by Geri Krotow
“Aren’t you?” He was still mesmerized by her lips. Like a sixteen-year-old with his first girlfriend, he couldn’t stop thinking about how soft they must be. How pliant they’d feel under his. And her tongue— He groaned.
Her eyes narrowed. “Are you okay?”
“Fine.”
He didn’t want to explain his uncontrollable attraction to her.
“Have you been out here before, during the day?”
She nodded. “Yes, but only out front. I usually see Winnie at her shop.”
“So you haven’t seen their Christmas lights for the kids?”
“No, not yet.”
She blinked and he knew he was moving too fast, into territory he had no business entering. But like a riptide, his need to be with her, be alone with her, propelled him to make the gutsiest, stupidest, most thrilling decision of the season.
“Let me show you.” He clasped her elbow and nodded toward the tall French doors that led to the large deck.
“It’s freezing out!”
“We won’t be there that long. Drink up the rest of your bubbly and when we’re back inside you can get a warm-up.”
She did, all the while eyeing him with a suspicious gleam. After she put the empty flute on a side table, she tilted her head toward the doors.
“Make it quick, Jonas.”
Jonas nodded and ushered her out onto the deck. The shock of the cold air hit his cheeks and he saw her shiver. Still, he couldn’t pull her in his arms.
He shouldn’t.
“Is that a tree fort?” She laughed at the sight of the miniature house trimmed with twinkling multicolored lights. Through the tiny window a small Christmas tree winked with white lights.
“Yes, Max goes all out for his girls.”
“It’s so beautiful here.”
She’d wrapped both arms around her, and he watched her profile as she gazed at the darkness, the lights, the stars, the water in the distance, reflecting the crescent moon.
“No matter where I go in the world, when it’s time to settle down, be it for a nap or a decent four hours of sleep, I never fail to see Whidbey in my mind.”
“This is your home. Of course you should see it in your dreams.”
“Is it going to be your home, Serena? How can you be so sure you’ll want to stay here with Pepé, that you won’t change your mind?”
The moonlight caught her expression and he saw her search for the right words to match her feelings.
When a sharp shiver went through her, he instinctively pulled her against him, rubbing her back to warm her.
She opened her arms and pushed her hands against his chest. Looking up into his face, she opened her mouth, no doubt to protest his bold actions.
Jonas allowed his years of medical and military training to carry him to the next indicated task. He had a beautiful woman in his arms and they both needed to stay warm.
He kissed her.
* * *
SERENA KNEW HE was going to kiss her. Knew she was going to let him. Knew, or at least assumed, that she’d like it. Otherwise, she wouldn’t have come out here with him.
What she didn’t expect was that Jonas’s lips on hers was going to release her inner vixen and make her want to jump him right here on the deck, to hell with the partygoers inside.
Her sex life with Phil had been loving, warm, at times exciting. Jonas’s kiss was hot, sexy, sinfully wonderful. And his tongue—Dios mio, his tongue was doing things to her mouth that immediately made her wish he’d use it on other parts of her anatomy, pronto.
She grasped the back of his neck and pulled his head closer while she angled her hips into his.
Who was she? Where was her composure?
Was that her groan or his?
He lowered his hands to her waist, turned her around and pushed her against the side of the house. The cold wood siding dug into her back through her sweater and grounded her in the moment. The crisp, cold air on her cheeks. Jonas’s hot, hot mouth. Her gulps for air when he lifted his lips from hers and buried his face in the side of her neck, his tongue seeking contact with the sensitive skin at the base of her throat.
She grabbed either side of his head and pulled him back up to her lips.
If only she’d kept her eyes closed, the moment might have turned into more.
When she looked up into his eyes, begging him for another kiss, she saw...
Confusion? Guilt?
“What, Jonas?”
One kiss and she was complete mush. She fought through the brain fog her lust had induced.
“Serena, I have to tell you something.”
Her skin cooled and the reality of being outside in subfreezing temperatures with Jonas— Jonas, who wanted her to give her house to him— sobered her.
“Oh, God, you’re married!”
“No, not married.”
She knew he wasn’t. Winnie would have said something. So would Dottie.
He put his fingers to her lips. The struggle that played out in his expression wasn’t odd to her—he wanted to kiss her again, too. She saw it in the way he stared at her, at her lips, and then licked his own. How could such masculine lips be so sensual?
“Serena, I’ve bought the land lots next to and behind the farmhouse.”
Rejection put an immediate end to her bliss and strangled her newfound sexual attraction to him.
She shivered and tried to steady herself against the cold.
The land lots she’d hoped to eventually purchase, to restore the farmhouse back to its original parameters.
To fulfill her silent promise to Dottie.
“When did you do this?”
“I’d placed bids on the lots while I was still on deployment—I gave my brother power of attorney. When I first got back I went ahead and signed the initial paperwork. Because of the slow real estate market the Realtor was able to make closing happen quickly.”
“It’s a done deal?”
“As of four o’clock today, yes.”
She lowered her hands from around his neck, leaving them with the lightest touch on his chest.
“Awkward.”
She was not going to let him see her disappointment. She still had her pride, for heaven’s sake.
“That means this is out of the question, doesn’t it?” Thank God for her attorney voice.
“It doesn’t have to, Serena. We’re both adults.”
“I’m not ready for anything like this, Jonas, and certainly not with the man who wants to choke me out of my rightful property.”
“Serena—”
She shoved against his chest and he took a step back.
“I’m cold, Jonas.”
Serena walked back into the party and headed for the bathroom. She had to sidestep several conversations, but she made it into the powder room off the main foyer without being dragged into any cocktail-party chatter. Fortunately, the bathroom wasn’t occupied and she was able to put a closed door between her and Jonas.
She flipped down the lid on the toilet and sat on it. It was covered with a fuzzy snowman’s face with a matching rug at the base. Only Winnie would have something so whimsical in her guest bathroom.
Serena felt anything but whimsy as she went over what Jonas had revealed, while trying to ignore her throbbing lips.
So he’d bought the land that surrounded the house? So what? She still had the property that included a good stretch of woods, and the front meadow that rolled down toward the shore almost a mile away.
If he builds, no, when he builds, he’ll be in full view of you. Every day. Every time you drive up to your house.
The land had never been built on. It had originally been purchased by Dottie’s grandparents when the land was cheap and their dreams big. When Dottie
inherited the house from her parents, she’d had to sell off some of the land to buy out her brother for her half of the house. She’d sold it to a local farmer with the promise she’d be able to buy it back when she wanted.
By the time Dottie met Jonas’s father, her concerns about the land became less important than raising four boys and enjoying being a mother and wife after years of living alone. She’d mentioned the land one of the times she’d had Serena and Pepé over for Sunday dinner.
Dottie had confided to Serena that she’d hoped to purchase the land once she cashed in some of her stocks in the next year or two. She’d been killed only a month later, before her vision was realized.
Serena blinked back tears and stared at the wall. Did Winnie really have red-and-green printed toilet paper?
The Christmas spirit that had entered her heart when she walked into Winnie’s home blew away in a puff of coldhearted truth.
She couldn’t bring Dottie back, and now it looked like she might not ever get the land, either. Jonas Scott might be the best kisser. But he played dirty.
She could, too. And it wasn’t really dirty. He needed to understand that she and Pepé were the farmhouse’s rightful owners.
She and Pepé were also the farmhouse’s future, connected to the past by blood. Once she found out more about who her grandparents had been, she’d show Jonas what legacy meant. The first aspect of her research would be the World War II tree ornaments.
Maybe she had some Christmas spirit after all. The ghost of Christmas past.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Remote island off Thailand
January 1942
FLYING TIGER HENRY FORSYTH sucked the juice out of the coconut he’d foraged from the jungle floor hours earlier, before the sun made its daily pilgrimage to the perch that bathed the tiny island in hellish heat. He let the murky liquid wash over his tongue as he lost himself in memories.
Sarah.
Dottie.
He’d see them again. He’d get home. It was only a matter of when.
He was on a dot of land somewhere off the coast of Thailand, his P-40 single-engine propeller aircraft the victim of a Japanese army air force “Oscar” machine gun. That damned Ki-43 had come out of nowhere, just when he’d finished his mission and was on his way back to home base in Burma.
It’d been well over a week since he’d been hit. He sat on the mat he’d made from palm fronds, up against the fuselage and under the starboard wing of his P-40 Warhawk. He squinted against the hot sun as he broke open another coconut. His fingers were rough and scratched his skin when he rubbed his eyes.
Ragged marks into the side of one of the metal tiles on the plane indicated it was his tenth day missing in action. Had he been reported home in a telegram as MIA? Or worse? By his calculations it was January 12, and even if the Japanese surrendered today, it would take the Marines weeks to find him. Followed by another month-long boat transit across the Pacific to Hawaii, where he’d await new orders. He’d never be flown from Hawaii to the States—he was too junior and he wasn’t injured badly enough to be discharged. His cuts were healing and the rib he figured he’d cracked in the landing would stop bothering him eventually.
Besides, he didn’t want to go home now, when the fight was just starting. He couldn’t wait to see Sarah and Dottie again, but he refused to go back without knowing the Japanese had surrendered.
He wanted to return to the fight so badly it made his teeth hurt. Or maybe that was from chewing through too much coconut.
He grinned at the jungle around him. It was tough not having the guys with him to laugh at his crazy thoughts. They were all just as nuts as he.
The tendons at his wrist still complained when he went to move his left hand, but the swelling had receded from the softball-size lump.
“I haven’t lost all my luck. I’m still alive.” He might find himself gone cuckoo if he kept having these conversations with himself.
The pile of gnarly dried branches he’d collected caught his attention. He’d picked them up on his walks to and from the beachfront. Without a working radio, and out of range even if his batteries hadn’t failed, he had no way, other than the stars, to be sure of where he was. His vision got clearer every night, at the same rate that the pounding in the back of his head and sides of his temples subsided. From the amount of dried blood on the back of his cockpit seat when he’d awakened, he must have taken a doozy of a crack to his noggin.
He wanted to have the comfort of a fire at night but even with a foggy brain he knew it could get him captured. It wasn’t worth it.
Sarah. Visions of her, naked on their bed, would give him all the consolation he needed.
Christmas. He’d missed it. Their first Christmas apart. He’d been granted a week of leave after his flight training, right before he got on the boat to Burma. He and Sarah had tried to make it a good week, like Christmas, but it wasn’t the same. It couldn’t be.
He didn’t have a gift for her this year, hadn’t sent her or Dottie anything, but he could make them one.
After his afternoon snooze he’d get himself a solid branch and create something using the knife that had made the trip in his flight vest.
* * *
HE ENJOYED MORE than a nap—when he awoke it was dark. The nights out here were darker than any he remembered. He knew that wasn’t really true but it was lonely out here. Whidbey Island got dark in the winter but as long as he could see the stars or the moon he never felt alone. Reality was that his solitude and vulnerability were closing in on him. He missed home.
Whidbey Island.
Funny how quickly Whidbey had gotten into his blood. At first he thought it was because of Sarah, as did his family back in West Texas. They thought he’d get tired of the long gray seasons and bring his wife back to the town he’d been raised in.
It hadn’t happened. After five years as a resident of Oak Harbor he belonged in the Pacific Northwest as much as he belonged with Sarah. Once Dottie came along, their family was complete, and he had no doubt they’d give Dottie a little brother or sister.
It had to wait until after the war, but he was going to see Sarah’s belly swollen with his baby again.
He would get back to them.
He wrapped his fingers around his pocketknife and he itched to make something for them now. Even if they never got it, just making it would bring them closer. At least it would feel that way....
Finally the sand reflected a silvery glow. The moonlight was the only light he could trust. Moving around wasn’t an option, either, as he didn’t know enough about where he’d landed to make traveling in the dark worth the risk of being captured or falling prey to wildlife. There could be wild cats and poisonous snakes, but he hadn’t heard any animal noises that concerned him.
He was too close to the beach. He should have moved farther inland. His instincts had told him to get to the trees, where he could hide better, which he did after he’d crashed in a grove not more than five hundred yards from the sand. His hunger made his stomach growl so loudly. Which was more of a risk—having his stomach noises heard by the enemy or risking capture if he went out to the beach to catch a crab?
Blue light glowed over the ocean water as he checked out the beach through the forest of palm trees. He ignored the feel of dozens of insects crawling over him, and the sound of their buzzing. His skin was getting bitten to hell, but at least he was still alive, and he didn’t feel feverish or sick. Both very good things.
His memory lit on the image of Sarah’s face when she’d held Dottie for the first time. Dottie had been as wrinkled as a tiny prune, her clenched fists fighting their way out of the yellow blanket Sarah had knit for her.
Sarah’s face had been like an angel’s, radiant with her love for their newborn. The smile she gave him when she looked up at him from their bed at the farmhouse, after all the
pain she’d been through, had left him breathless. Sarah was his partner for life, and Dottie his dear daughter.
He had to make it back home to Whidbey. Sarah and Dottie were counting on him.
* * *
SARAH LEANED OVER HIM, blocking his view of the blinding sun.
“Don’t forget me, Henry.”
Her breath fanned his face and his erection demanded satisfaction.
“Did you hear me, Henry?”
She kissed him and he tried to pull her closer, but his hands, his arms, wouldn’t move. He had to accept her kiss as she gave it, his consuming need for her blotting out his worry that he couldn’t move his limbs.
“Sarah—ooof.” Pain shot through his shoulder and his mobility returned at the same moment he thought his arm was falling off.
“Hey, stop it!” His yell was lost in the mayhem that surrounded him. Three Japanese soldiers stood around him, one with the butt of his rifle coming down again, this time in the middle of his gut.
They’d found him.
He’d get away. He had to.
But escape with a dislocated shoulder and most likely internal bleeding wasn’t going to happen. Not today, not on this godforsaken island at the edge of Southeast Asia.
They kept screaming at him in Japanese. He managed to stumble to his feet, his left hand clutching his right breast pocket.
He had the mini P-40 he’d carved for Dottie. Its sharp edges poked through his flight suit’s fabric. If these jerks kept hitting him, the Santa Claus he’d carved in the cockpit was going to break off.
More yelling, more shoving, as they forced him to the beach. He remembered destroying his navigation and communication equipment and maps. He allowed satisfaction to warm his cold prospects. The enemy wouldn’t get any information from him.
He stumbled onto the deep sand and saw where they were taking him—to a small launch that didn’t look much bigger than his father’s lake boat. Farther out on the horizon he recognized the silhouette of one of the Japanese imperial fleet’s many transport ships. He’d bet his life that it had the word Maru stenciled on it, an indicator of the Japanese cargo class. He’d flown a mission over one just weeks ago.
