Home for Christmas

by Lizzie Lane

  So she’d waited. Waited when he returned to White Falls to work at the bank and told her he needed a better job to get her the ring she deserved—even as she argued that she didn’t need anything but him. He hadn’t listened. And she’d gotten to the point that she was seriously considering popping the question herself.

  Then he’d whisked her out of the annual Mistletoe Ball on Christmas Eve, running across the square and up the stairs to the little apartment they shared, laughing all the way, telling her they had something special to celebrate and he couldn’t wait another second to tell her. He’d set the scene—candles lit, champagne chilled—and Sam’s heart had pounded out of her chest. She’d been so ready for him to ask—ready for years—she’d almost cried, “Yes!” before she realized he wasn’t saying what she thought he was saying.

  “California? But this is our home.” Embarrassment, hot and burning in her ears made it hard to hear his reply. And then the words had started falling out of her mouth—as they always seemed to when she was upset. “I thought you were going to propose.”

  “I am.”

  “That we move to California?”

  “That too. This job is an incredible opportunity for us, Sam. I know you love that Say Yes to the Dress show. Just imagine the fancy designer dress you can afford now. We even can fly to New York and you can go to that shop on the show. We can get married on the beach in California.”

  “But everyone we know lives here.” Besides, who wanted sand in her lip gloss on her wedding day? And she’d always known she’d buy her dress at Miss Claire’s shop. “That isn’t us.”

  “But it could be!”

  He hadn’t heard her. Already three thousand miles away in Los Angeles.

  Even sitting next to her on the plane back to White Falls, he was still out of reach. It was like the universe was taunting her with everything she wanted but could no longer have. She’d gone on the show to be free of him and had realized in Tahiti that no matter how much she wanted to be over him, no matter how much she wanted to throw herself headfirst into love with someone else, Jason MacGregor still had a hold on her.

  She didn’t want him to. Her brain knew he was just a man she used to love, but her heart hadn’t gotten the memo. No matter how she told herself not to feel for him anymore, it was still there, that wealth of emotion built on a history of wanting only him for so long she’d forgotten how to do anything else.

  Trapped by her own stupid heart.

  Trapped on this plane. So close to him she could smell his familiar frosted evergreen scent.

  Panic pressed in close and suddenly she had to get away. Away from Jase MacGregor and everything he made her feel.

  “I can’t talk about this.” Ignoring the lit fasten seat belt sign, she yanked at the buckle until it released. Lurching up out of her chair, she caught the death-glare from the flight attendant standing at the service station near the cockpit, but it couldn’t stop her. There had to be somewhere on this plane where she could get a five minute respite from the disaster of her life.

  Sam spun toward the rear of the plane—

  And the floor dropped out from beneath her feet as the plane plummeted through an air pocket, dropping twenty feet in a heartbeat before rebounding up in a jarring bounce that threw her sideways. She released a startled yelp as Jase shouted, “Sam!” and firm hands caught her, pulling her down onto his lap as the plane pinged up and down like a yo-yo.

  “Ladies and gentlemen, as you can see we’re going through some rough air at the moment,” came the smooth voice of the pilot over the intercom. “Please observe the fasten seat belt signs and we should be through this patch of weather momentarily.”

  “Patch of weather?” Sam breathed incredulously as the plane jounced and tilted.

  And her emotions pinged around just as violently at the feel of Jase’s hands on her—firm and steady and too damn right.

  Tears pressed hot behind her eyes, but she held them back. She just wanted to be home. Safe and sound and private where she could have a nervous breakdown in peace with no cameras watching and no exes stirring up old feelings they had no business stirring up. Was that so much to ask?

  “Sam,” Jase rumbled. “It’s okay.”

  “No, it isn’t. Nothing is okay.” The words spilled out, her voice shaking. “Nothing has been okay since you left.”

  Silence fell as the plane abruptly stopped shaking, as if cued by her accidental confession. Christ. She couldn’t believe she’d said that. She’d always had a tendency toward word vomit when she was stressed out so she’d been extra careful with her words when the cameras were rolling on the show, so determined to keep it together and avoid making a fool of herself on national television—but get her alone with Jase and suddenly the world’s stupidest admissions are falling off her lips.

  His hand smoothed over her thigh. “Sam…I…”

  “I didn’t mean—“ She started to protest, but then she turned her head and got caught by the look in his eyes, so close and incredibly blue.

  There was no embarrassment in his gaze, no pity for her pathetic confession, just the familiar intensity she’d almost forgotten and something else—something she was afraid to name. His intense focus sent shivers skittering down her spine and made goose-bumps rise on her arms as the moment held. Lingering and stretching until the very air between them seemed to draw taut.

  “I…”

  A binging overhead jarred her out of the spell.

  “Ladies and gentlemen, in a few moments we’ll be beginning our descent into Chicago. Please return your seat backs and tray tables to the upright position and ensure your seat belts are securely fastened as we make our final pass through the cabin to collect any remaining service items.”

  What was wrong with her?

  “I’d better…” Sam waved to her empty seat and climbed off his lap and over the armrest.

  Awkwardness folded around them, growing thicker and heavier as the cabin pressure changed and the plane sank lower and lower. Sam clicked her seat belt and kicked at her purse to make sure it was still tucked all the way beneath the seat in front of her, avoiding looking at Jase again.

  They would land soon and go their separate ways—or as separately as they could considering they were both going to the same fifteen hundred person town for the holidays.

  Whatever history they had was just that—history. There was no point reading anything into a look in his eyes. Or the almost involuntary way his hand had stroked along her thigh. Or the way her stomach had flipped just as hard from his scent as it had from the jolting turbulence.

  He’d caught her at a vulnerable moment—which pretty much all of her moments were, where he was concerned—but when she got home things could go back to normal and normal no longer included Jase.

  She just needed to get home.

  Chapter Four – Love in the Time of Cinnabon

  White Christmas poured through the speakers as snow fell in an unending sheet outside the windows and all the screens in the terminal gradually turned red as more and more of the flights listed were relabeled Delayed and Canceled. Including their connecting flight to Green Bay.

  Jason pulled out his phone, his gaze trained on Sam as she fidgeted impatiently in the mile-long line. She was waiting to talk to a customer service agent about when they might actually have a prayer of getting out of here. All he had to do was take one look around at the travelers already bunking down on all the chairs and scraps of floor space in the gate area to see that everything had been grounded for the storm. Their odds of getting out tonight were slim to none.

  The hotels were doubtless already full by now, so his first priority was getting them a rental car. His second priority would be getting Sam to agree to get into it with him. Because he needed more time with her to convince her that they still had a future together. And he had a job interview to get to if he wanted to have any hope of securing that future.

  She hadn’t said a word to him since they landed, pretending they
were just two strangers gathering up their belongings and heading up the jetway as if they didn’t know one another. She studiously avoided looking at him now as she shifted impatiently from foot to foot, but he wasn’t about to let her keep ignoring him forever. This was his chance to get her back and he wasn’t going to let it slip through his fingers.

  The first two rental companies he tried returned messages that everything was sold out. He began to have visions of trying to woo his way back into Sam’s good graces in the middle of the O’Hare food court as he pulled up the third travel site and typed in a request for anything with four wheels that could get them to White Falls.

  Three websites later, baring his soul in front of Cinnabon was looking more and more likely. Sam reached the front of the line and he could tell just by the dejected line of her shoulders that she wasn’t boarding a plane any time in the foreseeable future. She’d never had much of a poker face. It had been one of his favorite things about her. Everything was on the surface with Sam—her joy, her disappointment—it was all right there to see.

  But toward the end, he’d forgotten to look.

  She hitched up her purse, grabbed her roller bag and trudged away from the desk until she came to an unoccupied bit of valuable airport real estate and began to dig around in her purse.

  “No luck?” he asked as he came up beside her.

  She looked up and pulled a face—which he would take as a victory because at least she didn’t flinch away from the sight of him. “Nothing is flying until tomorrow and it will be a minor miracle if we can get on one of those flights, since everything is already overbooked for the holidays. And if that wasn’t enough, the airline lady said they can’t give out any more hotel vouchers because all the hotels are full of other passengers waiting to fly.”

  “I thought that might be the case.” He held up his phone. “I’ve been looking for a rental car. Thought we could carpool up to White Falls.”

  He’d expected her face to light with transparent hope, but instead hesitation filled her face. “Oh.”

  “It’s only a six hour drive.”

  “In perfect conditions.”

  “So it will take us a little longer. It’s still our best chance at getting home before Christmas Eve. And I’m not leaving you in the Chicago airport. Your mother would never forgive me.”

  “I wouldn’t be so sure about that,” Sam muttered.

  “Unless you just don’t want to get in a car with me.”

  “It isn’t that…” But her face spoke volumes that it was exactly that. Sam, who had once trusted him with every fiber of her being, didn’t want to get in a car with him.

  “You’ve known me since we were fifteen, Sam. I think by now you know I’m not an ax murderer.”

  “Does it even matter?” she argued. “We probably can’t even find a rental, with all the flights canceled or delayed.”

  He hated to admit she was right, wanted to push at her resistance until he found its source. “If I had a car would you go with me?” he pressed, tilting his phone to conceal the Sorry, no cars are available in your area message glowing on his screen. He absently swiped the refresh button—as if that would magically make a car appear.

  “I guess we’ll never know.”

  “You’d really stay here, sleeping on the floor of the airport with no guarantee that you’ll be able to get home this week rather than ride next to me for a few hours so you could get home tonight? You hate me that much?”

  “I don’t hate you,” she argued, eyes narrowing. “And I wouldn’t do that. I’d go with you if you had a car, but you obviously don’t so I don’t see why it’s such a big deal—”

  His phone binged cheerfully, interrupting her. He glanced at the screen—and his belief in Santa Claus was restored. “We got one.”

  “One what?”

  “A car. Look.” He showed her his phone, complete with a Thank you, Valued Customer, for reserving a car with us message.

  “How?”

  “Call it a Christmas miracle if you want, but we’d better get moving before they give it away to someone else.”

  She hesitated, her green eyes darkening. “I…”

  “I’m not letting you back out on me. You said if I had a car you’d ride with me. So ride with me. You aren’t sleeping on the floor of the airport five days before Christmas. Please, Sam, just let me get you home safe.”

  “I need to call Elise. Let her know not to meet the flight in Green Bay.”

  Jason smiled, taking the words as the capitulation they were. He bent and lifted her roller bag, tucking it under one arm as he grabbed the handle of his own. “Call her as we walk toward the car. I want to get out of the city before the snow piles up any more.”

  The rest of their bags were somewhere in the domain of baggage handlers, waiting for the next flight to Green Bay, but they could collect them after the weather-induced travel fiasco cleared up. Right now, Jase made a beeline toward the rental cars with Samantha’s carry-on held hostage under his arm.

  Six hours to plead his case.

  He could work with that.

  *

  Six hours with Jase MacGregor. What had she been thinking?

  Samantha trailed in his wake through the airport, trying not to ogle his tight butt in his tailored pants…but not trying too hard. He still looked too damn good. Jase had always been driven in everything he did—from physical fitness to academics to his career. It looked like at least the fitness part of that hadn’t changed. He probably still swam three times a week and lifted weights on the off days—if the way he’d lifted her suitcase like it was filled with air was anything to go by.

  Before she could get sucked into admiring his body—again—Sam dug out her phone and powered it up. She’d gotten out of the habit of having it while she was on the show. Their contact with the outside world was strictly monitored and over the last few weeks she’d been out of the country where her cell didn’t work anyway. She hadn’t had time to turn it on during her frantic LA layover and had completely forgotten to check it when they first landed in Chicago.

  Sam waited with equal parts anticipation and nerves as the phone finished its start-up routine. She hadn’t seen or spoken to her family since she’d brought Daniel home to White Falls as part of the show’s Meet-the-In-Laws dates. For all they knew she could be coming home engaged.

  As recently as a few hours ago, Sam would have wanted nothing more than to talk about Daniel and the strange lack of connection to him she had discovered when he dumped her on camera. But now all she could think about was Jase. What seeing him again meant. What would happen when they got in the car.

  She wasn’t so sure driving home with Jase was a good idea, but she wanted so badly to be there she hadn’t been able to pass up the offer.

  Sam thumbed through her recent contacts to her sister’s number and pressed the call icon, still following along behind Jase as he blazed a trail through O’Hare toward the beacon of ground transportation.

  Elise answered on the second ring. “Do you have any idea how good it feels to see your name on my caller-ID again? It feels like it’s been a million years since I’ve seen you!”

  The familiar sound of her sister’s voice reached into her heart and squeezed it. Elise was only two years older and they’d always shared everything. These last two weeks, isolated in her Tahitian hotel room, Elise was the one person she’d wished most often she could call and talk to about her confused feelings—or lack thereof—for Daniel, but now that Elise was on the other end of the line, she just wanted to talk about nothing, to listen to the comfortable familiarity of her sister’s voice and finally be able to relax.

  “I miss you too,” she said in a massive understatement, “but it’s gonna be a little longer before we can catch up. My Chicago-Green Bay flight was cancelled.”

  Elise groaned. “I was afraid that was why you were calling. This storm is insane. Do they have any idea when you’ll be able to get out of there?”

  “Actuall
y, it looks like I might be able to get home today—just not on a plane.” Trepidation threaded through her, but she forced herself to say the next words, as if saying them would make her go through with it. “Jase was on the flight too and he found a rental car—”

  “Wait a second. Your Jase?”

  They stepped out of the terminal and Jase immediately flagged down the rental shuttle, blindingly bedecked with Christmas lights. She climbed on behind him, putting one hand over her mouth to muffle her words though he didn’t seem to be paying any attention to her conversation.

  “He isn’t my Jase.” Not anymore.

  “But we are talking about Jason Duncan MacGregor, hometown hero, pride of White Falls, who you dated for ten years, are we not? That Jase?”

  She swallowed past the lump in her throat and forced the word out. “Yes.”

  “Sam! Why didn’t you tell me? How long have you two been back in touch? Did you see him when you were in LA?”

  “Elise.”

  Her sister wasn’t listening. “Are you guys back together? Does this mean you aren’t going to marry Mister Perfect and have clean-cut American babies with him? Oh my God! Did he choose you, but you turned him down and ran back into Jase’s arms? Did they get it on camera? Because I will just die if—”

  “Elise!”

  “Sorry. You speak. I’ll just sit here quiet as a church mouse and resist the urge to squee.”

  The shuttle arrived at the rental building and Jase gathered up their bags, leading the way inside. Sam dawdled, letting the distance stretch between them as she pressed the phone closer to her mouth and lowered her voice.

  “Elise. I love you and I will tell you every single detail of the last three months, gag orders be damned, including the way I accidentally ran into Jase on the plane and he offered to share his rental car up to White Falls out of convenience and how we are definitely not back together in any way, shape or form, nor are we ever going to be, but right now I have to get in a car and drive six plus hours through the snow with my ex, so can we save the dramatic reenactment of my life for tomorrow?”