Lighthouse Romances The Christmas Collection: A Lighthouse Romance, #6

By R. C. Cannon

BOOK ONE: The Christmas Lighthouse

Karen and Miles have worked together for years and as Christmas approaches they find themselves on the road together when an epic snowstorm strands them in a seaside lighthouse with an elderly couple who are willing and able to help this young couple work through the doubts, fear, and heartbreak of the past and to admit to each other what has been clear to everyone around them for years and that is that they are in love.
Miles had been in love before only to have his heartbroken by the woman that he thought that he would marry. Karen, aware of what happened to Miles and how it nearly destroyed him, has become so protective of him that she even protects him from herself. The couple that they are with during the days leading up to Christmas finds a way to teach them the simplest truth of all about love and Christmas and that is to love another is to be vulnerable.

BOOK TWO: A Lighthouse Christmas Wedding

 

Deanna's ex Is planning on getting married on Christmas Eve.

 

Her and Miles had broken up over two years ago and most of it had been her fault but that did not mean she could allow the one man that she had actually loved to marry a silly empty-headed stalker who had taken advantage of a man on the rebound. 

 

Karen and Miles are days away from the most important moment of their lives, their Christmas Eve Wedding, when they are informed by Miles' ex-girlfriend Deanna that she is coming to the wedding to save Miles from making a terrible mistake. What could turn into a nightmare may be stopped by the power of their love and a little Christmas romantic magic in the form of a tall dark and smugly handsome auto repair shop owner named JP who harbors a secret that could change the course of happily ever after for all involved. 

BOOK THREE: Lighthouse Honeymoons

JP is awoken on Christmas morning by a spreading rumor around town that he got married the night before. Could it be that something he believed was a joke has turned out to be a joke on him? Could it be that hurricane Deanna is actually his wife?

 

• Language: English
• Publisher: cannonbooks
• Release date: Oct 22, 2020
• ISBN: 9781393523277

Book preview

CHAPTER ONE

Karen hated to interrupt Miles while he was lost in a novel but they were in a need to know situation and this was need to know. The coastal road that they had taken had remained a single road that hugged the coast and had not allowed her to turn them back inland when the clouds began to build up like a death shroud over the open sea to their right.

Perhaps it would have been a good idea to turn around fifty miles back when the snow began to fall but now they were in near blizzard conditions and the only things left to do were to keep going or to park and wait it out. 

Professor. Uh, Miles, we have a problem.Karen was afraid that she had not spoken loudly enough because for the longest time he did not move or look up, then he closed the book and looked about. 

It is snowing.Miles Booth said in the flat tone of an academic. For the past three weeks on the road with him, Karen had hoped that he would begin to shed that tone completely, but it still showed up from time to time.

"I would say blizzard conditions and there is nothing

on the GPS for about a hundred miles ahead of us."Karen told him.

Miss. Poole, are you saying that we are not going to make it that far on this road under these conditions?He questioned.

Yes.

He turned his head to look back into the RV van that he had leased for what was supposed to be a journey to explore the history of harbors and lighthouses along the east coast and if something did not change soon may end up being a found footage film. 

We can park it and wait out the storm in this can’t we?

We got a quarter tank. If we used it for just the heater maybe we could sit for two days, but if this storm swamps the east coast and I did listen to weather reports suggesting something like that could happen, then we could be stuck out here longer than that waiting for aid. I have not seen a single vehicle on this road.Karen sighed. I am a little bit frightened.

We will be okay.Miles offered his hand and she took hold.

First-hand hold and of course it would take an extinction-level event to get there, Karen mused.  

Please god I don’t want to be scared and I don’t want him to see me cry, but the road is disappearing. Lord please we could use some help. God, do you want to take the wheel?

Through the swirling fall of snow, something flickered high above. At first, Karen thought that she imagined it and then it happened again. Another flash of light.

Our journey continues Karen.He squeezed her hand hard. You have found us another lighthouse. A lighthouse and a port in the storm.

CHAPTER TWO

The turning light in the tower of the lighthouse did not necessarily mean that the place had a staff it could have been automated or ran by remote so Miles left Karen in the van. If she had been correct that the storm started less than twenty minutes ago then judging by the ankle-deep drifts that he walked through then this one could become one of those for the record books. 

He reached the door and pounded on it. His experiences with the eight lighthouses that they had visited so far were that the things were echo chambers and had to be considering how tall some of them were built. This one looked to be taller than most, maybe over a hundred and fifty feet. 

Nothing happened for thirty teeth chattering seconds and as Miles raised a hand to knock again the door was opened by a tall grey-bearded man.

Look at you young man. Covered in snow. How do you come to be here? No one ever comes out to Sullivan's point these days?The greybeard remarked.

I and my companion took a wrong turn. Oh, forgive me. I am Miles Booth.He offered his hand.

Jonah Anderson.The man had a strong handshake. 

Well, Mr. Anderson do you mind if we come in out of the storm?

Please.He motioned him to enter. 

The drift of snow felt at least an inch deeper as he jogged back to the vehicle to get Karen who was ready with their overnight bags. He took them from her and walked the same path back to the door to the lighthouse with Karen so close behind him that more than once he felt her head hit the back of his shoulder.

When the door was pulled shut behind them Miles discovered that the lighthouse felt surprisingly warm and smelled like cookies.

Karen stepped from behind him and gave the air a cartoon character like sniff. 

I smell cookies.She took a few steps forward and did a slow circle. Not Christmas sugar cookies.She looked to Jonah and offered her hand. Hello, I am Karen. And before he could respond with more than a quick handshake she was drifting toward a short staircase near the back wall. I detect a hint of chocolate in said cookie. I believe that it is chocolate chip.

And as if in response to that statement a silver-haired woman came smoothly up the stairs carrying a plate of cookies.

My wife Hannah.Jonah made the introduction.

I think we have guests.Hannah offered her plate toward Karen who took an oversized cookie with each hand. 

Thank you.Karen said and after taking one bite closed her eyes as if to gather her strength and then began to go back and forth between the two cookies as if she was possessed by the cookie monster.

Clearly, Karen Poole was not the kind of girl who would have survived for long in a fairy tale. A shiny apple, a spinning wheel or a house made from kit kats and butterfingers and she would have been a goner, Miles mused as he strolled across the room to stand at Karen's side. 

CHAPTER THREE

I apologize.Karen heard herself saying even while grabbing two more cookies. They were the perfect combination of soft and chewy. It was not so much how tasty the cookies were or that they reminded her of the kind that she used to make as a child with her mother, it was the chocolate. She had neglected to get the usual supply of daily travel chocolate the afternoon before and once the weather began to turn she had started to crave it like a cigarette smoker facing death in one of those old black and white movies. 

Do not be silly my child. The more that you eat the less that an old man who needs to watch his sugar intake will have to worry.Hannah said.

What brings the two of your out on a day like today? I would guess a honeymoon, but I see no rings.Jonah asked.

We heard that a storm was coming, but did not expect it to come on so suddenly and to be so intense.Miles began and took a few steps back to look up through the spiral chamber. Karen turned back to watch him. Their journey was all about ports and lighthouses and this one was one that had not been on his map. The fact that it had literally become their port in the storm would soon become a secondary concern to need to know everything about the place right down to who laid the bricks. 

Uh, tomorrow is Christmas eve. We are pleased to find you here. I mean it may be a lifesaver, but shouldn't you be with family or they with you?Karen said.

You ever see that movie Up?Jonah asked.

I love that movie.Karen heard herself blurt out and she hated it when she just blurted things out but she did it every time that she was excited.  It starts out cute and then sweet and then sad and kind of scary and then the action and the amazing ending.

I never saw it.Miles said.

Well, it is a wonderful film.Karen said and understood what the question about the movie Up was hinting at.  Oh, you guys could not have children is that it?

Yes.Hannah nodded. But we found out early enough so we adopted three lovely boys. Two of them are in military service and our youngest is married and lives in France.

So you guys are all alone this year?Karen said.

Well next year the whole family will be together in France for Christmas. Our first trip overseas. And well we are not alone anymore. Thanks to this white Christmas you two will most likely be with us.Jonah said.

Karen checked her empty hands, captured two more cookies and this time gave one to Miles. She playfully offered him a toast with her’s he got the joke and tapped his cookie to hers. 

Yes, we will be happy to stick around as long as you don't run out of delicious cookie meat.

Cookie meat?Hannah sounded puzzled. 

Her vocabulary was damaged by growing up on a nonstop diet of the Nickelodeon channel.Miles smiled.

Not true, when she was a teenager she watched Disney as well.

CHAPTER FOUR

Since each step was about a foot even that meant that the landing of the light tower was about one hundred and twenty-seven feet high. Add in the light tower and peek onto then this unlisted lighthouse had to be over one hundred and forty feet, Miles calculated as he leaned forward to rest his hands on knees and to breathe deeply. If the climb had winded him then how did a man at least thirty years his elder do it at least twice a day if this place was still a working lighthouse?

Miles forced himself to stand tall and have a look out the windows. With the amazingly bright light to his back Miles positioned himself facing toward what he believed to be the direction of the sea. There was no way of telling. It was a total white-out. When the light hit the fall of snow directly it appeared as if it was attempting to illuminate an actual white sheet that was whipping in the driving winds. 

If you wish to find professor Miles Booth all you have to do is wait for him in the nearest lighthouse tower.Karen remarked, raised her phone and took a few pictures of him and the interior of the tower.

Why aren't you breathing hard?Miles looked at her. Her lovely face was a bit flushed red, but she showed no signs of having climbed as many stairs as he just had.

Should I be? Have you grown more handsome since I last saw you down below?She poked at him. 

Those stairs nearly dropped me to my knees.

Oh, that? I am loaded up on so much cookie sugar that I could have climbed up the outside of this lighthouse-like spiderman. Allow me to take on some more fuel and I will demonstrate.Karen reached into a pocket and came out with a cookie. 

How did you keep it from breaking?

Simple my dear professor. I make sure that all of my jackets and coat pockets are cookie-sized before I buy them. And all my hoodies must have gingerbread man-sized pockets.

You are bound to learn new and strange things about a person while traveling with them.He smiled. Did I thank you yet for saving our lives?

Do not be silly. All I did was drive.

Some people panic during bad weather. If you had decided to turn us around we would be somewhere out there in all of that instead of here. Good job Karen.

Speaking of here. What do you think of our host? she asked.

What did he think?

He had spent so much of the time here thinking about what could have happened to them if they had not found this lighthouse and an equal amount of time thinking about the lighthouse that he had not given the human aspects of their situation much thought. 

They seem like a nice couple. As we have seen on the trip so far lighthouse living can be wonderful.

Yeah, if they came with elevators.She crossed to the railing that looked out onto the storm.  Lovely, isn’t it?

She had said that at the moment the light rotated around and caught her in silhouette making her appear as if she was made of light.

Beautiful.He said.

CHAPTER FIVE