Holiday Homecoming. Jillian Hart

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      Contents

      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

      Epilogue

      Chapter One

      November 23

      Disaster.

      Kristin McKaslin took one look at the snow-caked airplane window and groaned. She was doomed. That window had been only a little bit icy less than twenty minutes ago, when she’d looked up from her work. Now she couldn’t see through it, not that there was anything to see at this altitude and with the plane swinging in the turbulence.

      At least it gave her something to think about other than heading home to Montana. Thanksgiving was tomorrow, and that was both good and bad. She loved her sisters. She loved her parents. She loved going home to visit.

      What she wasn’t looking forward to was facing her mother’s disappointments. She lived too far away. She didn’t come home to visit enough. She wasn’t married. And she wasn’t married. Mom was doubly unhappy about that one.

      Just because she wasn’t married, it didn’t mean she was a failure, right?

      Right. So, why did it feel that way? And why was it such a big deal? A marriage certificate came with no guarantees, and as far as she could tell, it didn’t protect a person against heartbreak, disappointment and loneliness.

      It wasn’t as if Mom and Dad were ecstatic in their nearly forty years of marriage. But it wasn’t as if she could say that to Mom. She hated pretending, as if nothing had changed in their family, when everything had.

      That was the real reason she didn’t want to walk through the front door of her childhood home. It was too painful to think about.

      “Kristin McKaslin, is that you?”

      She studied the well-dressed man who sank into the empty seat across the aisle. He was good-looking with disheveled black hair and eyes a sharp aquamarine blue. He had a straight blade of a nose, high cheekbones and dimples cut into his cheeks. He was dressed in a casual outfit that shouted, “Money!”

      Nope, she didn’t know him, but wait, there was something familiar about him. But what?

      She didn’t know him from work, the gym or church—either in Seattle or in Montana. Still, there was something distinctive about that devastating smile, those dimples…and that strong jaw.

      Of course! She saw a flash of a boyish face with longer black hair standing before the podium at a high-school assembly. The image of a leaner, younger star running back whipping off his helmet after the final touchdown for the state championship. The caustic face of her mom’s best friend’s son, who wanted to be anywhere but stuck waiting in the car while their mothers talked on the sidewalk in town.

      “Ryan Sanders?” She couldn’t believe it. She blinked, and the remembered youthful image of his face blended with the older, wiser one staring back at her across the aisle. “It is you.”

      “The one and only. I look different, I know, everybody says so. I went and got respectable.”

      “You were always respectable.”

      “Nope, I wasn’t. You’re just being nice.” His cute lopsided grin had matured into a slow curve of a smile. “You look better, but the same. Still have your nose in a book.”

      “Guilty. I confess.”

      Those blue eyes, which could have been cold, sparkled. “That’s how I recognized you.”

      “I’m surprised you could see me over the seats. I’m still short.”

      “The word is ‘petite.’ I was bored СКАЧАТЬ