The Majors' Holiday Hideaway Read online

  Swapping houses for Christmas vacation

  Brought a gift she never imagined

  While Fort Hood, Texas, isn’t exactly the City of Lights, Major India Woods discovers its hottest attraction—Major Aidan Nord—lives right next door! And they happily enjoy a little no-strings mischief under the mistletoe. Until India discovers Aidan is seeing other women—his adorable twin girls, that is! After a lifetime of globe-trotting, India wonders if this little family could be her biggest adventure.

  “You must be the neighbor. I thought you were the general contractor.”

  “No, I’m not.”

  “No. The real contractor showed up this morning and he definitely wasn’t...” She let her eyes do a quick survey from his face to his broad chest and lean waist, then back up to his face. “He wasn’t you.”

  He hesitated at that, then tilted his head a bit as he studied her, his eyebrows lifted a little in surprise, his mouth suppressing a smile. “And you were disappointed?”

  She stuffed her hands into her coat pockets, feeling the heat in her cheeks, but he wasn’t mocking her. He wasn’t a jerk, she could just tell, so she shrugged and smiled through her blush. “Maybe a little.”

  India pictured Helen’s note in her mind. Fabio is at the Nords’ house. That sounded like there were multiple Nords. Had Helen meant to write Nords’ or Nord’s? Was there a wife?

  Oh, what the heck. You only have a week. Just ask.

  “So...” She nodded in the general direction of the golden-bricked house. “Is there anyone else at your house? A wife?”

  His reaction was a little surprised again, a negative shake of his head with a bit of a smile, but his eyes were...sad?

  “No,” he said. “Just me.”

  * * *

  AMERICAN HEROES:

  They’re coming home—and finding love!

  Dear Reader,

  It’s that time of year! Holiday movies will soon be shown around the clock on multiple television channels. As a native Floridian, I particularly enjoy the snowy scenes in movies, because that is as close to a classic white Christmas as I get when it is eighty degrees outside. We make up for the lack of snow with holiday lights on our houses. When every house on the street is lit up at night, it feels like walking in a winter wonderland, even without the snow.

  My husband is a native Texan, so he enjoyed Christmas without snow and sleighs, too, just like the characters in this book, who live near Fort Hood, Texas. I enjoyed writing a Christmas story set in a place with no snow on the ground, because the hero has the single most important element that makes the holidays special: children. His two daughters’ faces reflect pure joy on Christmas morning.

  I also enjoyed switching up the traditional roles just a little bit. You’ve heard of the classic “confirmed bachelor,” of course. Well, this time, we’ve got a confirmed bachelorette. When the handsome hero comes as a package deal with twin daughters, will the magic of Christmas open our heroine’s heart to the love of not just one special man, but a complete family?

  I always love to hear what you think. You can email me privately through my website at www.carocarson.com or post a comment on Facebook: www.Facebook.com/authorcarocarson.

  Cheers,

  Caro Carson

  The Majors’ Holiday Hideaway

  Caro Carson

  Despite a no-nonsense background as a West Point graduate, army officer and Fortune 100 sales executive, Caro Carson has always treasured the happily-ever-after of a good romance novel. As a RITA® Award–winning Harlequin author, Caro is delighted to be living her own happily-ever-after with her husband and two children in Florida, a location that has saved the coaster-loving theme-park fanatic a fortune on plane tickets.

  Books by Caro Carson

  Harlequin Special Edition

  American Heroes

  The Captains’ Vegas Vows

  The Lieutenants’ Online Love

  Texas Rescue

  How to Train a Cowboy

  A Cowboy’s Wish Upon a Star

  Her Texas Rescue Doctor

  Following Doctor’s Orders

  A Texas Rescue Christmas

  Not Just a Cowboy

  Montana Mavericks:

  What Happened at the Wedding?

  The Maverick’s Holiday Masquerade

  Visit the Author Profile page at www.Harlequin.com for more titles.

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  This story about a family is dedicated to my family.

  Many military families must spend some holidays apart. I know I’m very lucky to have never spent a Christmas apart from Richard, Katie and William.

  May all your Christmases be bright.

  Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Epilogue

  Excerpt from A Stonecreek Christmas Reunion by Michelle Major

  Chapter One

  It began with the note taped to her door.

  Or rather, the note was the end.

  Major India Woods, US Army, stood in the hallway outside her apartment in Belgium and read the note. Her feet were killing her after a ten-hour day in black, high-heeled pumps, but the note was taped right at eye level, so she read it on the spot.

  Her boyfriend, Gerard-Pierre, had very neat handwriting. His words, lovely loops of black ink that formed perfectly parallel lines across the white paper, spelled the end of their relationship.

  He just didn’t know it.

  He’d written in French, of course, although his English was nearly as good as hers. Ostensibly, he preferred to use French when communicating with her because she’d once said it was her weakest language and he was, therefore, helping her. Considering her English, German, Dutch, Flemish and Danish were better than his, she believed he preferred to use the one language that made him superior—but she’d known that for almost as long as she’d known Gerard-Pierre. It wasn’t the language in which he’d written that signaled the end of their relationship.

  They needed to talk tonight, Gerard-Pierre had written. He had to work late, but he’d be home after dinner. This was Europe; after dinner could mean ten or eleven at night. India was an American and an army officer to boot; her workday started as early as six in the morning, something Gerard-Pierre had always considered uncivilized. His schedule as a university teaching assistant might be more sophisticated than hers, but expecting her to wait up for him tonight was a thoughtless way to treat a woman who had to get up before dawn to run three miles with her military unit.

  But that wasn’t why she was going to have to bring things to an end, either.

  It wasn’t her boyfriend’s insistence upon communicating in French, and it wasn’t the fact that his hours conflicted with hers far too often. It wasn’t the fact that they hadn’t found the time to take any of the weekend excursions around Europe that they’d once planned. Heck, they hadn’t found the time to take an excursion to the bedroom for months.

  Months? India frowned, tryi
ng to remember the last time they’d had sex. Yep. Months.

  Still, India wouldn’t have called off the relationship. Maybe things had cooled down between them, but they got along just fine. At long last, they were going to take one of those excursions and catch a train to Paris over Christmas. If that didn’t revive any passion, India knew she would have let their relationship drift along into the new year, maybe indefinitely—after all, sex wasn’t the be-all and end-all of a relationship—but now...

  She jerked the note off the door. Now, she had to take action.

  India used her hundred-year-old, oversize brass key to turn the old lock in the door. The moment she was in her apartment, the first action she took was to kick off her pumps. Since her current duty assignment required her to work in an office in NATO headquarters, she wore the army’s service uniform every day, a blue suit with epaulettes on the shoulders and military insignia on the lapels. In a straight skirt that was tailored precisely to midknee, India worked in her dream position, using her linguistic skills while living in a European capital, but sometimes she longed to be stationed back in the States, where nearly every soldier wore the roomy camouflage uniform and comfy combat boots, even in an office setting.

  Still wearing her sheer pantyhose, India scrunched her toes into the Turkish carpet she’d lugged from, well, Turkey, which had been her last duty station. She’d worn her blue service uniform daily in the embassy there, as well. She missed combat boots. She missed...

  She looked at the French writing on the page and felt something like homesickness. How irrational of her. This apartment, created out of a few rooms in a building that had existed for a hundred years longer than the United States itself had existed, was her home. There was no childhood home back in the States to miss. Her mother was a nomad, a happy nomad who had circumnavigated the globe by sea and rail and camel caravan twice in the eleven years India had been serving in the military. Her mother was on round three, somewhere in Australia at the moment.

  It was tomorrow in Australia, around four in the morning. India plunked her messenger bag onto her little high-top table, which served as her dining room and work desk in one corner of the apartment. She took out her cell phone, opened an app that enabled international video chats for free and pinged her best friend in the United States. It was before noon in Fort Hood, Texas. Maybe Helen was on her lunch break.

  Captain Helen Pallas answered, all smiles at her desk in the brigade headquarters of the 89th Military Police Brigade. The camouflage collar of her uniform was visible. And, as she waved into the camera, so was the diamond band on her finger.

  That vague feeling of missing something turned into a sharp longing, a sudden stab of pain that took away India’s breath. It couldn’t be homesickness, but it couldn’t be jealousy, either—India wasn’t in the market for a husband. She must be feeling envious of that comfy camouflage.

  But gosh, Helen sure had looked happy for the past year as a newlywed.

  “What’s up, roomie?” Helen asked. They’d been roommates as young lieutenants. India had been a first lieutenant who’d already completed two years of service when Helen had been commissioned as a new second lieutenant. They’d split the rent on a two-bedroom house outside of Fort Bragg for a while, until promotions and assignments had sent them off to different corners of the world. Now India was a major and Helen was a captain, just a couple of years away from being a major herself. They hadn’t been roommates in the past seven years, but the roomie nickname still stuck.

  “What time is it in Brussels? After dinner?”

  “I wish. Hang on for a second—I’ve got to set the phone down. Enjoy the ceiling.” India put the phone faceup on her table and shrugged out of her suit jacket. Her rows of hard-won medals and badges clinked in a muted, metallic way as she hung the jacket over the back of the bar stool. She picked up the phone. “Okay, I’m back.”

  “I love your ceiling. Those beams look like they belong in a medieval castle.”

  “This was a medieval stable, I think, before they divided it into apartments.”

  “Still cool. There’s nothing like that in Texas. There’s nothing like that on this continent. So, what’s up? You said you wished it was after dinner. Is your man taking you out on a hot date? Do you wish the meal was over and it was time for a little somethin’-somethin’ else?”

  Her man. That sounded kind of sexy, to have a man. India pictured someone strong, someone tall, dark and handsome—even devilish. Devoted. Maybe even protective. While she was at it, someone her age, early thirties; maybe an American, for a change. Someone financially independent, with a career. Someone...not Gerard-Pierre.

  “No hot date. My, uh, boyfriend—” India winced. She couldn’t bring herself to call him her man, but boyfriend sounded so crushingly juvenile. “My boyfriend wants to have a big talk after dinner tonight.”

  “A big talk? Like, the big talk? This is so exciting. You’re finally in love, and I’m finally going to see Europe because I will not miss your wedding. You’d better invite me.”

  “Actually, I need to break up with him, ASAP.” India kept her expression pleasantly matter-of-fact during the pause as the phone app sent her words from Belgium up to a satellite in outer space and back down to Texas.

  She heard Helen’s voice a second before the video showed her friend wrinkling her nose in disappointment. “Oh, India. What’s wrong with Jerry-Perry?”

  “Gerard-Pierre. But close.”

  “It sounds better when you say it. I can’t keep up with your exotic European men. But seriously, hasn’t he been your only exotic European man for forever?”

  It was India’s turn to wrinkle her nose. “Only a year. Just about as long as you’ve been married. Happy anniversary, by the way.” She knew the satellite would beam her a delayed image of a much happier expression on her friend’s face.

  It did. A second later, there Helen was, beaming like a new bride. “Thanks. It’s flown by. We still haven’t gotten a chance to take a honeymoon.”

  “But the new house?”

  “We just moved in. There’s still some work to be done, but it’s livable. I love it so much. We’ve got acres of land. It’s so quiet, you can hear the babbling brook. The dog is in heaven. Now stop trying to distract me. What did Gerard-Pierre do?”

  “He wrote me a note.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  India held up the note.

  Helen leaned into the camera. “You’re going to have to help me out here. Number one, this video isn’t clear enough for me to read it, and number two, I bet it isn’t in English.”

  “It’s French.”

  “The man’s name is Gerard-Pierre,” Helen said dryly.

  “He knows English, though. He just refuses to use it. I bet your man writes you notes in English.”

  “Well, yeah, but his name is Tom Cross, and he’s an American. Are you breaking up with Gerard-Pierre because he wrote you a note in French, or is it because he said something awful in French?”

  “He wrote...” India scanned the note. “That he wants to talk to me tonight after dinner—that’s after his dinner—because he just found out that his parents and his sister and his nieces are going to be here for Christmas. He says this affects our holiday plans.” India waited as the satellite in space did its thing.

  And she waited some more.

  Helen tilted her head, and looked like she was waiting, too.

  “Is our connection frozen? Did you get that?” India asked.

  “No, I only heard that his family is coming for Christmas.”

  “Yes, that’s it.”

  “What is?”

  “That’s why we need to break up. I can’t do the family thing.” India tugged at the black tab tie at her throat until the Velcro closure gave with a satisfying little ripping sound. She unbuttoned the top button of her white blouse. “No family. It never goes we
ll.”

  Helen shook her head slowly, like she felt sorry for India. “It could go well. His family could love you. You could love them.”

  That’s what I’m afraid of.

  “No family scenes for me. I have to call it off. I’m just better at being alone.”

  * * *

  Major Aiden Nord stared at the note in his hand. He’d never felt more alone.

  He hated being alone.

  Once upon a time, he’d been happy enough to be on his own, swaggering his way through the army as a bachelor officer, spending time with women who enjoyed spending their time with him. He vaguely remembered being free to schedule his off-duty hours without worrying about anyone else’s wants or needs, without worrying about whether or not anyone else liked what he’d chosen for dinner, or whether or not he was staying up too late and the volume of his television was keeping them awake.

  Whether or not the fairy book had been read more times than the puppy book.

  Whether or not the sandwich should be cut into triangles or squares.

  Aiden was a family man now. Four years ago, his wife had given birth to their fraternal twin girls, and Aiden hadn’t stopped worrying about other people’s needs since. Two years ago, his wife had died—the unfairness of her shortened life still maddened him, would always madden him—so he shouldered all those worries himself. Were his daughters hungry? Tired? Happy? Scared? It all mattered now, far more than his own wants and needs mattered.

  Aiden worried about Poppy being on the small side of the pediatrician’s height-weight chart, although his wife had been petite, and the doctor thought Poppy was simply taking after her. Aiden worried about Olympia, who was turning out to be tall with darker coloring like his, but who would surely stunt her own growth by refusing to eat practically every food in existence. He worried about things he’d never known parents worried about until he’d become one himself. It was constant. It was exhausting.

  He loved it.

  He loved them, and he loved being with them, but the note in his hand included the address of the vacation beach house where his sister had taken his daughters for the week to visit with his parents. An entire week lay before him without constant negotiations, constant questions, constant little fingers reaching for things they weren’t supposed to touch. An entire week without his children.