopher snowplow. Her son was a natural.

  “So?” Ethan asked once they reached the bottom. “What did you think?”

  Christopher seem to bubble over with excitement. “That was so fun. It was more fun than tubing. Can we go down again? Can we please?”

  Ethan grinned. “I’m game for it. What about you, Abby?”

  She wanted that feeling again, that heady sensation that she was leaving her troubles at the top of the hill.

  “Sure. Let’s go again.”

  He grinned at her, his teeth flashing white in the sunshine, and she felt a giddy hitch in her stomach.

  Apparently, the man didn’t even have to kiss her to set off fireworks inside her.

  She had worried things might be weird between them on this ski outing after the way things had ended the other night, with that intense, almost tender kiss and then the abrupt ending.

  She shouldn’t have worried, with Christopher there. He treated Ethan like his new best friend, and his happy mood seemed to set the tone for the whole afternoon.

  “Here we go. We’re almost to the top,” Ethan said. “Get ready.”

  This was the part she didn’t love, that moment when a skier had to leave the relative safety of the ski lift to depend on his or her own hard-fought ability to stay upright on the snow.

  She imagined there was probably a metaphor in that for her life, but she didn’t have time to figure it out before Christopher took off down the mountain again with a cry of glee.

  “The kid is a natural,” Ethan said with a laugh when they all reached the bottom again.

  “I was afraid of that.” Abby wasn’t able to keep the glum note out of her voice.

  As she might have expected, he caught it. “Why is that a bad thing? I would have thought you’d be happy.”

  “How often will I be able to take him skiing once we’ve resettled in Texas? Ski resorts aren’t exactly a dime a dozen there.”

  “You can always come back to Silver Bells to visit Winnie and Lucy during ski season. You know Winnie would love to see you.”

  Could she? Once she left town, would she feel comfortable coming back to visit? If she were only likely to see Winnie and the other Silver Belles, yes.

  Once she left, she intended to do her best to forget about Ethan Lancaster and all these feelings he sparked in her.

  After two more runs, her calves ached in the hard boots and she was ready to stop and go inside for a mug of cocoa to warm up, but Christopher’s enthusiasm hadn’t flagged yet.

  At least he would probably sleep well that night.

  “Can we go one more time?” he pleaded.

  Ethan must have seen her exhaustion. He placed a hand on her arm. “I’ll take him. Go warm up in the lodge. You can cheer us on from inside.”

  She wouldn’t argue with that. She left her skis on the rack, as she had seen others do, and made her way into the lodge, where she grabbed cocoa and then stood at the wide window. It was easy to find Christopher since his coat was red and his hat was a bright purple.

  The two of them looked so natural together, she thought as she watched. They had a rapport that touched her as much as it worried her.

  She didn’t want her son to be hurt when they left town and Ethan no longer played a part in their lives. She could only hope it wasn’t too late.

  Fifteen

  If she had any doubt the people of Silver Bells loved the holidays, the town’s annual gingerbread competition quickly put that to rest.

  Sunday afternoon, Abby looked around the large ballroom at the Lancaster Silver Bells, where three dozen teams worked feverishly around small tables. Each table held supplies for the gingerbread houses. Squares of gingerbread, fondant, gumdrops, pretzel sticks. Anything one might need to decorate an elaborate gingerbread creation.

  Winnie had explained the rules to her earlier in the day. She knew the teams could plan their creation ahead of time but couldn’t do any work until they arrived. They had a two-hour time limit to create, and the winners were chosen by the pastry chefs at the three Lancaster hotels in town.

  At the front of the ballroom, a jazz combo played holiday tunes beneath a banner that read Happy Birthday and Joyous Holidays, Rodrigo.

  “You really do this every year?”

  Winnie looked positively gleeful, as she had since they’d walked in fifteen minutes earlier. “Oh, yes. We have since Rodrigo was about twelve or thirteen. It used to be a small event, family and friends only. In the years since, it’s grown and grown until it has become one of the most fun traditions we have around here. Visitors make an annual trip of it. And the competition can be fierce, I’ll tell you. The grand prize is airfare plus a week’s stay at any Lancaster property in the world, and all proceeds benefit our family foundation, which is funding the endowment for the accessible lodge.”

  Silver Bells just might be the most festive town around anywhere. When she had agreed to help Winnie for these few weeks, she had wanted Christopher to experience a white Christmas. She just never expected she would come to love the place.

  “Are you ready to get to work? I am.”

  “I’m sorry you’re not eligible for the grand prize.”

  “Doesn’t matter. We can still win the random door prizes that are donated by local businesses. I’ve got my eye on a free session of hot yoga.”

  She smiled, adoring Winnie as much as she loved Silver Bells.

  The woman had become so very dear to her over these past weeks. Winifred Lancaster had endured great pain, losing the husband she loved, two children in infancy, having her only remaining son make a mess of his life.

  She was a great example of resilience and strength, and Abby wanted to be just like her someday.

  Maybe without the pink hair, which would clash horribly with her normal auburn coloring.

  Whenever she thought about how much she would miss the woman when she left town, Abby’s chest felt tight.

  She hadn’t realized how much she had been yearning for the influence of mature, wise women until this time she had spent with Winnie. Most of her friends in Arizona were her contemporaries. Nurses she worked with or other parents with children Christopher’s age.

  Winnie offered a long-range view that helped Abby put everything into perspective.

  “You’re entering Christopher, right? You won’t be disqualified from winning.”

  “Can we, Mommy?”

  “Sure,” she said on impulse. “Let’s go enter.”

  A few moments later, after paying the entry fee, she and Christopher were set up at a small table with supplies to build their own house.

  She enjoyed listening to the music and talking to Mariah Raymond and Dakota while the boys worked on their respective houses.

  “I’m building a dinosaur to go on the lawn,” Christopher said.

  “Good job,” she said, smiling at the gumdrop-and-pretzel creation that did indeed look like a l
ittle T. rex. She wasn’t sure what a T. rex was doing on the lawn of a gingerbread house, but who was she to question artistic license?

  She was helping him shape the long tail when she heard a deep voice.

  “There’s my favorite ski buddy. I’ve been looking for you.”

  Her heart started pounding, and she glanced up to find Ethan heading toward their table.

  “Ethan! Hi! Look. I’m making a dinosaur.”

  “Wow. That’s terrific. Almost good enough to eat.” He winked, which made Christopher giggle.

  “Don’t eat my dinosaur. If you do, we can’t win.”

  “Need help?”

  “I can only have one grown-up helper. That’s what the lady said,” Christopher said regretfully. Abby had a feeling that if she hadn’t been there first, he would have thrown her under the bus in a heartbeat as long as it meant he could have Ethan’s help.

  “Looks like you’re covered, then.”

  “Mine is almost done,” Christopher said. “Look. I made a car in the driveway. And I have a guy on a sled that I made out of pretzels.”

  “Perfect. You’re really good at that.”

  “I know.”

  Ethan smiled. For an instant, their gazes locked and she thought she saw something there, a strange mix of hunger, longing, regret.

  He looked away before she could be certain she hadn’t imagined it.

  “Since you don’t need my help, I guess I should go see if anybody else does,” he said. “I’ll see you both later.”

  Before she could stop him or at least encourage him to wipe the frosting off his hands, Christopher reached out to give Ethan a hug, which left a green smudge on Ethan’s fitted dress shirt.

  “Oh, no. I’m so sorry,” she exclaimed, reaching for a paper towel and dabbing at it while her son, oblivious, went back to his work.

  “I’m not worried. It will wash out. I’m just glad he’s having a good time.”

  She looked around the crowded ballroom at the convivial atmosphere. “How could he not? Everyone is so kind here.”

  “Silver Bells isn’t a perfect town by any means, but people here are pretty decent, for the most part. No doubt you will find Austin the same.”