ski buddy. I’ve been looking for you.”
Her heart started pounding, and she glanced up to find Ethan heading toward their table.
“Ethan! Hi! Look. I’m making a dinosaur.”
“Wow. That’s terrific. Almost good enough to eat.” He winked, which made Christopher giggle.
“Don’t eat my dinosaur. If you do, we can’t win.”
“Need help?”
“I can only have one grown-up helper. That’s what the lady said,” Christopher said regretfully. Abby had a feeling that if she hadn’t been there first, he would have thrown her under the bus in a heartbeat as long as it meant he could have Ethan’s help.
“Looks like you’re covered, then.”
“Mine is almost done,” Christopher said. “Look. I made a car in the driveway. And I have a guy on a sled that I made out of pretzels.”
“Perfect. You’re really good at that.”
“I know.”
Ethan smiled. For an instant, their gazes locked and she thought she saw something there, a strange mix of hunger, longing, regret.
He looked away before she could be certain she hadn’t imagined it.
“Since you don’t need my help, I guess I should go see if anybody else does,” he said. “I’ll see you both later.”
Before she could stop him or at least encourage him to wipe the frosting off his hands, Christopher reached out to give Ethan a hug, which left a green smudge on Ethan’s fitted dress shirt.
“Oh, no. I’m so sorry,” she exclaimed, reaching for a paper towel and dabbing at it while her son, oblivious, went back to his work.
“I’m not worried. It will wash out. I’m just glad he’s having a good time.”
She looked around the crowded ballroom at the convivial atmosphere. “How could he not? Everyone is so kind here.”
“Silver Bells isn’t a perfect town by any means, but people here are pretty decent, for the most part. No doubt you will find Austin the same.”
“I’m sure you’re right,” she said.
He looked as if he wanted to say something but seemed to change his mind at the last moment. “Well, good luck with the gingerbread house. I’ll be rooting for Team Christopher.”
“Thanks.”
The moment he walked away, a crowd seemed to converge around him. It was obvious as she saw him here among others in town that Ethan was well liked and well respected. She wouldn’t have expected anything else, she thought. She certainly liked him and respected him.
“I saw that.”
Abby looked away from Ethan’s retreating back to find Mariah watching her, a speculative look in her eyes.
“Saw what?” Abby tried to sound innocent.
“You told me there was nothing going on between you and Ethan. That didn’t look like nothing.”
She could feel herself blush and knew instantly that Mariah noticed that, too. “Ethan has become a friend over the past few weeks. That’s all.”
“Honey, I wish I had a friend who looks at me like he looks at you.”
“You’re imagining things.”
Mariah just gave her husky laugh and went back to helping her son. The other woman was someone else she would miss when she went to Austin.
Abby had made many cherished friends in the few short weeks she had been here. The Silver Belles had embraced her as an honorary member despite her lack of singing skills.
Perhaps she ought to try to join some other kind of group like this when she moved. If one didn’t exist, she could always start it.
Somehow Austin no longer held the appeal it once did. She would find her enthusiasm again, she told herself. It was only a matter of time.
* * *
How had one woman and her son managed to become so very important to him in only a few weeks’ time?
As Ethan made the rounds of the ballroom, greeting friends and neighbors and guests of the hotel who had decided to join in the fun, his attention seemed to constantly shift back to the other side of the ballroom, toward Abby and Christopher.
He couldn’t quite believe they had only been part of his life since Thanksgiving.
She was leaving soon. Christmas Eve was only four days away. Winnie had told him, rather tearfully, that they would be leaving the day after Christmas.
They had less than a week together.
Already, his world seemed a little more gray when he thought about them leaving.
“Ethan! I wondered if I would see you here today.”
Jolted from his thoughts, he turned toward a table where a group of women were working on a gingerbread house built around an “Under the Sea” theme, apparently.
It took him a moment to place the woman who had called out to him. Her name was Cora Parker and