Home In Time For Christmas

Home In Time For Christmas
Heather Graham

Melody Tarleton is driving home for Christmas when a man—clad in Revolutionary War–era costume—appears out of nowhere, right in the path of her car.Shaken, she takes the injured stranger in, listening with concern to Jake Mallory's fantastic claim that he's a Patriot soldier executed by British authorities. Bringing Jake to her parents' house, Melody concocts a story to explain the handsome holiday guest with the courtly manners and strange clothes.Mark, her close friend who wishes he were more, is skeptical, but her family is fascinated. So is Melody. Jake is passionate, charming and utterly unlike anyone she's ever met. Can he really be who he claims? And can a man from the distant past be the future she truly longs for?

Praise for the novels of Heather Graham

“Home in Time for Christmas is one of those novels that really touches you.

You finish reading it and immediately want to start again just to relive the whole experience…. Christmas truly is a time for miracles.

Don’t miss your chance for a bunch of holiday smiles and a book you will want to reread every Christmas season.”

— Bookreporter

“One of the most heartwarming novels I have read in a very long time.”

— Romance Readers Connection on

Home in Time for Christmas

“Graham plays the story’s supernatural angle for both chills and chuckles….

Ringo is the best ghost to come along in ages.”

—RT Book Reviews on Nightwalker

“Graham peoples her novel with genuine, endearing characters.”

—Publishers Weekly on The Séance

“An incredible storyteller.”

— Los Angeles Daily News

“Solidly plotted and peppered with welcome hints of black humor.

And the ending’s all readers could hope for.”

—RT Book Reviews on The Last Noel

“Heather Graham knows what readers want.”

— Publishers Weekly

HOME IN TIME FOR

CHRISTMAS

HEATHER

GRAHAM

www.mirabooks.co.uk (http://www.mirabooks.co.uk)

For Aaron Priest, Lucy Childs,

Lisa Erbach Vance, Nicole Kennedy

and John Richmond,

with all the very best wishes for the season,

however it may be celebrated!

Prologue A Winter’s Day

New York City

Christmastide, 1776

Perhaps it was fitting that it should be such a cold and bitter, yet stunning, day.

Jake Mallory took a minute to appreciate the awesome glory of the morning. The heavens were an extravagant shade of blue. Light puffs of soft white clouds were slipping by. The sun, a golden orb, was en route to a high point in the sky as the early hours of the morning defied the darkness of the passing night.

It was, indeed, a beautiful day.

A fine day to die.

They had all known it, known they might be called upon to die, all of them who agreed that the colonies must break from Mother Britain. All those who had set pen to paper and signed the Declaration of Independence. All those who had led the armies. All those who had fought.

And spied.

Not that spying had actually been his intent. He was a soldier. Well, he hadn’t exactly wanted to be a soldier, either. Such an enterprise had not been his intent in life. He was a newspaperman—or, at least, that was what he had intended to be. Writing was his passion. His home was the small town of Gloucester, but even there, as in all the surrounding towns, the talk had been about politics. About breaking away. Then, there had been the Boston Tea Party.

Blood had been spilled.

He believed deeply in the freedom and equality of man. That and, of course, the editorials he had written regarding the need for the colonies to break free, were what had brought him to stand here today. In the taverns of Boston he had gotten to know many a man handy with a pamphlet, such as John Adams, who in turn had introduced him to another John—Hancock. He had become involved with men to whom the written word was a weapon. And handling such a weapon …

Had led to his carrying a different kind of weapon. And—quite sadly, really—to getting caught.

Ah, there was the rub. Getting caught. Men far too old to be soldiers knew that they would hang if captured by the British, if their cause failed.

So here he was today.

Upon the scaffold.

Truly, such a deplorable state of affairs.

Ah, well. He had written well, and sewn rampant seeds of rebellion. He had taken to the field, running missions; he had picked up a gun, as well. He was guilty of sedition, so they said. Words on paper could shout loudly, and his had been heard, far and wide.