Home for Christmas

By Lizzie Shane

After being dumped on a reality dating show, all Samantha Whitney wants this Christmas is to get home and put this disastrous year behind her, but when she boards her flight to Chicago she finds the man in the seat next to hers is none other than Jase MacGregor, her first love and the man who shattered her heart last Christmas Eve--and put her in such a romantic funk it took a reality television show to shake her out of it.

All Jase wants this Christmas is a second chance with the love of his life, but if Sam’s frosty reception is anything to go by, it’s going to take more than a few hours at thirty thousand feet for Jase to convince her he's changed his workaholic ways and win back her heart.

When a blizzard cancels their connecting flight, it looks like neither of them is getting home for Christmas, but with the help of a little holiday magic Sam and Jase may be able to find their way through the storm. But only if they do it together.

A new novella from the 3-Time RITA-nominated author of MARRYING MISTER PERFECT.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lizzie Shane
• Release date: May 11, 2018
• ISBN: 9780463029107

Lizzie Shane

Lizzie Shane is a romance nerd and an avid fan of the sociology experiment that is reality television. In 2015, she launched the Reality Romance series with MARRYING MISTER PERFECT, featuring love behind the scenes on a reality dating show. Since then she has followed up that series with the related Bouquet Catchers novels, hitting the Amazon bestseller list and garnering numerous award nominations. She is a 3-Time finalist for Romance Writers of America's prestigious RITA® Award for contemporary romance and winner of the 2009 Golden Heart® award as well as the 2018 HOLT Medallion.Lizzie lives in Alaska where she uses the long winter nights to craft more happily ever afters and also writes paranormal romance under the pen name Vivi Andrews. For more about Lizzie, like her on Facebook (www.facebook.com/LizzieShaneAuthor) or visit her website at www.lizzieshane.com. Happy reading!

Book preview

Chapter One – The Ghost of Christmas Past

Hold the plane! Samantha Whitney sprinted through the terminal, dodging slow moving holiday travelers and dragging her roller bag faster than it was designed to roll, her oversized purse rhythmically thumping against her hip with each running step. She’d worry about the bruise her bag was leaving after she made the flight.

If she made the flight.

Don’t close the doors! she shouted to the gate attendants at G22—though the shout came out as more of a wheeze, thanks to her less-than-stellar cardio conditioning and two terminal half-marathon.

One of the attendants yelled for her to hurry.

Helpful.

She staggered to a stop at the gate, thrusting her ticket at the attendant who wasn’t looking at her like the Grinch had crawled up his butt.

We’ve been paging you. The Grinch folded his arms, eyeing her disapprovingly, as if she had threatened his precious schedule just for kicks.

International connection, she panted, retrieving her ticket from the non-Grinchy attendant.

Happy Holidays.

You too, Sam echoed automatically, forcing her uncooperative legs into a half-hearted jog down the jetway.

She just needed to get home and put this entire hellacious year behind her. Was that so much to ask?

Sorry, impossible connection, she called ahead to the male flight attendant who greeted her with a slightly forced smile beneath his antler headband.

We almost left without you, he said with an abundance of fake good cheer.

Well, thank you for waiting. She ducked her head, trying to look suitably contrite as she moved past him and began yanking her roller bag down the narrow aisle, fighting to keep the dang thing from ricocheting off the occupied seats on either side.

Luckily she didn’t have far to go. The show had booked her a first class flight. She only had to get to row four and the empty seat waiting there.

She glanced up, offering an apologetic smile to her seat mate—and the universe stuttered into horrifying slow motion.

No. Not him. Fate could not be that screwed up.

Sam froze in the aisle of the 737, gaping at the man in 4F, at the face that had figured prominently in all her fantasies—and nightmares—for the last year.

Jason MacGregor.

He still looked like something out of a GQ ad. Proof that there was no justice in the world.

Last Christmas Eve, Jase had ripped a chunk out of her heart, leaving the rest a misshapen, bedraggled lump, trying futilely to beat without the missing parts.

Or at least that was what it had felt like the day he walked away.

The last time she’d seen him she’d been crying ugly tears, her entire body shaken by the kind of sobs that handicapped her ability to communicate anything beyond miserable wails.

Her dignity hadn’t shown up for work that day.

No, she’d made a perfect fool of herself, begging Jase to stay, to think of them, to choose her.

It hadn’t been pretty.

So of course Sam had fantasized—once or twice or three million times—about how it would be when she saw him again. How poised she’d be—every hair in place, maybe dressed for a charity dinner. Her small town in upper peninsula Michigan wasn’t known for its high society events, but somehow every time she envisioned their meeting she wore a slinky gown complete with white gloves up to her elbows.

Okay, so it might have been the dress Julia Roberts wore to the opera in Pretty Woman, but a girl had to have role models. Even if those role models were on-screen prostitutes. Vivian was confident. And Vivian got her man. Sam could do worse.

In her dream meeting, she’d be over Jase, of course. So over him she could barely remember his name. He’d do a double take, maybe gasp her name, and his face would instantly telegraph the depth of his regret that he’d missed his chance with her. In some versions he would beg for a second chance, while in others her protective—handsome, rich, famous movie star—husband would whisk her away too quickly and Jase would only be able to gaze after her with unquenched longing in his winter blue eyes.

She must have imagined it easily a thousand times. Her triumph. The sweet taste of vindication in her mouth. Dumpee’s Revenge.

But in none of those versions, not one, was Sam in travel-wrinkled yoga pants, flushed and panting after her sprint through LAX, with her massive purse weighing down one shoulder as she gawked gracelessly beside the last empty seat on the plane.

An empty seat next to the one occupied by Jason MacGregor.

Dread calcified around her heart, turning it to stone.

Some days a girl just could not catch a break. Or some years in her case.

Jase looked up and shock passed across his features. Sam. He started to rise from his seat, but his already buckled seatbelt brought him to a halt with a jolt.

No. No no no no no. This was not how it happened. She was supposed to be triumphant, damn it.

Samantha pivoted to face the flight attendant. I can’t sit there.

Impatience mingled with the forced cheerfulness on his face. The tiny red and green jingle bells attached to the fuzzy antler headband on top of his head provided an odd counterpoint to the barely veiled irritation in his eyes. "I’m sorry, ma’am, but everything else is taken and we’re already running behind schedule, so if you could please take your seat we can close the door and get on our way so we don’t delay all these people any longer than necessary."

Any longer than we already have because we held the plane for you, you entitled brat went unspoken, but flashed vividly behind his granite smile.

Sam eyed the folks crowded into coach. This was only the second time in her life she’d ever flown first class, but it was only a four hour flight. She could handle coach. She’d bet any of those people back there packed in elbow to elbow would love to trade with her. Hell, she could probably even make a few bucks in the process. One First Class Seat, taking bidders now.

"Sam."

Her gaze returned helplessly to the man she’d been trying to pretend wasn’t sitting in 4F.

The shock had left his face and he’d locked whatever he felt now behind his familiar calm. That same steady, unflappable expression that always somehow made her need to freak out escalate exponentially. Why couldn’t he panic like a normal person, damn it?

A tangled hank of hair escaped from her messy ponytail and flopped over her eyes. Sure, it might have been unreasonable to ask that she be flawless, married, and blissfully happy when she first saw Jase again, but was it too much to ask the gods of Romantic Justice that she at least have had access to a comb in the last eight hours?

He looked perfect, of course. Jase obviously hadn’t just dragged his jet-lagged ass off a trans-Pacific flight and sprinted from customs all the way to the domestic terminal. Or if he had, it didn’t show. Jason MacGregor didn’t do rumpled.

His tailored grey suit pants were as crisp and fresh as the winter blue button-down that exactly matched his unfairly gorgeous eyes. He’d removed his suit jacket and it hung on a little hanger marked 4F on the back wall of first class.

Samantha focused on that jacket so she wouldn’t have to notice how he’d rolled up his shirt sleeves—two precise, tidy folds—and revealed the muscled, tanned expanse of his wrists and forearms.

Of course he was tan in December. He was living in Los Angeles now. Probably in a condo with a beach view, where he could watch toned, tanned girls playing volleyball in the sand when he wasn’t working the glamorous job he’d left White Falls—and her—for.

Are we going to have a problem, ma’am? the flight attendant inquired, aggravation lurking behind his smile.

Samantha, please sit down, Jase said. We can pretend we don’t know each other if you want.

Of course when he put it that way, she seemed ridiculous. Just because she’d once loved him like something out of a Jon Legend song. Just because she’d known down to her soul that he was The One ever since the first time he kissed her after the Mistletoe Ball