To my Italian chef friend, Giovanni Scorzo-Andreoli. I’ve been to Italy and I know the food,

      which is to die for. It was such a delight to find real Italian food in Scottsdale, Arizona! My thanks to Pamela Kimbrough and Vesna Ajic, my lunch buddies, for finding this Italian jewel and the many wonderful meals we share there together. www.andreoli-grocer.com.

Dear Reader,

      It was a delight and honor to be part of this very special Christmas anthology for several reasons. I want to thank Birgit Davis-Todd, Senior Executive Editor, for allowing this project to become a reality, and especially for asking Mills & Boon writers who are military vets to write the military romance novellas you will read in this book.

      I was in the U.S. Navy as an AG3 (weather forecaster) and pioneered the military genre in 1983 with Captive of Fate (Silhouette Special Edition). My other two sister writers, Delores Fossen, U.S. Air Force, and Geri Krotow, U.S. Navy, are also military vets, so the readers are getting the real deal. The novellas will have a uniqueness that no one else can produce because we were in the military and understand how it works from the inside out. We’re able to lend an insider’s knowledge to the novellas as a result.

      With the drawdown and our heroic military men and women finally coming home from Afghanistan, it makes our stories all the more heartrending and poignant. Delores, Geri and I know what it’s like to be stationed somewhere else in the world when the holidays hit. And it’s a very lonely time for everyone because of the separation involved. Christmas is the single most important holiday a military person yearns to be home for and celebrate. And so often it doesn’t happen. The sacrifices our military people make are many.

      To our military personnel, thank you for your service, your hours alone overseas, so far away from your home and family. And equally, let’s praise those wives/husbands and children who also make those sacrifices in different ways when their loved one is so far away from them. It’s hard on everyone. Just know that you are not forgotten by any of these military women vets and authors here at Mills & Boon.

      Hooyah!

      Lindsay McKenna

CHAPTER ONE

      SNOW TWISTED, TURNED and sparkled around Kyle Anderson as he eased out of the rental car. He closed the door and thrust his hands deep into the pockets of his leather bomber jacket. The cold snowflakes landed in his hair, slid across his jacket and melted upon touching his face as he slowly walked toward the White Sulphur Springs Ranch house. The wind was inconstant and he hunched his shoulders, hearing his combat boots crunching in the foot of snow across the graveled parking area.

      His heart squeezed with anticipation and worry. Anna Campbell, the woman he loved and had walked away from, had been in a serious auto accident two weeks ago. She’d been in a coma, though now was recovering at home.

      Kyle had been notified only three days ago because his SEAL team had been out on a two-week mission. He didn’t think twice before leaving to see her.

      His mouth tightened and he opened the creaking white picket-fence gate. Snow had covered the bright red tiles he had helped place there as a ten-year-old. Kyle had grown up with Anna on her parents’ ten-thousand-acre cattle ranch. There were so many good memories here. He halted for a moment on the covered sidewalk, looking around.

      The sun was setting, the sky a light gray. He could see the sharp pointed tips of the evergreens behind the massive two-story log house. To his left were three large red barns. To his right were pipe-rail fences where the cattle were kept. Most of the animals were probably in nearby pastures, huddled in herds, their butts to the wind, keeping warm. The barns would house the wrangler’s horses in box stalls, the grain and hay to feed these herds.

      No one was out in the coming blizzard. The car-rental place at the Great Falls, Montana, airport had warned him that a major storm was on its way. It was expected to dump three to four feet of snow in the next one or two days. He’d arrived home just in time.

      Turning, he wiped his wet face and spotted something in the window nearest the bright red wooden door. It was an electric candle sitting in the window.

      Old memories flowed through Kyle as he stared at the light, filling him with remorse and yearning. When she was eighteen, Anna had bought the electric candle in a scroll-like saucer of green copper at a hardware store in Great Falls. She told Kyle she would keep the candle on during the holidays, as a light, so he could find his way home to her. Pain squeezed his heart.

      The window was partly frosted over in the corners, the ice crystals making the soft yellow light look like some kind of halo an angel might wear. Anna was his angel. She always had been. His mouth pulled in at the corners as he stood there on the walk, his gaze on that candle, the memories filling him like warm, spiced red wine tainted with bitterness.

      Kyle couldn’t remember a time when he hadn’t loved Anna. They had grown up together on this ranch, attended the same small school, played together, laughed together and had so much fun. He’d joined the Navy at eighteen and later became a SEAL. He’d left Anna crying in this very driveway that cold December day. Rubbing his chest, grief, loss and concern warred within Kyle.

      Of all the people in the world he loved, Anna had always owned his