Chapter Twenty
O livia woke up at the crack of dawn. Her body ached from lack of sleep—it was nearly two by the time she’d drifted off—but she could feel the hotel coming to life already, the furnaces humming, and people whispering in the corridors on the other end of the mansion. She got out of bed and slipped her arms through her robe. Harry knows I’m not interested now. It’s over. I can get back to my life.
Olivia went downstairs to find her favorite people at the breakfast table—Maya, Aunt Veronica, and Phoebe. Coffee bubbled from the pot, and everyone was still in their pajamas. It was December twenty-first, just four more days till Christmas.
“I’m making cinnamon rolls,” Phoebe announced as Olivia strolled in. “I hope you’re hungry!”
The smell of freshly baked cinnamon rolls filled the kitchen. Olivia poured herself a mug of coffee and sat between Phoebe and Aunt Veronica, watching Maya as she wrote a to-do list in her notebook. Outside, the air was fresh and clean. The snow glistened beneath the morning sky.
You have to find it in yourself to trust people. Sooner rather than later.
But what did Harry know?
“How was your night out?” Phoebe asked conspiratorially. “I saw you leave with handsome Harry.”
Olivia groaned and set down her mug.
“Uh-oh.” Maya glanced up from her to-do list. “What happened?”
Olivia raised her shoulders. She felt Aunt Veronica’s intense gaze.
“I just don’t know about him,” she admitted.
“Honey, that’s okay,” Maya assured her.
“With a face like that, you had to try,” Phoebe said with a laugh. “That’s what I thought when I first met Braxton.”
Olivia tilted her head. “I suppose it worked out for you!”
Phoebe blushed. “Looks aren’t everything. It’s the soul that counts.”
Olivia wanted to ask, And is Braxton’s soul really so good?
But she didn’t.
“He opened up more about his childhood,” Olivia said of Harry. “He was raised quite poor. I think it’s given him this incredible drive to make something of himself.”
“That’s nice,” Maya said after a pause. “But it doesn’t mean you have to marry him.”
Olivia laughed. It sounded ridiculous, but it was true. At her age, people often thought they’d just take what they could get . But it wasn’t true.
She had half her life to live.
Maybe even more if she drank more green juice.
Phoebe got up to pull the cinnamon rolls out of the oven. She’d already made the icing, which she smeared across the top. Olivia’s mouth watered.
“Where did you go last night?” Phoebe asked.
“The wine bar,” Olivia said.
“Ah! Brad and I talked about going there. But we ended up at Giovanni’s,” she explained. Giovanni’s was the only Italian place in town.
“Italian. Sounds romantic,” Maya said.
“It was!” Phoebe said as she slid a spoonful of icing over a roll. “You know, he was telling me about some of his business dealings. I had no idea he was so involved in strategy.”
Aunt Veronica raised her chin and looked at Phoebe curiously. “Strategy?” She repeated as though it were a foreign word.
Phoebe nodded furiously. “He’s been instrumental in bringing businesses into the public sphere. You know, for a while, I thought he was just a wealthy guy who did whatever he wanted and traveled where he pleased. But actually, he’s so much more than that. He has a real mind for business.”
Now, Phoebe was looking at Maya. She wanted her to turn around.
But Maya had returned to her to-do list. Phoebe put her icing spoon back in the bowl of icing and rubbed a towel over her sticky hands. “I told him about the difficulties we’ve been having here at the hotel.”
Maya made a strange sound in her throat.
“He said he’d be happy to take a look,” Phoebe said.
Maya sighed and put back down her pen. “I don’t know, honey.”
“He’s got a real head for business, Mom,” Phoebe said. “Much more than I do.”
Phoebe was implying that Braxton had a better head for business than Olivia and Maya, too. Olivia didn’t resent that. She knew she didn’t have a real mind for business. But Maya had thrown herself into the business end of the hotel. She’d read countless books that summer. She’d put herself through online business classes.
“What do you think?” Phoebe asked her mother. It was as though Aunt Veronica and Olivia were no longer in the kitchen. “Don’t you think he should help out? He’ll be a member of the family next year. And he said he’d hate to watch the hotel go under.”
Maya flared her nostrils.
Phoebe’s words hung in the air. The hotel go under.
It sounded like a bad omen. It was important not to speak those bad omens aloud , Olivia thought.
Finally, Maya spoke. “Who said the hotel would go under?”
Phoebe stuttered. “It won’t go under. You just said you were worried?”
“I don’t remember what I said,” Maya insisted. “All I know is your aunt Olivia and I are doing our very best during these opening weeks to keep everything going. We’ve made a few mistakes, maybe, but that’s common. And it’s Christmas! And everything will be fine.”
Olivia nodded. She had to be supportive of Maya. Plus, it wasn’t like she wanted Braxton anywhere near the Albright Hotel’s spreadsheets. Or anywhere near the Albright Hotel at all.
Phoebe made plates of cinnamon rolls for everyone, then disappeared upstairs. Her face was blotchy.
Aunt Veronica spoke softly as she pulled a fork through her roll. “You did the right thing, Maya.”
Maya sighed. “I don’t want her to think I don’t support her or her decisions.”
“Maybe you don’t support this particular decision. The Braxton decision,” Aunt Veronica offered. She sighed down at her cinnamon roll. “Goodness. It’s awful to watch the ones you love make decisions like that. You can’t control them. But you wish you could tell them everything. Everything that might matter in the future.”
“She was always so mature for her age. Always making adult decisions as a younger girl. But a divorce can do funny things to a person. I know that better than anyone,” Maya said.
“This whole Braxton era will be a blip,” Olivia assured her. “Maybe you and Phoebe will look back on this and laugh.”
“Perhaps we all will,” Maya agreed.
It wasn’t till a couple of hours later when Olivia was working at the front desk of the Albright Hotel and greeting guests who’d come to enjoy the Christmas season, that it occurred to her.
Braxton and Harry had both offered their “business-minded services” on the same evening.
What did it mean?
She stood with a nervous smile, half listening to the older gentleman trying to check into the inn while his wife grabbed something from their car.
“It’s Hollygrove! Hard to believe we’re here,” he was saying. “We’ve always heard it’s the most sensational Christmas destination in Upstate New York. My wife read an article about the Albright Hotel and made a reservation like that.” He snapped his fingers. “I’m sure you’ll be booked all winter long! Who says Christmas should remain in December? My wife leaves our tree up till February. Oh, but we wanted to get away from it all this year. Away from our little house. Our son is spending Christmas on the West Coast, and with Rhonda’s back, we really can’t fly that far.”
Olivia’s heart throbbed with a mix of sorrow at his story and the sudden realization about Braxton and Harry.
But the Harry and Braxton scenario was probably just a coincidence.
It couldn’t be anything else.
“We’re so happy to welcome you here,” she said. She handed him a flyer for upcoming Christmas events, including more snowy carriage rides, a little German-inspired Christmas market in the back garden of the hotel, plus feast after feast. Their kitchen staff would be hard at work until New Year’s Eve. Harry had told her himself he would be making more than two thousand pastries. It was hard to grapple with that number.
After the gentleman left to help his wife with the bags, Olivia stood with her hands spread across the gleaming mahogany front desk, remembering the day Robby had installed it. He’d spent more than a week building it in his workshop, and she’d visited him frequently during that time, bringing him coffee or post-work beers and chatting with him as the sawdust settled. Like Harry and Olivia, Robby hadn’t come from much. But he didn’t seem to be manipulative the way Harry was. Robby hadn’t “clawed his way up from the bottom,” like Harry described his journey. Instead, Robby had been kind, diligent, and openhearted. He’d been grateful for what he had.
Olivia considered asking Maya what she thought about Braxton and Harry offering their business advice on the same night. But Maya had enough on her plate. That, and Olivia was pretty well done talking about Harry. In fact, maybe she needed to head to the kitchen and tell him herself, point-blank, that she didn’t see a future with him.