A Town Called Christmas. Carrie Alexander

      

      On a long loop of ribbon, a clump of mistletoe dangled from the ceiling. He reacted instantly

      But while Mike had the honed reflexes of a fighter pilot, Merry had a head start. The cold air made his lungs seize, but he got the words out. “Don’t you want…me to…kiss you?”

      She frowned. “Not with my parents pushing us together so obviously. Not with you leaving in only a week. Not when we’re both pressured by the circumstances.”

      He dropped the timbre of his voice to a conspiratorial level that was only partly joking. “What are these circumstances you speak of?”

      She blinked. “You don’t know?”

      “Nick told me lots of things, including that you and the guy you lived with split up recently. Is that what you mean? Are you broken-hearted?”

      “I’m not broken-hearted,” she whispered. “But I am…”

      “Eminently kissable,” he said, and gathered her into his arms so she couldn’t run away again. He took her mouth with certainty. After a moment he deepened the kiss and dropped his hands to her waist.

      Ding. A bell went off in his head. Plink. The penny dropped. Click. Pieces came together.

      “Meredith.” She looked straight at him, nodding a little. “You’re pregnant.”

       ABOUT THE AUTHOR

      A lifelong Michigander, Carrie Alexander has been writing for more than a decade, garnering two RITA® Award nominations and a Romantic Times BOOKreviews career achievement award along the way. At Christmas she indulges her artistic side by spending too many hours wrapping gifts, creating birch-bark wreaths and decorating sugar cookies.

      Dear Reader,

      A town called Christmas actually exists. It’s located near Lake Superior, on highway M-28 in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. Giant Mr and Mrs Claus signs welcome visitors to the Christmas mall, while the town’s post office hand-cancels Christmas cards sent from around the country. Though my version of Christmas, Michigan, has been fictionalised to include the tree farm of the heroine’s family, the Parade of Lights and a tavern named the Christmas Cheer, the essence of the rugged, can-do spirit remains true to life.

      I hope you find a little quiet time during your own busy holiday season to enjoy Merry and Mike’s story.

      Happy holidays!

       Carrie

      PS Visit my website at www.CarrieAlexander.com for Christmas cookie recipes and news bout future projects.

      A Town Called Christmas

      CARRIE ALEXANDER

       www.millsandboon.co.uk

      To my father:

      Christmas-tree seller, ski jumper

      and storyteller extraordinaire

      PROLOGUE

      LIEUTENANT COMMANDER Michael Kavanaugh relished the crucial seconds of the strike fighter’s final approach to the aircraft carrier. For that brief time, he had nothing else occupying his mind. His sorry excuse for a personal life vanished. All that mattered were his years of flight experience—from the first day of ground school through combat sorties to making just one more successful trip.

      He entered the traffic pattern at two hundred and fifty knots, flying up the wake of the ship with his tailhook down, and completed a brisk break turn and deceleration. Landing gear and flaps extended.

      A red indicator light blinked on his instrument panel. Too fast. He pitched nose up, passing the ship’s port side now. A turn to final approach, hand on throttle, looking for the “meatball,” the colored-light array that was his optical landing aid. The orange meatball was centered, indicating an optimum glide slope. One clipped radio announcement and response from the landing signal officer and he was good to go.

      Final approach. Every thought, every sensation, narrowed to an arrow point of concentration. The small, rapid corrections he made to maintain the ideal angle were automatic.

      The plane hit the deck with a solid thump. Mike jammed full throttle in anticipation of a bolter—where the tailhook bounced past the ship’s arrestor wires despite a perfect approach—but the hook caught and he was safely aboard.

      He exhaled. That was it. The last “E” ticket ride of the day.

      Still high on the rush, he looked to a yellow-shirted crew member for directions to taxi the Rhino to its parking spot.

      Afterward, still in his green flight suit, Mike reported to his home away from home, the Blue Knight squadron’s ready room. The room was outfitted with rows of assigned chairs, a television and other amenities, along with the banners and crest of the squadron. Grades for the day’s approaches would be posted, but that wasn’t his present focus.

      He exchanged greetings with a couple of pilots before settling into his padded chair, wishing that just once there might be some privacy. It was a futile wish, but there’d been nothing else for him, lately.

      With grim resolution, he reached into an inside pocket, feeling the strain where the shoulder harness had bruised his collarbone. The letter he withdrew was already familiar in his hand, even though he’d received it only a few days ago, four months in to the cruise. He had every word memorized, but then that had been an easy task. The letter was short and concise, as if Denise hadn’t wanted to waste any more time or words on the breakup of their lengthy engagement.

      Mike unfolded the letter. Reading it again was like prodding an aching tooth with his tongue. He did it over and over to see if it had stopped hurting.

      Soon enough, it would. Because even though the news had hit him in the gut like a swallow of Applejack, Denise was right. There was no great love lost between them, only injured pride.

      The letter was dated the twenty-fourth of May.

       Dear Michael,

      You must already know what I’m going to write. I heard it in your voice the last time we talked. We haven’t really been in love for a long time now.

      That doesn’t mean I’m not sorry to do this. You’ll take it as a failure, but you shouldn’t. It’s more my fault than yours. I just didn’t know how lonely it would be, waiting for you to come back. Although, to be brutally honest, there were times you seemed a thousand miles away even when you were here.

      What I see now is that my feelings for you aren’t strong enough to take the frequent separations of military life. I doubt yours are, either.

      So I can’t marry you. I’m sorry.

      I’ll always remember you and the good times we had, but I know that this is the right thing to do. And you believe in doing the right thing, don’t you? That’s practically your mantra.

      Maybe one day we’ll meet again, in happier circumstances.

       Yours truly,

       Denise

      CHAPTER ONE

      “ARE YOU CERTAIN we’re not at the North Pole?” Michael surveyed the frigid landscape beyond the ice-encrusted windows of the rental car. After his deployment to the Persian Gulf earlier that year, he was familiar with loneliness and deprivation, but he’d never been to a place as cold and isolated as this before.

      The strange new world was nearly colorless. Out of the flannel sky, fat, lazy snowflakes spiraled toward the windshield in random loops and whirls. A frosty two-lane highway