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.”

Alana decided the only thing that she was regretting at the moment was reporting the situation when she did. To heck with procedure, she should have just gone and checked things out, then radioed her findings afterward. “Consider me gone. You hold off drafting an engagement announcement for the newspaper until I at least introduce myself, okay?”

“What I am going to do is notify Ed for backup. It’s been a while since we’ve had a stranger come through town.”

Now she remembered why they cut her a check every two weeks? “Barbara Jayne Dodd—cease and desist.” The woman’s mindset could go from softhearted romance writer to police-procedural novelist faster than a career perp could blame someone else for his problems. No wonder she wasn’t published yet; she was all over the map with her feelings and focus. A person would have to be schizophrenic to keep up with her.

But Alana did sympathize to a degree. Oak Grove, population 3,900, was a challenge to her, too. The town hierarchy claimed it could barely justify the police force they had—especially around raise time—and yet protected the top tier that officiated over criminal behavior, so that things like drug trafficking and subsequent related crimes couldn’t be crushed, only minimally controlled. As a result, Alana was often accused of being an adrenaline junkie herself and just “looking for trouble.” That said, she wasn’t about to let what was probably a simple 11-94, Pedestrian Stop, get turned into something that could cost the chief another prescription for his ulcer.

“Will you please let Ed have his donut break?” she told Bunny. “With Sue Ann out of town visiting their daughter and new grandbaby, this is the only time he doesn’t get his clothes checked for sugar-glaze crumbs. If I think there’s a need to bring him in on this, you’ll be the first to know.”

Signing off, she exited her white patrol car with the bold red-and-blue writing on the side, and angled south beyond the vehicle a few yards in order not to approach the man from the rear and startle him. As much as she wanted to rein in their dispatcher’s imagination, she wasn’t about to drop her guard. Aided by the very moon that had Bunny sounding as though a serial Lothario might be on the loose, Alana saw that the man continued to sit quietly, leaning forward to rest his forearms on his knees, staring unblinkingly at the fast-flowing creek. Unless he was deaf, drugged or otherwise hearing impaired, he had to have heard her pull up behind him, and could still hear the patrol car’s engine continue to idle.

Usually no more than a dozen feet wide, the creek was now at least twice that. Nevertheless, as she’d attested to Bunny, the stranger was not in harm’s way yet; Alana could confirm that from her new vantage point. Also, so far, she didn’t think she knew him. He was wearing a dark-colored T-shirt—she was now guessing it was olive-green due to the duffel bag between his feet—jeans and athletic shoes. If he was a drifter, there was nothing shabby about him, and given his buzzed haircut and lean but toned build, her first guess was that he was military, or at least recently discharged. A veteran on his way home? He sure didn’t seem in any hurry. With that in mind, she also had to consider the spike in suicide rates due to veterans suffering from post-traumatic stress. Then there was the AWOL possibility, another reason for sticking to back roads and night travel to keep out of sight.

In the mysterious blue-white light of Bunny’s moon, his hair color was difficult to define, and the close haircut didn’t help. It looked at once ashy, then brown, but not as dark as her own. One thing was for certain: with each step, the closer view of his profile discounted Latino, Native American or Middle Eastern ethnicity. In fact, he could be Kevin Bacon’s kid brother.

“Sir? Everything okay here?”

At first the man acted as though he hadn’t heard her, but after another few seconds, he rolled his head, chin leading, to inspect the intrusion on his privacy. Was that sweeping glance and subtle shake of his head for a woman being in uniform, for the fact that she’d had the audacity to approach him by herself, or what? Whatever his thinking, he returned his attention to the water.

“Am I breaking some ordinance, Officer?”

“Technically, not at all,” Alana replied, allowing a touch of humor to enter her voice. “But at this hour, our four-legged scavengers tend to assume that this trail is their territory. If one happens to confront you, I’d strongly advise you to voluntarily surrender any food you’re in possession of—especially if it’s pizza or hot dogs from the convenience store down the block.”

She followed that comment by a nod toward the brightest lights in town. It earned her an “are you for real?” look.

“Here’s the thing,” Alana said in response to that. She was now confident that she had his full attention and that he wasn’t high on something. “It’s after one in the morning and it’s obvious that you’re not here to fish, or throw change into the creek and make a wish. If by chance you have another plan less pleasant, it’s my responsibility to convince you to reconsider.”

That won her another disbelieving glance.

“Oh, yes, sir, I’m serious,” she said, although her tone remained amiable. “And look at that current, the dirty foam against the bank, and the litter accumulating in the tall weeds. No telling what else is in that water. Do you really want to deal with an angry woman having to face an admittedly overdue tetanus shot, not to mention getting her hair messed up?”

While his expression said, You and what crane? he replied, “I’m not planning anything. I was just taking a break. Thinking. Have politicians figured out a way to put restrictions on that, too?”

“Rumor has it something is tucked away in an upcoming city council bill.” But Alana was relieved that the man could form such a coherent sentence. “I don’t recognize you as a local.”

“I’m not. Well, once. Not anymore.”

“So you’re passing through to touch bases with someone before heading elsewhere?”

“Probably.”

Alana could visualize Bunny scribbling down this dialogue for some work in progress, but she was finding it as enjoyable as scraping lint out of a dryer vent. “What might change your mind?” When he didn’t seem to want to answer, Alana tried a different angle. “My institutionally disrespected female intuition is telling me that you’re military. Reassure me that you’re not AWOL.”

“Officer,” he enunciated, “I’m retired and the least of anyone’s worries.”

Ordinarily, that would suffice for her—except for the defeated and world-weary tone in his voice. “I appreciate that, sir. I’m Officer Alana Anders, Oak Grove P.D. And you are?”

It took him a good while, but finally he offered, “Mack.”

Alana could start to feel the roots of her hair follicles aching as she mentally visualized pulling them out of her head. “You’ll have to do a little better than that.”

“Graves.”

She had to lock her knees to keep from taking a step back. “Mack Graves.” Her heart went into such chaos, she couldn’t help but take several deep breaths for the skidding and colliding going on behind her ribs. Especially when she started to see something familiar about his face. “Fred’s Mackenzie?”

“Just Mack. Mackenzie is my mother’s maiden name and it was hell getting through school with it, let alone dealing with the ridicule in boot camp.” The look he added suggested that if she remembered nothing else, she shouldn’t forget to avoid calling him that again. “But, yeah, Fred is my father. I angled down this way to see if he wanted to try again in the relationship department. I suspect if you know Fred, you know warm and fuzzy aren’t the first descriptions that come to mind.”

Despite her training, Alana momentarily struggled with deeper emotions, and not only because Mack Graves had used the wrong tense. To her, Fred had been those things—although, she would allow, not to everyone.

“You have been away for some time.” She wished she could delay telling him the bad news, but she couldn’t. “We were trying to find you. I’m sorry to say—so sorry to tell you—that your father passed away last month.”

After another long look, the unusually self-contained man nodded once, twice, then simply hung his head and stared at the duffel bag between his feet.

Alana had no problem picking up on the shock and turmoil going on inside him. She knew all about such emotions...and much more.

So the prodigal son had returned. Fred’s ex-wife, Dina, had left him years ago—and had taken their eight-year-old boy with her. She had hated small-town living and Fred’s iron grip on their finances. Word had it that the boy had returned once, as a teenager during a summer break, but had left soon afterward, never to return. The gossip mill concluded that Fred had been abusive at the worst, and a cold miser at best. At the time, Alana had only started grade school and was preoccupied with horses and flying, the latter a passion her older brother had infected her with, so she had remained blissfully oblivious to all of that. It was only later that she’d come to learn how inaccurate the gossips were. That wasn’t to say that Fred hadn’t been a disciplinarian, and frugal, but what had he been dealing with in a boy who no longer remembered, let alone respected, him?

“I’m sorry for your loss,” she said, hoping he didn’t catch the hitch in her voice that had gone husky. He didn’t need to know that the loss of Fred was hard on her, too. “Although I can see the resemblance to your father, I’d appreciate seeing some ID. Then you can come with me to the station. There are papers you need to sign before we hand things over to you.”

“He was cremated?”

“Yes, but...” Alana hesitated in telling him everything yet, so she pointed across the street to the city cemetery. “We ended up placing the urn over there. Under the big oak at the northwest corner between his parents, your grandparents. I was talking about the keys to the ranch—house, truck, barn, things like that. You’re his sole beneficiary. That’s the other reason that we’ve been trying to locate you.”

“I see.”

After the slow, enigmatic response, Mack pulled out his billfold and took out his driver’s license. Despite her certainty that he was who he claimed to be, Alana still accepted it with her usual caution when dealing with strangers, then used her LED penlight to see that it was a current one from Virginia. The address was an apartment and she would bet anything he no longer considered it home. She also noted that he was born in mid-February, thirty-eight years ago. The photo was clearly the man before her, maybe ten pounds heavier, with fewer signs of life and its stresses. Returning the flashlight to her pocket, she tucked away the ID, as well.

“Okay, I’ll hang on to this to make a copy at the station. Grab your bag and let’s go. Afterward, I’ll drive you out to the ranch.”

“You don’t have to do that. I guess I remember enough to find it myself.”

While he hadn’t been out of the service long enough to go soft, on foot a relatively healthy person might make Fred’s ranch by the first hint of daylight. Such a trek was neither safe at this hour, nor would it be considerate. “Fred was more than a neighbor and friend,” she said, by way of explanation. “He was like family to me. It’s the least I can do.”

As Mack Graves put his duffel bag in the backseat of the patrol car and eased into the passenger side, Alana settled in the driver’s seat. “Which branch were you in?”

“Marines.”

Then he could definitely make the hike faster than most people, but she still wasn’t going to allow that. “Were you in Iraq or Afghanistan?”

“Both.”

Whoa, Alana thought. “Glad you made it back—and in one piece.”

He turned away to look out the passenger window, but she took no offense; after all, she had just given him some life-altering news. What’s more, not everyone appreciated the “thank you for your service” attitude. She’d concluded more that some just wanted to fulfill their obligation and get on with their lives. On the other hand, a simple “Thanks” in return wouldn’t rupture his spleen.

“I’m not trying to be chatty.”

“I’m glad to hear that.”

Lifting her eyebrows at the borderline-rude response, Alana knew there was no way she was going to be quiet and circumspect now. “Ah. You’re the strong, silent type. Then you’d better prepare yourself for Bunny. She’s our night-shift dispatcher. I’m quite shy, in comparison. In fact, I became a cop to force myself to be more outgoing.”

She felt his sidelong look, but kept her eyes on the road. None of what she’d said was accurate, but she didn’t care. He’d made up his mind about her from the moment she approached him, and it irked that the news about Fred hadn’t softened his edges one bit.

“Doesn’t your family worry when you go out playing commando after dark?”

There it was, Alana thought with a wry twist of her lips. The derision she’d felt from him at first glance. But if he thought he was going to make her cower, he’d misjudged her more than he could imagine.

“I don’t see any part of being a cop as playing,” she replied, maintaining her pleasant tone. “Security checks on strangers in the park included. And as far as family is concerned, Uncle Duke is it, all two-hundred-fifty pounds, six feet four of him. Since he’s the chief of police, and before that was a state trooper, and before that a marine himself, if he didn’t feel that I’d been fully trained to do my job, I wouldn’t be sitting here talking to you right now.”

Mack’s soft groan and the way he dropped his head against the headrest had her lips curling into a satisfied smile.

What she failed to add to all that was that Duke hated that she’d become a police officer and had been doing his best to marry her off or otherwise get her off the force from her first day on the job. The only thing that helped keep him semiquiet about it was the knowledge that if he didn’t allow her to be a member of their hometown department, she would go elsewhere...or take on a career that was even more demanding and dangerous.

“Don’t worry, gyrene,” she drawled, using the marines’ favorite expression for themselves. Uncle Duke had told her about how it had evolved back in World War II. The hard-fighting U.S. soldiers had been dubbed GIs, but marines considered themselves tougher yet, and wanted to be called marines. So the term GI and marine became gyrene. “You’re not in trouble with him...or me, for that matter. Attitudes like yours are as common as scales on a fish.”

She pulled into the station located on the other side of the cemetery—barely a half mile from the park. Parking by the front sidewalk in the otherwise-empty lot, she invited Mack to keep his duffel bag where it was, then she escorted him inside.

“Ally—darn it!” Bunny declared the second they came through the door. “You turned off your radio, didn’t you? And you didn’t radio back. I was about to call Ed even though you said not to.”

The strawberry-blonde with the corkscrew curls and baby voice leaped to her feet exposing more of a zaftig body stuffed in a half-size-too-small blue shirt and jeans. It was a good try at claiming indignation, but Alana knew the divorcée, who served as a civilian clerk and dispatcher, had already spotted Mack and was really showing off her five-foot-two frame in case he wasn’t into “brunette amazons,” as she’d dubbed her.

“Buns, the door was unlocked” was all Alana said to the woman who was six years her senior. But the look she sent her reminded her of department policy when no “badges” were on the premises.

“Ally.” Bunny shot her a look that went from withering to pleading before offering Mack a dimpled smile. “Is everything okay?”

“Everything is fine,” Alana intoned. Then she added evenly, “This is Mack Graves, Fred’s son.”

“Oh! Aw.” Bunny’s big, brown calf eyes went soft with sympathy. “Condolences for your loss.”