Suddenly Home
THERE WERE TIMES WHEN ALEX WANTED TO GIVE UP…. BUT TAYLOR NEVER GAVE HIM THE CHANCE.Body and faith bruised, Lieutenant Alex Van Buren had one wish–to make it through another day. Then sprightly Taylor Griffith came into his life…and he began to wonder if it was time to face his future.Taylor had never known a man like Alex. The moment they met, she felt a connection. But the man stubbornly refused to let faith…or love…into his life. And if he didn't, how could she show him that with love and grace anything was possible?
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âLetâs get something on those scratches.â
For the next five minutes, Alex sat in one of Taylorâs kitchen chairs as she swabbed his cuts with antiseptic. His own mother hadnât fussed over him this gently when heâd skinned his knees as a boy.
What made Taylorâs attentions seem soâ¦different? Maybe the way her hands shook, ever so slightly, as she touched the swabs to his cuts. Maybe it was the way her voice trembled just a little when she asked, âDoes that hurt?â
And maybe, just maybe, it was the look in her eyes that said even something as insignificant as cat scratches were importantâ¦because he was important.
If onlyâ
LOREE LOUGH
A full-time writer for more than a dozen years, Loree Lough has produced more than 2,000 published articles, dozens of short storiesâappearing in magazines here and abroadâand novels for the young (and young at heart). The author of twenty-nine romances (including the award-winning Pocketful of Love, Emmaâs Orphans and bestsellers like Reluctant Valentine, Miracle on Kismet Hill and Just One Christmas Wish) Loree also writes as Cara McCormack and Aleesha Carter.
A comedic teacher and conference speaker, Loree loves sharing in classrooms what sheâs learned the hard way. She lives in Maryland with her husband of nearly (gasp, sputter, choke!) thirty years.
Come home with me, and refresh thyself,
and I will give thee a reward.
âI Kings 13:7
To Elice and Valerie, my daughters,
my friendsâ¦may the romance of true love care for you all the days of your lives.
Contents
Prologue
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Letter to Reader
Prologue
Date: December 17
Time: 1600 Coordinates: 17º 22.3 minutes north 66º 45.6 minutes west Altitude 500 feet
Like blue-green tentacles, lightning snaked along the F-16âs wingtips, brightening the Puerto Rican sky and blacking out the entire control panel. Lieutenant Alex Van Buren had mere seconds to decide: Ejectâ¦
Or go down with the fighter.
He jerked back on the throttle, but it was no use. He couldnât bring the aircraft out of its nosedive. If he abandoned the plane, thereâd be no time for his chute to open. Not while flying over the choppy waters at an altitude of five hundred feet.
He hoped for a miracle. Thereâd been times when, under similar conditions, other pilotsâ parachutes had releasedâ¦rightâ¦?
Who was he kidding? Heâd been a test pilot a long time. More than long enough to know a guy didnât bullet through the sky at nearly six hundred miles an hour and survive a crash. But even if he didnât die, heâd be so broken and battered heâd be lucky to see a cockpit again, let alone manipulate its controls.
Death didnât scare him. Livingâif it meant he couldnât flyânow, that terrified him. As a much younger man heâd entertained the idea of pastoring a little church in the boonies. But every Van Buren before him had been a naval officer. Who was he to break tradition, especially for something as meaningless as a boyhood dream?
So many thoughts, so many questions racing through his mindâ¦.
As the sparkling surface of the water hurtled closer, closer, Van Buren held his breath and closed his eyes, steeling himself for the rib-racking effects of ejection, and did something he hadnât done in ages.
He prayed.
Prayed heâd pass out, so he wouldnât hear his bones breaking, his muscles tearing. Prayed that God, in His infinite mercy and wisdom, would let him drown quickly in the warm island waters; better that than go home as something other than the man heâd worked so long and hard to become.
Van Buren felt his body catapult from the cockpit.
And as he became one with the sky, he wondered if heâd survive the impact.
Date: December 17
Time: 4:00 p.m. Supra-Air Flight 550 In the skies above Puerto Rico
If she spoke, even to order coffee, sheâd break down. And so when the flight attendant stopped the drink cart beside her seat, Taylor pretended to be asleepâ¦
And remembered the last time sheâd talked to her mother.
Back then, Taylor had been working at a small pub in Houston. As usual, her mom ended the telephone conversation with a warning about what becomes of folks who live in the fast lane. In her motherâs opinion, Taylorâwhoâd traded her physical therapist smock for a microphoneâhad spent the past five years doing exactly that.
Taylor wasted no time pointing out that, in her opinion, it was the other way around. Because six months before, her mother had taken up with a has-been race-car driver who, frustrated by a dead-end career, had begun hurtling through life at maximum overdriveâ¦.
These past twelve hours had been a crazy, hazy blur: the phone call to her uncle Dave, then booking a last-minute flight from Puerto Rico to Baltimore, packing, hailing a taxiâ¦. Through it all, Taylor fought tears, asking herself why she hadnât called her mom more often, why she hadnât visited home more frequently. Because if sheâd been there, she could have steered her mother around the hazard signs in the road ahead.
