Kathleen O'Brien - Christmas in Hawthorn Bay

Though she knew it was completely selfish, she half hoped they would, too. It would make her life so much easier if Jack would just go back to Kansas City.

It wasn’t just that his arrival had set all the old emotions bubbling. She was a strong woman, and she could handle a little leftover yearning and angst. She had an old scar on her knee that hurt sometimes, too. She took an aspirin and went on with her life.

No, the serious issue was Colin. How long could she keep Jack from running into the boy? And once he saw him, once he saw an eleven-year-old kid with curly black hair and eyes the color she had always called Killian blue…

Nora wondered, sometimes, what Jack’s brother thought when he looked at Colin. At first she’d been afraid that he might tell Jack, but that fear had subsided little by little, as the years passed without incident. She always had her story ready, though. The whirlwind romance in Cornwall, the black-haired charmer who had broken her heart.

But no one had ever asked.

Still, if Jack saw Colin, how long would it be before he put the whole picture together? About five minutes?

And then what would he do?

Dear Reader,

I love Christmas so much it’s become a joke in my family. When I was six, my uncle came to our house and asked my dad incredulously, “Is Kathleen really out on the porch playing Christmas music?” It was July.

Maybe I began loving the season because my parents filled our living room with marvelous presents—life-size dolls, dollhouses with real electric lights and stuffed turtles and crocodiles the size of armchairs. But I still love it, even though I have to do the shopping myself, and the cooking, and the cleaning…and the dreaded opening of the bills in January.

Christmas has everything. It has lilting, emotional music—can anyone listen to Bing Crosby sing “O Holy Night” without tearing up? It has color—what’s more visually joyous than a whole neighborhood twinkling with lights? It has great food—when else can you stuff yourself, from the morning’s pumpkin muffins to the late-night reheated pecan pie, without feeling guilty? It has family, friends and time off from work. It has cherished rituals that wind like golden threads through our lives, connecting great-grandparents to the generations they’ll never see.

And it has that most beautiful of all things: Hope. At Christmas we believe in fresh starts, in second chances. In the promise of angels and the return of innocence. Christmas seemed like the perfect season for Nora Carson and Jack Killian to find each other again, after twelve long years apart. They have many problems to overcome—betrayals, broken hearts and terrible secrets. But the magic of Christmas, surely, is enough to overcome all that. I hope you enjoy their story.

And remember…there really is no law that says you can’t play carols in July!

Warmly,

Kathleen

www.millsandboon.co.uk

Four-time finalist for the Romance Writers of America’s RITA ®Award, Kathleen is the author of more than twenty novels for Harlequin Books. After a short career as a television critic and feature writer, Kathleen traded in journalism for fiction—and the chance to be a stay-at-home mother. A native Floridian, she and her husband live just outside Orlando, only a few miles from their grown children.

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

CHAPTER NINETEEN

NORA CARSON HAD ALWAYS found it hard to say no to Maggie, even when she knew that her bullheaded best friend was being stupid. Though Nora, at nineteen, was only three months older than Maggie, the younger girl had a way of making Nora’s common sense sound pathetically boring.

And if making Nora feel like a fuddy-duddy didn’t work, Maggie had big sad eyes and a killer pout, a little-girl-lost look that turned Nora—and just about everyone else—straight to mush.

This late-autumn Saturday, Maggie’s nineteenth birthday, was no exception. Maggie, who was eight months pregnant, woke up with a hankering to go sailing. Nora knew it was a rotten idea, and so did Dr. Ethan Jacobs, the young obstetrician who had begun as Maggie’s doctor when they’d arrived in town three months ago—and ended up more like a love slave with a stethoscope.

But neither of them could resist Maggie in a Mood.

So here they were, halfway to nowhere, with the Maine coast receding as Ethan’s sails filled with crisp, clean wind. The cooler at their feet bulged with fried chicken, egg-salad sandwiches and bottled water. Ethan had caved in to Maggie’s pressure first, and admitted that he knew a tiny island Maggie would love. Just a couple of miles wide, it had everything, he said—a green forest, a cliff, a small white waterfall.

Best of all, it was completely uninhabited. The perfect place to make the world go away for an afternoon.

They’d been on Ethan’s tiny day sailer for almost an hour—the island was about ten miles offshore—when suddenly Maggie hopped up onto her cushioned seat and let out an exhilarated squeal.

“This is the best birthday ever! Oh, my God, I love this day!”

Nora, who was sitting at the back of the boat, couldn’t help smiling. Maggie’s spiky brown hair stood straight up in the wind, and her pregnant stomach looked as rounded and full of energetic purpose as the sails above her.

Maggie’s moods were always infectious. If she was depressed, everyone around her suffered. But if she was happy…

“And I love you!” Maggie climbed down and wrapped Nora in a bear hug. She turned to Ethan, who was angling the tiller, and, taking his face in her hands, covered his parted lips with a loud, smacking kiss. “And you, my dashing seafarer!”

Then she whirled away, and, with a contented sigh, leaned over to drag her fingers in the green current that rushed along the side of the boat.

Nora caught Ethan’s gaze. Behind his wire-rimmed glasses, he looked stunned, as if he’d never been this close to anything as dazzling as Maggie. The sails began to luff, as Ethan forgot to steer, but he corrected the mistake and shrugged sheepishly, his cheeks pink.

Just last night, he had confessed to Nora that he was in love with Maggie. When Ethan had finished rubbing Maggie’s feet, which had been sore after a long day waiting tables at the lobster shack, she had stumbled off to bed, leaving Nora and Ethan alone together.

He had flushed the entire time he spoke. He knew it was inappropriate, he said, given that Maggie was his patient, but he couldn’t help it. She’d made her way into his blood, and he was going to ask her to marry him.

What did Nora think? Would Maggie say yes?

Nora wasn’t sure. For all her childlike displays of emotion, Maggie kept her deepest truths in darkest secret. That’s how you knew something really mattered to her—the bubbling stream of chatter suddenly dried up to dust.

Though they’d been best friends since they’d eaten paste together in kindergarten, Nora had accepted that there were things she’d never learn, no matter how many times she asked.

Like where Maggie got that old-fashioned gold ring she wore on a chain around her neck.

Or who was the father of her baby.