Helen Myers - A Holiday to Remember

HOME? FOR THE HOLIDAYS?

Alana Anders had lost enough in life to recognize a kindred soul. So when fate led her to a lonely cowboy—with a battle-scarred heart to match her own—she should have given him a nod and moved on. Because the holidays were upon her...and the last thing she needed was someone else’s problems....

But what she wanted was another story. And she wanted Mack Graves, reluctant war hero and heir to the Last Call Ranch—badly. She knew that Nowheresville, Texas, was the last place he longed to be—at Christmas, no less!—but Alana just knew that she and Mack were meant to be together. And that in each other’s arms they could forge a new kind of home....

“How on earth did that compel you to come here and try to talk me into starting this fling we’re supposed to have?”

Slipping his hand to her nape, Mack drew her toward him. “I admit it defies logic. But while it would probably be smarter for me to leave you alone, that is one empty and ugly house without you in it.”

With that he closed his lips over hers. There wasn’t any anger or frustration this time. He simply wanted to make sure that she thought of him after he left. He sure as hell would be thinking of her.

He liked how she let him direct the kiss, liked realizing that her lips felt even better than he remembered, and how her tongue accepted then flirted with his. He groaned, wanting to unbutton her uniform and begin to learn what else she liked.

When he finally, reluctantly, eased his lips from hers, he found her slow to open her eyes. Feeling a tug somewhere deep inside, he kissed one eyelid, then the other.

“How sweet,” she murmured, sounding touched. “Didn’t know you had that in you.”

“Don’t let it get around.”

Dear Reader,

Although scientists like to debunk the idea that blue moons are anything other than a mathematical phenomenon, they remain rare enough to be special and romantic to some of us. It proves life-changing to Alana Anders and Mack Graves one night in August while under a bright, full, blue moon in Oak Grove, Texas. On the surface, Officer Anders seems to bear an old family tragedy well enough, and Mack—just retired from the Marine Corps—hopes to mend fences with his long-estranged father as he recovers from wounds suffered in Afghanistan. But as is often the case, there’s a great deal more going on beneath the surface with these two. I hope you will enjoy their journey of the heart.

While there was a community called Oak Grove in Wood County, Texas (established in the 1850s, with businesses active through the 1930s), all the stores are long gone and only a few houses remain. My Oak Grove is fictitious.

I do hope you’ll enjoy Alana and Mack’s time in Memphis, where they stay at the famous Peabody Hotel. I was a few days premature with Chez Philippe’s autumn menu, but the dinner described was reflective of what is served.

Thanks, always, for being a reader, and please check out my website at HelenRMyers.com, or look for me on Facebook under Helen Myers.

With warm regards,

Helen

A Holiday to Remember

Helen R. Myers

www.millsandboon.co.uk

HELEN R. MYERS

is a collector of two- and four-legged strays, and lives deep in the Piney Woods of East Texas. She cites cello music and bonsai gardening as favorite relaxation pastimes, and still edits in her sleep—an accident, learned while writing her first book. A bestselling author of diverse themes and focus, she is a three-time RITA® Award nominee, winning for Navarrone in 1993.

Contents

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Epilogue

Excerpt

Chapter One

“Do you think he’s a jumper?”

The excited voice on the other end of her police radio had Officer Alana Anders groaning inwardly. All she’d reported was that she’d spotted someone loitering along Oak Grove, Texas’s, flooding Miller Creek. How that constituted a 911 crisis was all in dispatcher Barbara Jayne “Bunny” Dodd’s vivid imagination.

“Bunny, he’s sitting on a tree stump that’s no higher than a park bench would be if this town wasn’t too cheap to put any in,” Alana told the information-addicted woman. “Unless he has a rocket strapped to a part of his anatomy that I can’t see, he’d need to be an Olympic long jumper, not a diver, to make the fifteen-to-twenty feet it is to the edge of the water.”

It was unusual to see the creek in this condition—especially since there was no hurricane blowing up from the Gulf of Mexico. But there was a change in weather patterns going on. It was flooding in Oklahoma and Arkansas; as a result, while East Texas was seeing little in the way of precipitation, the northern counties’ tributaries were inheriting a splendid overflow.

“But it’s a blue moon,” her coworker declared, the announcement coming out of nowhere.

An aspiring writer in her free time, the divorcée was chock-full of trivia that most people forgot minutes after hearing it. While Alana sometimes found her prattling a help to stay awake during many an uneventful shift, others avoided the woman exactly because of her wandering focuses of interest as much as her relentless chattiness. She’d certainly knocked one out of the park this time with that blue-moon reference.

“Excuse me?” Alana peered out of her windshield to check the sky in case she was really missing something of astronomical significance.

“They’re rare because it takes two to three years to build up on the yearly extra days to have a second full moon in a month. It’s said that this August one is among the rarest. That has to mean something.”

“Not according to CNN this morning,” Alana replied. “They said the scientific world has taken all the mystery out of the event. Supposedly a volcano eruption caused the appearance of a blue moon—and some green sunsets. Krakatoa back in...1883, I think they said. So the other references that go back another couple of hundred years could well have been due to equally logical coincidences. But, hey, if it will make you happy, I’ll gladly ask our fellow insomniac if he’s a galactic visitor here to correct the last half-dozen mathematical errors in calculating the end of the world. That’s our job, right? Leave no question unanswered.”

Bunny sighed. “Oh, Ally, you don’t usually make fun of me the way the others do. And where’s your sense of romance? You like music. You know musicians were referencing the blue moon in song forever.”

“And you know that I don’t listen to Elvis,” Alana replied, feeling the pinch of a tension headache coming on. “Who, by the way, also offered his services to Nixon—or was it J. Edgar—to be an agent for the U.S. Give me a break, Bunny.”

“Not just Elvis,” Bunny replied in her most little-girl voice. “Mr. Richard Rogers. You like Broadway.”

“I like beer and bourbon, too. Unfortunately, I’m on duty.” At Bunny’s prolonged silence—obviously due to wounded feelings—Alana lifted her gaze to the heavens again. “Okay, okay, I’m going to make an effort...after all, it has been a while since I’ve had the cheap thrill of frisking a total stranger.”

“Now, you stop,” the dispatcher demanded. “For all you know, he could be suffering from a broken heart. Maybe he’s been somehow led here to be your guy.”

Alana had heard enough. “Listen, Sherlock—”

“What does he look like?”

“Bunny,” Alana said, tone pleading, “I’m too far away from him to tell, and you know the lighting isn’t great over here.”

“Well, go find out before he goes and does something you might both regret for the rest of your lives.”