Christmas Cookie Baby Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  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

  Chapter Sixteen

  Epilogue

  HAPPY NEW YEAR, BABY Excerpt

  Chapter One

  Dear Reader

  About the Author

  Copyright

  CHRISTMAS COOKIE BABY

  SEAL Team: Holiday Heroes

  Book One

  Laura Marie Altom

  Chapter One

  Kodiak Gorge, Alaska

  “YOU A VIRGIN?”

  “Excuse me?” Sociologist Dr. Rose Foster glanced up from the Alaskan wildlife brochure she was trying to read. But her hands were shaking so badly from a wicked case of preflight jitters that the bouncing words, far from educating her, were making her nauseous. As hard as she’d been trying to learn about grizzly denning—and in the process, forget she was thousands of miles from home on Christmas Eve—she’d been trying that much harder to ignore her too-handsome-for-his-own-good pilot.

  As well as being gorgeous, he also appeared to be clairvoyant. How could he tell just by looking at her that she hadn’t been intimate with a guy in… Well, it’d been a loooong time. Long enough to re-qualify for virgin status.

  “You all right over there? Your cheeks look pasty.”

  Rose shot the little plane’s big pilot her most scholarly glare. “I’m great. After way too much school, I’m finally off on the career adventure of a lifetime. What could be better?”

  His slow grin messed with her stomach even more than the clack of the plane’s skis as they skimmed over the lake’s ice bumps. “Oh, I can think of a few things.”

  “Which explains your interest in my virginity?”

  “Ma’am…” While she clutched the sides of her seat in terror, he pulled back on the yoke, then winked.

  What did that mean?

  “With all due respect to your bedroom experience or lack thereof, that comment was only my bumbling attempt at making polite conversation. You know, wondering out loud if this is your virgin flight in a small plane. If I ever ask a female passenger that question again, I’ll rephrase it.”

  “Oh. Yes. This is my first time.”

  Where was a nice dark hole to climb into when you really needed one?

  After aiming one more charming grin her way, he thankfully returned his attention to flying.

  To keep her mind off the fact that they were hurtling into space in the aircraft equivalent of a tuna can, Rose turned her attention to the pilot. His cornball-sexy Santa hat. His rangy build big enough to make a petite woman feel protected. Gulf-of-Alaska-green eyes with an entire tidal chart of perils. Thick dark hair perfect for running fingers through—not necessarily her own. Square jaw sporting one of those all-day five o’clock shadows—just prickly-soft enough to tease a girl into thinking she’d been kissed by a dream come true when he was probably a rogue. Already taken. Or a closet boozer. Or hiding some other dark secret.

  She didn’t peg him for an abuser—not like her father. Very few men rivaled his cruelty. Thank goodness. But that didn’t mean she wasn’t cautious. Her few friends who knew what she’d been through encouraged her to not give up on love. But how could she do that when deep down, she didn’t believe such a thing truly existed.

  Her one time with a guy from her English Lit class had proved a mortifying epic fail. After which, she’d abandoned all hope of finding an emotionally—or even physically—satisfying relationship. So why did a long-buried part of her still crave a relationship?

  It made no sense.

  Especially when considering her mom’s history. After nearly dying at the hands of Rose’s violent dad, rather than giving up on love, Vivian had searched for the elusive feeling with the same fervor adventure-seekers reserved for long-buried treasure. Vivian Foster-too-many-last-names-to-count craved love so badly that she didn’t just fall for every guy she met—she married him!

  As a result, she’d become so reliant on men that she hardly answered the door anymore without asking her latest hubby for his opinion.

  Rose adored her mother, and knew that when her father had gone to prison and subsequently died behind bars, it’d been beyond tough. But instead of getting therapy or figuring out how to make her own way in the world, Vivian had turned to wedding rings for support.

  Rose, on the other hand—aside from her brief lapse of judgment in dating Rick—prided herself on being as self-reliant as they come. She’d never admit it, but though the physical bruises her father left were long gone, she was terrified the emotional variety might never fully fade. Which explained a lot about her lackluster social life.

  Once the small plane’s initial rocket launch into a gray winter sky evened into an only mildly bumpy ride, Rose tried relaxing by counting the plastic red berries on the silver garland lining the plane’s curved ceiling.

  Ceiling? Was that the technical term for the roof of an airplane? Who knew?

  When that didn’t work, she tried drawing parallels between this journey and the summer sociological field trip she’d taken with several classmates a few years ago. They’d been following up on Polly Wiesner’s 1970s study of gift exchange among the !Kung and hxaro in Botswana and Namibia. Problem was, even on that remote trek, the bumpiest moments had been when their Land Rover caravan hit a treacherous series of mud holes. Sure, there might have been a few lions watching from the shadows, but at least she hadn’t had to sit beside them.

  Up here, with only the width of her black down coat separating her from the pilot’s worn brown leather flight jacket—the one filling the whole cabin with its rich scent—well…

  The small craft hit a nasty sky bump.

  Rose instinctively grabbed one of his supple leather sleeves and the edge of her seat, trying to ignore the tingly-hot waves of awareness flooding her system from that lone simple touch.

  “Uh-huh,” the pilot said with another of his potent grins. “You’re a virgin.”

  As if it had burst into flame, she released his sleeve.

  That hadn’t been attraction for him making her fingers tingle, but an internal warning from the little girl inside, holding up a blaze-orange caution sign.

  “Let’s see if I can get us around the worst of this.” The pilot hummed “Jingle Bells” while banking the plane hard to the left. But upon closer inspection of a towering gray cloud, he shook his head. “Where did that monster come from? I checked the weather twice, and this storm wasn’t due for a while.”

  “If it’s that bad,” Rose asked above the engine’s raised pitch, “shouldn’t we turn back? I’m okay with spending another night. The lodge where I stayed was charming. Crackling fire. Gorgeous Christmas decorations—even better food. I had steak and a loaded baked potato. I didn’t know you had sour cream all the way up here.”

  “On good days we even have running water and Internet—even the latest gum crazes.” He winked before reaching to the plane’s dash for a pack of grape Bubble Yum. “So, see? We’re not all that uncivilized. Want a piece?”

  Nodding, she took the packet from him, working the foil free enough to take one of the four remaining pieces.

  The plane hit another nasty bump, but this time, Rose busied herself with the gum.

  “Mind getting me a piece, too?” he asked after she’d popped her first bubble. “Smells good.�
��

  “Sorry,” she said over the sudden pinging of ice against the windows. “I should have offered you one when I took mine.”

  Unwrapping his piece of gum, she tried not to notice how he’d tightened his grip on the yoke. Now she saw why commercial pilots kept their cockpit doors shut.

  When it came to flying, ignorance really was bliss.

  Bouncing, pinging.

  Bouncing, pinging—then the engine launched into a whirring cough.

  “Um, want me to rewrap your gum?” She’d only touched the paper.

  “Wouldn’t ordinarily ask this, but would you mind just putting it in my mouth?” Instead of his customary grin, he gave her a grimace. “With this weather change, I should keep my hands on the business of keeping us airborne.”

  “Absolutely.” She nodded. “Sounds like a good plan. Excellent. Best I’ve heard in—”

  “Gum?”

  “Oh, right. Sorry.” He opened his mouth and she popped it in, instantly wishing she’d kept her thick gloves on to perform the operation. The whispery brush of his lips and hot breath on her fingers caused more distress than the jostling plane. Her stomach flip-flopped, and that odd tingly sensation swept through her again.

  Okay, what was going on?

  No case of airsickness she’d ever heard of started with a gnawing, all-consuming—completely irrational—urge to touch one’s pilot!

  “Thanks for the gum,” he said.

  “You’re welcome.” Thank you for being hot enough to distract me from this weather.

  The little girl inside didn’t appreciate the joke. Her pilot might be a handsome man, but that didn’t mean he was a safe man—if there was even such a thing.

  TEN MINUTES LATER, the icy assault had let up.

  Former Navy SEAL Colby Davis wondered if he should use the time to try calming his passenger. The flight and crap weather were routine to him, but judging by her wide-eyed stare, she wasn’t likely to be a repeat customer.

  “You know,” he said, “back at the lake, I was in such a hurry to load your gear I didn’t get a chance to properly introduce myself.” Left hand on the yoke, he offered her his right. “I’m Colby.”

  “Rose,” she said. “Nice meeting you.”

  His grip swallowed her slim fingers, triggering not only instant awareness and heat, but that infernal protective streak that had gotten him into more trouble than he cared to remember.

  She’s just a paying customer, he told himself as he released her hand.

  Even so, he cranked up the heater to warm her icy fingertips.

  Since she didn’t seem all that talkative, he took a turn at tossing the conversational ball. “You said you’re a sociologist. What’re you doing with those yahoos up at the oil site?”

  “The Chicago-based company I work for performs employee evaluations for other companies. In this case, Global Oil. They have a high turnover rate at remote sites like this and want me to study how isolation affects the crew, then develop ways to counteract it.”

  Colby nodded.

  Sounded like a load of bull to him, but he wasn’t about to tell her that. Alaska either made a man or broke him. If the state were equated to a woman, she wouldn’t be kind or forgiving, but she was fair. As long as a man kept his wits about him, he’d be okay.

  Colby happened to love Alaska.

  His friend and former SEAL teammate, Tanner Muldoon, on the other hand, was giving serious thought to chucking it all in. His plan was to somehow sell his failing fishing lodge and then head to the lower forty-eight to seek his fortune. At the first sign of trouble, his wife Jenny had bailed. Tanner probably thought he could chase her down and work things out, but Colby had seen this sort of thing happen more times than he could remember.

  You either loved Alaska or hated it, and you sure as hell couldn’t force a woman to love it any more than you could force her to love a man.

  Colby clenched his jaw.

  Damn shame about those two. They’d been good together.

  “How much longer?” Rose asked, tracing a pattern in the frost on the inside of her window.

  “’Bout thirty minutes. Maybe longer with this headwind.”

  She nodded, and blew a bubble at the same time he did.

  They both laughed.

  “Feeling better?” he asked.

  “Yeah,” she said with her first genuine smile of the day. “Never underestimate the calming powers of a good grape bubble.”

  Grape bubbles, hell. What he’d underestimated was the power of her grin, which was warming him way more than the plane’s heater.

  Colby had time for one last chuckle before all hell broke loose.

  Ice pellets spattered the windshield like bullets, one of them cracking the glass. Ferocious winds buffeted the tiny plane like a moose swinging its rack at a gnat.

  “Hold on!” Colby said as the plane lost altitude, dipping into a terrifying valley only to rise back up to a treacherous, turbulence-filled peak. His forearms and biceps screamed from the strength needed to control the yoke.

  He risked a sideways glance and saw his passenger’s teeth chattering. From fear? Or the icy fists of wind punching through the vintage plane’s every air hole? The heater wasn’t coming close to keeping up.

  The frozen pellets turned to freezing rain, coating the windshield.

  How long until ice coated the wings?

  ROSE WATCHED HER pilot press a button that made some sort of de-icing liquid squirt onto the windshield. It helped a bit, but hardly solved the icy problem.

  The engine struggled to outpace the wind, whining from the effort.

  “You ever been in this tight a jam before?” she managed to ask past her dry throat.

  “This?” His white-toothed smile held enough appeal to set her senses on edge again. The plane’s every bounce jingled the bell on his Santa hat, distracting her even more. “This is nothing. You should’ve been here the time I—”

  The engine coughed and sputtered, then died.

  “Okay,” he said, fiddling with knobs and controls. “Now, we might be in a speck of trouble. But just a speck.” He held his thumb and forefinger barely apart, but that didn’t do much to calm her nerves.

  “Oh God,” she said. Inside, she said a little more. She wasn’t ready to die.

  She wasn’t anywhere near ready to die.

  She’d really looked forward to acing this first field assignment—a two-month gig. Growing even closer with her mom. While Rose never planned to marry—her mother had done enough of that for the both of them—she did very much want to have a male companion one day. And kids. As for what would make those kids—the sex—she wanted the chance to try it again. To prove she wasn’t broken.

  “I don’t want to die,” she said. “I really don’t want to die.”

  “Me neither, babe.” He held the yoke so tight that his face reddened and a vein raised on his forehead.

  “Mayday, mayday,” he called into the radio, relaying their location.

  No one answered.

  “Think anyone heard you?” Rose asked above the racket from the storm.

  “Hard to say.” He gave the dash a good hard thwack, then adjusted more knobs.

  But nothing he could do mattered when a rogue gust caught them, aiding in their not-so-gentle glide to the ground.

  “You filed a flight plan, right?” Her heart pounded dangerously fast. She held the sides of her seat tight enough to make her fingers go numb.

  “Uh-huh.”

  “So then just as soon as we land, s-someone’ll be out to get us?”

  “That’d be nice.”

  “But?”

  “But, too bad for us, if I know this area as well as I think I do, we’re coming down smack dab in the middle of some of the roughest terrain on God’s white earth.”

  He radioed for help again.

  Twisted still more controls.

  Something scraped the bottom of the plane. Treetops? Rock?

  The plane lurched, then contin
ued its rapid descent.

  Jaw hard and knuckles white from fighting the forces trying to rip the yoke from his hand, Colby said, “You the praying kind?”

  “N-not particularly.”

  “Now might be a great time to start.”

  Chapter Two

  “ROSE?” MINUTES AFTER ditching the plane in a powdery-soft snow bowl, Colby gave his passenger a light shake.

  He felt his way in the darkness to an equipment box he kept beneath his seat, reaching inside for a flashlight. He flicked it on, shining it her way.

  No blood. Good. Very good.

  Her complexion was waxy, but considering what they’d just been through, that was no surprise.

  Garland had fallen on her right shoulder. He flicked it to the floor.

  Leaning back in his seat, he slammed the yoke with the heel of his hand. Dammit, how had he let this happen?

  He knew the route.

  Knew the weather.

  His landing had been safe but sloppy. The left wing had been sheared, throwing the whole ride off balance, plowing them deep into the snow.

  By his calculations, this storm should’ve taken at least another day to barrel through this part of the state. He should have had more than enough time to safely deliver his fare to the drilling site, then get himself back to a crackling fire, a bowl of Nugget’s steaming beef stew and that special Christmas Eve Lakers game on ESPN.

  His passenger.

  Gazing at her now, he frowned.

  From the second she’d stepped off the snow-crusted dock and into his plane, Rose had become his responsibility.

  And now?

  He raked his fingers through his hair.

  Now, he could quite possibly be responsible for her death. He wished for a keg of beer to counteract that sobering thought.

  “Hello? Rose?” He held his open palm just below her nose. Puffs of breath warmed his hand. Whew. She was very much alive. Breathing normally—or as close to it as could be expected.

  Colby ran the light over her legs, finding them surprisingly long for her petite frame. And straight—thank God. Her arms looked good, too. No broken limbs. A huge blessing considering the battle he faced in just figuring out how to keep her warm.