The Albright Hotel (A Frosty Season #4)

Chapter 18

Chapter Eighteen

N ow, Robby stood outside the wine bar with Adam and Stan. It was December twentieth, nearly two months since that night at the Vermont inn. It felt like a lifetime.

Robby had read once that going through a breakup was a form of brain damage. He couldn’t refute that.

“Let’s get home, Dad,” Adam begged.

Robby knew it would be painfully awkward if and when Olivia noticed them across the street, watching her in the wine bar. But he couldn’t move. He felt glued to the ground.

And then, suddenly, her date returned to the table.

It was the clean-shaven, startlingly handsome black-haired man who worked as a pastry chef in the Albright Hotel. He spoke animatedly, then reached across the table to touch Olivia’s hair. It felt like a stab to the gut. Robby’s eyes filled with tears.

But then he realized something.

It can’t be.

No.

But it was.

The pastry chef was Vinny the bartender from the inn in Vermont.

Robby’s mouth hung open.

How was this possible?

“Come on, Dad,” Stan breathed, snaking his arm through Robby’s and guiding him away.

Robby walked with his sons, head turned to watch as Vinny continued to talk to Olivia as though she were the only woman on earth.

Robby remembered that when he’d first seen Vinny, he’d thought he looked familiar. He’d thought Vinny was an actor or a model.

He’d thought that about Phoebe’s fiancé, too.

Robby’s stomach sloshed with beer and confusion. He wondered if he was making things up. He was wordless all the way home. His sons thought he was just upset about Olivia. How could he explain what he’d seen without sounding insane?

Adam and Stan didn’t want to leave Robby in the living room, so Robby had to make a big show about yawning and getting ready for sleep, only to sit on the edge of his bed, staring through the darkness.

Had Olivia and Vinny left the inn together that night? Was that what happened?

Robby tried to reason through what had happened.

He remembered that he went to Vinny’s room to listen to records and drink scotch. He’d gotten back to the suite around midnight to find it empty. Olivia had packed up her stuff and left. Was it possible that she and Vinny had staged her escape? Maybe she’d packed up, hid her stuff somewhere, then gone to Vinny’s room immediately after Robby left it?

Robby’s head spun.

Why had Olivia gone through the trouble of saying she loved him?

Why had she put on such a big show?

Unless he was wrong. Unless he was missing something.

Robby’s hands were in fists. He suddenly, desperately needed to get to the bottom of this. He needed to dig.

He would do whatever he could to find out.