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  HOME FOR CHRISTMAS

  by Lizzie Shane

  Copyright © 2015 Lizzie Shane

  All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights reserved under copyright above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in, or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of the copyright owner and publisher of this book.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, brands, media and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Home for Christmas

  All she wants this Christmas is to get home and put this disastrous year behind her, but when Samantha Whitney boards her flight to Chicago she finds the man in the seat next to hers is none other than Jase MacGregor, her first love who shattered her heart last Christmas Eve.

  All he wants this Christmas is a second chance with the love of his life, but if Sam’s frosty reception is anything to go by, it’s going to take more than a few hours at thirty thousand feet for Jase to win back her heart.

  When a blizzard cancels their connecting flight, it looks like neither of them is going to get their Christmas wish, but with the help of a little holiday magic Sam and Jase may be able to find their way back home. But only if they do it together.

  Table of Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  About the Author

  Acknowledgements

  Special thanks to Kim Law, Elizabeth Bemis, June Love, Amanda Brice, Kali Robaina, Kristan Andrews and, as always, my mom.

  For my grandmother,

  who loves Hallmark Christmas movies.

  And for everyone who believes in the magic of the season.

  Chapter One – The Ghost of Christmas Past

  “Hold the plane!” Samantha Whitney sprinted through the terminal, dodging slow moving holiday travelers and dragging her roller bag faster than it was designed to roll, her oversized purse rhythmically thumping against her hip with each running step. She’d worry about the bruise her bag was leaving after she made the flight.

  If she made the flight.

  “Don’t close the doors!” she shouted to the gate attendants at G22—though the shout came out as more of a wheeze, thanks to her less-than-stellar cardio conditioning and two terminal half-marathon.

  One of the attendants yelled for her to hurry.

  Helpful.

  She staggered to a stop at the gate, thrusting her ticket at the attendant who wasn’t looking at her like the Grinch had crawled up his butt.

  “We’ve been paging you.” The Grinch folded his arms, eyeing her disapprovingly, as if she had threatened his precious schedule just for kicks.

  “International connection,” she panted, retrieving her ticket from the non-Grinchy attendant.

  “Happy Holidays.”

  “You too,” Sam echoed automatically, forcing her uncooperative legs into a half-hearted jog down the jetway.

  Only a few more hours. Then she’d be home and she could put this entire hellacious year behind her.

  “Sorry, impossible connection,” she called ahead to the male flight attendant who greeted her with a slightly forced smile beneath his antler headband.

  “We almost left without you,” he said with an abundance of fake good cheer.

  “Well, thank you for waiting.” She ducked her head, trying to look suitably contrite as she moved past him and began yanking her roller bag down the narrow aisle, fighting to keep the dang thing from ricocheting off the occupied seats on either side.

  Luckily she didn’t have far to go. The show had booked her a first class flight. She only had to get to row four and the empty seat waiting there.

  She glanced up, offering an apologetic smile to her seat mate—and the universe stuttered into horrifying slow motion.

  No. Not him. Fate could not be that screwed up.

  Sam froze in the aisle of the 737, gaping at the man in 4F, at the face that had figured prominently in all her fantasies—and nightmares—for the last year.

  Jason MacGregor.

  He still looked like something out of a GQ ad. Proof that there was no justice in the world.

  Last Christmas Eve, Jase had ripped a chunk out of her heart, leaving the rest a misshapen, bedraggled lump, trying futilely to beat without the missing parts.

  Or at least that was what it had felt like the day he walked away.

  The last time she’d seen him she’d been crying ugly tears, her entire body shaken by the kind of sobs that handicapped her ability to communicate anything beyond miserable wails.

  Her dignity hadn’t shown up for work that day.

  No, she’d made a perfect fool of herself, begging Jase to stay, to think of them, to choose her.

  It hadn’t been pretty.

  So of course Sam had fantasized—once or twice or three million times—about how it would be when she saw him again. How poised she’d be—every hair in place, maybe dressed for a charity dinner. Her small town in upper peninsula Michigan wasn’t known for its high society events, but somehow every time she envisioned their meeting she wore a slinky gown complete with white gloves up to her elbows.

  Okay, so it might have been the dress Julia Roberts wore to the opera in Pretty Woman, but a girl had to have role models. Even if those role models were on-screen prostitutes. Vivian was confident. And Vivian got her man. Sam could do worse.

  In her dream meeting, she’d be over Jase, of course. So over him she could barely remember his name. He’d do a double take, maybe gasp her name, and his face would instantly telegraph the depth of his regret that he’d missed his chance with her. In some versions he would beg for a second chance, while in others her protective—handsome, rich, famous movie star—husband would whisk her away too quickly and Jase would only be able to gaze after her with unquenched longing in his winter blue eyes.

  She must have imagined it easily a thousand times. Her triumph. The sweet taste of vindication in her mouth. Dumpee’s Revenge.

  But in none of those versions, not one, was Sam in travel-wrinkled yoga pants, flushed and panting after her sprint through LAX, with her massive purse weighing down one shoulder as she gawked gracelessly beside the last empty seat on the plane.

  An empty seat next to the one occupied by Jason MacGregor.

  Dread calcified around her heart, turning it to stone.

  Some days a girl just could not catch a break. Or some years in her case.

  Jase looked up and shock passed across his features. “Sam.” He started to rise from his seat, but his already buckled seatbelt brought him to a halt with a jolt.

  No. No no no no no. This was not how it happened. She was supposed to be triumphant, damn it.

  Samantha pivoted to face the flight attendant. “I can’t sit there.”

  Impatience mingled with the forced cheerfulness on his face. The tiny red and green jingle bells attached to the fuzzy antler headband on top of his head provided an odd counterpoint to the barely veiled irritation in his eyes. “I’m sorry, ma’am, but everything else is taken and we’re already running behind schedule, so if you could please take your seat we can close the door and get on our way so we don’t delay all these people any longer than necessary.”

  Any longer than we already have because we held the plane for you, you entitled b
rat went unspoken, but flashed vividly behind his granite smile.

  Sam eyed the folks crowded into coach. This was only the second time in her life she’d ever flown first class, but it was only a four hour flight. She could handle coach. She’d bet any of those people back there packed in elbow to elbow would love to trade with her. Hell, she could probably even make a few bucks in the process. One First Class Seat, taking bidders now.

  “Sam.”

  Her gaze returned helplessly to the man she’d been trying to pretend wasn’t sitting in 4F.

  The shock had left his face and he’d locked whatever he felt now behind his familiar calm. That same steady, unflappable expression that always somehow made her need to freak out escalate exponentially. Why couldn’t he panic like a normal person, damn it?

  A tangled hank of hair escaped from her messy ponytail and flopped over her eyes. Sure, it might have been unreasonable to ask that she be flawless, married, and blissfully happy when she first saw Jase again, but was it too much to ask the gods of Romantic Justice that she at least have had access to a comb in the last eight hours?

  He looked perfect, of course. Jase obviously hadn’t just dragged his jet-lagged ass off a trans-Pacific flight and sprinted from customs all the way to the domestic terminal. Or if he had, it didn’t show. Jason MacGregor didn’t do rumpled.

  His tailored grey suit pants were as crisp and fresh as the winter blue button-down that exactly matched his unfairly gorgeous eyes. He’d removed his suit jacket and it hung on a little hanger marked 4F on the back wall of first class.

  Samantha focused on that jacket so she wouldn’t have to notice how he’d rolled up his shirt sleeves—two precise, tidy folds—and revealed the muscled, tanned expanse of his wrists and forearms.

  Of course he was tan in December. He was living in Los Angeles now. Probably in a condo with a beach view, where he could watch toned, tanned girls playing volleyball in the sand when he wasn’t working the glamorous job he’d left White Falls—and her—for.

  “Are we going to have a problem, ma’am?” the flight attendant inquired, aggravation lurking behind his smile.

  “Samantha, please sit down,” Jase said. “We can pretend we don’t know each other if you want.”

  Of course when he put it that way, she seemed ridiculous. Just because she’d once loved him like something out of a John Legend song. Just because she’d known down to her soul that he was The One ever since the first time he kissed her after the Mistletoe Ball when they were sixteen. Just because he’d mangled her heart last December and she hadn’t seen him or heard a word from him in months. Why should she be allowed to have a nervous breakdown in the middle of first class, his composed expression seemed to ask. Her internal natural disaster was no reason to inconvenience an entire plane full of people.

  “I’m good. It’s fine,” Sam said, addressing the hovering flight attendant because she still couldn’t quite bring herself to speak to the man in 4F.

  She tossed her purse onto her seat and the attendant took her roller bag from her, expertly retracting the handle and heaving it into an empty space in the overhead bin. Sam claimed 4D, carefully avoiding looking to her right, and busied herself with shoving her purse under the seat in front of her and buckling her seat belt.

  Which took about two seconds and then she had nothing to do but fixate on the man beside her as the flight attendant retreated and the plane immediately began to roll back from the gate.

  “Sam…”

  “Don’t.”

  Jason had walked away from her. From them. Four hours trapped beside him at thirty thousand feet wasn’t going to change that. But she was stronger now than she’d been when he left. She’d broken out of her shell, seen the world—admittedly in a very controlled way—and she wasn’t going to fall apart just because Jason freaking MacGregor was sitting next to her. She could do this.

  She just needed to get through this flight and catch her last connection up to Green Bay where her sister would be waiting to drive her home to White Falls for Christmas. Then she could fall apart.

  Sam was almost pathetically grateful when the pilot began to speak and she could pretend to hang on his every word—even though she couldn’t seem to focus and only caught the vague impression of the words through the Charlie Brown’s teacher distortion of the intercom. Something about flight times to Chicago and getting ahead of the weather. Outside the window on Jase’s far side, the sun shone with Los Angeles reliability, so she figured she must have misheard.

  Not surprising when all she could think about was trying not to think about the man at her side.

  He was as good as his word, pretending they didn’t know one another, staring scrupulously ahead, his fingers laced calmly in his lap. Sam looked down at her own hands and forced herself to stop picking at her cuticles.

  Jason shifted in his chair—almost as if the unflappable Jase was uncomfortable—and a waft of his scent hit her. Evergreen and frost. So familiar it made her toes curl in her shoes. It wasn’t fair that he still smelled like winter when he’d abandoned White Falls. Shouldn’t he smell like stale coconut oil or pungent, overpriced cologne now that he was living in LA?

  What was he doing here? Besides destroying her already tenuous equilibrium.

  Business trip, most likely. He’d probably pull out a laptop any second and begin solving the world’s problems, one PowerPoint presentation at a time. If only he would do something, she wouldn’t be so excruciatingly aware of him, sitting there.

  Waiting.

  She had to say something. Not talking to Jason MacGregor had to be the only thing more awkward than trying to make casual conversation with the man she’d once envisioned marrying so many times she could recite the imaginary wedding toasts by heart. Sam flailed about for a safe topic of conversation. What did one say to the former love of one’s life? How’s it hanging?

  “Did the pilot say something about getting ahead of the weather?”

  Jase’s head turned toward her and Sam’s gaze skittered away from his familiar winter blue stare. “There’s a super storm dumping snow on the Midwest,” he said. “The 24-hour News channels are going nuts over it. How have you avoided hearing about it?”

  “I’ve been out of the country.” Sam flapped one hand in the general direction of Tahiti, before realizing the flapping looked graceless and spastic and forcing herself to stop.

  “Ah. That explains the tan.”

  Sam looked down at her own arms, which were unusually golden. She tended toward shocking day-glo paleness—especially in the winter—but these last two weeks when she’d been more or less held hostage by a reality television show, there hadn’t been much to do beyond lay out on the balcony of her hotel room and soak up the Tahitian sun.

  “I thought nothing could pry you out of White Falls between Thanksgiving and Christmas. You’re missing the Winter Festival, aren’t you?”

  Sam tried not to stiffen at the allusion to their same old fight—that Samantha never wanted to step beyond the borders of their hometown while nothing in quaint White Falls was ever good enough for Jase.

  There was a lot she couldn’t tell him about the reason for the tan—the show’s gag orders were extensive—but she could at least prove she wasn’t the adventure-phobe he’d always accused her of being.

  “I went on a reality show. We had to commit to filming until right before Christmas so I arranged for Elise to run my booth at the Winter Festival this year.”

  Jase’s eyebrows flew up at her first sentence and stayed up. “Which reality show? Not Survivor.”

  A forgotten memory resurfaced. Watching Survivor with Jase as he bragged about how amazing he would be on the show and Samantha swore she would never go on it in a million years. Cuddling on the couch and arguing about whether the nice person or the strategic person deserved to win. Sam always on the side of nice and Jase always making choices with his head rather than his heart.

  Story of their relationship.

  “Marryin
g Mister Perfect, actually.”

  The engines fired and the plane rushed forward into the air as Jase’s jaw dropped. Sam couldn’t quite smother a smile. His shock was incredibly satisfying.

  “The dating show? The one where all the girls compete to date the same guy? Are you serious?”

  “Elise nominated me for it.” She shrugged. “It seemed like a good idea.”

  Which left most of the story unspoken, but there was no way she was going to tell him her sister had nominated her for the show in a desperate attempt to break her out of the funk she’d fallen into after Jase had dumped her. Or that she’d gone on it to try to get over him.

  Or that it had almost worked. That she’d thrown herself whole-heartedly into a relationship with Mr. Perfect Daniel to prove to herself that her love life hadn’t ended with Jase. She’d almost convinced herself she actually loved Daniel. She’d even let herself start fantasizing about the two of them moving back to White Falls together when he visited for the Meet-the-In-Laws episode.

  She’d really started to believe she could love again, had thought for a fleeting second that Daniel might actually be her happy ending…and then he’d picked up the rings at the Elimination Ceremony in Tahiti and handed them to Elena and Caitlyn instead.

  She’d cried for the cameras—controlled, elegant tears, thank God her dignity had shown up for work that day—but then she hadn’t been allowed to fly home for another week and a half because the show didn’t want any spoilers leaked.

  So there she was, trapped in her Tahitian hotel room until Daniel made up his mind between Elena and Caitlyn and popped the question. Admittedly, there were worse places to be trapped, but with nothing to do but tan and think she’d been faced with the undeniable fact that she hadn’t ever loved Daniel. She’d just wanted to love him so badly she’d almost convinced herself she did.

  Unlike Jase. Who she wanted desperately not to love, but with him sitting so close, with his winter eyes and his familiar scent…