“No, I think-”

“Please? Let me have my crowning glory.” With careful concentration she followed Steve’s terse directions and pulled straight in, toward the hangar and its opened doors. The small figures standing there gradually came into focus. One by one she made out each of the mechanics. Then Matt. Even Holly. She saw Bryan, standing in the open hangar door, his pilot’s uniform gracing his tall, leanly muscled body. He looked right at her, and though not one of his muscles seemed to relax, she would have sworn his eyes filled with relief.

Cocky now, she waved to him.

“Katie!” Steve yelled. “Keep both hands on the-”

Too late.

On the slight incline, the plane veered to the right. Three mechanics dove out of her way. Matt stood there a moment longer, his mouth hanging open in disbelief, terror in his eyes, before Holly tackled him and pulled him down to safety.

“Katie!”

“Steve, stop hollering, you’re distracting me.”

“But-”

“Hush!”

He only groaned and ducked.

She whizzed by without killing anyone.

That was her last thought as the plane’s wing clipped the steel hangar side wall, buckling it like a cheap toy as the plane skidded to an abrupt halt ten feet short of her tie-down spot.

When the plane shuddered still, Katie opened her eyes and risked a peek at Steve.

He straightened, looked out the window and grimaced. “Hey, remember last week when you almost killed our vice president and you didn’t get fired?”

“Yeah?”

“Hope your luck is still holding.”

13

HEART IN HIS THROAT, Bryan hauled Katie out of the plane. Before her toes could even touch the ground he had her buried in his arms and he was never going to let her go.

Never.

It shocked him, scared the hell out of him, but he could no longer deny the truth.

He loved her.

Because his legs were weak, he pressed his back against the other side of the hangar, the good side, on the steel wall that wasn’t buckled like a tin can, and sank to the ground with her in his lap.

“You’re shaking,” he whispered.

“No, that’s you,” Katie whispered back, holding him tighter. “Bryan…”

“No.” Fear and anguish and panic all rolled together into temper that overcame him now that he was sitting. “What the hell was that, Katie? What got into you?”

“Well, I-”

“What were you doing up there taking a flying lesson, and from someone else?”

“It’s-”

“Dammit, how could you risk yourself that way, in a plane that isn’t mine, and then that-that approach, though I use the term loosely! What the hell was that?”

“My life is my own, Bryan.”

“Yes, but I want in.”

“You…want in. My life?”

“I meant it,” he whispered. “I meant what I said in the hangar. I didn’t realize it, God who would have thought, but Katie, it’s true. I love you. Enough to give up stunting, enough to know that I’ll never want another woman, enough to promise forever. But please, please don’t ever fly again.”

He shouldn’t have asked it of her, he had no right to ask anything of her when she hadn’t asked anything of him. Misery and regret washed over him. “Wait. That didn’t come out right.”

“You don’t want me to ever fly again,” she repeated slowly. “Interesting.”

“Katie-”

“Whoops,” she said, covering his mouth again when he would have spoken. “Still my turn.” Ignoring the commotion around them as everyone picked themselves up and took inventory of the damage, she looked deep into his eyes. “I thought I wanted safety. Security. Stability.”

“The three S’s,” Holly said with disgust, dusting herself off. “Boring.”

Katie ignored both her and the baleful glance Matt shot her as he wiped at his filthy trousers. She looked only at Bryan. “I wanted everything I never got from my father as a child.”

When he softened with remorse, when his hands slid over her arms in a caress, she shook her head sharply and kept her hands firmly on his mouth. “Please. Let me say this, I have to get it out. I thought I wanted safe love. The quiet, reserved kind that isn’t really love at all, but just a teaser for it.” She sighed and smiled into his eyes. “I was wrong, Bryan, that’s not what I want at all. I want true, heart-pounding, butterflies-in-the-stomach, real love.”

He pulled her fingers away from his mouth. “I can’t tell you how glad I am to hear that. But dammit, you risked your life today!”

“Exactly.” She grinned at him proudly. “So now I know I’m capable of taking a risk. I know I can do this.”

“Do…what exactly?” Damn, was he always going to be clueless around her?

“Silly man. Now I know I can love you.” She cupped his face and kissed him softly, so very softly his heart caught.

“You…love me.”

“Yeah.” Her eyes filled. “I tried to save the best for last.”

“Katie, sweetheart, do me a little favor.” He could hardly speak. “Say it again.”

“I saved the best for last.”

“The other,” he said as patiently as he could. “Repeat the other.”

Her eyes filled. One tear spilled over and as he gently swiped it away with his thumb, she said the words he’d been dying to hear.

“I love you, Bryan Morgan, with all my heart. Will you be mine? Forever?”

His own eyes stung, his throat burned. “That’s supposed to be my line.”

“Well then, say it already.”

Another tear spilled over his fingers and he had no idea now which of them it belonged to. “Will you be mine, Katie Wilkins? Forever and ever?”

“I will,” she promised, and they sealed the vow with a kiss.

“I guess your Christmas curse is over,” Holly said behind them.

Julie was also there, and she smiled. “From this point on, she’s Christmas blessed.”

Around them the rest of the staff gathered oohing and aahing over Katie’s erratic-and expensive-parking job.

Katie looked deeply and lovingly into Bryan’s eyes. “Next time, I promise to let you teach me to fly, in your airplane. Okay?”

He gazed into her beautiful eyes as he stroked her cheek. Behind them he could see the damage to the hangar, the torn wing on the airplane and quickly calculated the expenses. He thought lovingly of his own planes, and how much they were worth. Behind her back he crossed his own fingers. “Next time,” he said, and kissed her.

“Can I help you?” Riley asked.

Holly gave him the once-over, her gaze lingering on his badge. “Is this town actually big enough for a sheriff?” she questioned.

Her voice was smooth and cultured, and everything about her screamed “city girl.” “We’re big enough to court trouble,” he said lightly. “Can I help you find something?” Like the highway?

“Is this really the Café…Nirvana?” She tilted back her head and studied the stark blue sky, then the wide open landscape. Finally she shook her head. “It’s some sort of joke, right?”

She leveled those light blue eyes on him with what could only be described as hope. He slowly shook his head. “Nope. No joke.”

Briefly she closed her eyes. “Cosmic justice,” Riley heard her mutter.

Then she was walking away from him, but not out of his life. No, she went into the café, her look of determination as strong as her stride.

Hug Me, Holly!


Prologue

LOST IN THE DEPTHS of hell, Holly pulled over, tossed back an Evian water and contemplated her next move. She could consult the map that lay open on the passenger seat, but then she’d have to admit she didn’t know how to get to Little Paradise, which was the same thing as admitting she didn’t know where she was going, and she hated that.

Holly Stone always knew where she was going. Okay, and maybe because of that, she’d always been a tad bit stubborn, but she couldn’t help it. Much.

She could get out her cell phone and call…who? Her family? They’d get far too big a kick out of her being lost. Oh, there’s Holly, proving a beautiful blonde can’t find her way out of a paper bag again. That would be from her parents, who’d been patting her on the head, then shaking their own heads behind her back for years.

There she goes again, racing off without a plan and blowing it before she even gets started. That would be from her oh-so-loving siblings, who’d never taken her seriously, not once, not even when she’d really needed them to.

No, she wouldn’t be calling her family.

She could try a friend, if she’d managed to keep any over the years, which she hadn’t. Holly didn’t open up easily. For years this had disturbed her, but she learned to at least pretend it didn’t matter.

Bottom line-she didn’t play well with others, and she’d probably known it as early as kindergarten. It’d been reinforced in every job she’d ever had, and there’d been many. She’d been a banker, a photographer, a bookkeeper and most recently, an office manager for a private airport. She’d even almost had a boyfriend there, almost being the key word, though she’d worked very hard to get him. But then the boss’s daughter had caught the jerk’s eye and he’d decided he had bigger fish to fry. That was fine, because so did Holly.

At none of her jobs had she been particularly popular, which all came back to that getting along with others thing. Maybe she tried too hard, always pushing in order to accomplish her own agenda. People, especially men, didn’t seem to like that.

But she was who she was. With a fatalistic shrug, she got out of the car, stretching legs that had been protesting the long drive from Southern California to this godforsaken part of Arizona over the past eight hours. Her heels crunched on the sun-hardened sand. The material of her clothes immediately stuck to her. Ugh. To avoid squinting in the unbelievable glare of the sun-why court wrinkles before she was even thirty?-she slid on glasses and considered her options.