A Down-Home Savannah Christmas

by Nancy Robards Thompson

  That was when Daniel noticed an older woman at the table next to them beaming at them.

  “She’s adorable. How old is she?”

  “I’m five.” Chloe fanned out the five fingers on the hand that wasn’t holding the crayon. She checked her hand as if she was making sure she had the right number.

  “You seem like a very smart and well-behaved young lady,” the woman said as she and her party scooted their chairs back and prepared to leave. “It warms the heart to see parents so engaged in their child. You are the most beautiful little family.”

  “Thank you,” Daniel said.

  He flashed a knowing smile at Elle, to see how she would react.

  When she smiled and thanked the woman, too, for that moment in time, looking at her sitting across the table from him, next to Chloe, he felt like they were a family. Daniel soaked up what it would be like to be married to Elle and out to dinner with their child.

  It felt right.

  “What?” Elle said, smiling at him.

  He shook his head, grinning back at her.

  “This place makes me think of the architecture tours you were talking about offering your guests,” he said, needing to ground himself in more substantial thoughts than pretending to be married to her.

  “How so?” she asked.

  “It’s not only the oldest building in Savannah, but it’s considered the oldest house in all of Georgia.”

  “I’ve heard that, but—okay, I’ll confess. Can you believe that even though I was born and raised here, this is the first time I’ve ever been to the Pirates’ House?”

  “Get out,” he said, leaning in. “I thought this place was mandatory for all natives.”

  “No, it’s mandatory for all tourists,” she said.

  “Which makes it a must-see for your architecture tour. The historic restaurant and tavern area of the place were built in the 1750s, but that small building that we passed on the way in, the Herb House, was built in the 1730s. That’s some pretty significant architectural history.”

  “It sure is,” she said. “It’s pretty impressive that you know so much about it. Were you always interested in architecture?”

  He shook his head. “I don’t know. Maybe I was, but I didn’t realize it. If I’d always been interested in it, I probably would’ve gone to college and studied architecture. Like Aidan.”

  “It’s never too late.”

  He leaned back so that his back was flush against the chair. “I have too much on my plate already with my business. There’s not a lot of extra time, which is a good problem to have. Plus, I think I’d probably prefer building over designing, but I think it’s knowing the design end—or at least the features that are specific to the original houses of Savannah—that sets me apart from the competition.”

  Elle held up her hands. “You’ve convinced me. I think it’s cool that you’re into the history because it interests you.”

  It was crazy, but the way she tilted her head made him think about their history—about the first time he saw her, about that time when she was trying to teach him grammar and he leaned in and kissed her. He wanted to do it again and would have, right there in the middle of the Pirates’ House, if Chloe hadn’t been sitting there.

  “Will you give me your architectural tour of Savannah?”

  He blinked. Her request caught him off guard.

  “Um... I don’t really have a tour, per se.”

  “Maybe one evening we can walk around and you can point out some of your favorites.”

  Normally, he would’ve made a joke about finder’s fees or something equally lame, but he didn’t want to spoil the moment.

  “That sounds like a date.”

  * * *

  “It’s about time you made some time to see me.” Elle hugged her sister Kathryn and laughed to soften the reprimand so that Kate knew she was kidding—sort of.

  “I got back into town last night,” Kate said, hitching her shoulder bag back into place. “I was on a weeklong cruise to the Bahamas. I got in late last night.”

  “Well, that explains why you’re so tanned and why you haven’t been returning my calls,” Elle said as they walked through the lobby on their way to the kitchen. She waved at a couple who was spending their honeymoon at the Forsyth. They were dressed up and looked like they were heading out for a night out on the town.

  “Right, I didn’t have cell service on the ship and I didn’t think you’d want me to call you at two o’clock this morning when I got home. You’ll have to catch me up on everything I missed while I was gone.”

  “Oh my gosh. Where do I start?” Elle said as she made a mental list of everything—coming home because she lost her job. Daniel. Aidan’s accident. Daniel. Keeping Chloe. Daniel. Their mom and Gigi being at odds over the renovation and the new direction that Zelda wanted to take with the inn... Daniel.

  From her shoulder bag, Kate pulled a bottle of red wine, a small bottle of rum, which she told Elle she’d brought back from the islands, some brandy, a carton of orange juice and several pieces of fruit. She lined them up on the table. “I thought I’d make some sangria for us to drink during this family meeting Mom and Gigi have called. Do you know where Gigi keeps the pitchers?”

  “I’ll look for one,” Elle offered.

  “Thanks, and if you’ll hand me that cutting board, I’ll get started cutting up the fruit so it can marinate in the brandy.”

  As Elle pulled open the cupboard doors, she said, “Didn’t you use to date Aidan Quindlin?”

  Kate snorted. “I don’t know if you’d call it dating.” She grimaced. “He had a crush on me in high school and asked me to the prom. It sort of ended badly and it was my fault. I’ll own that much. I should’ve never agreed to go to the dance with him. Why?”

  “He had a bad motorcycle accident last week.”

  “Oh, no. That’s terrible. But Aidan Quindlin rides a bike? He was always such a nerd.”

  “Kate!” Elle said as she set a glass pitcher on the table. “That’s so mean. He got hurt pretty badly.”

  Kate covered her mouth with her hand and looked truly contrite. “Oh, wow, I’m so sorry to hear that. Is he going to be okay?”

  “He’s in a coma at Memorial University Hospital, but as of yesterday, his prognosis took a turn for the better. They think he’s going to be okay, eventually.”

  “A coma?” Kate looked taken aback. “I’m glad he’s going to be okay. I think I’ll go see him tomorrow. When are visiting hours?”

  Elle told her. Kate pursed her lips and squinted at her sister, knife poised midair. “How is it that you know so much about Aidan’s condition and visiting hours?”

  Elle braced herself. “I was with his brother, Daniel, when he got the call about the accident.”

  Kate set down the knife and held up both palms like a traffic cop commanding an intersection. “Whoa! Hold up there. Back up. What the hell were you doing with Daniel Quindlin?”

  Elle’s stomach tightened, then flipped.

  Here we go.

  “Having lunch.” She said it as if she was discussing one of her high school girlfriends, not the guy whom both of her sisters hated on her behalf. Even though she was nervous to tell Kate about the unexpected turn of events, she was eager to talk about them and their new...friendship? She hesitated to call it a relationship because everything was so new, and had been driven by such volatile emotions, but it was definitely more than friendship. Friends did not kiss like that or have daydreams about doing so much more. She didn’t really know what to call it, what to call them. She wished she didn’t have to slap a label on them at this point. Because that was the fastest way to kill the passion.

  “Um...lunch?” Kate blew out a breath that made her lips buzz for a second. “I’m confused. I think you need to start from the beginning.”

  And so Elle did. S
he told her sister how she’d lost her job and come home. She told her about seeing Daniel jogging in the park and how he’d appeared in the Forsyth lobby a little while later.

  “Did you know Mom and Gigi are renovating the inn?” Elle asked.

  “Mom and Gigi are renovating the inn? What? I go away for a week and everything turns upside down.”

  “Apparently the reno plans have been perking longer than a week. By the time I found out, Daniel was already on board as the general contractor.”

  Kate did a double take. “Are you kidding me? I see them at least two or three, sometimes four times a week—depending on who needs her hair done—and they failed to mention any of this to me? Nice.”

  “So, it’s not just me,” Elle said. “It feels like they’ve been a little sneaky about the way they’ve handled this?”

  “Who’s being sneaky about what?” Zelda breezed into the kitchen carrying a manila file folder.

  The sisters looked at each other. Then Elle looked away. She wished she’d had enough time to tell Kate the rest of the story about Daniel. Now she wasn’t sure if she wanted to open the can of worms in front of everyone.

  She hated herself for thinking of them as a can of worms. Maybe it proved that she needed more time to process everything.

  Kate put her hands on her hips. “To start with, you and Gigi. What’s this about you hiring Daniel Quindlin to remodel the inn?”

  Kate spat out his name as if it might leave a bad taste in her mouth. Regret tugged at Elle’s heart. She should have told her sister.

  Zelda set her folder on the table and then checked her posture. “And why is that a problem?”

  Kate glared at their mother. “Are you kidding?” She turned to Elle. “She’s kidding, right? Because any mother who would hire the guy who wrecked her own daughter’s wedding would be—”

  “Elle knows that we hired Daniel. In fact, Elle seems to not only be fine with it, but she seems to have made her peace with Daniel. Kate, you can’t live in the past. If you do, you’ll end up being old and bitter.”

  “Who’s old and bitter?” Gigi entered the kitchen holding several brown paper bags, which she set on the table. “I hope you’re not talking about me.”

  “No, we’re talking about Kate,” Zelda said.

  Gigi fisted her hands on her hips. “Why do you think Kate is old and bitter? She’s young and fabulous.”

  “Because she’s still holding a grudge against Daniel Quindlin.” Zelda said.

  “Kate, honey, why are you bitter about Daniel Quindlin? I thought you dated his brother. Oh, and say, did you hear that Aidan’s in the hospital? He was in quite a nasty crash. You should go see him.”

  “Yes, Gigi, I heard about Aidan. I’m very sorry that happened. But that aside, how could you do this to Elle? Hiring Daniel Quindlin, of all people. Elle is brokenhearted over this.”

  Enough was enough.

  “I’m not brokenhearted. I think I’m falling in love with Daniel Quindlin,” Elle announced, surprising herself for flying right past friendship and dating and landing on the L-word.

  Three pairs of eyes gaped at her and three mouths fell wide open.

  “What the hell?” Kate was the first to respond. She looked seriously affronted.

  “Oh, my.” Zelda drawled, confusion clouding her pretty green eyes.

  “I knew it,” Gigi celebrated, clapping her hands as if her team had won the World Series.

  But Daniel didn’t know it, and neither had Elle, until she’d blurted it like the words had been caged inside her and had clawed their way out.

  “Well, I mean we’re seeing each other,” Elle amended.

  “Since when?” Kate demanded.

  “Since last week.”

  One week. Elle realized how ridiculous it must seem. She’d spent years detesting this man and after spending a week with him, she thought she was falling in love?

  “I don’t understand,” Kate said and busied herself putting together the sangria.

  “I don’t understand it, either,” Elle said. “But it’s happening. Daniel and I had a chance to talk about things and it helped me realize that he’s not a bad guy.”

  Kate made a sound that was somewhere between a tsk and a snort.

  “He was a pretty rough dude in school, Elle.”

  “Says the girl who used to like to dress up like Columbia in Rocky Horror Picture Show and act out the part at the midnight movies on Saturday nights when you were in high school, but that isn’t who you are now.”

  “Thank God,” Zelda murmured.

  “Mom,” Elle and Kate said in unison.

  “We don’t hold it against her,” Elle said, making the point to her mom and grandmother. “Do we?”

  “I make it a personal rule not to hold any kind of grudge,” Gigi said. “I try to talk to people if we have a problem.”

  “You talked to Daniel?” Elle asked.

  “Of course I did,” Gigi said. “I didn’t dig into the past, but I didn’t have to. I figured that if you and Roger were meant to be, nothing could keep you apart.”

  Gigi’s shrug filled in the missing words, And we all know how that turned out.

  “I consider myself a pretty good judge of character,” Gigi said. “When I started shopping around for a general contractor, I learned that Daniel Quindlin was the best. I figured, why should I settle for someone second-rate when I could have Quindlin Brothers, the very best, refurbish our family home? Besides, I sense that Daniel has always had a thing for you, Elle. It took guts to stand up there at your wedding and do what he did in front of all those people. When Roger ran, I knew he didn’t deserve you. I always thought he was a little too sneaky and slick for his own good. And yours, too.”

  “I guess that’s one way to look at it,” Kate said. “Is that how you feel, Elle?”

  “Amazingly so,” Elle said. Admitting it made her stomach hurt a little. But she still wanted to walk back her confession of falling in love. And, okay, if she thought about it too hard, in real-world terms, she had the urge to run away and go back to her safe, if not somewhat boring, life in Atlanta. But at the same time, she was aware that the urge to run was a symptom of the post-traumatic stress she’d suffered after Roger.

  And how was that working out for her? She’d let herself edge toward a new relationship exactly once since Roger. She’d been the one to end things because there was no chemistry—to preempt things—before she’d even given Heath a chance.

  She and Daniel had mad chemistry and after announcing it to her family she was getting cold feet.

  Was that what she wanted? To be alone? Was that how she wanted to live?

  “In the spirit of full disclosure,” Elle said, “this is new. Obviously. Daniel and I are still trying to figure things out. I didn’t mean to throw around the ‘love’ word wantonly, so maybe you could keep that part to yourself. It’s premature.”

  “Oh, brother.” Kate rolled her eyes. “Do you love him or not? I need to know whose side I’m on.”

  “Thank you for being on my side, Kate,” Elle said.

  “We’re all on your side,” Gigi said.

  “I need a drink,” Zelda said, eyeing the pitcher of sangria in which Kate was muddling the fruit. Zelda hopped up and got four wine glasses from one of the cupboards. “Take your time and don’t let anyone rush you into anything. Being alone isn’t necessarily a bad thing.”

  Elle knew her mother was thinking of her divorce. She didn’t talk about it very often.

  Fred Clark had left Zelda when the girls were in elementary school. An alcoholic, her father had been unemployed more often than he’d held a job. Zelda finally gave up trying to collect child support. She’d decided making a clean break was better for her daughters than the occasional check from Fred. Everything was fine for a couple of years until Fred sued for half interes
t in the Forsyth Galloway Inn.

  He’d lost, but his stunt had inspired Gigi to have a lawyer strengthen the terms of the trust protecting the inn from husbands of future generations succeeding in pulling a similar stunt.

  Ever the optimist, Gigi had said being able to add extra protections to the ownership of their beloved inn had been the silver lining in an otherwise heartbreaking relationship. Zelda saw it as a heartbreaking ending. She hadn’t been the same since the divorce. Even though Fred had lost his pursuit for half the value of the inn, it was as if he had stolen Zelda’s spirit.

  “I’m glad I brought the sangria,” Kate said. “I think we all need it.”

  “Listen to me, everyone,” Elle said in her teacher’s voice. “I may have gotten a little caught up in the moment when I said I was falling in love with Daniel. Seeing him in this new light has been...nice. Freeing. But when I step back, I have to factor in that this is an emotional time for him with Aidan in the hospital. And I hadn’t planned on staying when I came home. I haven’t heard back from the county about whether or not they have a place for me. If they do, I’ll go back to Atlanta.

  “Daniel’s business is here. My life is there. That’s all we need to say about it for now. Gigi and Mom, you two are the reason we’re all together tonight. You called the meeting. The floor is yours.”

  Zelda and Gigi, who had been setting out an array of appetizers that she had picked up from Hitch restaurant on Drayton Street, exchanged what Elle might have considered wary glances, but she was trying not to jump to conclusions anymore. Forming her own opinion before hearing the facts had been holding her hostage for years.

  “I wish Jane could be here with us tonight,” Gigi said as she put some avocado fries on her plate, next to a heaping mound of poke salad. “If she wasn’t working right now, I’d get her on the phone so she could listen in. But since Kate works days and Jane works nights, I suppose she will have to get the CliffsNotes. Your mom and I have called you here tonight because we have news. I am officially retiring and handing over the reins of the Forsyth Galloway Inn to your mama.”

  It wasn’t exactly a surprise, since Gigi had been talking about doing this for at least the past ten years, but it was a surprise that the official day had finally arrived.