The Albright Hotel (A Frosty Season #4)

Chapter 14

Chapter Fourteen

September in Vermont

T he days continued in a similar vein. Dreamy. Crisp. Bright leaves and hot apple cider. The happiest days Olivia had ever known.

Every day, Olivia and Robby slept till eight thirty or nine and waded downstairs for an enormous breakfast. Sometimes the chefs experimented with different cream-stuffed pastries or donuts or eggs Benedict or waffles. Salty. Sweet. Everything in between. Olivia had stopped wearing a belt with her jeans and didn’t bother counting calories. So what if she gained a little weight? So what if she loosened up in her life? She wanted to open her heart to comfort, to change. Robby only ever looked her in the eye, anyway. He only ever gave her that big, generous smile.

Olivia promised herself not to take his smile for granted. She promised she would remember how special this was.

After breakfast, Olivia and Robby usually roamed the woods, went shopping in the little town a couple of miles over, wandered across old stone bridges, or read on the veranda outside. Olivia had a running list of things she wanted to bring back to the Albright Hotel—elements of the inn she thought were particularly sensational. But she also knew that one of the reasons the inn’s guests returned year after year was the owners' kindness. They treated their guests like family. They not only remembered their names but also the names of their grandchildren and their pets. Olivia thought Maya was already probably good at that. She was thoughtful and sincere. Olivia knew she was like that, too—past the boundaries she’d built around her heart. Robby was melting those boundaries. Within a couple of months, she’d be a big softy. She didn’t care.

On the fifth day of their stay, Robby ate breakfast quicker than normal and followed the owner of the inn outside to see how he could help with a repair. Olivia cleared her plate, filled a mug with more coffee, and took her book out to the veranda by herself. It was fifty-seven degrees and sunny with a crispness to the air. Everywhere she looked, the trees were orange and red.

“What are you reading there?” A handsome young man with a black beard spoke to her from the opposite end of the veranda. He was maybe in his late twenties although it was difficult to say.

Olivia smiled and turned her book around to show him. The Bee Sting by Paul Murray.

“That’s quite a hefty book,” the man observed.

“It’s sensational,” she gushed. “I’m trying to slow down so I don’t read it too quickly.”

The man smiled. His eyes flickered off to the right to watch Robby climb a ladder. “Your husband has been a great help to the inn.”

Husband! Did she like the way that sounded?

She decided she did.

Her heart spilled over with love.

“Do you work here?” Olivia asked.

“Yeah,” the young man said.

“What do you like about working in an inn like this?” she asked. “I’m about to open a hotel myself. I want to make sure my employees are happy with me.”

Olivia laughed nervously even though this was a real fear of hers. She didn’t want to be her employees’ enemy. She’d worked enough terrible jobs throughout her life. She didn’t want to add to the pile.

“Where’s the hotel?” the man asked.

“Upstate New York. Outside a little town called Hollygrove.”

“Never heard of it,” the man said.

She laughed. “Hopefully, the Albright Hotel will be on the map this time next year. Even here in Vermont.”

“It’s a good name,” he said.

Olivia raised her shoulders. She didn’t want to explain the intricacies, the Albright name, the inheritance, and her long-lost sister. It was a story that had run its course in her head for now.

“Let’s see. I’ve worked in about a dozen little inns and bed-and-breakfasts like this,” the man said. “I think the thing I value the most is honesty.”

“Between employee and employer?”

“Exactly,” he said. “If I don’t feel my employers can trust me, I feel useless. Small.”

Olivia furrowed her brow. This made sense to her. She detested when people thought she couldn’t handle something on her own—the truth or responsibilities.

“Thanks for sharing that,” she said. “I mean it.”

“Anytime. I’m around all week if you want to chat more,” he said, then disappeared inside.

Olivia sat back in her chair and sunned her face. She wondered what kind of man he was—wandering from place to place, working in inns and bed-and-breakfasts. Maybe he wanted to see the world. Perhaps he wanted to meet all kinds of people. Or maybe he just couldn’t sit still.

Olivia had once been like that, too.

But now she wanted to sit still. She wanted to build.

It was that night Robby brought up marriage for the first time.

They were on the sofa in front of the fireplace, where ravenous flames licked the bricks. Olivia was bundled up in a sweater and leggings, her hands wrapped around a mug of hot apple cider.

“What do you think about marriage? Generally, I mean,” Robby asked.

Olivia’s heart felt squeezed. “Generally?”

I knew he was going to bring this up.

Don’t panic.

Robby laughed and blushed. “I sound like a fool for asking.”

“You don’t.” She sipped her cider and considered how to answer him. “I used to think of marriage as a way of trapping someone into spending the rest of their life with me. But I don’t think about it like that anymore.”

Robby tilted his head. “How do you think about it?”

Olivia set down her cider. She suddenly felt jittery. The fire was too hot, and the air was too cold. Robby’s eyes upon her were too intense.

I love him. I really do.

Just open yourself up to this.

He’s asking you an honest question.

But Olivia’s hands got clammy. She stood and cracked the window to breathe some fresh air. The world swam around her.

“I’m sorry,” Robby said from the sofa. “I didn’t mean—”

“Don’t worry about it. Really.” Olivia tried on a smile.

But horribly, her mind had begun to play tricks on her.

Horribly, she’d begun to think, He’s just messing with you. He doesn’t want to marry you. He just wants to play a game.

He’ll leave you, just like everyone else has left you.

Olivia wasn’t sure where this was coming from. She winced and rubbed her temples. The week in Vermont had been perfect. Why was she ruining it?

Robby was on his feet. He looked pale. “Let’s just sit back down,” he said. “Let’s forget I said anything about the m-word. I mean, you know my history. You know how complicated that word is for me, too.”

Olivia couldn’t sit down. Not right away. She needed to call her therapist. She needed to work through this.

“I’m sorry. I…” she stuttered. She considered saying, I would love to marry you! But he hadn’t asked her to marry him. He’d just asked what she thought of marriage in general.

Maybe he’d say, I’m not ready, either! And then she’d feel like the biggest fool ever.

“I think I just need some air.” She put on her fakest smile. “Do you mind if I go for a short walk?”

Robby furrowed his brow. It was eight forty-five at night, dark and ominous. It had rained for most of the evening, and the rails would be muddy and swampy with dead leaves. But Olivia had suddenly decided that a walk beneath that big orange moon as the night sky cleared was the only thing that would heal her. Heck, maybe she’d come back to the inn and ask Robby to marry her right then and there!

Robby watched Olivia get bundled up for her walk. His cheeks were slack.

“You really don’t want someone to go with you?”

“I just want a few minutes to clear my head,” Olivia explained.

Robby looked heartbroken. “We’ve spent all week together.” It sounded like he was trying to reason with himself. “Maybe it was too much at once?”

“No. It’s been brilliant,” she assured him. “I just need an hour, tops.”

Olivia then took his elbow in her gloved hand and gazed into his eyes. What am I doing? “I really do love you, Robby. I wouldn’t be in Vermont with you if I didn’t.”

Robby walked Olivia downstairs to the back door. Only one other guest was downstairs, staring at a chessboard with a massive book sitting beside him. Olivia wondered what his wife was up to. Had she fallen asleep? Had she told him to give her space?

Robby gestured vaguely toward the hotel bar. “I’m going to grab a nightcap. You can find me there.”

Olivia peered down the hall toward the hotel bar, where a dark-haired bartender in his forties stood at the counter, shaking a cocktail for a guest she couldn’t see.

“I can order you a drink if you want? I can have it waiting for you,” Robby suggested.

“No. It’s okay.” Olivia swallowed the lump in her throat. “I’ll come find you there.”

Olivia kissed Robby’s cheek and stepped into the night. The winds had calmed, and the moon was bright overhead, making the scene look like an ink drawing that hadn’t yet dried. Olivia’s legs moved quickly, and her heartbeat intensified. Within a few minutes, she had Teresa on the phone. She gasped for air.

“I don’t know. I just panicked when he brought up marriage,” she explained.

“You told me yourself you thought he might propose this week in Vermont,” Teresa reminded her.

“I know. But the reality of it terrified me. I haven’t been proposed to in years. I thought maybe that time of my life was over,” Olivia confessed.

“Olivia, you’re in your forties with half your life left to live,” Teresa prompted. “There’s so much time to build something with someone. And to me, Robby seems like the right sort of man to do that building with. You told me yourself. He’s honest. He’s open. He hasn’t dated much, if at all, since his wife left him. He’s trying with you.”

Olivia was at the edge of the forest. She listened to herself agree with Teresa. She said, “I’ll try. I’ll try.” Because it was all she could do.

Olivia walked for another twenty minutes before she looped back around toward the inn. When she passed the bar window, she spotted Robby inside, speaking effusively with his hands to the bartender behind the counter—the same one she’d seen shaking the cocktail before. The bartender nodded and stroked his beard. On the other side of Robby sat someone else. Olivia couldn’t see who it was.

Olivia wondered if Robby was talking about her. Maybe he was complaining about her. Perhaps he was saying, I brought her on this romantic vacation, and she left me here alone.

But Robby wasn’t the kind of guy to do that. Was he?

Olivia entered the inn through the side entrance and checked her appearance in the mirror. She hadn’t realized she’d been crying. Black makeup stained her cheeks. She decided to go upstairs to fix her face and change her clothes, then head to the bar for a nightcap. Maybe she, Robby, and the bartender could laugh together. Perhaps the bartender had stories about mixing drinks for celebrities or dealing with awful customers.

Maybe after that, she and Robby would hold hands and go upstairs, and she’d tell him, This is what I think of marriage. I don’t think I’m good enough for anyone. But I want to believe I’m good enough for you.

Olivia was in the suite for no longer than ten minutes. All told, she’d only left Robby for an hour, just as she’d said she would. An hour was nothing. But an hour had been everything to clear her head.

She couldn’t wait to go downstairs and leap back into her life.

Olivia hurried down the steps. The man at the chessboard remained, but he’d cracked his book and now furrowed his brow as he pored over it. She gave him a soft smile as she passed, heading to the hall that led to the bar.

Her heart slammed to a halt.

Robby wasn’t there.

Neither was the bartender.

Nor was whoever else had been in the bar with them.

Olivia’s hands were in fists. “Hello?” she called meekly. She felt foolish.

Olivia returned to the main room.

“I’m sorry to interrupt you,” she said to the man who was reading. “But did you happen to see anyone come this way?”

The man made a big show about putting his bookmark into his book as though her interruption had really bothered him. “I’m sorry?”

“Did you see someone come out of the bar earlier?”

“Plenty of people walked by me. It’s an inn. Sixteen people are staying here right now,” he said.

Olivia’s heart hammered.

“Woman? Man? Both? Who?” the man demanded. “Who are you looking for? I need more information if you want me to help you.”

Olivia slunk back. It was clear he was in a horrible mood. She wasn’t going to get anything honest out of him.

Maybe Robby had gone up a side staircase and waited for her in the room. Perhaps she could slink back up and find him.

“Oh! Good evening. You’re up late.”

A familiar voice greeted her from the hall. Olivia turned to find the handsome twentysomething she’d chatted with earlier that day. He smiled. “Would you like a nightcap? I’m operating the bar for the next two hours.”

Olivia marveled that an inn of this size would keep their bar open this late. Then again, maybe married couples needed space. Perhaps people needed nightcaps so they didn’t feel so alone. She took a breath. “Maybe just a small one,” she said. She needed to calm down after her walk, and the man with the book was so aggressive toward her.

She followed the twentysomething to the bar and sat on the stool.

“I figured I’d see you here at the bar earlier,” the man said as he put a wineglass on the counter. “For some reason, I thought you were here with the handyman. I thought he was your husband!”

Olivia remembered how nice it had been earlier when he’d called Robby that. Her husband.

Olivia furrowed her brow and watched the red wine drain from the bottle into her glass. “I am here with the handyman,” she said. “We’re not married, but…”

But I needed air, and now I can’t find him.

The twentysomething’s eyebrows rose. He gave her a look. What did it mean?

He set down the bottle of red.

Olivia spread her hands across the counter. The silence thickened between them.

It was clear that something had happened.

But how had it happened so quickly?

She’d left Robby one hour ago.

He’d been at the bar for one hour!

An hour was nothing.

An hour was everything.

“Did he go somewhere with the other bartender?” Olivia asked.

The younger bartender rubbed the back of his neck. He looked like he wanted to be anywhere else as his eyes danced from one end of the room to the other. “I told you before. I’ve worked in a dozen inns all over the place. I’ve seen so many different stories. Inns and bed-and-breakfasts filled with secrets.”

Olivia’s cheeks were hot. “I don’t really get what you mean.”

But I do. I do get what he means.

I just don’t want to believe it.

Robby wouldn’t do this to me.

He wouldn’t betray me.

But then again—

Everyone else did.

Everyone else I ever believed in.

Starting with my family, who gave me up for adoption.

Olivia took a drink of wine. She needed the young man to start talking. She was going to scream if he didn’t.

“I saw him through the window,” Olivia said. “He was talking to the other bartender. The older one.”

“Right. Yeah. Vinny.”

Olivia didn’t need to know his name.

“Vinny went home,” the new bartender said, “when I took over.”

“Okay?” It was another reason Robby was probably just upstairs. “I’d better get to bed.” She took another drink of wine. She was tired of this game.

“He went with someone,” the bartender sputtered. “A woman.”

Olivia felt it like a knife. The other person in the bar. The person who was drinking the cocktail when Robby went down the hall.

She gaped at him. “What woman?”

The bartender couldn’t look her in the eye. “You remember the red-headed woman? The one who was bird-watching?”

Olivia vaguely remembered a pretty woman with a pair of binoculars. She’d seen her at breakfast. She’d been alone.

“She came down for a nightcap. She’s alone, you know? So I guess she wanted companionship. Conversation. They got to talking,” the bartender said. “She asked him to come see something in her room.”

The bartender put his hand over his mouth, then muttered, “I shouldn’t have said anything.”

Olivia sat in stunned silence. She felt outside of her body.

This can’t be happening. Not again.

“Which room is she in?” Olivia demanded.

But the bartender shook his head. “I can’t tell you that.”

Olivia closed her eyes. It was for the best , she told herself. What was she planning to do? Knock on the door? Interrupt whatever they were doing?

Olivia took a staggered breath. She drank the rest of her glass of wine and looked at the bartender. Tears spilled down her cheeks.

“I appreciate your honesty,” she said.

“Of course,” he said. “I feel I owe it to people like you.”

“People like me?”

He raised his shoulders. “People who trust too much.”

Olivia was on her feet. She left the bar and stumbled up the staircase, praying that the bartender had been wrong and Robby was waiting in their suite for her. But the suite was just as she’d left it. Robby hadn’t been back. She splayed across the mattress and pressed her face into the pillow. She wept.

And then she thought, Don’t be a fool, Olivia. Get out of here.

It was ten forty at night, which didn’t give Olivia many options. But on her phone, she discovered a large hotel a couple of miles down the road. She called to learn they had many vacancies. All she had to do was get herself there. That was easy. She called a taxi—the only taxi in the area at that time of night. The taxi driver agreed to swing by in ten minutes.

Olivia had never packed faster in her life.

As sweaters and jeans and boots fell into her suitcase, she stared at the door, begging Robby to come back and explain. Maybe the bird-watching woman needed her binoculars repaired. Perhaps he’d fallen asleep in a corner of the inn somewhere. Maybe he’d gone out looking for Olivia and gotten lost in the woods.

But why hadn’t he texted her?

Olivia was stumped.

But something about their relationship was revealed tonight, something she couldn’t overlook.

It was time to cut her losses and hit the road.

When the taxi driver picked her up, she sat in the back and smiled in the darkness.

“Pretty rare to get a call this late all the way out here,” the driver said. “What brings you to Vermont all by yourself?”

“I’m researching,” she lied. “I’m opening a hotel of my own.”

The taxi driver eyed her in the mirror curiously. “I’ve heard that’s mighty difficult work,” he said. “They say the first five years are the toughest.”

Olivia’s smile was so stiff that it hurt her face.

In the anonymity of the hotel room, she stared at her phone, waiting for Robby to call. But he never did.

She didn’t call him, either.