Walter smiled wanly. He felt a pang of guilt, but he raised his glass and drank to that. He squeezed Vivian’s hand as his eyes filled a little.
He was a tough man with a ridiculous work ethic, but when it came to his family, he was mush.
Walter’s grandfather, Ernst, had been a sheep farmer in Kristalldorf at the turn of the twentieth century, when he saw an opportunity with the mountain train opening up from the settlement of Bloch down the valley. Ernst had the foresight to turn arable land into tourism and he opened a guesthouse at the foot of the mighty Silberschnee, the majestic mountain that overlooked the village, then three more as tourism started to grow. Ernst’s son, Walter’s father Gerhard, bought more land along the banks of the Glanzfluss river, and turned guesthouses into luxurious hotels when Kristalldorf started becoming as popular in the winter months as it was in summer. In the 1940s, the Steinherr family joined forces with the Sommars and the Kochs, two other founding families, to fund the first chairlift from the village up to the mountains, which by now were being fashioned into ski runs.
Despite war raging in Europe, Kristalldorf was booming with Swiss visitors, or Paris’s exiled elite, all looking for an escape. When Walter was born in the 1950s, he had his grandfather’s foresight and his father’s taste for grandeur, and over the decades he expanded his portfolio of hotels, with the Steinherrhof, the Alpenrose, the Kristall Palace, the Silberblick and, in the 1990s, Vitreum– the most luxurious, modern and exclusive hotel he’d built yet, perched high on a ledge overlooking the town. With his growing fortune, Walter alone funded a superfast train from the north bank of the Glanzfluss up to the slopes. The mountain train enabled skiers to get from the village to the slopesin three fast minutes, which brought a bigger boom and cemented Kristalldorf’s reputation as the finest– and most exclusive– ski resort in the world.
For the past five years he’d focused on building the lofty glass box by the river, a beauty to rival Vitreum, which he’d carelessly lost in a bet at a casino in Monte Carlo. When it was finished, Walter gifted the Anna Maria hotel, a tribute to his late first wife, to their daughters for Christmas, to see if the sisters could come together in business. A test to help Walter identify an heir to take over the Steinherr empire.
Anna Maria Steinherr had died of ovarian cancer at home, opposite the site of the hotel that would one day be named after her. She was only thirty-four. Her daughters and two sons were all aged ten and under. Vivian was just a baby, she never knew her mother. She didn’t remember wife number two, Mechthild, who took on the heartbroken billionaire and his four young children with matronly gusto, but Walter was too grief-stricken to let her in and the marriage was over within three years.
Wife number three was wicked stepmother Susan, an Englishwoman whose own husband had died in a car accident. Susan endured the teen and young adult years, a tricky time as eldest brother Lysander and Anastasia were particularly combative. Susan stayed in Kristalldorf long enough to receive a tidy divorce settlement for her fifteen years of service. Before them there was a nurse Walter alluded to if he was misty-eyed or tipsy, but he shut down the conversation when his children ever asked more. And there was Kiki. Wife number four who Walter met when he was playingblackjack in Monte Carlo five years ago. Half Walter’s age with absolutely no shared interests apart from poker.
‘Proscht,’ Walter conceded. ‘Anna Maria would have loved to watch you all grow up,’ he said sentimentally. ‘To see what beautiful children you bore Anni.’
Anastasia looked proud. She loved it when her children got her compliments.
‘And I’m sure you will too, Vivi.’
Vivian looked solemn for a second. Her honey-blonde hair was tied back in an elegant ponytail and her huge bright-blue eyes were spaced far apart. Pale and ethereal looking, she was totally different to her darker, sharper, more sinewy elder sister, who had brown eyes like their mother. It made Vivian feel even sadder. She couldn’t remember the woman Anastasia was always told she looked like. Vivian gripped her father’s hand, grateful she was here next to him.
‘Thank you,’ she almost whispered, as she gave his hand a squeeze.
‘Why don’t you bring this mystery man of yours over?’ Walter asked. ‘It would be nice to meet him.’
‘A man?’ scoffed Anastasia. ‘I thought darling Vivian was too busy for romance.’ The thought of her sister finally having a boyfriend and no longer pining over the Joubert boy piqued Anastasia’s interest and she raised an eyebrow.
Walter waved a hand.
The huge doorbell chimed and Vivian’s heart raced, full of hope. Perhaps he was coming. Perhaps he was finally ready to officially stand by her side.
‘I don’t know why you’re so coy, Vivi,’ Walter interjected. ‘I take each person at their own value, I don’t judge based on their name or background.’ As he said this, he knew itnot to be true. If Vivian were dating a Kivvi, perhaps, Walter imagined it might be problematic. ‘Nor should people judge you or your brothers for being Steinherrs,’ Walter said, somewhat unsurely. They all knew the Steinherr name could carry as much contempt as it could kudos.
A man in a suit, tie undone, clutching a bunch of flowers, walked into the dining room.
‘Hey, who’s judging?’ he said with a shit-eating grin.
Chapter Four
Emme eked out every step towards the doors, nervous about the upcoming introduction. Further down the platform she saw a woman reprimanding her children for something. Or was it her husband she was telling off as he approached the group and crouched down to greet his children? Either way, she looked pissed off.
Oh dear,Emme thought, recognising the man Cat had pointed out on the train from the Zoom call. And as she looked at the woman properly, she recognised her auburn hair and alabaster skin, that had shone so perfectly under the ring light of their video call. She was Alexia Harrington, Emme’s new boss.
Oh dear,Emme thought again, as the woman noticed her approaching. Her tense face morphed into a forced showbiz smile with prim red lips. She had the look of a faded Hollywood star, her Rita Hayworth waves pinned perfectly off her face; telltale creases where her Botox stopped at her nose. She looked like she was going to either burst into tears or burst into song.
‘Emmeline!’ She outstretched her arms awkwardly. ‘Welcome to Kristalldorf! How was your journey?’
The two little redheaded children stood either side of their mother, expectant to meet the woman who had the nerve to be replacing their adored Jenny.
‘Mrs Harrington, Alexia, lovely to meet you,’ Emme said as she went to shake her hand. Alexia was so fragrant-looking, Emme wondered if she should curtsey, but she took the outstretched gloved hands and let Alexia squeeze hers.
‘Lexy, please. Did you meet Bill on the train?’ She nodded towards her husband.
‘Bill,’ he said, outstretching his gloved leather hand.
They both shook their heads and Emme smiled affably.
‘Nice to meet you,’ she said.
