Coming Home for Christmas: Christmas Angel / Unexpected Gift / Navy Joy. Lindsay McKenna

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      To my Italian chef friend, Giovanni Scorzo-Andreoli. I’ve been to Italy and I know the food,

      which is to die for. It was such a delight to find real Italian food in Scottsdale, Arizona! My thanks to Pamela Kimbrough and Vesna Ajic, my lunch buddies, for finding this Italian jewel and the many wonderful meals we share there together. www.andreoli-grocer.com.

Dear Reader,

      It was a delight and honor to be part of this very special Christmas anthology for several reasons. I want to thank Birgit Davis-Todd, Senior Executive Editor, for allowing this project to become a reality, and especially for asking Mills & Boon writers who are military vets to write the military romance novellas you will read in this book.

      I was in the U.S. Navy as an AG3 (weather forecaster) and pioneered the military genre in 1983 with Captive of Fate (Silhouette Special Edition). My other two sister writers, Delores Fossen, U.S. Air Force, and Geri Krotow, U.S. Navy, are also military vets, so the readers are getting the real deal. The novellas will have a uniqueness that no one else can produce because we were in the military and understand how it works from the inside out. We’re able to lend an insider’s knowledge to the novellas as a result.

      With the drawdown and our heroic military men and women finally coming home from Afghanistan, it makes our stories all the more heartrending and poignant. Delores, Geri and I know what it’s like to be stationed somewhere else in the world when the holidays hit. And it’s a very lonely time for everyone because of the separation involved. Christmas is the single most important holiday a military person yearns to be home for and celebrate. And so often it doesn’t happen. The sacrifices our military people make are many.

      To our military personnel, thank you for your service, your hours alone overseas, so far away from your home and family. And equally, let’s praise those wives/husbands and children who also make those sacrifices in different ways when their loved one is so far away from them. It’s hard on everyone. Just know that you are not forgotten by any of these military women vets and authors here at Mills & Boon.

      Hooyah!

      Lindsay McKenna

CHAPTER ONE

      SNOW TWISTED, TURNED and sparkled around Kyle Anderson as he eased out of the rental car. He closed the door and thrust his hands deep into the pockets of his leather bomber jacket. The cold snowflakes landed in his hair, slid across his jacket and melted upon touching his face as he slowly walked toward the White Sulphur Springs Ranch house. The wind was inconstant and he hunched his shoulders, hearing his combat boots crunching in the foot of snow across the graveled parking area.

      His heart squeezed with anticipation and worry. Anna Campbell, the woman he loved and had walked away from, had been in a serious auto accident two weeks ago. She’d been in a coma, though now was recovering at home.

      Kyle had been notified only three days ago because his SEAL team had been out on a two-week mission. He didn’t think twice before leaving to see her.

      His mouth tightened and he opened the creaking white picket-fence gate. Snow had covered the bright red tiles he had helped place there as a ten-year-old. Kyle had grown up with Anna on her parents’ ten-thousand-acre cattle ranch. There were so many good memories here. He halted for a moment on the covered sidewalk, looking around.

      The sun was setting, the sky a light gray. He could see the sharp pointed tips of the evergreens behind the massive two-story log house. To his left were three large red barns. To his right СКАЧАТЬ