COMING HOME FOR CHRISTMAS
Author: RaeAnne Thayne
ISBN: 9781335504999
Publication Date: 9/24/2019
Publisher: HQN Books
Book Summary:
Hearts are lighter and wishes burn a little brighter at
Christmas…
Elizabeth Hamilton has been lost. Trapped in a tangle of postpartum depression and grief after the death of her beloved parents, she couldn’t quite see the way back to her husband and their two beautiful kids…until a car accident stole away her memories and changed her life. And when she finally remembered the sound of little Cassie’s laugh, the baby powder smell of Bridger and the feel of her husband’s hand in hers, Elizabeth worried that they’d moved on without her. That she’d missed too much. That perhaps she wasn’t the right mother for her kids or wife for Luke, no matter how much she loved them.
But now, seven years later, Luke finds her in a nearby town and brings Elizabeth back home to the family she loves, just in time for Christmas. And being reunited with Luke and her children is better than anything Elizabeth could have imagined. As they all trim the tree and bake cookies, making new holiday memories, Elizabeth and Luke are drawn ever closer. Can the hurt of the past seven years be healed over the course of one Christmas season and bring the Hamiltons the gift of a new beginning?
Elizabeth Hamilton has been lost. Trapped in a tangle of postpartum depression and grief after the death of her beloved parents, she couldn’t quite see the way back to her husband and their two beautiful kids…until a car accident stole away her memories and changed her life. And when she finally remembered the sound of little Cassie’s laugh, the baby powder smell of Bridger and the feel of her husband’s hand in hers, Elizabeth worried that they’d moved on without her. That she’d missed too much. That perhaps she wasn’t the right mother for her kids or wife for Luke, no matter how much she loved them.
But now, seven years later, Luke finds her in a nearby town and brings Elizabeth back home to the family she loves, just in time for Christmas. And being reunited with Luke and her children is better than anything Elizabeth could have imagined. As they all trim the tree and bake cookies, making new holiday memories, Elizabeth and Luke are drawn ever closer. Can the hurt of the past seven years be healed over the course of one Christmas season and bring the Hamiltons the gift of a new beginning?
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Excerpt:
Chapter One
This was it.
Luke Hamilton waited outside the big, rambling
Victorian house in a little coastal town in Oregon, hands shoved into the
pockets of his coat against the wet slap of air and nerves churning through
him.
Elizabeth was here. After all the years when
he had been certain she was dead—that she had wandered into the mountains
somewhere that cold day seven years earlier or she had somehow walked into the
deep, unforgiving waters of Lake Haven—he was going to see her again.
Though he had been given months to wrap his
head around the idea that his wife wasn’t dead, that she was indeed living
under another name in this town by the sea, it still didn’t seem real.
How was he supposed to feel in this moment? He
had no idea. He only knew he was filled with a crazy mix of anticipation, fear
and the low fury that had been simmering inside
him for months, since the moment FBI agent
Elliot Bailey had produced a piece of paper with a name and an address.
Luke still couldn’t quite believe she was in
there, the wife he had not seen in seven years. The wife who had disappeared
off the face of the earth, leaving plenty of people to speculate that he had
somehow hurt her, even killed her.
For all those days and months and years, he
had lived with the ghost of Elizabeth Sinclair and the love they had once
shared.
He was never nervous, damn it. So why did his
skin itch and his stomach seethe and his hands grip the cold metal of the porch
railing as if his suddenly weak knees would give way and make him topple over
if he let go?
A moment later, he sensed movement inside the
foyer of the house. The woman he had spoken with when he had first pulled up to
this address, the woman who had been hanging Christmas lights around the big,
charming home and who had looked at him with such suspicion and had not invited
him to wait inside, opened the door. One hand was thrust into her coat pocket
around a questionable-looking bulge.
She was either concealing a handgun or a Taser
or pepper spray. Since he had never met the woman before, Luke couldn’t begin
to guess which. Her features had lost none of that alert wariness that told him
she would do whatever necessary to protect Elizabeth.
He wanted to tell her he would never hurt his
wife, but it was a refrain he had grown tired of repeating. Over the years, he
had become inured to people’s opinions on the matter. Let them think what the
hell they wanted. He knew the truth.
“Where is she?” he demanded.
There was a long pause, like some
tension-filled moment just before the gunfight in Old West movies. He wouldn’t
have been surprised if tumbleweeds suddenly blew down the street.
Then, from behind the first woman, another
figure stepped out onto the porch, slim and blonde and…shockingly familiar.
He stared, stunned to his bones. It was her.
Not Elizabeth. Her. He had seen this woman around his small Idaho town
of Haven Point several times over the last few years, fleeting glimpses only
out of the corner of his gaze at a baseball game or a school program.
The mystery woman.
He assumed she had been there to watch one of
the other children. Maybe an aunt from out of town, someone he didn’t know.
Luke had noticed her…and had hated the tiny
little glow of attraction that had sparked to life.
He hadn’t wanted to be aware of any other
woman. What was the point? For years, he thought his heart had died when
Elizabeth walked away. He figured everything good and right inside him had
shriveled up and he had nothing left to give another woman.
Despite his anger at himself for the unwilling
attraction to a woman he could never have, he had come to look forward to those
random glimpses of the beautiful mystery woman who wore sunglasses and floppy
hats, whose hair was a similar color to his wife’s but whose features were
very different.
For the first time since he had pulled up to
Brambleberry House, he began to wonder if he had been wrong. If Elliot had
been wrong, if his investigation had somehow gone horribly off track.
What if this wasn’t Elizabeth? What if it was
all some terrible mistake?
He didn’t know what to say, suddenly. Did he
tell them both he had erred, make some excuse and disappear? He was about to do
just that when he saw her eyes, a clear, startling blue with a dark, almost
black, ring around the irises.
He knew those eyes. It was her.
There was nervousness in them, yes, but no
surprise, almost as if she had been expecting him.
“Elizabeth.”
She flinched a little at the name. “No one
has…called me that in a very long time.”
Her voice was the second confirmation, the same
husky alto that had haunted his dreams every single night for seven years.
The other woman stared at her. “Sonia. What is
going on? Who is this man? Why is he calling you Elizabeth?”
“It is…a really long story, Rosa.”
“He says he is your husband.”
“He was. A long time ago.”
The anger simmered hotter, flaring up like a
controlled burn that was trying to jump the ditch. He did his best to tamp it
down. He would not become his father, no matter the provocation.
“I’m still your husband. Nothing has changed.
Until we divorce or you are declared dead, we are very much still married in
the eyes of the law.”
Her mouth opened again, eyes shocked as if she
had never considered the possibility. Maybe as far as she was concerned, her
act of walking away without a word had terminated their marriage.
It had in every way except the official one.
“I…guess that’s probably true.”
“That’s why I’m here. I need you to come back
to Haven Point so we can end this thing once and for all.” He was unable to
keep the bitterness out of his voice. “It shouldn’t be that hard for you. You
know the way. Apparently you’ve been back to town plenty of times. You just
never bothered to stop and say hello to me or your two children.”
Her skin, already pale in the weak December
afternoon light, seemed to turn ashen, and Luke was immediately ashamed at his
cruelty. He tried to be better than that, to take the higher ground in most
situations. He was uncomfortably aware that this unwanted reunion with his
long-missing wife would likely bring out the worst in him.
The other woman looked shocked. “You have
children? I don’t understand any of this, Sonia.”
She winced. “It’s so complicated, Rosa. I
don’t know…where to start. I… My name isn’t Sonia, as you’ve obviously…figured
out. He is right. It is Elizabeth Hamilton, and this…this is my husband,
Lucas.”
The other woman was slow to absorb the
information, but after a shocked moment, her gaze narrowed and she moved
imperceptibly in front of Elizabeth, as if her slight frame could protect her
friend.
It was a familiar motion, one that intensified
his shame. How many times had he done the same thing, throwing his body in
front of his mother and then his stepmother? By the time he was big enough and
tough enough to make a difference, his father was dead and no longer a threat.
“Are you afraid of this man?” Rosa demanded.
“Has he hurt you? I can call Chief Townsend. He would be here in a moment.”
Elizabeth put a hand on the other woman’s arm.
It was clear they were close friends. The wild pendulum of Luke’s emotions
right now swung back to anger. Somehow she had managed to form friendships with
other people, to completely move on with her life, while he had been
suffocating for seven years under the weight of rumor and suspicion.
“It is fine, Rosa. Thank you. Please don’t
worry about me. I…I need to speak with…with my husband. We have…much to
discuss. Go on inside. I’ll talk to you later and…and try to explain.”
Rosa was clearly reluctant to leave. She
hovered on the porch, sending him mistrustful looks. He wanted to tell her not
to waste her energy. He’d spent years developing a thick skin when it came to
people suspecting him of being a monster.
“I’m here,” she said firmly. “I’ll wait
inside. You only have to call out. And Melissa is in her apartment as well. We
won’t let anything happen to you.”
“Nothing is going to happen to me,” Elizabeth
assured her. “Luke won’t hurt me.”
“Don’t be so sure of that,” he muttered,
though it was a lie. Some might think him a monster but he suspected Elizabeth
knew he could never lay a hand on her.
First of all, it wasn’t in his nature. Second,
he had spent his entire life working toward self-mastery and iron control—doing
whatever necessary to avoid becoming his father.
After another moment, Rosa turned around and
slipped through the carved front door, reluctance apparent in every line of her
body. On some level, Luke supposed he should be grateful Elizabeth had people
willing to stand up and protect her.
“How did you…? How did you find me?”
He still didn’t know everything Elliot had
gone through to locate her. He knew the FBI agent had spent long hours tracking
down leads after a truck driver came forward years later to say that on the
night Elizabeth disappeared, the trucker thought she gave a woman resembling
Elizabeth’s description a ride to a truck stop in central Oregon.
Somehow from that slim piece of information,
Elliot had undergone an impressive investigation on his own time and managed to
put the pieces of the puzzle together. If not for Elliot, Luke wouldn’t be here
in front of this big oceanfront Victorian in Cannon Beach and this familiar but
not familiar woman.
Thinking about Elliot Bailey always left him
conflicted, too. He was grateful to the man but still found it weird to think
of his former best friend with Megan, Luke’s younger sister. After several
months, he was almost used to the idea of them being together.
“I didn’t.” He jerked his attention back to
the moment. “Elliot Bailey did. That’s not really important, is it? The point
is, now I know where you are. But then, I guess you were never really lost,
were you? We only thought you were. You’ve certainly been back to Haven Point
in your little disguise plenty of times over the years.”
It burned him, knowing he hadn’t recognized
his own wife. When he looked closer now, knowing what he did, he could see more
hints of the woman he had loved. The brows were the same, arched and delicate,
and her lips were still full and lush. But her face was more narrow, her nose
completely different and her cheekbones higher and more defined.
Why had she undergone so much plastic surgery?
It was one more mystery amid dozens.
“What do you want, Luke?”
“I told you. I need you to come home. At this
moment, the Lake Haven County district attorney’s office is preparing to file
charges against me related to your disappearance and apparent murder.”
“My what?”
“Elliot has tried to convince the woman you’re
still very much alive. He hasn’t had much luck, especially considering he’s
all but a member of the family and will be marrying my sister in a few months.
The DA plans to move forward and arrest me in hopes of forcing me to tell them
where I hid your body.”
“Wait—what? Elliot and Megan are together?
When did that happen?”
He barely refrained from grinding his teeth.
“Not really the point, is it? This has gone on long enough. I’m going to be
arrested, Elizabeth. Before the holidays, if my sources are right. The district
attorney is determined to send a message that men in her jurisdiction can’t get
away with making their wives disappear. I’m going to go to jail, at least for a
while. Our children have already spent enough Christmases without one parent.
Do you want them to lose the other one?”
“Of course not.”
He didn’t know whether to believe her or not.
How could he? He didn’t even know this woman, despite the fact that she had
once been closer to him than anyone else on earth.
“Then grab your things and let’s go.”
Excerpted from Coming
Home for Christmas by RaeAnn Thayne. Copyright © 2019 by RaeAnn Thayne. Published by HQN Books.
Author Bio:
New York Times bestselling author RaeAnne
Thayne finds inspiration in the beautiful northern Utah mountains where she
lives with her family. Her books have won numerous honors, including six RITA
Award nominations from Romance Writers of America and Career Achievement and
Romance Pioneer awards from RT Book Reviews. She loves to hear from readers and
can be reached through her website at www.raeannethayne.com.
Social Links:
Twitter: @raeannethayne
Facebook: @AuthorRaeAnneThayne
Instagram: @jensnowauthor
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