***
“I can’t believe we had enough turkey for this crowd. Makes me think of the Bible story of five loaves of bread and two fishes feeding a multitude,” Kaitlyn Reagan laughed as she scraped the last of the sliced turkey from the roaster. They had set up a serving line to dish out the food and now they were cleaning the leftovers into smaller dishes.
Helen was amazed they’d had enough food, too, for the crowd squeezed in the hotel on this snowy afternoon. The cold wind and covering of snow on the ground didn’t stop people from arriving with their own contribution to the meal. Pies, bread, jars of pickles...women brought their best to add to the rest of the meal donated by the hotel and other merchants in town.
“That’s true. Thank you so much for your family’s help with setting up the tables and chairs. We might have had enough food, but seating was tight.” Helen added while spooning the last of the gravy into a quart jar.
“Were your feelings hurt that your pie didn’t win the top prize, Millie?” Kaitlyn teased her friend.
“Oh heavens, no. I bake so many pies in a day I don’t care if the crust isn’t perfect,” Millie laughed. “I’m glad Maeve Ramsey won the prize for prettiest pie. It will help her find that husband she’s pining for.”
“Maeve is a good teacher though, and I’d hate to lose her yet. She’s been very patient with catching Iva Mae and Maridell up on their school work since they missed the start of the school year.”
Helen scanned the crowd of kids playing together. Three were in the thick of the girls group, and Luella was being watched, with the rest of the toddlers, by the Wilerson clan.
She looked for Ethan at one of the men’s table and realized he was watching her. Helen glanced at Kaitlyn and realized the pastor’s wife was watching both of them.
“You’re a very good hostess, Helen, and Ethan is lucky to have you,” Kaitlyn praised Helen.
“I assume you’ll stay at the hotel...unless someone asks for your hand in marriage?”
“Since I have employment and a roof over our heads I’m not desperate for another husband, especially with the trouble I’ve had with them. The next man has to be honest, make a decent living, and be willing to raise my children,” Helen declared.
Millie looked at Kaitlyn. “I think she just described Ethan, don’t you think, Kaitlyn?”
“He’d be a fine husband, as long as you can cut him from his mother’s apron strings,” Millie said under her breath.
“Is Esther Paulson really as bad as everyone jokes about her?” Helen felt sorry for the woman since she hadn’t met her yet.
“Of course I can’t say much since I’m the pastor’s confidante...but Esther has clung to Ethan for a reason...but she needs to let go of her past. And until she does, no woman has a chance of a good life with Ethan unless she’s been approved by Esther, or Ethan stands up to his mother.”
Helen glanced at Ethan again, and he turned his head and smiled at her. They had worked well together the past weeks and the girls adored him. She could envision their life, living in the hotel permanently with Ethan, loving him and expanding their family to include some blonde girls, or maybe even boys.
Yesterday morning they were alone in the office, and Helen was sure he wanted to kiss her. And she would have let him. The attraction to Ethan was stronger than she’d had to any of her past husbands.
Did Ethan see that as a problem though, her being married so many times? She knew Ethan had never been married, but had he courted anyone besides Sarah?
“So what do you suggest I do?” Helen felt comfortable asking her new friends because they knew the Paulsons.
Millie turned to look at Helen and seriously asked, “About Ethan? Would you consider his marriage proposal, if he asked you?”
“Yes, yes I would. I know he’s a decent man who would always respect me and the girls.”
“If you want to be with Ethan, build his confidence, besides the hotel business,” Kaitlyn advised. “He’d need both to take a stand against his mother.”
Millie looked across the room and Helen knew she was looking at her sister-in-law, Sarah. “You also have to heal his heart. Sarah leaving him at the altar scarred him deeply. I think she’s the only woman he’s ever loved.”
So did Helen want to risk hers, and her girls’ hearts, by persuing Ethan to be her next husband? Helen cringed, thinking how that sounded, but it had been fate that caused the loss of her husbands, not by her hand or her actions.
Could she fall in love with Ethan only to have something happen to him? She hadn’t loved the other men like she did Ivan, her first and only true love. My heart is scarred worse than Ethan’s. So was it fair to encourage him if she couldn’t give her whole heart to him?
***
“She’s doing fine, Ethan. Helen’s a very capable woman,” Lyle nudged Ethan’s shoulder, bringing Ethan’s mind back to the present company around the table. Ethan had sat down to enjoy the meal with the rest of the townsmen, letting Helen and her cohorts serve the food and clean up the leftovers.
“That was a good idea to have a community event here. I didn’t mind cooking turkeys when someone else fixed and served the rest of the meal,” Dan Clancy slapped Ethan on the back.
“You know it was Helen’s idea,” Ethan sheepishly admitted. He couldn’t believe almost everyone in the town and many country folk were packed in his hotel. The logistics of putting this meal together and having it go so well was done totally by Helen. Ethan had just done the list Helen had given him to do.
“Yep, and shall I look forward to cooking hams for a Christmas dinner here, too?” Dan teased.
“I think it’s the cafe’s turn to host the next holiday meal.”
“Nope, don’t have room like you do here at the hotel.”
“Lorna said Helen had already planned a Christmas party here though,” Lyle added to the conversation. “You do know that, don’t you, Ethan?”
“Yes, she’s planned a Christmas open house on the Sunday afternoon before Christmas. She and Irma already have the refreshments planned, and I’ve been told to have the hotel decorated three days before the event. Helen ordered Christmas decorations through Taylor’s Mercantile two weeks ago and the boxes of who knows what arrived yesterday.”
“My daughter, Mary, said the school children will be putting on their annual Christmas program here during the event, too,” Reuben Shepard added.
“Here at the hotel, instead of at the schoolhouse?” That was news to Ethan. Or maybe Helen had told him and he wasn’t listening? Seems like he’d spent a lot of time staring and daydreaming when she was around.
“She’s an organized woman, Ethan. Better keep her around,” Reuben winked. He was a newlywed and his attitude about life changed drastically when he fell in love with Darcie Robbins and combined their children into one happy family.
Yes, I’ve been thinking I’d like to keep her around...
“Glad the trial is done about that Jones man conning her and Lorna. Lorna wasn’t comfortable to sit in on the trial, but Helen’s testimony didn’t give the judge any choice but to send him to prison,” Lyle commented.
“She’s a mother bear watching out for her cubs, when it comes to her children,” Reuben added.
“Helen’s a good addition to the town, even if she was conned into coming to Clear Creek,” Lyle added.
“So when you gonna ask Helen to marry you?” Reuben asked, causing Ethan to choke on the sip of coffee he’d just taken from his cup.
“Excuse me?” Ethan said between his gasps of air.
“You know men are going to catch on there’s an available woman in town, and start courting Helen,” Reuben said matter-of-factly.
“I need to see how she gets along with my mother first,” Ethan mumbled before taking another sip of coffee, hoping this one would stay down.
“Ethan. Wise up. You’re a grown man, not your momma’s boy anymore.” Reuben’s slap on his back took care of the coffee staying down.
Was
that how townspeople saw him? Not able to make his decisions because his mother did them for him? Ethan squirmed in his seat, knowing there was some truth in Rueben’s words.
“So what should I do?”
“Check to see if there is any mistletoe in the Christmas decorations Helen ordered. And if there isn’t, order some, or something similar, and hang it above every door in the hotel. Every chance you get, give Helen—and her girls—a kiss.” Reuben grinned, happy with his idea.
Adam leaned back in his chair, apparently listening in on the conversation, at the table behind them. “I’ll have Millie bake some Baker’s Kiss cookies and bring them over to Helen with instructions on how to use them. Be sure you run your face into a door now and then so she’ll use the cookies and magic sugar on your bruises.”
Ethan’s face turned beet red as the men howled with laughter. He had seen Millie use that kissing cookie routine on her nephew Tate. Millie would dip the little cookie in a tin of powdered sugar, pat it on Tate’s booboo, then lick her lips and kiss the powdered sugar spot to make “everything better”. The action would leave a perfect imprint of her lips on his skin, making him forget what he was crying about.
Then Millie started using the technique on any little bruise Adam got in the line of duty, which always included his lips.
Ethan could just imagine himself waiting on a customer with powdered sugar on his lips and couldn’t help grinning.
“Yeah, be sure Millie delivers some Baker’s cookies with her next order of pies.” Ethan’s confidence was growing with the men’s encouragement. He knew Helen was interested in him by the way she looked at him. Ethan came so close to kissing her the other day in the office, and he was positive she’d kiss him back.
Why not go after the woman? Because Mother might not like her? Ethan pushed that thought to the back of his mind. It was time he got on with his life and he wanted a family. And the idea of Helen and her four girls becoming his, well, it was an idea he’d like to pursue.
Chapter 10
“What did you do in school today, girls?”
Helen was about to knock on the partially open door of their suite, but she waited for Iva Mae or Maridell to answer Ethan first, to see what they would say.
After their supper, Ethan asked Helen to watch the front desk, because he and the girls had “something” they wanted to make this evening. Helen could smell cedar when Ethan carried a box of something upstairs, so she assumed it was cedar branches and they were making wreaths for the front doors. The girls giggled all through supper about the surprise they were making but they wouldn’t tell her what it was. So apparently the two youngest didn’t know what “it” was yet themselves or they would have said.
By the sound of their voices, Helen guessed Ethan and the girls were sitting around the table, or on the floor, making a mess she or June would be cleaning up later. But it didn’t matter since it sounded like her girls were happy.
“I got second place in the spelling bee today. I missed ‘appreciate’,” Iva Mae confessed.
“That’s a big and important word,” Ethan answered. “What does it mean?”
“Appreciate means you’re glad to have something.”
“Like what? Give me some examples, girls.” Ethan was very good about helping them with their school work and pointing out the positive in their learning.
“I appreciate...” Ethan started, “your momma helping me with the hotel.”
“I appreciate Aunt Millie’s pies and Miss Naomi’s cinnamon rolls!” Maridell pipped up.
“I appreciate living in the hotel with you because...” Iva Mae started to say but then stopped.
“Why is that important, Iva Mae?” Ethan quietly asked.
“Because now we have a place to live, and we aren’t hungry anymore.”
Helen sucked in her breath at her daughter’s confession. She was ashamed at what the girls had gone through before they came to Clear Creek, but Helen had done the best she could.
“Would you like to live in the hotel all the time?”
“Yes!” they chorused.
“What would you say...if some day—and I’m not saying right away—I asked your momma to marry me?”
Helen leaned in to hear the girls’ answer. Ethan hadn’t made another move to kiss her, but apparently he was ready to take the next step in their relationship.
Not one of the girls spoke up. Why didn’t they answer? Helen was sure the girls liked, even loved Ethan by now.
“Will you be nice to her? Not hit her?” Iva Mae demanded to know. Helen closed her eyes and leaned her head against the door frame, hating the girls had known Lawrence had hurt her.
“Iva Mae, I would never lift a finger to harm any of you or your momma. Have I done anything since you moved here to question that?” Ethan asked patiently.
“No, you’ve been very nice to us.” Iva Mae seemed satisfied now.
“But won’t you die if you marry Momma?” Maridell’s tearful question almost caused Helen to enter the room to console her daughter, but the child needed to hear Ethan’s answer.
“Come here, Sweetheart.” Helen imagined Ethan pulled Maridell into his lap.
“War and disease killed your poppas, but the nation is at peace now, and I’m very healthy. I plan to live a very long time.”
“Any more questions? You know Marcus and Sarah Brenner adopted their children and made a family. Would you like to do that...if your momma and I marry?”
In some ways Helen wished Ethan had talked to her about this first, but yet he was right in that her daughters’ needs and wishes were more important than what Helen might feel for him. But wouldn’t the girls expect them to eventually marry now? Was this the reason Ethan was bringing it up, to insure Helen would say yes?
“Could we call you Poppa then?” Avalee would be the one to want to know that question. The older two had remembered their fathers’ but Avalee was too young when her father died. Luella’s father said the girls had to call him Mr. Higby instead of an endearing name.
“I’d be so honored for you to call me, Poppa, if that’s what you wish.” The passionate tone of his words made Helen respect and fall in love with him even more.
“Now, we need to get this surprise done for your momma before she comes looking for you. Iva Mae, cut the ribbon in about twelve inch pieces...”
Helen moved away from the door and quietly walked down the stairs to give them privacy so they could surprise her later.
She wished with all her heart that nothing would spoil her family’s future with Ethan. But she worried what Ethan’s parents would say when they arrived home to see the upheaval she and the girls had created in their hotel. They had increased profits and brought laughter to the hotel, but not everyone would see the latter as a positive thing.
***
“Momma!” Maridell yelled to her mother two flights down the stairs. “Go in the kitchen so you don’t see what we’re doing!”
Of course Helen had probably heard him tapping nails with a hammer in the top of door frames, so she could guess they were hanging some kind of greenery.
“All right. I’ll move into the kitchen until you come get me.”
Helen played along, making her girls happy, but Ethan was hoping their surprise would make Helen happy, too.
The girls had spent the past hour making what they called “kissing balls” by rolling fresh short cedar branches in a circle and tying them with red velvet ribbons. They were between three to five inches in diameter, more oblong than round but the girls were happy with the end results.
Ethan had thought they’d hang the balls downstairs, but the girls insisted a ball should be hung in every door in the upstairs suite, which was fine with him. He’d have more private places to kiss Helen every time they’d happen to stand underneath a kissing ball then.
To be sure the magic of the ball worked, he’d picked up and placed a sloppy noisy kiss on each girl’s cheek. They giggled, squirmed and asked for another one.
“Okay, go get your momma. We need to make sure these balls we hung downstairs work for kissing, too.” Ethan encouraged the girls after he climbed down the step stool for the last time this evening.
Next on Ethan’s list was to hang wreaths on the front doors. The Christmas tree wouldn’t be brought in until the morning of the open house.
“Oh, how pretty!” Helen exclaimed as the girls pulled her from the kitchen into the dining room. “I love them! What a nice holiday decoration to make for the hotel. You did a good job making them, girls.”
“We’ll show you how they work,” Maridell pulled Helen’s hand until she was below the kissing ball in the dining arch. “Okay, stand right here and close your eyes.”
“Shall I lean over so you can kiss me?” Her question was answered by giggles.
“Nope!”
Helen tensed, then relaxed when she felt Ethan’s arms wrap around her shoulders. Helen opened her eyes to see his face close to hers. He stared at her lips, then looked into her eyes.
“The girls want to be sure the kissing balls works their magic. Shall we test this one out?”
The smile on her face was priceless and he tried not to shout with happiness. She was such an endearing woman.
“Are we doing this for the girls’ benefit?” she whispered so only he could hear her.
“Oh, they want to see if it works, of course, but this kiss is for us, too. Ready?”
“Very ready.” Helen wrapped her arms around his waist as she lifted her lips to meet his. Ethan kissed her lips softly once, twice, before pressing more firmly and tightening his arms around her.
Helen Heals A Hotelier (Brides With Grit Book 10) Page 9