Read Online Holiday Homecoming by Jillian Hart - Free Book Online Page B

eggs forgotten.
    â€œRyan!” As if he’d just rescued the world from certain disaster, she ran to him. “You’re home! You’re here. I can’t believe it! Oh, it’s so good to see you!”
    Happiness lit his heart as he dropped his bag, opened wide his arms and hugged his mom to his chest. She was a little thing, wrapping her arms around him, smelling of coffee and shampoo and the lilac lotion she’d always used. Her laughter bubbled through him as she stepped back and studied him with a mother’s keen, knowing gaze.
    â€œYou’re going to be the death of me, young man. I was worried out of my mind, what with this weather and your flight diverted. Yes, I checked with the airport. You could have called and let me know you were alive .”
    Okay, so no matter how old a man was, his mom was always his mom. “I know. I should have called and I meant to, but stuff happened. Are you gonna ground me?”
    â€œI have half a mind to do it, too!” But her eyes werelaughing and crying at the same time. “Oh, son, you look awful. You’re not getting enough sleep. You’re working too hard.”
    â€œI’ve just got a lot of stuff going on right now—”
    â€œYou stop sending me money, right now. You’re not taking care of yourself. Have you eaten?”
    â€œUh, no. Nothing was exactly open, since we drove up through the middle of nowhere.”
    â€œWe?”
    Boy, did Mom jump on that quick, or what? And how was he going to minimize the fallout? He’d tell her the truth, he wasn’t the kind of man to lie to his mother, and then she’d get all excited because he’d spent time with a woman. And not just with any woman, but with her best friend’s daughter. Wasn’t that just what she’d been hoping for all these years? For him to marry one of the nice McKaslin girls?
    Yeah, right. He wasn’t the marrying kind. He’d always suspected it, but Francine had been all the proof he needed. The last thing he wanted was to settle down. Not that Mom was going to understand that. Not in the slightest.
    Look at the way she was practically vibrating with hope. He knew his mom, and she was secretly praying right now, as she retrieved her spatula and rescued the eggs from the frying pan, that he was going to say he’d driven up from Boise with a woman. A special woman.
    And the second he admitted it was Kristin, she’d leap ahead and draw her own conclusions and there was nothing he could do to stop her. It would snowball intothis big thing, when the truth was simple. He’d offered her a ride. She’d accepted. That was it. End of story.
    â€œA stranded traveler I picked up at the airport, that’s all.” He shrugged out of his coat and dropped it on his suitcase. “And before you start getting all crazy, it was one of the McKaslin girls. She was alone and it wasn’t safe for her to spend the night in a strange city.”
    â€œOh, I should hope not!” Mom lit up, shining as if she was about to spontaneously emit her own energy field. “Kristin McKaslin. My, my. You know, she’s got some fancy job on the coast. Alice was just saying—”
    As if on cue, the phone rang. Mom lifted the eggs from the pan with her spatula. He was gentleman enough to hold out the platter for her and carry it to the table as she raced for the phone.
    â€œOh, Alice! Yes, Ryan told me. Isn’t that something? On the same flight from Seattle?”
    Yep, some things never changed. Mom was an eternal optimist, and he was an affirmed bachelor. How could he be anything else? There were only three chairs at the table, in the nook that had been widened to accommodate the same wooden table Mom had bought after her wedding long ago. It had been refinished and looked as good as new sitting on the braided rug on the polished hardwood floor. Although the room had changed, life went on.
    But the little boy