A Holiday to Remember

A Holiday to Remember
Lynnette Kent

Литагент HarperCollins EUR

Tonight, Chris Hammond is getting the truth, even if it means crashing the snowy gates of the Hawkridge School.Chris is convinced he's found his childhood sweetheart, a girl he loved and lost twelve years ago in the Smoky Mountains of North Carolina. It's her, he's sure. Only…she doesn't seem to know him at all. Jayne Thomas's past is a mystery, even to her. But as Hawkridge's headmistress, Jayne knows her future is clear.She'll be spending Christmas snowed-in with seven cranky students and an intrusive though quite attractive stranger. At least he's handy with an ax…and his lips. Chris knows he can't force her to remember, or himself to forget. He must love Jayne for the woman she's become. Or risk losing her all over again…

“You, I’m afraid, are just plain wrong.”

Jayne turned her back to Chris and reached for the doorknob. “Now that we’ve got that settled, I think the best place for you to sleep is—”

“The hell we have.” Chris strode forward, grabbed her forearm and pulled her around to face him while shutting the door with a single kick. Then he gripped her other elbow. “I learned every inch of your body when we were seventeen.”

She stopped struggling and stared at him, mouth open.

He nodded. “You have a birthmark on your left hip, red and shaped like a boot.” Her gasp made him smile. “Oh, yeah, I’ve seen it. I’ve kissed it. Want to tell me now that I’m plain wrong?”

Before his next heartbeat, the lights went out.

Dear Reader,

Though my family moved to Florida when I was nine, I still treasure Christmas memories from my early years in the Smoky Mountains. I recall sitting on the curb of a downtown street, waiting for Santa to arrive at the end of the Christmas parade. I remember watching red and green traffic signals blinking like ornaments in the falling snow.

Of course, I remember opening presents in front of the tree on Christmas mornings. Then we’d dress in our holiday best and drive to my grandmother’s house, where my cousins and aunts and uncles would all gather for a splendid Christmas dinner.

Sometimes, though, Christmas doesn’t turn out as you expect. A natural disaster—say, a blizzard—can make travel impossible, keeping you from the ones you love or, worse, shutting you in with someone you don’t trust. The electric power might fail. How will you stay warm? What will you eat? Will rescue arrive soon enough?

These challenges confront Jayne Thomas when she’s marooned over the winter holidays with some of her students at the Hawkridge School. The unexpected arrival of sexy photojournalist Chris Hammond eases the burden of looking after the girls, but his disturbing presence threatens Jayne’s emotional balance. Chris says he knows her, insists they have a past together. Jayne doesn’t remember him at all. Which one of them is telling the truth?

I hope you enjoy spending time in the snowy wonderland of the Smoky Mountains. I love to hear from readers at any time of the year, so feel free to write me at P.O. Box 1012, Vass, NC 28389.

Happy holidays!

Lynnette Kent

A Holiday to Remember

Lynnette Kent

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Lynnette Kent began writing her first romance in the fourth grade, about a ship’s stowaway who would fall in love with her captain, Christopher Columbus. Years of scribbling later, her husband suggested she write one of those “Harlequin romances” she loved to read. With his patience and the support of her two daughters, Lynnette realized her dream of being a published novelist. She now lives in North Carolina, where she divides her time between books—writing and reading—and the horses she adores. Feel free to contact Lynnette via her Web site, www.lynnette-kent.com.

This book is dedicated to all the wonderful workers at

Harlequin Books who type and copy and proofread pages, who design and illustrate covers, who run the machines that put pages together, who fill and ship boxes and perform countless other tasks I’m not even aware of…in other words, the people who see to it that my stories get into print. Thank you!

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 One

Chris Hammond had never thought of himself as a stalker.

But he needed to get another look at the face of the woman who’d entered the coffee shop just as he was leaving. They’d danced together on the threshold for a few seconds, trying to get out of each other’s way. He’d backed up, finally, and held the door open for her. With a quick smile and a “Happy Holidays,” she’d headed inside as Chris stepped out onto the sidewalk.

Now he turned toward the wide front window to find her again. The service counter ran across the back of the room, so all he could see of his quarry was an auburn ponytail fanned over the back of a heavy gray coat appropriate for the subfreezing mountain weather.

Maybe the hair had triggered his memory. A long time ago he’d known a girl with a mane in that same polished mahogany color, with the same extravagant curls. He’d been a kid then, but coming back to Ridgeville, North Carolina, had brought those days closer to the surface.

That’s why he hadn’t been here in over a decade.

Chris didn’t think the hair was the only resemblance, though. Something about her face had seemed familiar enough to stop his heartbeat for a second or two. He wanted to be sure he was wrong about recognizing those hazel eyes, the lightly freckled cheeks and pointed chin. Then he could finish grocery shopping for his granddad with a clear head.

So he lingered in front of the adjacent hardware store next to the coffee shop, waiting for the woman and hoping like hell she wasn’t meeting a gaggle of friends for an hour’s gossip over coffee. He’d have frozen to death by then, despite his new down-filled jacket. His last assignment, in equatorial Africa, had left him with a poor tolerance for cold.

Every time the bell on the shop door tinkled, he glanced that way from beneath the lowered brim of his baseball cap. Six times he was disappointed, but seven had always been his lucky number and proved so yet again—he saw the gray sleeve of her coat as she pushed the door open.

He tipped his hat back, wanting to get a good look as she approached. The coffee place was the last business at this end of Main Street. Surely she would come his way.

Instead, the woman walked straight to the curb, showing him only her profile. She checked both ways for traffic before stepping into the street, but he missed seeing her full face because that one glimpse of her tip-tilted nose and full lower lip had left him gasping for air, like he’d been sucker punched.

Such a likeness couldn’t be an accident. What the hell was going on?