Christmas at Holiday House - RaeAnne Thayne Page 0,22
Winnie wanted her to do. Did Ethan know about his grandmother’s fundraiser tours of the house? He seemed so protective of Winnie, Abby couldn’t imagine him being thrilled about them.
“Your grandmother had everything organized today. I was merely the kitchen help, following her directions.”
“Don’t listen to her,” Winnie said from the other end of the table. “She and Christopher did it all. You all would have been eating canned ham if not for her.”
“To Abby and Christopher,” Mariah said, lifting her wineglass. Everyone at the table toasted her, as well. Christopher didn’t seem to know what was going on, but he beamed, anyway.
“To my friends, both old and new,” Winnie said. “I’m thankful for each one of you.”
“You made a rhyme,” Christopher said gleefully.
She grinned at him. “So I did.”
For the next few moments, others around the table made various toasts to things they were thankful for that year.
“Okay. Enough of this,” Winnie finally said. “This food will be cold if we don’t eat.”
People tucked into the meal, and conversation became more general around the table.
“How was Winnie last night? Did she sleep all right?” Ethan asked Abby.
She couldn’t help but be touched by his concern for his grandmother. “She’s obviously in pain and doesn’t want to admit it. But I watched to make sure she took a pain pill, and she went to bed early. She said she slept soundly.”
“If you were able to make her take any pain medication, I’m impressed.”
“I didn’t make her do anything. I suggested it. She must have needed it or she wouldn’t have agreed. I tried to get her to take another one earlier this afternoon, without success. I’ll work on her again before bedtime tonight.”
“Kudos to you for trying, at least.”
She made a face. “If I have to, I’ll tell her that if she doesn’t take one willingly, I’m going to slip it into her pumpkin pie.”
He looked startled. “Would you really do that?”
“No. But Winnie doesn’t need to know that.”
He chuckled, and she told herself that shiver down her spine was simply a chill coming in through the huge stained-glass windows in the dining room.
* * *
Abby Powell seemed to have amazing skills at managing his grandmother.
Ethan wasn’t sure how she did it, but somehow Abby was able to persuade Winnie she wasn’t needed in the kitchen to clean up dinner, that she should instead sit in her favorite chair in the room off the kitchen and visit with her guests.
He waited for Winnie to protest. Instead, she meekly complied. Richard and Teresa Shannon took the hint and helped her to the chair, covering her with a blanket.
Winnie must be in pain or she never would have agreed. She would have been right in the middle of the action as the table was cleared and leftovers divided into containers for each guest to take.
While the Shannons asked Winnie questions about historic holiday celebrations in the house—a conversational gambit destined to distract her as nothing else could—everyone else pitched in to help clean up.
Ethan washed dishes, his traditional role after holiday meals.
At first, Mariah Raymond was helping dry the dishes and trying to flirt with him, as she always did. Her phone rang before she really got warmed up.
“Oh. That’s my baby,” she exclaimed, dropping her dish towel in the drying rack and reaching for her phone.
As she left to take the call, someone picked up her dish towel. The scent of vanilla clued him in that it was Abby even before he looked up from the dish he was scrubbing to find her standing next to him.
“You should let someone else do that. I believe we can all agree you’ve done enough today. You ought to be in the other room with Winnie, sitting in the chair next to her with your feet up.”
“I can dry,” Rodrigo said eagerly. “I do that at home.”
“Great. Sounds like a plan,” Ethan said.
“Here you go,” Abby said, giving José’s younger brother her towel. “How about this? You dry and then Ethan can tell both of us where to put things.”
“You’re assuming I know where things go. It’s been a few years since I lived here.”
As all three of them worked together, a kind of peace swirled around them. He had always found washing dishes to be a very zen kind of job, for some strange reason.