“I can carry him,” Ethan offered.
He scooped up her son, who immediately wrapped his arms around Ethan’s neck and held on tight.
Abby wanted to do the same. Those tears burned again but she blinked them away, not wanting to ruin the peace of the evening by giving in to her sadness about the pain she knew hovered around the corner.
“I have to put out the cookies for Santa,” Christopher said. “I can’t forget.”
He quickly put the cookies on a plate and took the cup of milk she poured to the table near the tree in the great room.
“Can I have a story?” Christopher asked.
“You do know Santa can’t come unless you’re asleep,” Winnie said.
“A short one,” he countered.
“I wouldn’t mind a story,” Winnie said. “How about The Night Before Christmas?”
Abby sighed. She didn’t want the evening to end, either. “Pajamas first, then a story.”
By the time he had changed into his red-striped footie pajamas, Christopher had found a second wind. She knew from experience it wouldn’t last long. When he crashed he was going to hit hard.
They returned to the great room where they found Winnie sitting on the sofa with her corgis snuggled around her. Ethan sat in a chair by the fire, his expression unreadable.
They took turns reading The Night Before Christmas, to Christopher’s rapt attention. When it was over, he gave a happy sigh.
“And to all a good night,” he repeated softly, which made Winnie smile.
“Okay. Bed now, honey.”
He nodded, too tired to argue. Christopher went to Winnie, working his way through the corgis to hug her.
“Good night, darling. Merry Christmas,” she said.
Next, Christopher went to Ethan and threw his arms around his neck. “Merry Christmas, Ethan. I love you.”
His words seemed to pierce what was left of Abby’s control, and one of those tears that she had been fighting all evening spilled over.
Yes. Her son loved Ethan. And so did she. Somehow he had become so dear to her over this wonderful holiday season in Silver Bells. How would she ever be able to walk away from this place to build a new life in Texas, when all the people she loved were right here?
She wouldn’t steal the joy and wonder of Christmas by worrying about that yet. She had another thirty-six hours to savor this season here at Holiday House.
As she expected, Christopher fell asleep quickly, almost before she pulled the blankets up to his chin. She was tired, too, but knew she couldn’t sleep yet. She still had to put the gifts she had bought him under the tree.
When she walked into the great room, arms laden with gifts, the room was lit only by the fire in the hearth and the gleaming lights on the tree.
Ethan still sat in the chair by the fire. Her heartbeat seemed to accelerate, especially when she realized he was alone.
“Where’s Winnie?” she asked.
“She said she and the corgis were going to watch the BBC comedy Christmas special that she watches every year, and then she was going to sleep. Lucy texted that she was going to José’s and we’re not to wait up. Apparently they have Christmas gifts to exchange.”
Was that why he seemed so tense? Did he have a problem with the new relationship between his sister and his good friend? She didn’t think that could be it. Ethan adored Lucy and would want her to be happy.
“She said she would be late but gave strict orders not to let Christopher open any presents until we wake her up.”
She smiled a little at that, then realized what else he had said. He had used we. “You’re not going home?”
He looked surprised. “Didn’t Winnie tell you? I’m staying in my old room upstairs. I wanted to be here to enjoy Christopher’s Christmas morning, too. Having a child around makes everything seem more magical, doesn’t it?”
Another tear slipped out and she wiped it away, hoping he wouldn’t see. “Oh. That is so sweet of you.”
“Can I help you put his gifts from Santa under the tree?”
“I... Yes. Of course. I brought some of them, but I have a few more in the closet of the room next to ours.”
“I can get them for you.”
She quickly arranged the gifts she had brought in a suitcase from Phoenix and others she had purchased in town. She also put a few small wrapped toys in the stocking Christopher had hung near the mantel.
A few moments later, Ethan carried out several more boxes she had wrapped for her son. “Is this everything?” he asked.
“Yes. I think so.”
He placed them under the tree, then stood back to admire the festive room.
“I have one more gift I thought you could give him from Santa. I hope that’s okay.”
“Okay,” she said warily.
Ethan walked outside and returned a moment later carrying a set of Christopher-sized skis, a helmet, boots and poles.
“I went with the same sizes of the ones we rented the other day when we went, but we can always trade up for a bigger size if you want.”
She stared, not sure what to say. “That’s wonderful,” she finally said. “What a kind and generous gesture. I’m not sure where we’ll be able to use skis in Austin, but thank you.”
He gazed at her for a long moment and she had the oddest feeling that he was nervous. Ethan Lancaster, the CEO of a vast luxury hotel group, seemed uncertain for the first time since she had met him.
“I have something else.”
“For Christopher?”
“Sort of. And for you.”
His odd mood made her even more wary.
What was going on?
“Have a seat,” he said, gesturing to the sofa in the great room. Baffled, she complied and watched as he turned on Winnie’s big screen. For the first time, she noticed a laptop on the chair where he had been sitting. He opened the laptop and an image was immediately cast to the big screen.
It showed a town she easily recognized as this one, surrounded by soaring mountains and blue sky.
A title read Things to Love in Silver Bells.
She gave him a confused look. “What is this? Some kind of tourist bureau ad?”
“I know how much you like lists. So I made one for you.”
“You did?”
“Yes. I wanted to show you all the reasons why you should think about staying in Silver Bells.”
“Staying.”
Did he know how very much she wanted to do just that?
“Austin is great, I’m sure. It has good people, a great music scene, a lot of historical sights. But Silver Bells has a lot to offer, too.”
She looked at the computer and then back up at the screen. “Winnie said you were working on a project. Is this why you were late tonight?”
To her astonishment, Ethan shifted, color climbing his cheeks. “Do you want to see the rest?”
He wanted her to stay? He must. Why else would he have spent time working on a very polished presentation aimed at persuading her to do just that?
It even had music, she realized. A soft, jazzy version of “Silver Bells.” While the music played, images flashed on the screen.
Excellent schools, the first slide said, along with images of children playing in the snow and what looked like a stock image of a teacher in a classroom leading a discussion.
It stayed on the television for a moment before fading to another slide that read A thriving business district, accompanied by pictures of the downtown area of Silver Bells, crowded with shoppers.
Recreational opportunities, read the next one, followed by pictures of skiers, the tubing hill, hikers, a lake in summer.
Kind neighbors. The screen flashed to various pictures of the Silver Belles in the choir robes they had worn for the tours of Christmas at Holiday House.
&n
bsp; Career opportunities. The next slide showed at least a dozen medical facilities, all with nursing positions available, circled in red.
“Where did you find all those positions?”
He shrugged, again looking embarrassed. “I reached out to people I know in the medical community and had them forward me any possible jobs. You wouldn’t have any trouble picking one if you decide to stay.”
“Why would you do that?”
He didn’t answer, only looked at her for a long moment and then hit the next slide. She had a hard time dragging her gaze away from him to read it, but when she did, her breath seemed to catch.
People who love you, it read.
The next slide featured an image of Winnie surrounded by the corgis, Rodrigo at his gingerbread birthday party with frosting on his cheek, Mariah and Dakota in parkas and beanies, then Lucy, holding hands with José and smiling at the camera.
He had gathered all these pictures, put this all together. He must have asked people to pose for him. Did they know what he was doing?
What a wonderful man. A sweet, thoughtful, wonderful man.
She couldn’t seem to catch her breath, feeling the hot trail of more tears sliding down her face. Finally Ethan clicked to progress the slide show one more time, and the next image made all the other thoughts fly out of her head.
It was a picture of Ethan gazing at the camera, his features serious, his eyes intense.
People who love you.
She looked at the image on the screen and then at the man beside her.
“What...what does that mean?”
He looked down at her, that unreadable expression shifting to one she recognized now.
Tenderness.
“You’re going to make me say it, aren’t you?” he said gruffly.
“Yes,” she answered, sounding as breathless as she felt. “Yes, I think I am.”
He smiled a little and took a step toward her.
“I love you, Abby. There. I said it. For a long time, I’ve worried that I wasn’t capable of love, that my heart was somehow closed off permanently.”
He cleared his throat. “I didn’t realize how wrong I was until you and Christopher came to town.”
He reached for her hands and tugged her closer to him. “I love you, Abby. I wasn’t looking for it, but you showed up with your big heart and your sweet smile, and I fell hard.”
“Oh, Ethan.”
He paused. “It would be easier for me if you would consider staying here in Silver Bells, but if you have your heart set on Texas, we can figure out a way,” he said quickly. “I don’t know if you know this, but we actually have a Lancaster hotel in Austin. I could work out of there as easily as I work out of the Lancaster Silver Bells.”
He would leave this place he loved, his grandmother, his sister, to follow her to Texas? If she had any doubt as to his sincerity, which she didn’t, it would have disappeared in that instant.
She could feel more tears slip out and was touched beyond words when he wiped them away.
“I didn’t mean to make you cry. Is it too soon for you? I know how much you loved your husband. I would never want to compete with that. I might not be him, but I would still be willing to love you and Christopher with all my heart, if you give me a chance.”
How was it possible that she had been lucky enough to be loved by two such amazing men? She sniffled a little and reached for his hand.
“I did love Kevin. He was a very good man and so many parts of him live on in Christopher. But love is a funny thing, isn’t it? When you open your heart to it once, it becomes that much easier to open it again.”
“I wouldn’t know,” he said. “This is the first time I’ve ever been in love.”
“This is the second time for me,” she told him. “And I have a feeling it’s going to be amazing.”
She reached on tiptoe and kissed him, feeling the wonder and the magic of the moment sparkle through her like new snow in morning sunlight.
He kissed her softly, tenderly, his gaze locked with hers. She wanted to memorize every moment of this. The firelight casting shadows on his face, the snow falling softly outside and especially the joy that seemed to soak through all the lost and lonely places inside her.
Soon they were cuddled together on the sofa, and she didn’t want this Christmas Eve to ever end.
“It’s past midnight,” he said sometime later, when they were both breathing hard and the lights on the tree had begun to blur. “Merry Christmas.”
She kissed him again, her heart overflowing with love and the joyful promise of many more beautiful Christmases to come.
* * *
Keep reading for an excerpt from Coming Home for Christmas by RaeAnne Thayne.
If you enjoyed Christmas at Holiday House,
turn the page for a preview of
another heartwarming holiday story from New York Times
bestselling author RaeAnne Thayne!
Available now from HQN Books
Coming Home for Christmas
by RaeAnne Thayne
One
This was it.
Luke Hamilton waited outside the big, rambling Victorian house in a little coastal town in Oregon, hands shoved into the pockets of his coat against the wet slap of air and nerves churning through him.
Elizabeth was here. After all the years when he had been certain she was dead—that she had wandered into the mountains somewhere that cold day seven years earlier or she had somehow walked into the deep, unforgiving waters of Lake Haven—he was going to see her again.
Though he had been given months to wrap his head around the idea that his wife wasn’t dead, that she was indeed living under another name in this town by the sea, it still didn’t seem real.
How was he supposed to feel in this moment? He had no idea. He only knew he was filled with a crazy mix of anticipation, fear and the low fury that had been simmering inside him for months, since the moment FBI agent Elliot Bailey had produced a piece of paper with a name and an address.
Luke still couldn’t quite believe she was in there, the wife he had not seen in seven years. The wife who had disappeared off the face of the earth, leaving plenty of people to speculate that he had somehow hurt her, even killed her.
For all those days and months and years, he had lived with the ghost of Elizabeth Sinclair and the love they had once shared.
He was never nervous, damn it. So why did his skin itch and his stomach seethe and his hands grip the cold metal of the porch railing as if his suddenly weak knees would give way and make him topple over if he let go?
A moment later, he sensed movement inside the foyer of the house. The woman he had spoken with when he had first pulled up to this address, the woman who had been hanging Christmas lights around the big, charming home and who had looked at him with such suspicion and had not invited him to wait inside, opened the door. One hand was thrust into her coat pocket around a questionable-looking bulge.
She was either concealing a handgun or a Taser or pepper spray. Since he had never met the woman before, Luke couldn’t begin to guess which. Her features had lost none of that alert wariness that told him she would do whatever necessary to protect Elizabeth.
He wanted to tell her he would never hurt his wife, but it was a refrain he had grown tired of repeating. Over the years, he had become inured to people’s opinions on the matter. Let them think what the hell they wanted. He knew the truth.
“Where is she?” he demanded.
There was a long pause, like some tension-filled moment just before the gunfight in Old West movies. He wouldn’t have been surprised if tumbleweeds suddenly blew down the street.
Then, from behind the first woman, another figure stepped out onto the porch, slim and blond and...shockingly familiar.
He stared, stunned to his bones.
It was her. Not Elizabeth. Her. He had seen this woman around his small Idaho town of Haven Point several times over the last few years, fleeting glimpses only out of the corner of his gaze at a baseball game or a school program.
The mystery woman.
He assumed she had been there to watch one of the other children. Maybe an aunt from out of town, someone he didn’t know.
Luke had noticed her...and had hated the tiny little glow of attraction that had sparked to life.
He hadn’t wanted to be aware of any other woman. What was the point? For years, he thought his heart had died when Elizabeth walked away. He figured everything good and right inside him had shriveled up and he had nothing left to give another woman.
Despite his anger at himself for the unwilling attraction to a woman he could never have, he had come to look forward to those random glimpses of the beautiful mystery woman who wore sunglasses and floppy hats, whose hair was a similar color to his wife’s but whose features were very different.
For the first time since he had pulled up to Brambleberry House, he began to wonder if he had been wrong. If Elliot had been wrong, if his investigation had somehow gone horribly off track.
What if this wasn’t Elizabeth? What if it was all some terrible mistake?
He didn’t know what to say, suddenly. Did he tell them both he had erred, make some excuse and disappear? He was about to do just that when he saw her eyes, a clear, startling blue with a dark, almost black ring around the irises.
He knew those eyes. It was her.
There was nervousness in them, yes, but no surprise, almost as if she had been expecting him.
“Elizabeth.”
She flinched a little at the name. “No one has...called me that in a very long time.”
Her voice was the second confirmation, the same husky alto that had haunted his dreams every single night for seven years.
The other woman stared at her. “Sonia. What is going on? Who is this man? Why is he calling you Elizabeth?”
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