A Christmas Spark (Hudson House Holiday #2)

Prologue

Argonne Forest, France

October 1918

L azy wispy clouds drifted across the hazy autumn sky. Winter would soon arrive, but today it seemed far away.

From his position on his back, staring upward, Kase Hudson half expected to see a flock of migrating geese form a V on their way south, but none entered his view.

He heard a sharp whistle and wondered if the afternoon train was about to arrive in Silver Bluff. It seemed odd, though, because his childhood home was half a dozen miles from town and the whistle never carried that far.

Kase drew in a deep breath, expecting to smell the sweet, spicy aroma of his family’s apple and pear orchards and the flaky-crusted pies Aunt Dulcie baked. Instead, his lungs filled with a sharp, acrid odor mingling with the stench of rot and death.

The whistle grew louder, shriller, then the ground shook, and the world around him exploded. Flying shrapnel, decimated earth, and dagger-like splinters that had once been a lush forest of trees sailed skyward.

The clouds he’d imagined disappeared, replaced with belching pillars of smoke from the battlefield. Kase blinked, leaving behind dreams of home and returning to the terrible reality of war. He tried to sit up, but a heaviness held him in place. A glance down confirmed the weight was one of the soldiers who’d been fighting beside him when the Germans had rained down a hail of mortar shells.

“Kase?” A voice carried through the discordant cacophony of battle. “Kase!”

He heard his brother, Drake, calling his name, searching for him. The only good thing Kase could see about the war was being able to serve alongside his older and only brother.

“Drake!” Kase shouted, unable to move and not yet feeling the strength in his limbs to move the body pinning him to the ground.

“Kase! I’m coming!” A moment later, Drake appeared in Kase’s range of vision. His brother had scratches on his face and a bleeding wound on the back of his hand, but nothing that looked deep or fatal. Drake pushed aside the body, grabbed on to Kase’s upper arm, and pulled him into a sitting position.

For a moment, Kase felt woozy, like he might be ill, but he swallowed hard. He reached up to remove his helmet, only to find it missing. When he pulled his hand away, it was covered in sticky blood.

Drake knelt beside him and pressed a wad of gauze to the wound. “It’s not deep. Right on your hairline like that, it will give the girls one more thing to admire about your ugly mug.”

Kase grinned. “Unlike yours that chases girls away from a hundred yards.” In truth, Kase often envied his brother. Drake was the spitting image of their father, with coal-black hair, the Hudson blue eyes, a short nose, and swarthy looks that made females think he was a well-heeled gentleman pirate.

Although Drake bore the name of their mother’s family, Kase was the one who resembled them. He was the spitting image of their mother, from his Greek nose and leaner face, to his fuller bottom lip and wide smile. The only difference was that Holland Hudson had deep-brown eyes, and Kase had inherited the Hudson cobalt-blue eyes.

His sister, Sarah, had once told him girls all over Silver Bluff talked about his pretty eyes. Kase wasn’t sure he liked females referring to any part of his anatomy as “pretty,” but he’d take what he could get since most of them ignored him in favor of his brother.

Drake set Kase’s helmet on his head. “Must have rolled off when you hit the ground,” he said, then hauled his brother to his feet. “Anything feel broken? Are your insides hot?”

“I think I’m fine.” Kase moved his shoulders, shook one hand, then the other, then took the rifle Drake had picked up off the ground.

Drake turned over their fallen comrade and collected his personal effects, stuffing them into his pocket to give to the commanding officer later to be returned to the man’s family. He took the soldier’s gun, bayonet attached to the end, and ammunition, then nodded to Kase. “Let’s go.”

Kase fell into step behind his brother as they hurried to rejoin the battle that was moving onward. Being left behind wasn’t an option unless they were among the dead.

They’d just caught up with their battalion, part of the 91 st Infantry Division from Camp Lewis, when another round of mortar shells filled the sky. The whine of them grew in intensity and fervor until Kase wanted to press his hands to his ears to block out the sound.

Instead, he increased his pace as he and Drake ran headlong into battle.

As though his brother sensed something Kase didn’t, Drake placed a hand on Kase’s shoulder and shouted, “Love you, Brother!”

In the time it took Kase to blink, a mortar hit Drake, and he was gone.

The impact of the explosion tossed Kase into the air, sending him spiraling like a top before his vision went dark and his life was forever altered.