Harlequin Superromance November 2014 - Box Set 2 of 2: Christmas at the Cove\Navy Christmas\Until She Met Daniel (49 page)

Whidbey Island
Christmas Eve, 1945

“C
AREFUL
, D
OTTIE
. Y
OU
know the ornaments shouldn’t get too close to the lights.” Dottie had exclaimed “ouch” several times as her fingers hit the brightly colored bulbs that were strung on the tree. She knew they were hot, but Sarah wasn’t so sure she understood the need for care with the paper chain.

“I’m careful, Momma. Can I hang the angel Daddy made us?”

“Sure.” Henry and Sarah replied in unison, and Sarah reveled in the sound. They were Dottie’s parents again—together.

“Do we have tinsel?” Henry stood in the middle of the living room, at a loss as to where he fit into the routine that his wife and daughter had established over the past several Christmases.

“I’m sorry, honey.” Sarah walked over and hugged him. He kissed the top of her head and she nestled her cheek against his rough flannel shirt. Since their kitchen adventure, they’d made love at every possible opportunity, and gave each other meaningful glances when they weren’t alone. It was the honeymoon they’d never had, the exploration many couples would be bored with by now.

The few remaining couples who hadn’t gone through a war...

“What are you sorry about?” He stroked her hair as they watched Dottie bounce between the ornament box and the tree, hanging each decoration with care.

“You need your Christmas job, too. I put the lights on the tree, and Dottie hangs the ornaments. You want to do the tinsel, which I have right here.” She pulled away and rustled through the seemingly empty box on the sofa, filled with crumpled newspapers that held their glass, paper and tin ornaments the other eleven months of the year.

She felt the sharp edges of the aluminum strips and she pulled her hand out, laughing. “Found it!”

“I suppose there’s a special way to put the tinsel on.” Sarah smiled at Henry’s observation. She did have her own way of doing things and it was a definite adjustment to allow him back into her carefully ordered life.

It was silly. But if she let Henry all the way in, let him take some of the chores off her shoulders, it made her afraid. Afraid he’d have to leave her again, and that she’d never get back to normal.

“Where did you go, Sarah?” His hands were on her shoulders. Usually it was Henry who drifted off.

“Nowhere important. Are you ready to hang the tinsel?”

“Not yet. Tell me, sweetheart. Tell me everything.”

“Oh, dear. It’s not very Christmassy of me, but I keep thinking I’m going to lose you again. That the minute I believe you’re back—really back, here, and safe—the Army’s going to call you up for another mission.”

“Come here.” He wrapped his arms around her and murmured sweet reassurances in her ear. “I’m staying right here, darling. I’m not going anywhere.”

* * *

“A
RE
YOU
GOING
to have to go back to the war, Daddy?”

He looked down at his daughter—his daughter!—whose eyes matched his own and whose expression was straightforward like Sarah’s was when he’d first met her.

“No, pumpkin. I’m here to stay. I’m not going anywhere. The war’s over, remember?”

Dottie nodded. “Good. Mrs. Albrecht says that we are lucky children to grow up when the war is over.”

“Mrs. Albrecht’s partially right.” Her fourth-grade teacher couldn’t possibly understand the number of children who weren’t as lucky as Dottie. Who’d lost their fathers, brothers and uncles to the war. He’d even heard of nurses who’d died in the war, right next to the men they served.

His jaw muscles tightened. A distraction was in order. “I made you something, Dottie.”

“What, Daddy?”

“Let’s see.” He made a big show of pulling the tiny plane out of his front pocket where he’d placed it last night when he’d been in the shed.

“Here you go!”

“It’s a little airplane! With Santa Claus flying it!”

“Yes, that’s right. It’s a P-40, the plane I flew. Do you see the name written on its side?”

“D-O-T-T-I-E. It’s my name, isn’t it?”

“Yes, it is.”

“I thought Santa Claus flew his sleigh with the reindeer.” The twinkle in her eyes let him know that she was well aware of who Santa was and exactly how her gifts found their way under her tree.

“He does, Dottie. But sometimes he needs help, especially down south where it gets very warm. He has a squadron of airplanes he can hop into whenever he wants. He loads them up with toys for good little girls and boys and then delivers them.”

Dottie smiled, a smug look on her face. “Nice story, Daddy.”

“Yes, it’s an old one, and well-known.” He chuckled. “Will you do me a favor and hang the ornament?”

“Sure thing, Daddy!” She looked like a little fairy, alighting on the coffee table in front of the sofa and then leaning over toward the tree. She hung the tiny P-40 on the highest branch she could reach, in the very front.

He tried to absorb every second as best he could. Dottie had grown so much in his absence, yet he had an inkling that she’d be grown up and starting her own family in a blink.

If only the war years had gone as quickly as the past weeks had.

“You’re going to spoil her, Henry.” Sarah spoke from her rocking chair, the rocker he’d made her for a wedding present. He’d never forget how beautiful she’d looked sitting in it while she nursed newborn Dottie, or how lovely she was tonight as she knitted some mysterious last-minute Christmas gift. She refused to tell him or Dottie what the object was, or who it was for. It was mostly hidden in a canvas bag she’d fashioned from flour bags, with only the top of the brown wool visible as she worked row after row.

He walked over to her, knelt down and cupped her face in his hands.

“I plan on spoiling you both for the rest of our lives. Together.” He kissed her.

“Ewww.”

Dottie was growing up indeed.

Henry didn’t allow Dottie’s disgust at her parents’ affection to stop him. He didn’t lift his lips from Sarah’s until he was sure she’d be as anxious for bedtime as he was.

“Merry Christmas, darling.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

Whidbey
Island
Christmas Eve

“Y
OU
REALLY
ARE
going to pack up and leave this house, Serena?” Emily looked at her over her mug of eggnog. The Christmas tree twinkled behind her and Serena tried to forget her memories of Jonas helping them hang ornaments.

He’d helped with their entire Christmas. Until he’d become possessed by the Grinch, damn it.

“I don’t have a choice, Em. But don’t worry, we’re staying here. I couldn’t leave Whidbey now if I wanted to. It’s where Pepé and I have healed.” Until her current broken heart, but that was another matter.

Emily shook her head. “I can’t believe Jonas didn’t have the b—”

Serena shushed her with one hand held up in front of her. “Pepé’s right here!”

“Mom, is Jonas coming over for Christmas? He said he would.”

First strike to her heart.

Damn you, Jonas Scott.

“No, honey, he’ll be busy with his own family, and besides, we have to get ready for Santa and tomorrow morning. Do you still want cinnamon rolls for breakfast?”

“Mmm, yes!”

Ronald barked.

His tail thumped the floor.

The doorbell rang.

Emily looked at her, frowning. “Expecting someone?”

“No.” As Serena replied, she got up from the easy chair and tried to see through the door’s beveled glass. All she could make out in the dark was a red blob.

They’d missed the firehouse delivery of candy canes; maybe the firefighters had come back.

“Pepé, see if there’s a fire truck in the driveway.” Meanwhile she made sure she had her fireplace poker in hand. Christmas Eve didn’t mean anything to drug addicts or criminals.

Thump, thump.

“Coming. Ronald, stay.”

Serena opened the front door a crack at first, careful and wary.

“Ho, ho, ho!”

Santa Claus, in full red velvet apparel, complete with a snowy white beard, stood on her porch. She opened the door wider.

Eyes as blue as Texas bluebonnets gleamed at her.

“I understand there’s a little boy here named Pepé.”

“There is! It’s me!” Pepé squeezed between Serena and Ronald. Ronald, damn that dog, had rolled on his back, waiting for a belly rub from “Santa.”

“Santa, I thought we made it clear that...that there’s nothing left—”

“Let Santa in out of the cold, Serena,” Emily interrupted her. “Pepé, go get some of those cookies you frosted with your mom. I’ll get Santa some eggnog.”

“I think Santa likes milk, Auntie Em.” Pepé was serious about Santa’s needs.

“He can have a little bit of eggnog, I think. It’ll probably do him good before his big ride of the night.” Emily laughed at her double entendre as she urged Pepé into the kitchen with her.

Serena allowed Santa to enter, wondering if they could hide his real identity from Pepé. Pepé’s feelings were paramount.

“Trust me, Serena. You have no reason to, but trust me.”

His eyes were on her and she couldn’t look anywhere else. “I burned the land deeds.”

“You didn’t!”

“I don’t need your land, Jonas.”

“I know, you need...” He looked over his shoulder toward the kitchen and she followed his gaze.

Emily and Pepé were mysteriously gone. Vanished.

“Did Em know you were doing this?”

He took her hands. “You need me, Serena. Pepé needs me. Admit it.”

She stared at him, speechless.

“Wait, let me do this over.” He took off his hat and beard, and shrugged out of his red coat. Jonas placed all the items in her small coat closet, out of sight.

Jonas, in a thermal shirt and jeans, stood in front of her, his eyes blazing and the smile on his face incredibly irritating.

“This isn’t funny, Jonas. Pepé’s going to come back out here and wonder where Santa is. And you’re leading him on.”

He took her hands again and pulled her toward him.

“I’m not leading him on—or you, Serena. I am so sorry to have put us both through my angst. I’ve never been so deeply in love before, and I didn’t know how to deal with it, especially when the woman I love was basically thrown into my life by Dottie.”

He knelt down and pulled a box out of his front pocket.

“I love you, Serena. I don’t give a damn where we live, whether it’s in my town house or a cottage by the beach. I only want to be with you. Will you marry me?”

Oh, no. He wasn’t getting off this easily.

“What about the house?”

“Do you mean
your
house?”

“How much moving around will we have to do, with the Navy?”

“Not much. Maybe none. I’m a Navy man, so I can’t promise anything on that score until I’m out.”

“Will you come to Texas with me to meet my family?”

“Yes.”

“Then, yes, Jonas, I’ll marry you.”

Jonas stood up and placed the largest diamond she’d ever seen on her finger.

“This was Dottie’s mother’s. Your grandmother’s. Your grandfather did well after he came back from the war and he bought this for her when your father was born. Mary had it and Emily helped me figure out your ring size.”

Tears blurred her vision and Serena wiped away her tears with her sweater sleeves.

“I’m so happy, Jonas.”

“I know. Me, too.”

He kissed her, then kissed her again. It was the best Christmas Eve. Ever.

“Hey, where’s Santa?”

“Sorry, I tried to keep him upstairs—” Emily’s words reached Serena’s ears but she didn’t want to stop kissing Jonas.

Jonas lifted his lips from hers but maintained eye contact. Pure love and the promise of Christmas future, shone in his gaze.

“Come here, Pepé. Santa’s coming back later, but first, your mom and I have something to tell you.”

* * * * *

Keep reading for an excerpt from ALL THAT GLITTERS by Mary Brady.

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CHAPTER ONE

A
DRIANA
B
ONACORDA
gripped
the steering wheel of her rental car until her aching knuckles blanched white. Rain made it nearly impossible to see more than a few car lengths in front of her and the wind rocked the tiny compact. Addy prayed she could stave off the dark threats coming at her from all angles long enough to get to Bailey’s Cove, Maine, in one piece.

“Stay away from the coast, folks” had been the last bit of coherence she had gotten from the car’s radio. All she heard now was squawks and dead air.

Her phone still worked because it started ringing the raucous tones she’d assigned to her younger sister, Savanna.

“Hello, Savanna, sorry, warning, the signal may break up.”

“Where are you?”

“I’m in Maine after Zachary Hale.” Addy peered through the wind-driven rain searching for her turnoff.

“That’s what I called about. Hey, what’s he doing in Maine?”

“He’s headed to ground and I hope to get to him before he’s in hiding.”

“Why isn’t he in jail?”

Addy harrumphed. “It doesn’t work that way in the world of high finance.”

“I end up with nothing and some fat cats get rich. And he gets off without any punishment?” Savanna almost squealed the last few words in indignation.

“Calm down. During the huge Ponzi scandal, it was early December when the FBI got involved and early March, fifteen months later, before any jail time began to be served, and that scandal involved over fifty billion dollars.”

“Not fair. Just not fair.”

“Savanna you must have called for something besides a rant about Hale and Blankenstock.”

“I guess you just answered my question. I wanted to know how you were doing at getting Hale to fess up.” Savanna sounded sad. Her life was a wreck and she was newly unemployed.

“And you need more money.”

“I do. I hate to ask but can you lend me another hundred? I want to—”

A sign, big and green, loomed off to the side of the road heralding her exit and then vanished into the downpour.

She could barely see the road she was driving on and her sister was a distraction on a good day. “Savanna, I gotta go. I’ll have some funds transferred as soon as I can.”

As soon as I see if I have enough,
she thought.

“I need to take the girls shopping. They didn’t get any new clothes for school and now they’re on sale cheap and they really need them.”

“I get it. Yes, I’ll do it when I can. Bye.”

Addy thumbed off the phone and tossed it onto the seat beside her. She squeezed her already hunched shoulders tighter and concentrated hard on seeing through the rain.

The exit ramp popped into view and she braked hard, rocked in the wind and dove off the nearly deserted interstate onto a narrow two-lane road. She had known this drive wasn’t going to be easy in the remnants of a hurricane, but some things had to be done.

Moving closer to the coast, deeper into the fringes of a storm whipping up the Atlantic Ocean, made for bad driving, but maybe not a bad day. There was a pot of gold at the end of this rainstorm, maybe even a Pulitzer Prize. At the very least she’d get a stab at retrieving her pride.

A sudden blast of wind sliced down hard across the road trying to take her small car with it. Addy answered with a fierce jerk of the wheel.

“Please, let me get there.” The sound of her voice eerily muted in the din coming from the outside. “That guy needs to pay.”

As she moved slowly down the road, the windshield wipers beat wildly at the sheets of rain, giving her occasional glimpses of the wreck and ruin going on outside. A branch skittered across the road and a river ran where the shoulder of the road should have been.

This storm, a has-been hurricane, was to brush the coast as it headed north toward the good folk of Nova Scotia.

Well, it was “brushing” hard, Addy thought.

There had been a point when the weather forecasters wondered if Hurricane Harold would break records and head directly for the central coast of Maine. Luckily for the citizens of the rugged state, that was not going to happen.

Braving the storm, Addy felt a touch of the old Adriana Bonacorda. She had been tough and smart. She had needed to be in order to survive. Not every reporter would be daring enough to chase a story into the middle of Afghanistan, a rebel monk to his hideout in Nepal or a billionaire criminal into the fringes of a storm.

She jerked hard again on the wheel to avoid hitting a piece of siding or a door or whatever it was and then hissed out a breath as she brought the car back into her lane.

In addition to the radio warnings, a State Trooper had sternly advised her to stay away from the coast. She had the distinct feeling they would have arrested her for reckless something or other if she’d tried to drive in this weather in Massachusetts, but not here in Maine.

Desperation could make one nuts.

After her big disgrace, she had tried to get worthy stories under more sane circumstances. Instead of a scoop or a better angle, she had gotten scorn, and worse, derisive snickers from the other reporters at every news scene. When she had tried to defend herself online, the whole world was then alerted that she had put her heart and soul into one giant piece of fiction she had unwittingly called news.

She had been duped, an apt word for eager and stupid. Today she battled to recover
eager,
but
stupid
she’d left buried in the humiliation.

When the sign marking the turn off toward Bailey’s Cove flashed at her through a break in the rain she popped the wheel with the palm of her hand. “Yes.” She was going to make it. Maybe there were still lucky cards in her pile.

Just then a piece of debris plastered itself to her windshield and, for a terrifying moment of blindness, stuck to the wipers and refused to move away. When it finally flew off, she hunkered down with passion, renewed by luck, and after fifteen more minutes of concentration reached the town.

Bailey’s Cove, Maine, population fourteen-something-thousand, the wildly undulating sign read as she slowed the car to a crawl.

The low-slung buildings of small-town urban sprawl blinked in and out of view as she crept into the small fishing village in the late afternoon storm-filtered light. Some of the buildings had boarded-up windows. A few had sandbags. There were no lights anywhere.

A service station called O’Reilly’s had its large glass windows boarded up, but huge letters scrawled on the boards, OPEN and CALL. She supposed there was a phone number somewhere to be found, but she couldn’t see it for the rain.

These people had been preparing for a direct hit by the hurricane called Harold. Even though the storm was passing them by, they had not known until two days ago they were to be spared the brunt of it.

Addy peered out at the sealed-up buildings, wondering which ones had people inside. There had to be someone here who would refuse to leave and who could tell her where Zachary Hale would hide out. Nothing on the internet had narrowed it down to anything less than “somewhere near Bailey’s Cove, Maine.” In fact, Bailey’s Cove got no direct hits on the internet.

With this storm raging, Hale would think he was safe, sheltered from prying eyes.

Ha!

When a puddle nearly swallowed the compact car, Addy pulled onto the higher ground straddling the lanes. She stretched her beleaguered fingers and retrieved her mobile phone that had flown off the seat during one of her dodges.

She had a signal, but with the exception of her sister who needed money for school clothes, or makeup for herself if she found nothing she wanted to buy for the girls, she had no one to call.

Sad.

Silly.

Stupid.

Shut up,
she thought. None of those things mattered. They were the past. Intrepid. Hard-hitting. Totally inquisitive, she said back to the nagging voice inside her head.

After today, Adriana Bonacorda would be headed for the top again. And the frosting...her sister and all the others Hale had robbed would get a chance at recovering some of their losses.

The road continued to descend into town. Buildings appeared and disappeared through the windswept downpour. On the ocean side of the road, she spotted a small wooden church. Soaked and dark, the siding seemed to shudder, but that might have just been the strobe effects of the rain.

After a moment, Addy realized a woman stood in the arched doorway of the church. Her mop of hair swung wildly as she waved. A crazy woman, a comrade, a sister against the storm.

Addy checked for traffic. Nothing but rain. She intended to make a U-turn to question the woman, but when she looked across the street again, the doorway was empty.

Okay. Now she was imagining people. Maybe she was seeing herself in forty years. They both might be crazy and the woman had the same out-of-control mop, but the woman’s had been gray.

Keep driving,
she told herself, and she did. She had little alternative.

Scuffling with the wind, she eventually reached what seemed, by the age of the buildings, to be the center of the old town. More boarded-up and shuttered windows greeted her, their darkness almost a grimace.

At the corner, in front of a restaurant called Pirate’s Roost, a sign pointed to the harbor. A sliver of hope gleamed. Maybe that’s where the people were, trying to save their boats or piers or whatever seamen did in a storm.

As she crept several blocks down toward the harbor on what had become a torrent instead of a street, Addy could see she was right. Luck again or savvy? She hoped the latter. Two crews in rain slickers wrestled with boats as one crew tried to secure a boat they had already rescued from the water, the other struggled to pull one out onto the dock. Each small craft dithered dangerously in the wind as they worked.

All one of these people had to do was point her in the right direction and then she’d leave them to their task.

She let the car roll slowly toward the pier.

Once she found him in his hideaway, she’d get a reaction from the scum, swindler Zachary Hale, and if her luck still held, an interview. The whole interaction would likely be a series of bald-faced lies on his part, but it would give her starting points from which to tear this guy to the ground, kick him into the hole he’d dug with the pension funds and life savings of old ladies, blue-collar workers—and her widowed sister. Then Addy would cover him with the truth until he begged to return every dime he had left of his ill-gotten booty.

The trickle down from this story was the gravy. People were going to recoup some of their hard earned money. Retirees, pensioners, kids trying to pay off college loans might actually get a break. Nuns. And Savanna, her sister, who had thought she was on her way to a secure future.

This story would turn the tide for Addy and all the cheated.

Darn, but she was good, and people were going to realize the lies about her for what they were.

As if tired of her fanciful boasting, the bitsy car rolled to a stop on its own as it faced off against the wind.

The closest four-man crew of yellow rain-suited workers had managed to raise the pleasure craft from the ferocious water and pull it onto a boat rack with ropes. But they struggled to rescue it from the wild wind and secure it on the stand.

Addy left her fashionable fedora on the passenger seat, flipped up the hood of her lime-green Ilse Jacobsen rain jacket and snugged the zipper up under her chin. The car undulated in a scary shimmy as she leaped out and hurried toward a man holding a rope for all he was worth.

Halfway there, the wind whipped off the hood of her jacket, slapped her long, hyper-curly blond hair against her cheek and stole away her breath. Her steps faltered and she stopped.

Wet and chilled, she hauled her hood back on, but not before cold rain poured down the back of her neck and, as she leaned into the wind and managed to take another step—into her shoes.

These people were crazier than she was to be out here. These were just boats, pleasure boats, and not someone’s livelihood. And since the remains of Hurricane Harold were passing right by this little-known corner of the world, their efforts were probably unnecessary.

Forcing one foot and then the other, she struggled closer to the workers.

Several boats had already been hauled out and sat tethered in place with taught ropes. Still out in the harbor, hardy lobster boats strained and rocked at anchor, and one particularly large yacht looked as if it were ready to break free and crash everything into flotsam on its way inland. Some poor rich guy was about to be short one boat.

Zachary Hale, she hoped.

As she got within a few feet of the boat, the closest man clinging to the rope hollered above the rushing wind, “Lady, get out of here.”

“I need to ask you a question,” she shouted, and wasn’t sure her voice even got past the end of her nose until he wrapped the rope around one arm and pointed at the flapping overhead. Two identical red flags with black centers curled and snapped above them.

Hurricane! Even a landlubber like her knew the meaning of those flags. Marine warning flags for a hurricane.

Harold had beaten the odds and headed inland. The wind hammered at her as she stood immobile, wavering between the insanity of the storm and the lunacy her life had turned into.

She suddenly saw herself once again standing on a stage facing a jeering crowd at the university. When the booing started, she had thought it was a joke, and then as it continued, she expected rotten eggs, but it had been a more intellectual crowd, and all she got were death threats and promises of a lifelong ban from journalism.

The wind took another shot at her and she tensed her whole body. When she didn’t leave, the man waved her away with a jerk of his head, but it was another shout from him to “go away” that revved up her reporter mode.

She swiped at the rain running down her face and, when he turned in her direction, stepped forward.

“I just need to find Zachary Hale.” She screamed into the wind and it screamed right back at her.

“’Et.... ’Ell. ’Way.” The rising wind carried much of his shout off, but she got the gist.