The Albright Hotel (A Frosty Season #4)

Chapter 8

Chapter Eight

S unday afternoon in the entrance hall of the Albright Hotel was chaos. Checkout time was one o’clock, and their inaugural round of guests streamed down staircases and out of elevators, calling goodbye to one another and strolling up to the glossy desk to hand in their ornate iron keys. Olivia was stationed at the desk, her dark hair in dense curls across her shoulders.

“Thank you for a perfect weekend,” she said to each of them. “I hope you’ll leave online reviews for us?”

“We’d be pleased to!” This was Calvin. “Of course, we’ll be here in just a couple of weeks for a big weekend of our own.” He turned to wink at Stacy, his fiancée.

Olivia had to hand it to Calvin and Stacy. Their love at this stage of life was remarkable proof of the universe's magic. At the same time, Olivia didn’t want to wait until she hit sixty-seven to marry for the first time. Was that too much to ask?

Just then, Phoebe and Braxton raced past the front desk, hand in hand. Phoebe’s winter hat bounced out behind her. It was hard to believe Phoebe had been crumpled in bed half the year, wondering if her life was over.

Maya came downstairs and shook the Hollygrove residents’ hands, thanking them and hugging them warmly. She joined Olivia behind the desk, and they churned through the rest of the check-outs. When the foyer was empty, glossy, echoing, Maya’s face fell, and she said, “My cheeks hurt!”

Olivia laughed and winced. “I know what you mean.”

“That’s hospitality, I guess.”

“Are we in over our heads?” Olivia asked.

Maya considered this. There had been numerous “minor emergencies” since Friday’s opening day, but they’d gotten through okay, all things considered.

“I think we’ll make it,” she said. “Knock on wood.”

They had three hours till check-in. Another round of guests—non-Hollygrove residents, mostly—were coming in from the city to enjoy Hollygrove blanketed in snow. From the foyer, Olivia could smell the gorgeous food prepped in the kitchen—spices and oils and baking breads. She studied Maya’s face, remembering how Maya had dreamed of working in the kitchen. She was a remarkable food writer, so much so that Olivia joked the menu Maya had written was the best book she’d ever read.

“You know, we could always get a hotel manager,” Olivia said, not for the first time. “That way, you could spend more time in the kitchen.”

Maya waved her hand. “I don’t want to hire anyone for that. We don’t want to burn our way through the money immediately.”

It was true that Aunt Veronica was leaving them a fifty-million-dollar inheritance. But they wanted to prove to themselves that they could run a whip-smart business. They didn’t want to get in the red.

Olivia decided to go outside and take a few photographs of the Albright Hotel in the startling midafternoon sunlight. It was up to her to update the social media and blog about the “successful grand opening weekend.” As she wandered around, snapping photos, she wondered if she would ever get tired of taking photos of the same place. Over decades, she’d worked as a traveling photographer and enjoyed seeing many different sights. But the thing was, the Albright Hotel seemed to change based on the light, the time of day, the snow, and the wind. Olivia fell more in love with it every day.

“Olivia?”

Olivia nearly jumped out of her skin at the sound of her name. Whipping around, she removed her camera from her face and peered across the snow at none other than Harry. Instead of his chef whites, he had on a pair of hiking boots, thick jeans, and a big puffy coat. Olivia hadn’t seen him since they’d kissed Friday night. Her heartbeat pounded in her ears.

“Harry? What are you doing out here?”

Harry’s smile was infectious. She couldn’t help but match it.

“I’m on a walk,” he said. “My shift starts at five thirty tonight, and I wanted to see the woods before then. This sunlight is something else, isn’t it?”

Olivia touched her hair. “It’s something else.”

“Do you want to join me?”

Olivia put her camera in her bag and crossed her arms over her chest as they walked through the forest. Sunlight streamed through the spindly trees. They walked a few inches apart although Olivia wanted to put her hand in his.

“You’re a photographer,” he said.

“I was a professional photographer for many years,” Olivia explained.

“And now?”

“Now I’m a little bit of everything, I guess.”

He laughed. “Same.”

Olivia was surprised. “I figured you’ve just been making pastries for decades.”

“I have been,” he said. “But I’ve been doing a little bit of everything else, too. Painting. Building. I drove a truck for a while. I worked in bars. I lived all over the place. I didn’t want the madness to end. Until I did.”

Olivia raised her eyebrows.

“I’ve been meaning to ask,” Harry said. “Whose idea was it to start the hotel?”

Olivia considered this. “Last Christmas is such a blur,” she confessed. “I came back here to seek revenge and get my inheritance, which sounds so silly now. When I met Maya, she immediately showed me how big her heart is. We got to talking about how massive the mansion is. I guess the idea transformed from there. It got bigger and bigger, and now…”

“It’s reality,” he said.

Olivia smiled. “For better or for worse.”

“Why would it be for worse?”

“It’s just hard work,” Olivia confessed. “Sometimes I wonder if we’re in over our heads.”

“You definitely are. But everyone is,” Harry said. “That’s life.”

Olivia paused and stared down at her shoes. They were scuffed and covered in mud and dead leaves. She hadn’t considered that before agreeing to the walk. “I’m not proud of how I treated Maya last year. I’ve struggled to forgive myself for that.”

Why was she telling him this? Why did she want to pour her heart out to him?

Was it because she wanted to fall in love with him?

So soon? After everything that had happened this summer.

But maybe that had always been her mistake, she thought now. Maybe she’d given too much power to her heartbreaks. Maybe she should be more like Phoebe—able to pick herself up by her bootstraps and open her heart to new love again.

“You can tell there’s a lot of love between you and Maya,” Harry said. “I think that means she’s forgiven you. I hope you can find a way to forgive yourself, too. Because the fact is, life is filled with pain. We experience it, and we cause it for other people. But life is filled with goodness, too. We have to find a way to balance it all out.”

“I’ve never been good at balancing anything,” Olivia admitted.

Harry studied her. Light streaming through the forest reflected off his dark eyes. Olivia felt a wave of desire come over her. But she felt slightly frightened, too. Like she wasn’t ready to kiss him again so soon after the intensity of Friday.

“Would you mind if I take your picture tonight?” Olivia asked, remembering herself. “I’d like a few of you in action, making pastries and cakes.”

Harry laughed. “I wouldn’t say no. I love being the center of attention.”

“I’m sure you do.”

Harry and Olivia returned to the hotel, where Harry disappeared to prep in the kitchen. Olivia killed time in her bedroom, editing photographs and jotting down notes. She ruffled through old notes from last summer, all of which she kept in a madcap pile on her desk. A photograph fluttered out and fell face-down on the floor. Without thinking about it, she picked it up and turned it over.

She stopped breathing.

The photograph had been taken in early June. Just six months ago. In it, she, Robby, Phoebe, and Brad sat at the edge of the river with their feet in the water. Olivia wore no makeup, and she had a suntan. Phoebe was softer-looking and younger, as though her divorce had stripped back several years and left her innocent. It was clear that Maya had taken the photograph.

Olivia was startled out of herself with the photograph in her hands.

She would have given anything to go back to that day. To feel Robby’s hand on her shoulder. To gaze into his eyes and know he was to be trusted.

Olivia took a deep breath and tucked the photo into the back of her drawer. Maybe she’d find it in another few years. Maybe by then, she and Harry would be engaged to be married and ready for the next phase of their lives.

Maybe.

The next few days found Olivia in Harry’s orbit frequently. She took photographs of him in the kitchen. They went for walks through sun-drenched woods or grabbed a beer at the hotel bar after Harry’s shift. Bits and pieces from Harry’s life made their way into their conversations, including the fact that he’d never been married before, either.

“It’s rare to meet someone who never took that leap,” Olivia said one night at the hotel bar. It was dark and stormy outside. Through the window, the trees along the edge of the woods thrashed.

“Why do you think you never did it?” Harry asked.

“My therapist says it’s my fear of commitment,” Olivia said. “But I only ended one of my three engagements. They ended the other two.”

“Did they give their reasons?”

“One left me for his ex,” she remembered. “That stung. The other left me for a job in California. I couldn’t leave at that time because I had a good thing going for a newspaper in the area. Anyway, maybe I should have gone with him.”

“But then you’d never have found Maya,” Harry pointed out. “You’d never have wound up at the Albright Mansion.”

Olivia wondered if Harry knew how much her inheritance was. It wasn’t exactly common knowledge, but she wasn’t sure who else Maya had told. They’d promised themselves early on not to be weird about the money. But how could you not be awkward about that incredible amount?

Olivia met her therapist Wednesday afternoon at the clinic on the outskirts of Hollygrove. Olivia had started going soon after arriving at Hollygrove last year because she’d needed help making sense of everything that had happened. At first, she’d told her therapist about Maya; their mother, Bethany; and their aunt Veronica. But shortly after that, she’d explained how frightened she was of romance, that she always fell in love too quickly and had terrible patterns when it came to love.

When Olivia met Robby, she’d had a panic attack in the bathroom. She’d known something was going to happen.

She’d called her therapist immediately. Her therapist said, Take a deep breath. Remember you can’t know anything about the future. Go with your gut.

And Olivia had said, My gut is always wrong!

Now, Olivia sat across from her therapist, Teresa, and crossed her ankles. Teresa wore thick glasses and a plum-colored cardigan. Olivia had invited her to the opening party of the Albright Hotel, but Teresa had said, I don’t like parties.

Now, Olivia heard herself say, “I think maybe I met someone.”

Teresa tilted her head. “Tell me more.”

“He works in the kitchen at the hotel. When we met, there was immediate electricity between us. But you know how I am. I always think there’s electricity. And then, they always disappoint me,” Olivia said.

“Do you get the sense that this man will disappoint you?” Teresa asked.

Olivia thought of Harry’s painfully handsome smile and the stories of his epic travels. “He doesn’t seem like the kind of guy who can be pinned down. He’s never been married.”

“Neither have you.”

“Not for lack of trying,” Olivia joked.

Teresa folded her hands. “Have you spent any romantic time with him?”

“We kissed once,” Olivia explained. “Since then, we’ve just been getting to know each other. Going on walks. Having drinks at the hotel bar.”

“It sounds like you aren’t going too fast at all.”

“But we kissed the first day we met!” Olivia pointed out. Fear wrapped around her throat.

“That happens,” Teresa said. “You got caught up in the moment. It’s Christmas.”

Olivia pressed her lips into a line.

“I know you feel like you can’t trust yourself after what happened with Robby,” Teresa said.

“Robby was just another guy,” Olivia reminded her.

“He wasn’t just another guy. You told me you wanted to marry him,” Teresa said.

“Sure. I wanted that. I thought he was trustworthy, but I was wrong,” Olivia said.

Olivia felt a bite to her voice. Teresa was quiet.

Olivia wondered if she was beyond help.

“It sounds like you’re taking your time,” Teresa said. “You’re aware of your triggers and your trauma. You’re aware of what’s happened to you. But you have to let yourself keep going.”

Olivia swallowed. “My niece already met someone else.”

“The niece who got divorced earlier this year?” Teresa asked.

“Yes. She was devastated for most of the year. And then, bam. She met someone.” Olivia closed her eyes. “I think he’s wrong for her.”

“Why do you think that?”

“Because he’s rich. Arrogant. I don’t know. I worry about her,” Olivia said. “I think it’s a rebound. She wants to get over Henry so badly. I did that kind of thing when I was younger.”

“Are you worried the man you’re seeing now is a rebound after Robby?” Teresa asked.

Olivia was quiet. She wanted to say obviously.

“Maybe there are no such things as rebounds,” Teresa suggested. “Maybe we’re all just learning as we go.”

But Olivia wasn’t so sure.

Her chest was tight.

She didn’t want to be afraid.

But every night she woke up terrified of what came next and had to slowly coax herself to sleep. She was so tired of falling asleep alone.