A Soldier's Christmas: I'll Be Home for ChristmasPresents Under the TreeIf Only in My Dreams

by Leslie Kelly

  “Of course.”

  A sigh escaped her mouth. “It’s not that I wouldn’t...”

  “Ahh, I get it.” The tiniest of smiles appeared on those lips. “You don’t trust yourself, huh?”

  “I see that ego of yours hasn’t gotten any smaller.”

  “For old times’ sake, Ellie,” he said, lifting a hand and brushing the tips of his fingers across her cheek. “I’ve dreamed about having you in my arms again. Spent long, miserable nights clinging to that dream.”

  She closed her eyes and drew in a shaky breath. He dropped his hand, as if realizing he wasn’t playing fair.

  “Now that you’re engaged, one dance is the only chance I’ll ever have to make my dream come true. For auld lang syne, and all that. Whaddya say?”

  She tried to resist, but that sexy voice, the need in his eyes and the hint of true emotion—as if he were mourning for something they’d had and lost—made her finally lower her guard.

  One dance. One more time in Rafe’s arms.

  Then she’d put him out of her mind—and her heart—forever.

  “All right, Rafe,” she said, breathing the words out through closed lips. “For old times’ sake, I’ll dance with you.”

  * * *

  HE SHOULD HAVE let it go. Should have let her go.

  The minute Ellie Blake had told him she belonged to another man, Rafe should have swallowed his disappointment, ordered his heart to go back into the hibernation in which it had existed for the past few years and walked out of the party.

  But he just couldn’t do it.

  He hadn’t planned to seek her out during his holiday leave, which would end the day after tomorrow. His situation hadn’t really changed. He had another four long years in the army, several of which would be in active combat. Iraq had been hell, but his next stop on his round-the-world tour of war zones, Afghanistan, was going to be even worse. So when his cousin’s wife had told him she’d run into Ellie, he should have just ignored the information. Should have pretended Noelle hadn’t mentioned Ellie was attending a New Year’s Eve fundraiser for abused animals at a downtown Chicago hotel.

  He just wished his cousin’s wife had heard the tidbit about Ellie’s engagement.

  But it was too late to retreat now. One and done. He’d dance with her, build up the memory bank and then get out of here, spending the next two days with his family and returning Ellie Blake to the deepest corners of his mind and of his past.

  He turned toward the dance floor, placing the tips of his fingers against the small of her back. Even through the shimmery fabric of her dress, he could feel the tiny protrusions of delicate bone, and couldn’t help remembering how it had felt to drop his hand lower and cup the soft curves of her ass. Her whole body had always been so perfectly fitted for his, those curves driving him crazy whether she was wearing casual jeans or nothing at all.

  The nothing at all was especially nice to remember.

  God, he’d been crazy about her. Physically and emotionally. What kind of idiot had he been to let her slip away?

  “I was wrong. You have changed a little,” he told her.

  “Oh?”

  “You don’t look like a co-ed anymore.”

  “I’m all grown up now. Eighteen months left of vet school, then I’ll be out there doing what I’ve always dreamed of doing.”

  Saving living creatures. That’s all she’d ever wanted to do. What a funny couple they’d made, considering he’d wanted to go off to fight and kill.

  He pushed that out of his head, not wanting dark thoughts to intrude on what might be his very last moments with Ellie.

  He looked down at her, staring intently, saving the vision for all the days to come when he’d have to rely only on memories to conjure her face. She was, indeed, all grown up. Her auburn hair was pulled back, a few long strands dangling around her pale, bare shoulders. He remembered scraping his lips across that collarbone, inhaling her sweet fragrance, and he couldn’t take his eyes off her skin as they moved through the crowd.

  He and Ellie hadn’t been involved for long, just a couple of months, but she’d been the one woman he had never gotten out of his system. The sex had been explosive—they’d been insatiable for each other, and no woman he’d been with, before or since, had ever made him lose his mind and be willing to give up his very soul to have her.

  It had been about more than sex, though. She’d been the first woman he’d really loved. Make that the only woman. She’d been his rock when they’d been together, and his steadying fantasy once he’d forced her away. He couldn’t count the number of times the thought of her had calmed him in a moment so tense he’d been sure he’d snap.

  And now, she really was out of his life. For good. Forever. No going back, no changing things, even though he wished he could erase that last conversation, when he’d told her he wouldn’t be calling again.

  He’d done his job all too well and she’d taken him at his word. That was probably the best thing for her. Unfortunately, acknowledging he should be happy for her, that she was better off, didn’t stop his gut from churning or his muscles from clenching.

  “Good band,” she said.

  “I guess. If you enjoy this kind of music.”

  He didn’t, usually, preferring classic rock to the jazzy, blues-type stuff the musicians had been playing tonight. But he had to admit, this was a lot better to dance to...if the object of the dance was getting as close as possible to a woman who drove you crazy.

  “I do,” she said, turning to face him as soon as they reached the edges of the swaying crowd, though neither started to dance. “I guess I’m old-fashioned. Remember? We went to that techno club one night and I ended up getting a migraine and we had to leave?”

  He remembered. A smile tugged at his lips. “I believe that was because of the Long Island iced teas.”

  Her brow furrowed as she remembered. “Oh. Right.”

  She sounded sheepish and appeared embarrassed by the memory. Not to mention cute as hell.

  “How many was it...six? Seven?”

  “Four,” she snapped. “They tasted just like regular iced tea.”

  “You were such an innocent.”

  “You weren’t. You let me drink them.”

  “Sorry. I regretted it when I realized how sick you were.”

  “You regretted it more when I threw up on the way home.”

  He lifted a hand to her hair, unable to resist fingering one of those flaming strands. “I held your hair out of the way.”

  “Not one of my finest moments.”

  Maybe not. But what he most remembered about that night was how strangely good it had felt to take care of her. He’d never experienced that with a woman before, that desire to make sure she was safe and healthy.

  That night, he’d made a resolution to never do anything to hurt her, if he could possibly avoid it. And stringing her along while he was in Iraq...that had hurt her, and would continue to hurt her. Which was why he’d forced himself to let her go.

  “Well?” she said, holding her hands up. They’d been standing there talking as dancing couples moved around them.

  He hesitated, aware that taking her in his arms would simply cement his certainty that he’d made the biggest mistake of his life in letting her go.

  The song fell somewhere between slow and fast. And this wasn’t the type of place for the arms-around-neck, hands-on-butt, bodies-crammed-together type of movement he was used to from the old days, when he’d done things like going to parties or clubs and finding a hot girl to hook up with.

  Christ, those days seemed to belong to somebody else’s mental scrapbook. They were so far removed from the life he lived now.

  Ellie, though? Ellie was connected to just about every good thought he’d had during the long, lonely, dangerous
years he’d spent in a far-off land where everyone was either friend or enemy and there was often no real way of telling them apart until it was too damned late.

  “I’m not the best dancer,” she said, as if noticing his hesitation and interpreting it as a lack of confidence in his dancing ability. Not in his own sanity at having shoved aside the one perfect relationship he’d ever had.

  “You’re talking to the king of two left feet, remember?”

  “I suppose you must’ve gotten more nimble.” Her smile was faint, but there was a searching concern in her pretty green eyes.

  “I suppose.”

  Yeah, he’d done some dancing in Iraq. Considering it seemed the entire country was mined, any soldier who wasn’t quick on his feet risked losing them.

  He thrust off those thoughts. He only had the length of one song to build up a lifetime of memories with the woman he’d never been able to forget. And what he’d feel in those moments seemed worth any lingering regrets later.

  He drew her close, resting one hand on her hip, the other twining with hers at their sides. They began to sway, and he found it easier than he’d figured. Maybe because he wasn’t concentrating on his feet or even on the music. Only on how it felt to finally be pressed against her soft body, remembering the first time he’d made love to her, in his crappy old apartment. They’d been insatiable, locked together, naked, hot and hungry...for hours. He’d buried himself inside her body, sure he’d never felt anything as good as being wrapped tightly in all that heat. He’d lost himself in her, and hadn’t ever wanted to find his way back out.

  Now, looking down into those eyes, into that sweet, heart-shaped face, he lost himself again in those moments, as if the past four ugly years hadn’t even happened.

  “I’m glad to see you, Ellie,” he murmured, meaning it. He couldn’t regret finding her, even if it meant coming face-to-face with the reality that he’d never be with her, that she really had moved on and fallen in love with another man. That she would wear someone else’s ring and have someone else’s babies.

  Rings and babies hadn’t been on his mind when he’d left Chicago four years ago. War had. Fighting and adventure and adrenaline and patriotism. Living up to some standard of manhood that Hollywood and boasting friends said every guy should.

  Tonight...holding her in his arms, knowing she’d never be there again—he didn’t think he would ever stop wondering if he’d made the wrong decision.

  “I’m glad you’re all right,” she finally replied, her voice soft, hesitating, as if she was unsure what to say. Maybe she figured admitting she was glad to see him, too, would have been disloyal to her fiancé.

  Her fiancé. His stomach churned at the word and every muscle in his body tensed.

  He was envious of a man he’d never met, and would never meet. Envious of the years that man would have with Ellie, of the future they’d build. Jealous as hell of the nights they’d sleep side by side and the mornings they’d wake up bathed in sunlight as they listened for the little footsteps of their children.

  Around them, the voices of the crowd began to swell. The announcer was saying something, the band had segued from smooth jazz into a raucous celebration. He faintly heard someone calling off the numbers, counting down from ten. The revelers were ticking off another year, consigning to the past everything that had come before this particular minute in time.

  He and Ellie stopped dancing, remaining very still in the middle of the floor, staring at each other. He saw so much in those aquamarine eyes—from love to anger to fear to longing—that part of him wished he’d left her alone, just walked away when she’d told him there was someone else.

  “Happy New Year!”

  Voices rang out, happy shouts, and the band began to play “Auld Lang Syne.” All around them, couples stopped to kiss in the New Year, expressing hope for a wonderful, happy future.

  This was the end of all he and Ellie had ever been and all they would ever be. He’d never see her again after tonight.

  He had to say goodbye forever.

  So without asking, without warning, he bent and brushed his lips across hers in a kiss as tender as it was fleeting. Then, his face close to hers, he whispered, “Happy New Year, Ellie. I wish you nothing but happiness.”

  Watching her through eyes that might have held the tiniest hint of moisture—though he’d deny it with his dying breath—he began to back away, melting into the throng. She watched him go, step by step, not lifting a hand to stop him, even though her tears said a part of her wanted to.

  But it was too late. Far too late. You couldn’t go back to the past. Couldn’t recapture something that you’d intentionally let slip away.

  All that was left for both of them to do was move on.

  Without each other.

  2

  Present Day

  “ARE YOU TELLING ME there is not one single flight leaving from this city today?”

  Ellie Blake stared at the clerk behind the airline counter, who appeared as exhausted and frazzled as the streams of irritated travelers swarming around her. People yelled from farther back in the line, angry travelers vented their frustrations on their cell phones, babies cried in strollers and fights seemed ready to break out at other stations.

  Acknowledging this wasn’t the woman’s fault, Ellie tempered her disappointment and added, “I’m sorry, I realize you don’t control the weather. But isn’t it possible some airline is still getting out of here? Send me south, send me anywhere. I’ll fly to Florida and change planes to get to Chicago by tomorrow.”

  Tomorrow. Christmas Eve.

  She had to be home. Damn it, she just had to. She couldn’t bear to miss the baby’s first Christmas.

  Plus Denny would be all smug because he’d warned her she shouldn’t risk traveling so close to the holiday.

  “I’m terribly sorry, ma’am. Every person here feels exactly the same way,” the woman said. “But the winds are just too severe, and with blizzard conditions expected later tonight, all the airlines are canceling flights.”

  Why on earth did this have to happen now? Why did a major winter storm have to hit New York City the very day she was supposed to fly home to Chicago?

  She should never have come here for the conference on new surgical trends for canines. She shouldn’t have risked traveling right before the holidays with, not only Denny and Jessie, but also her sister, her parents and her friends also waiting for her back home. She’d never missed a Christmas in Chicago, not even when she’d left the country to volunteer at a wild animal preserve in Africa two years ago. She’d been gone almost an entire year, yet she’d still managed to be there with her family, drinking eggnog at midnight on Christmas Eve and waking up the next morning to an orgy of presents and goodwill.

  “I wonder if I could catch a train?” she mused, speaking more to herself than to the airline clerk.

  “The lines are already shut down. The tracks are freezing up; it’s much too dangerous.”

  Ellie swiped a frustrated hand through her hair, knocking loose the ponytail that had begun to give her a headache. Actually, the whole afternoon had given her a headache. She’d arrived at the airport early this morning, having watched the weather reports and gotten the warnings that travel would be difficult today. Only to be told her flight had been canceled and the airport was going to close altogether within a couple of hours.

  “I gave up my hotel room and there’s no way I’ll get another one. Great way to spend Christmas—on the floor of JFK.”

  “You’ll have a lot of company,” the woman said unhelpfully.

  “I can’t believe I’m not going to make it home for the baby’s first Christmas,” she whispered, imagining the disappointment she’d be sure to see in Denny’s face and, of course, in Jessie’s. The new parents had been planning for ten-month-old Annie’s first holida
y with all the fervor of elves training for sleigh duty, and as the child’s godmother, she’d fully intended to spoil the baby rotten.

  Funny that she should be so anxious not to disappoint her ex-fiancé and her best friend, who’d realized during Ellie’s own engagement that they were far too attracted to each other. Ellie was sure they hadn’t betrayed her; they both cared far too much about her for that. But she wasn’t blind; she recognized serious attraction when she saw it. What Jessie had with Denny was something Ellie’d never shared with her fiancé.

  And after Rafe had shocked her with that New Year’s Eve visit, she hadn’t been very successful at hiding the fact that she still cared far too much about her ex. It hadn’t been fair to Denny to be angry about his obvious feelings for Jessie when Ellie had been a little less than subtle about her own for Rafe.

  So she’d let Denny go, gracefully, calmly, and had been right there in the front pew when her ex-fiancé and best friend had gotten married the very same month Ellie and Denny had intended to say “I do.”

  The woman reached over and patted her hand, as if hearing the genuine misery in Ellie’s voice. Or maybe it was the mention of a baby. Ellie didn’t point out that it wasn’t her own child’s holiday she’d be missing; right now, she’d take whatever help she could get.

  “Listen, you may not have any luck at this point, but a lot of people have gone to the car-rental counters hoping to get an SUV or something so they can drive out of the city ahead of the worst of the storm.”

  Hope blossomed in her chest. Yes, it was a long way from New York to Chicago. But if she got on the road within the next hour or so, she should, indeed, be able to get ahead of the storm. Driving through the night, she ought to be able to find clear roads all the way home and arrive by tomorrow afternoon at the latest.

  It was worth a try, anyway.

  “Thank you so much,” she said, meaning it. “I’ll go there right away.” She glanced at the queue behind her, which had edged closer and closer as people pushed for their chance to hear the same bad news in person. “And good luck tonight. I hope you make it home to your family for Christmas.”