The first twenty years of Maddie Horton's life seemed of little importance as she anticipated the next few weeks. This upcoming Christmas vacation promised to be a time of pleasure and adventure. Her first airplane ride. Her first trip outside the continental United States. And when she landed in Honolulu in a few hours, she would see Lincoln Carey for the first time in over ten years.

Recalling that momentous occasion when Lincoln, who preferred to be called Linc, came into her life, brought fleeting sadness to Maddie. Her father, Commander Stanley Horton of the U. S. Navy, had been on a six-month assignment to Hawaii when he was killed in an airplane crash. Maddie was only ten years old. Linc, a junior officer under her father's command, had accompanied his body home to West Virginia for burial.

Unaware, the handsome sailor had stolen Maddie's impressionable heart at their first meeting. The years hadn't changed her affection for him. After her mother died, Maddie kept in touch with Linc with an occasional note. She had also sent him her high school graduation announcement, which he hadn't acknowledged.

But when she'd written to ask him to provide some information about Hawaii's role in World War II for a History project, he invited her to spend the Christmas holidays with him in Hawaii and do on-site research. Maddie had jumped at the chance to find out if the man she'd enshrined in her heart for ten years was as wonderful as she imagined.

Anticipating the trip, Maddie had become as flighty and excited as a kitten chasing sunbeams. She lived in a state of euphoria for weeks. But she'd come down to earth with a thud when she visited Caroline Renault, director of the Valley