GREETINGS FROM THE FULLERTON VALLEY!

Dear Charlotte and Lydia,

Whose idea was it, anyway, to look up our first loves?

Guess what? I’ve already found mine, and Ryan’s just as gorgeous as I remember and, better yet, he’s still single!

He lives on a ranch near Stoney Creek with his aunt (a sweetie), his brother, Cameron (who’s really kind of a mystery man), and his darling little niece.

Guess what else? The hotel here is closing for the winter, so I’m going to be staying at an apartment the Donnellys have at their ranch. I should be there till Christmas.

Wish me luck! Will let you know how it all turns out.

Love,

Zoey

P.S. See you both on New Year’s Eve!

Dear Reader,

Have you ever sat around a table with your best friends, talking about old times, and someone’s said, “Hey, I wonder what happened to so-and-so?” The first guy you had a crush on, the first love of your life. Did he become the doctor or astronaut or bus driver he always wanted to be? Did he get married? Have children? Does he ever think of me?

Three best friends—Zoey Phillips, Charlotte Moore and Lydia Lane—take up the challenge in my new miniseries, GIRLFRIENDS. We start with Zoey’s story, when she’s invited back to the small town in British Columbia she’d once called home. She’s there to help with a friend’s wedding. And she’s bound to run into the boy she lost her heart to at sixteen. What happens then? I think the results may surprise you!

Like girlfriends everywhere, Zoey keeps in touch with Charlotte and Lydia while she’s away—and discovers that Charlotte has set out on the same quest, while Lydia… Well, you’ll see.

I hope you enjoy GIRLFRIENDS, the stories of three best friends who met as eighteen-year-olds just out of high school while working at a wilderness resort in the Rocky Mountains. Now, ten years later, they set out—each on her own—to track down that elusive first love.

And all the while, their friendship remains an important part of their lives. Old friends, best friends…GIRLFRIENDS!

Warmly,

Judith Bowen

P.S. I love to hear from readers. Write to me at: Box 2333, Point Roberts, WA 98281-2333 or check out my Web site at www.judithbowen.com.

Zoey Phillips
Judith Bowen

www.millsandboon.co.uk

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

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

CHAPTER NINETEEN

CHAPTER TWENTY

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

PROLOGUE

WHOSE IDEA HAD IT BEEN to look up everyone’s first love, anyway?

First love, first crush…whatever.

The challenge, as Zoey recalled, had been tossed out last spring at the ten-year reunion of the Jasper Park Lodge female summer staff. Zoey and her best friends, Charlotte Moore and Lydia Lane, both of whom she’d met at the lodge that long-ago summer, had flown from Toronto to Calgary for the big event, rented a car and driven through Banff and the glorious Alberta Rockies to Jasper. Last time they’d been there, they’d been swabbing out bathrooms, changing sheets and peeling vegetables. This time, they were paying guests.

About twenty girls had shown up. Someone—Jenny Springer?—had announced that they all ought to look up their first crushes, just for the fun of it, even if he’d been the cute guy with the freckles in kindergarten. Simple curiosity. Just to see what had happened to that first heartbreaker in a girl’s life. Probably bald, boring and hopelessly unappealing now. Then—here was the test—they’d all report back at next year’s reunion.

Zoey hadn’t given the suggestion a thought, but later, when she and Charlotte and Lydia were floating under a clear midnight sky in the outdoor pool overlooking Lake Beauvert, the topic had come up again. Lydia, naturally, had sneaked in a bottle of bubbly and some plastic glasses and they’d each had a glass or two. There were so many events and memories to toast….

“I’ve made up my mind. I’m going to do it.” Charlotte raised her glass to the others. “Wish me luck.”

“Do what?” Zoey had been idly watching the tattered balloons of her breath hanging in the cold air over the heated water and thinking of bears. Wondering if they were still hibernating—it was late April—and if they ever came out of the woods and wandered down to the lodge pool to check out the contents.

“Look up my first crush.” Charlotte was delicate and fragile in appearance, with blue eyes and perfect skin—in fact, everything about Charlotte was perfect—but Zoey knew what kind of energy was hidden beneath that remote, hands-off exterior. The three of them had run a business together, the Call-a-Girl Company, nearly eight years ago. They’d done children’s birthday parties, house-sitting, gardening, last-minute catering, pet-walking, what-have-you—and no one had put in more hours or devised better, more off-the-wall money-making schemes than Charlotte.

“Yeah, and who would that be?” Lydia asked. She was a tawny blonde, a little taller than the other two, whose lazy, sensual looks hid a razor-sharp mind.

“My first?” Charlotte gave a throaty chuckle. “Liam Connery. He was in my sister’s class at school when I was in grade five. A loner type. He’d just moved to Toronto from somewhere else, the East coast, I think, and I remember he had a big brown dog. All I know is that I was desperately in love and that he wanted to fly airplanes when he grew up. He was so handsome, at least I thought so at ten, eleven, whatever I was.”

Zoey and Lydia laughed.

“My sister hung out with him,” Charlotte continued dreamily. “I’m not sure we ever even spoke! The age difference is huge when you’re in grade five and he’s in high school, but—” She shrugged and raised her glass. “Oh, what a heavenly feeling, just to know he was looking at me. Once in a while, anyway!”

Lydia laughed and raised her glass, too. “To first love. Drink up!”

They all repeated the toast solemnly and downed the champagne. Zoey felt silly. First love? That would be Ryan Donnelly, the handsome track star at Fullerton Valley High who’d taught her what a French kiss was and then laughed at her when she wanted more.

“That’s it?” Lydia asked. “No more juicy details?”

“That’s it.” Charlotte smiled through the ghostly mist that undulated on the surface of the pool. “I have no idea what happened to him. They moved, I guess.” She laughed and took a sip of her champagne. “Probably married and living in Scarborough and the closest he’s ever come to flying is taking his kids on the Sky-master at the CNE each year.”

“So why look him up?” Zoey asked. She was perplexed and yet genuinely interested. Charlotte was a smart woman. She had a boyfriend, a handsome, successful lawyer type on Bay Street. Why would she waste her time on this?

“Oh…just because,” she’d answered dreamily. “Don’t you ever wonder what happened to your first guy?”

She hadn’t. Then, six months later, Zoey accepted a childhood friend’s invitation to help plan her stepmother’s wedding. Until then, she hadn’t thought she’d see Stoney Creek or the Fullerton Valley again. Or Ryan Donnelly. But on the drive up from Vancouver to Williams Lake and north, to Stoney Creek, she’d thought of little else. Did he still live there? He was from a large, well-established Chilcotin ranching family. Was he still handsome? The eighteen-year-old had been both a football hero and a track star. And, even more puzzling, how exactly had a sensible girl like Zoey ended up head-over-heels in love with him in the first place?

As she recalled the situation, Ryan had suggested in their last year of high school that he and Zoey pretend to be an item so he could make another girl jealous, the class beauty, Adele Martinez. Zoey already secretly adored him so she’d jumped at the chance. Surely any girl of that age would be forgiven for believing that events might turn out differently. She certainly had. In her preferred version, Ryan concluded that, of course, Adele wasn’t the one for him; Zoey Phillips was.

Or, Joey Phillips, as she’d been then. Joey was short for Josephetta Antonia. There were six Phillips girls and every one of them had a feminized male name: Thomasina, Frederica, Roberta, Frances, Josephetta and the baby, Stephanie. Harvey Phillips had clearly wanted a boy, but after six girls, he’d given up.

Stephanie was the only one who got off relatively easy, Zoey thought.

Joey, another boy’s name, was bad enough. Everyone knew exactly what it was short for, the weird Josephetta, which was the name teachers read out for roll call and the name typed out in full on her report card. She’d dumped Joey her first year away from home, part of the calculated distance she wanted to put between who she was now and who she’d been then, at least in the eyes of Stoney Creek. Zoey was glamorous. Mysterious. Different. And so was the second-youngest Phillips girl, Zoey had decided. She’d tried Chloe for a while, but no one could spell or pronounce it, so she’d tossed it for Zoey.

Stoney Creek was the closest she’d come to having a hometown. It was the longest the Phillipses had stayed in one place, first in the run-down house across the tracks and later, as Harvey Phillips’s fortunes improved, in the white-painted clapboard house with the lilac hedge and the big maple trees at the top of the hill. They moved a lot. Zoey remembered leaving one elementary school after only two months—finish school on Friday, gone by Monday. Her father was an inventor and a dreamer, always searching for the perfect place to live, always losing or quitting his job. Luckily, her mother was a nurse and could get work nearly everywhere they went.

There was no money for education but Zoey had made up her mind she was going to college. She put herself through with summer jobs and the money she made with Call-a-Girl Company, which she and Charlotte and Lydia ran year-round, even during the academic year. Charlotte, from an upper-crust Rosedale family, had the contacts and no shortage of good ideas. Lydia, a dreamy girl with a lot of imagination and a soft heart, was an excellent cook and organizer and had taken charge of most of the catering they’d landed. Her goal was to earn enough to travel to Australia. Zoey, who claimed no particular domestic or culinary skills, pitched in wherever help was needed, dealing with the advertising and promotion for their little company as well.

After graduation, Zoey had managed to turn her English major into a successful editing and book packaging career, first in Toronto, then in New York for a couple of years and now back in Toronto. Her time was her own and she made good money now that she worked exclusively with bestselling mystery writer Jamie Chinchilla, whipping the author’s convoluted manuscripts into shape before Chinchilla’s publisher saw them.

As a single, independent woman, she now moved when she wanted to—not when there were too many bills to pay and the most attractive option, according to Harvey Phillips’s modus operandi, was simply to leave town.

Zoey Phillips had—in her estimation—arrived. She’d worked hard to get where she was today. Perhaps it was time to return to Stoney Creek for a visit. She’d changed—had the town?

CHAPTER ONE

“THAT’S HIM—over there!”

“Where?” Zoey rolled her eyes and made a little face. Obviously, Elizabeth didn’t expect her to turn right around and stare.

Her friend leaned across the table and wagged her spoon meaningfully in a direction that was behind Zoey and slightly to her left.

“There! By the window. He’s having dinner with his aunt and his brother and—” Elizabeth craned her neck delicately “—and his niece. And maybe someone else, I can’t tell.” It was just past six, but the Gold Dust Café, the restaurant on the main floor of the Fullerton Valley Hotel was packed, mostly with families. People dined early in Stoney Creek, British Columbia. Zoey had been dragged along by her schoolfriend, Elizabeth Nugent, formerly Jonkers, when she could have been ensconced in the privacy and quiet of her room upstairs, starting work on the manuscript she’d brought with her to edit. She had to admit, though, that dinner with the Nugents, a precursor to making an appearance later in the evening at the volunteer firefighters’ dance, had been pleasant so far.

Ryan Donnelly. Zoey held her breath, suddenly seventeen all over again—be still my trembling heart. Was that really him? She artfully dropped her paper napkin, which skittered a surprising distance, and reached to pick it up from the carpet, sliding her eyes to the left as she did. Disappointment washed through her. Rats! That wasn’t him—that was the man she’d seen in the shoemaker’s shop this morning. The man who’d picked up a bridle that was being fixed.

“Who’s that, hon?” Arthur Nugent asked his wife, eyes on the lettuce leaf he’d turned over on his salad plate.

“Ryan Donnelly. Zoey’s high-school heartthrob. Oh, Arthur! Don’t you remember them going out together, back when Ryan was trying to make Adele Martinez jealous? Zoey’s still half in love with him.” Elizabeth giggled. “She told me last night. Isn’t that romantic?”

“Lizzie!” Zoey shushed her friend. “Don’t be silly. I just wondered if he was still in town, that’s all—”

“What’s wo-mantic, Mommy?” five-year-old Tessa asked innocently. Zoey wished Elizabeth had kept her big mouth shut. She loved her dearly, but Elizabeth was an inveterate fixer—anybody’s relationship problems were fodder. Of course, Zoey had no relationship problems, but she had confessed to Elizabeth when she’d arrived in Stoney Creek the day before that she’d love to run into her old high-school crush. The boy who’d seen her as an enthusiastic partner-in-crime, a fellow road warrior, when she would’ve preferred he see her as the love interest.

“Never mind, honey,” Elizabeth soothed her youngest, then inexplicably reversed herself. “Well, guess what? Auntie Zoey likes Lissy’s uncle, that’s all.”

“Oh.” Tessa covered her mouth and grinned. “Are they in love and getting married, like Barnaby’s mom and dad?”

“Not yet!” Elizabeth’s eyes twinkled and Zoey would have elbowed her if she’d been closer. “You eat your salad now, Tess. Yum-yum. It’s full of vitamins and minerals that little girls need to grow up strong and pretty and smart like Zoey who’s come to visit us all the way from Toronto! Isn’t that wonderful, girls? I still can’t believe it!”

Zoey smiled. Sometimes Elizabeth made her feel like she was another member of the Nugent brood, in need of constant management and encouragement.

“But Daddy isn’t eating his,” Becky observed calmly. At six, nearly seven, she was eons more sophisticated than her sister. “I think there’s something in it. Maybe something bad.” She glanced at her sister. “Maybe a worm.”

Tessa dropped her fork with a clatter and gave her mother a pained look, mouth open. “Aaaah…”

Elizabeth’s attention lit on her husband. “Arthur, what are you doing? That’s only radicchio and you’re not setting any kind of example for the girls, playing with your food like that.”

Arthur, a partner in the Nugent family insurance business, was a large, quiet, thoughtful man. Zoey remembered him vaguely from high school. He’d been a year or two ahead of Zoey and Elizabeth and their gang. As she recalled, he’d been large and thoughtful then, too, with untamable stand-up hair. His hair, thinning a little on top, was nicely combed now.

“I don’t think I care for these designer greens, Lizzie.” He smiled at his wife and put down his fork, directing a quizzical glance across the table. “Hey, Zoey, want me to take you over and introduce you, see if he remembers you?”

“Ack!” She let out a tiny shriek, which amused the girls highly. “No, definitely not. I’m in town until Christmas.” It was nearly the end of November. “I can wait. Besides, that isn’t Ryan over there, anyway.”

“It is!” Elizabeth insisted.

Fortunately, their main courses arrived then, diverting Elizabeth, and the subject was dropped, to Zoey’s enormous relief. But Arthur’s comments lodged in her heart. Would Ryan Donnelly remember her? She’d been poor and skinny, with horrible carrot-colored hair. As untamable as Arthur’s, if the truth be told. And Ryan had never been in love with her at all—only used her in a ruse designed to make the town’s teen queen jealous. As if anyone would envy Zoey Phillips!

She, pathetically, had gone along with everything he’d suggested: dances, dates at the local cinema, kisses, trips to the Dairy Queen. When Adele Martinez had finally deigned to notice him after a month or so, Ryan had disappeared from Zoey’s life. Thank heaven, it was the spring before graduation, and Zoey had landed a plum job that summer, working at Jasper Park Lodge in the Alberta Rockies. No more boring, dusty, small-minded Stoney Creek, she’d thought. The pain of that first love, never returned, had faded, as she’d known it would. Wasn’t that the way with first love? You always fell for the wrong guy, the one who broke your untried teenage heart.

Now, ten years later, she’d come back, after all. To see Elizabeth and Mary Ellen Owen and her stepmother, who was getting married, and some of the other people she still cared about. To look up that aging charmer, Ryan Donnelly—maybe. To have a working holiday in British Columbia’s interior, a place she thought she’d left behind forever.

Deep down, she knew she’d come for another reason, too: to rub the town’s nose in her success. Just a tiny bit… No one in Stoney Creek, except Elizabeth and Mary Ellen and Mrs. Bishop, the school librarian, had ever taken her seriously.

She’d been a skinny, scared, brainy brat when she left. A good education, a terrific job, hair that was a nice ordinary dark-auburn now, with a little assistance—everything had changed in her life. She was no longer one of the six gawky Phillips girls, all redheaded, all wearing hand-me-downs and living in a ramshackle house on the wrong side of the tracks. She’d even lost most of her freckles.

Times had changed. Zoey Phillips was definitely somebody now. And, with the exception of the freckles, she’d done it all on her own.

RYAN DONNELLY WAS sitting at the large table near the window.

At one point, Elizabeth got up to help Tessa take a trip to the bathroom and Zoey saw her smile and wave. She gave Zoey an exaggerated wink.

Zoey glanced toward the table in question to see that a man, who’d had his back to them, had turned slightly and was staring at their table. Ryan Donnelly. Her heart nearly stopped in her chest. She smiled but to her shock he didn’t respond, his gaze moving to Arthur and Becky before returning to her for a few seconds. He smiled uncertainly and Zoey made a tiny gesture, a sort-of wave.

Ryan leaned toward the other man, the one she’d seen in the shoemaker’s. He turned and Zoey caught the glimpse of recognition as he noticed her. She smiled distantly; what else could she do? Ryan never looked her way again.

She would’ve known him anywhere.

Well, that was that. She’d seen him and he was as handsome as he’d ever been, maybe more. Zoey quickly scanned Ryan’s table. Besides the man who’d recognized her from their brief encounter that morning, there were two women—one of them a blonde, one of them quite a bit older—and a young girl.

Zoey felt oddly let-down as she resumed eating her cherry cheesecake. Her cheeks were hot. What had she expected—that Ryan Donnelly would rush over and fall onto his knees and exclaim that she’d been the girl he’d loved all along? She, Zoey Phillips, and not the gorgeous Adele. That she’d broken his heart when she’d left Stoney Creek, that he’d never married because no other woman had quite measured up to her…

Zoey found herself smiling. A girl could dream, couldn’t she?

She’d been on pins and needles ever since she’d arrived the day before, thinking she might run into him—on the street, in a café, in the hotel. Okay, so she’d seen him now. Next step was actually talking to him. She could handle that.

“You up for an hour or so at the firemen’s dance—oh, excuse me, it’s firefighters now, I forgot,” Arthur said with a cheerful smile. Zoey realized he was addressing her. “We’ve got a couple of women on the roster so maybe it’s firepersons, I don’t know. Should be fun. I promised the girls a few dances.”

“I’m looking forward to it,” Zoey said, surprising herself. Well, she was…now. Would Ryan be there? Idiotically, she wished she’d dressed up a little, worn a skirt, paid more attention to her makeup.

Elizabeth hustled back to the table, red in the face. Tessa’s bottom lip stuck out stubbornly. Now, what was that all about? Some kind of mother-daughter disagreement. Zoey loved to visit her nieces and nephews, but motherhood was a total enigma to her. She didn’t know what she thought about kids; sometimes she yearned for a family of her own, a husband and children, and other times she wondered what all the fuss was about.

“Finish your dessert, honey,” Elizabeth told her daughter, then straightened and sent another quick smile toward the Donnelly table.

“Whew!” She sat down. “Okay, everybody ready to go?”

Arthur went over the bill, item by item, refusing to let Zoey contribute. There was an error in the addition and by the time he’d figured it out, paid, and carefully counted out a generous tip, Elizabeth had her daughters’ coats on and was trying to convince Tessa to wear her woolen cap. No luck.

Zoey glanced toward the table by the window again. It was empty. Ryan and his friends were already gone.

They’d dated, they’d held hands, they’d kissed in the Rialto. They’d danced together at the spring prom. Sure, it was all a big joke. And it had been ten years ago, nearly eleven. Still, she couldn’t understand why he hadn’t walked over to their table to say something. Hello. Having a good life? Where’ve you been? Nice to see you. Anything.

What was she—invisible? Zoey swallowed her disappointment. So much for first loves. Just as she’d always maintained, they were better forgotten.

ZOEY HAD ARRIVED in Stoney Creek the day before— Friday—to a mix-up with the hotel. She’d thought she had a room for the full five weeks, but the man at the desk told her they were closing for the winter after hunting season, the end of the following week. She’d have to find another place to stay.

The Fullerton Valley Hotel was old but charming, with sloping floors in the corridors and a creaking, slow-as-molasses elevator. She’d remembered it as being quite a bit more charming and a whole lot less old, but that was the way memory seemed to work. Between a high-school basketball tournament and hunting season, the place was full. They’d put her in the top-floor honeymoon suite.

Honeymoon suite. She’d wanted to giggle. Well, at least she’d get a peek inside one, since it was starting to look as though she might not get there in the usual way. She’d dumped her most recent boyfriend, Chad Renwick, Jr., when she discovered him attempting the horizontal mambo on the office sofa with his new receptionist four months ago, and she’d had absolutely no prospects since. Not even bad ones.

First things first. Zoey had changed out of the fleece pants and jacket she’d traveled in and stretched out on the giant-size bed, propped up by half a dozen soft pillows. There was a large mirror on the ceiling that she decided to pretend wasn’t there. She called Elizabeth to say she’d arrived, accepted the invitation to join the Nugents Saturday night, then called down for room service only to discover it didn’t exist.

Figured. She found the phone book and dialed a pizza joint two blocks away that said they’d deliver.

Dawson, Dodson, Donaldson… Zoey leafed through the phone book and let her eye stray down the columns. Donnelly. Hmm. Five Donnellys. The schools were probably populated with all kinds of cute little Donnellys.

Fielding, Furtz—wasn’t that the shoemaker who’d been so kind to her father? She’d definitely go see him the next day.

Hanson, Hoare—she recalled how the poor Hoare girls had been teased—Hopewell, Hoskins, Jenkins, Jones, Jonker. That was Elizabeth’s mother and dad.

Probably a whole lot of the kids she’d gone to school with had stayed in Stoney Creek. Maybe, with Elizabeth and Mary Ellen in tow, she’d visit some of them while she was here.

As soon as the stores were open the next morning—cold, bright and crystal clear, with the snow-capped Coast Mountains majestic in the west—she’d headed for Mr. Furtz’s Saddlery and Shoes. It was exactly as she’d remembered it. Various pieces of dusty leather paraphernalia adorned the street-front window, along with some fancy-stitched cowboy boots, children’s sandals, a few samples of out-of-style high-heeled shoes, leather dog leads and harnesses and several trade publications—she made out Canada Shoe and Boot and Leather Forever—fanned artfully near the window to entice the passerby, their covers pale and sun-bleached.

She pushed open the door with the old-fashioned jangling bell.

“Joey Phillips! My goodness.” Mr. Furtz had actually remembered her before she’d had to introduce herself. Zoey felt a warm rush of gratitude. Until then no one she’d seen in town had recognized her. Mr. Furtz pronounced his js with a y sound, in the German way, so even the name she’d discarded didn’t sound too bad. Yo-ey. “My, my, such a beauty, too,” he went on, eyes twinkling. “All you Phillips girls were lovely girls, just like your mother. How is your father, my dear?”

“Just fine. Dad’s got a new job, with a municipality in Saskatchewan. Rosetown.”

The old man nodded his head vigorously, making the few hairs he’d wound across the top of his mostly bald pate bounce dangerously. “Oh, yah, yah! Good for him. He’s a good man, your father. A very fine man.”

Zoey felt her eyes water slightly. Most people had regarded her father as a hopeless loser. Mr. Furtz was still smiling broadly when Zoey heard the bell jangle again.

“Oh!” The harness-maker looked up toward the door. “Ah, there you are!”

Zoey turned. A tall, dark-haired man, obviously a cowboy of some sort from his dress—worn Wranglers, a broad-brimmed hat, chambray shirt, sheepskin vest, scuffed boots on his feet—had entered the store.

“You mind, my dear?” Mr. Furtz whispered loudly. “A customer—?”

“Please! Go right ahead,” Zoey said, stepping back as the customer approached the counter. He seemed vaguely familiar but she was quite sure she’d never met him. One cowboy looked pretty much like another, in her view, and Stoney Creek was full of them. “No hurry. I’m staying in town for several weeks,” she said into empty air.

Both men were bent over a piece of equipment on the counter. A little embarrassed, Zoey moved away to inspect the articles on display. Purses, more shoes, Birkenstocks, a whole rack of boots of various kinds. She could feel the stranger’s gaze on her back. Her cheeks burned. She turned quickly toward the counter, but he was absorbed in examining whatever piece of horse equipment the shoemaker had repaired for him. She must have imagined it.

“Nice job, Raoul. Very nice work. Hell of a note getting it caught in the binder like that and tore up. I figured I’d have to throw it away.”

Raoul?

“Never! Something’s made of leather, it can be fixed. No problem. That man-made stuff, vinyl, plastic, now that’s another story. I—”

“How much?” The stranger reached in his back pocket and removed several bills from his wallet. He tossed them onto the counter. “That do?”

“Oh, yah. Maybe too much,” the shoemaker said doubtfully. “It was an easy job.”

“For you, maybe. Take it.” The stranger laughed and Zoey felt the sound echo along her ribs. She glanced at him again. He was attractive, in a rough-hewn, serious way. Not knock-down handsome at all. But attractive, nonetheless.

“Yah, yah! Good joke. Ha, ha.” The shoemaker rang up the transaction on his old-fashioned cash register. “‘Easy for me,’ yah!”

He handed the customer a receipt and the man slung the bridle onto his right shoulder, giving her a curious glance as he turned away. There was no mistaking it, he had looked at her—this time.

That made her feel a bit better somehow. That he’d noticed her at all.

Of course, any stranger in Stoney Creek would stand out to a local. Even on a busy weekend like this, with the town full of hunters and basketball players.

“I’ve known you all these years, Mr. Furtz, and I never knew your name was Raoul,” she said, smiling, when the customer had gone. “Was your mother Spanish or Italian?”

“Oh, no! Austrian, from the Tyrol, like my dad.” Mr. Furtz’s blue eyes twinkled. “But she was a romantic woman, my mama. You know what I mean? Very, very romantic!”

POOR MR. FURTZ! Zoey thought now, looking around at the crowded arena. She wondered if he was here. The entire town and surrounding district of Stoney Creek seemed to have put in an appearance at the volunteer firefighters’ dance, which was being held at the curling arena, with sheets of plywood laid out over the ice. She had no idea what his story was. As far as she knew, he’d never married. No wife, no children. But Zoey was sure she knew exactly what he meant when he’d said his mother was romantic and she suspected that Mr. Furtz was a romantic at heart, too.

She wasn’t particularly romantic herself. She’d always viewed herself as sensible and clearheaded. A smart woman who knew what she wanted and knew how to get it. A risk-taker, but sensible. Impulsive? Sometimes. Adventurous? Always. Romantic? No, that was for teenagers and sentimental old women.

There was a five-dollar “donation” to get into the dance, and a band was tuning up on the makeshift stage when they arrived. She needn’t have worried about how she was dressed. Her slim charcoal slacks with the matching jacket and the ivory silk short-sleeved sweater under it were businesslike, yes, but she preferred businesslike to the elaborate confections of skirts and crinolines some women wore. Others had on plain jeans and cowboy boots and, among the younger set, bare tummies and low-rider pants were in evidence, complete with tattoos and body piercings.

Arthur led the way and found a table near the bandstand.

“Drinks?” he mouthed, over the noise, and then disappeared to the refreshment concession. All proceeds—drinks, donations at the door, silent auction items ranged on tables around the rink—went to the local Boys and Girls Club, which was in the process, Elizabeth had told her, of raising funds for a building of its own.

Zoey spotted a dark-haired woman on the other side of the room smiling and madly waving so she waved back.

“Who’s that, Lizzie?” she muttered, leaning across Becky. “Over there in the pink shirt?”

“That’s Sherry Porter, used to be Rempel—you know her! She was one of the cheerleaders for the basketball team. We never made the squad.” Elizabeth laughed and waved, too. Zoey felt pleased that someone had remembered her. The shoemaker yesterday and now this Sherry Porter, who, she was sorry to say, she could barely recall.

The lights dimmed and the crowd immediately quieted. Zoey noticed Arthur on his way back to their table, balancing a tray filled with glasses.

A man dressed in a white shirt and tie and a rumpled sports jacket had mounted the stage and stood by the microphone.

“Just before the music starts, I want to remind all you folks that every cent raised this evening goes to the Boys and Girls Club.” He pushed his glasses higher on his nose.

“The mayor,” Elizabeth whispered, leaning toward her. “Herb Trennant, did you know him?”

Zoey shook her head.

“I think he was in Arthur’s class,” Elizabeth continued and her husband raised a finger to his mouth to shush her. She made an impatient gesture back and returned her attention to the stage.

“I recall moving to Stoney Creek when I was ten and didn’t know a soul,” the mayor said. “A Boys and Girls Club back then would have made things a little easier,” he went on. “Moving to a new town can be a mighty lonely experience. Our own young people who grow up here could use a place like this, too, so be generous, folks! It’s for a good cause.”

The crowd clapped and the band struck up a Shania Twain tune, “Whose Bed Have Your Boots Been Under?” and people began to take to the dance floor. The mayor’s words had struck a deep chord in Zoey. She remembered so well the feeling of being alone and new at school, a stranger in town. It had happened so many times. Youth could be highly overrated; she wouldn’t be fifteen again for anything.

“Dance, Lizzie?” Arthur bent gallantly over his wife’s hand. “You’re next, Becky,” he addressed his daughter with a grin and she giggled. “You, too, Zoey. You can get in line.”

At that moment, Zoey spotted Ryan Donnelly pushing through the crowd, headed toward their table. Her heart lodged in her throat. She’d just been thinking she wouldn’t be a teenager again—and here, standing practically in front of her, was one of the reasons.

“Lizzie!”

Elizabeth turned, still holding her husband’s hand.

“Yes? Oh, Ryan, I didn’t see you here.” Elizabeth shot a triumphant glance Zoey’s way.

Up close, Ryan was even handsomer than he was from a distance. His eyes, blue as the summer sky, were vivid and expressive. His hair, a rich tawny color, was neatly trimmed. He had on a dark blue shirt and black jeans, cowboy style.

“Hey, listen,” he said, with a warm glance at Zoey. “I saw you in the hotel.” He grinned, still the grin that could melt a girl’s bones. “Who’s your friend, Lizzie? Introduce me.”

Zoey wanted to sink into one of the cracks in the ancient wooden fold-up she was sitting on. Ryan Donnelly hadn’t recognized her in the restaurant! Had she changed that much? Or had she meant so little that he’d completely forgotten her in the ten years she’d been gone?

“Friend? You’re kidding, right?”

Ryan shook his head. He looked truly mystified. Arthur was grinning.

“For Pete’s sake, Ryan, that’s Zoey Phillips—don’t you remember Joey Phillips? You went out with her!”

CHAPTER TWO

RYAN STARED at Zoey. Her face, then the rest of her. Zoey felt her cheeks burn all the way down to her toes.

Then, with a shout of laughter, he pulled her into his arms. “So it is! Well, well. Man alive, little Joey Phillips!” And he kissed her—right on the mouth! Zoey nearly fell over, she was so surprised. “Welcome home, Joey. Welcome back to Stoney Creek. You stickin’ around for a while? I sure hope so. Man, have you turned into some kinda babe!”

“About a month,” Zoey said, her face still burning. Babe! “If I can find a place to stay, that is. They’re kicking me out of the hotel on Friday. By the way, I changed my name. Decided Zoey was a little more grown-up.” She knew she was babbling. Ryan’s greeting had totally unnerved her.

“No kidding!” Ryan’s gaze hadn’t shifted. He was giving her a look of admiration she’d rarely seen from him before. Certainly not directed at her. “Zoey. Zoey Phillips.”

He glanced around. Zoey noticed that the man and child who’d been with Ryan in the hotel restaurant had followed him to the table. “Hey! This is my brother’s little girl, Melissa. Lissy, we call her.” He patted the child on her head. “And this is my brother, Cameron. Cam? You remember the Phillips girls? Bunch of good-lookin’ redheads? Maybe you knew some of Zoey’s older sisters?”

The man she’d seen at the shoemaker’s nodded. He seemed a little out of sorts. Annoyed. The little girl with them immediately began chattering to the two Nugent girls.

“Hey, these seats taken?” Ryan addressed Arthur, who shrugged.

“Go ahead, Ry. Sit down. I was just going to dance with my wife. Give you and Zoey a chance to get reaquainted.” He winked at her. Honestly! He was as bad as Lizzie.

Ryan’s brother frowned. “I’ll go get us some drinks if we’re going to be parking ourselves here.” He didn’t exactly sound enthusiastic.

“Sure, sure!” Ryan pulled out a chair and sat down, reaching across the table to clasp Zoey’s hands, his blue gaze riveted on her. He was a toucher, all right. She remembered that from ten years ago. A very physical guy. She was still stunned, her heart beating a mile a minute. He hadn’t forgotten her; it was just that she’d changed so much—looked so good—he hadn’t recognized her.

Not in her wildest dreams had she—

“I can’t believe it! And now I hear Mary Ellen’s coming to town to spend some time with Edith.” Edith Owen was Mary Ellen’s stepmother, who was marrying her neighbor after many years as a widow.

“Yes. She’ll be here this week. I can hardly wait. Mary Ellen asked me to help with Edith’s wedding. That’s why I’m here, really.”

“You two used to be good friends, right?” He was so close Zoey could smell the warm, manly scent of his aftershave, faintly woodsy, faintly citrus, could see the tanned crinkles around his eyes. Ryan Donnelly had always smiled a lot. If anything, ten years suited him. He was definitely handsomer than she’d remembered. To think that she’d once dated him! Well…sort of.

“Best friends,” Zoey said, then added loyally, “Elizabeth, too. But Mary Ellen was the first person I met when we moved to Stoney Creek.”

“Well, son of a gun.” Ryan grinned. “We’ll have to get together, the three of us. We had some good times back then, didn’t we, babe?” Was he thinking of the kisses in the Rialto, as she was? Zoey nodded mutely, feeling every bit the gauche teenager she’d once been.

“Listen.” He squeezed her hand. “We’ll have to have a few dances, for old times’ sake, huh? I promised Lissy I’d dance with her first.” He glanced at the little blond girl with the china-blue eyes who was standing at the table, sharing a drink with Tessa. Arthur had brought lemonades for the children. Lissy’s father hadn’t returned yet. “Okay, honey?”

The “honey” was for his niece, Zoey realized after a split second. Then she was sitting alone at the table, with the two Nugent girls. Arthur and Elizabeth were dancing—somewhere, Zoey couldn’t see them on the crowded dance floor. Ryan had whirled off dramatically, his niece clinging to his neck, her short blond hair flying. The girl seemed to be about Tessa’s age, four or five.

“You okay here?” Ryan’s brother—what was his name again?—appeared at the table and put down two paper cups of beer and a can of Pepsi. This time he was accompanied by the blond woman who’d been at the Gold Dust Café earlier. He didn’t introduce her. Zoey nodded automatically, a little confused, and he headed immediately for the dance floor, hand-in-hand with the blonde. The band had segued into an old Hank Williams tune, a two-step.

Zoey watched Ryan’s brother put his arms around his partner, smile at her and start moving to the music. He was a decent dancer. Most cowboys were. He glanced back briefly and Zoey stared at the wall, avoiding eye contact. The wife? Must be. A nice-looking woman, wearing a green print dress. The type men usually went for—lots of hair and big boobs.

Zoey studied the pair from the corner of her eye as they moved away. He was about the same height as Ryan, maybe an inch taller. A little heavier build, broader shoulders. He was obviously older if he’d known her sisters. She hadn’t met any of Ryan’s family; their pretend romance hadn’t gotten that far.

Imagine! The customer she’d seen in Mr. Furtz’s shoe repair shop, the man who’d ignored her—although she’d been pretty sure she felt some interest there for a second or two, which was weird, considering he was obviously married—turning out to be Ryan’s brother.

Wait until she told Charlotte and Lydia. Small town life was just too full of coincidences!

RYAN RETURNED to the table with his giggling niece. He took Zoey’s hand and bowed low over it. The other two girls were jumping up and down. “My turn!” Tessa yelled.

“Zoey first and then you, Tess,” he said firmly. “Then Becky.”

“Oh, no!” Zoey said, coloring. “I couldn’t leave the girls here all alone.”

“Why not?” Ryan shrugged. “They’re fine. There’s plenty of neighbors around. Hell, here’s Cam, he’ll sit with the kids.”

As he led her onto the floor, he said something to his brother. Cameron looked at her, over Ryan’s shoulder, and Zoey got the funniest sensation. That he didn’t approve? What possible business was it of his, if Ryan danced with her?

Just then Elizabeth and Arthur came back and Becky launched herself at her father. “My turn, Daddy! My turn!”

Elizabeth fanned her flushed face and waved gaily at Zoey as she sat down. Zoey knew exactly what her friend was thinking. That she and Ryan had hit it off. That there was suddenly the excitement of romance in the crisp, cold air of the Fullerton Valley. That Zoey, unmarried at twenty-eight and probably, in Elizabeth’s view, pretty near over the hill, could do a heck of a lot worse. That it was no coincidence that Zoey’s old heartthrob was unmarried and very, very eligible. That, indeed, this was not only serendipity—it could even be fate.

Ryan was a good dancer, just as Zoey remembered. He held her close and her head swam. Everything about him was so familiar and yet so very, very strange.

“Where are you living these days, Zoey?”

“Toronto.”

He whistled. “The big city, huh?”

She didn’t say anything. She was normally an excellent dancer but for some reason she was having trouble keeping in step with him. Nerves?

“Hey! Remember the time we drove out to Varley’s old barn and had a picnic, you and me and Adele and that guy she was going with—what the hell was his name?”

Zoey nodded. “Burke Goodall, wasn’t it?”

“That’s it! Burke the Jerk, I always thought of him.” She felt his right arm tighten around her shoulders. “I was always crazy about Adele, remember that?”

Did she! “Whatever happened? You two ever get together?” Zoey hoped her question sounded nonchalant. It was a question she’d agonized about for a long time, even after she’d left Stoney Creek.

Ryan’s face clouded, and he sighed. “No. Just one of those things, I guess. For a while there—” He shrugged, then went on. “Hell, it wasn’t meant to be, I guess. Enough about me. What about you—married?”

“No.”

“Boyfriend?”

“No.”

“What? Good-looking lady like you?” He hugged her and Zoey thought she’d burst with pleasure and pride. He meant it, he actually meant it!

“Not that I believe you for a minute, but—”

“Hey, believe it. You were always a pretty little thing, but, damn, you’re gorgeous now.”

Pretty little thing? No way! Zoey didn’t think she could stand much more of this. She was glad when the dance ended and Becky materialized beside them, tugging at Ryan’s shirt. “My turn now!”

Elizabeth wanted to leave after the next dance. Tessa had obviously been crying; Zoey had no idea what that was about, either. Kids! At one time, she might’ve been annoyed that they had to go but tonight she welcomed the opportunity. Her head was spinning—worse than before.

“I’m just going to check out the silent auction, okay?” She might as well drop some more money while she was here. It was all for a good cause, as the mayor had reminded them.

“Sure. Fifteen minutes?” Elizabeth glanced at her watch.

“Fine.”

Zoey moved along the line of products and services displayed on the paper-covered tables at the back of the room, pausing occasionally to mark down her bid, leaving Elizabeth’s phone number for a contact since she didn’t know where she’d be when the hotel threw her out. Looking for another place was next on her to-do list. She’d been invited to stay at the Nugents’, but Elizabeth’s offer, while kind, was impossible. She needed peace and quiet.

Okay. Twenty bucks for a manicure. That was a deal. Fifteen for a string of Christmas lights—she’d give those to Elizabeth if she won. Twenty-seven dollars for a sack of premium dog food. Elizabeth and Arthur had a big black Labrador that probably ate them out of house and home.

“Ma’am?”

“Yes?” To her shock, it was Ryan’s brother, hovering behind her right shoulder.

“Care to dance?”

CHAPTER THREE

ZOEY SCRIBBLED on a piece of notepaper she’d found inside the desk in her room.

Greetings from the Fullerton Valley!

Lydia: You’ll never guess. I ran into my first love—remember I told you about Ryan Donnelly, the great-looking rancher?—yesterday. Already! He was at a dance I went to with Elizabeth and her family. Here’s the best news—he’s single and he thinks I’m gorgeous! Nice change, huh? Oh, I also met his brother (didn’t know he had one) plus a niece. The hotel is chucking me out this week and I might have to stay with Elizabeth until I can find something else. When you hear from Charlotte, pass on my news. Wonder if she’s met her first love yet? Bet I got you both beat! I’ll keep you posted.

Luv, Zoey

P.S. Haven’t even had time to look at the manuscript—too much going on!

MARY ELLEN ARRIVED Monday night, and Elizabeth and Zoey met her for lunch the next day at the trendy—for Stoney Creek—Martha’s Grainery, a fern-draped, health-menu establishment at the corner of Tremont and Main Street.

Mary Ellen, who’d worked for a travel agency for six years and had recently left it to open her own business, a bed-and-breakfast inn on Vancouver Island, was the same shy, warmhearted girl she’d always been. The Osprey’s Nest—so-named, she told them, because it perched all alone on a hilltop overlooking Georgia Strait—was closed for the winter season, just like Zoey’s hotel.

With no makeup and dressed in sneakers, jeans and a red silk shirt, Mary Ellen didn’t look much older than she had in high school.

“So, any news on the man front?” Zoey thought they ought to get straight down to business. “Not you, Elizabeth, you’re married—unless you’ve got some suggestions for us.”

Elizabeth laughed, but Zoey thought she sounded pleased. Marriage, husband, children. In Elizabeth’s eyes, she had it all. And Zoey had to agree; if you were going to live in a small town like Stoney Creek, you might as well be married. What was there to do for singles?

“No,” Mary Ellen said, with a small shrug. She picked up one half of the shrimp-and-cheese-stuffed croissant she’d ordered. “Too busy these days. You?”

“Same.” Zoey attacked her vegetarian burger, wishing she’d ordered some fries. Elizabeth looked content with her huge Caesar salad and grilled chicken breast.

“Speaking of men, you’ll never guess who we ran into on Saturday?”

“We?” Mary Ellen raised her eyebrow, mouth full.

“Lizzie and me.” She leaned forward. “Ryan Donnelly! Remember him?”

Zoey thought Mary Ellen seemed a little flustered, but maybe that was just because she was swallowing. “Of course I remember Ryan,” she said. “Didn’t you spill several buckets of tears over him, mostly on my shoulder?”

“Yeah.” Zoey was perfectly aware that her friend was teasing. Mary Ellen knew as well as Zoey did that Ryan had never had any real interest in her, only as a stooge to make Adele Martinez jealous. “Did you know he almost married Adele? That’s what Lizzie says. She ran off before the wedding. Jilted him.”

“No!” Mary Ellen looked genuinely shocked. “That poor man!”

“Yes. And of course Lizzie—” they both turned to their good friend, Zoey with a grin and Mary Ellen with an expression of dismay “—knows everything.”

It was true. Elizabeth knew who was in town and who wasn’t and why they’d left and when they’d be back, if ever. She knew the price of beef and how much a new teacher made in the Stoney Creek district and that washing soda was a perfectly good substitute for detergent in the laundry. She bottled and preserved and made her own Christmas presents and sewed all her girls’ clothing, as well as running a busy seasonal craft business specializing in candles and fridge magnets.

She was Fullerton Valley’s own blend of Ann Landers and Martha Stewart.

Zoey had realized right away that Elizabeth was a wealth of local information and could steer her clear of any faux pas she might otherwise make in this small community. If the mayor’s wife was sleeping with the fire chief, Zoey wanted to know.

“Yep.” Zoey loaded her fork with alfalfa and black radish sprouts. They were dressed with a raspberry vinaigrette, quite tasty. “Ryan was with his brother and niece. Say, what’s with the brother?” She turned from one to the other. “Weird. He asked me to dance and then never said a word the whole time we were dancing. Except once. I asked what his wife’s name was and he said he didn’t have a wife. End of conversation. He has the most darling little girl, though. He’s your basic tall, dark and handsome type, but no where near as handsome as Ryan. You ever meet him?”

Mary Ellen shook her head. “I don’t think so. Never mind him, what happened with Ryan and Adele?”

“They went out for a while right after high school and Ryan wanted to marry her. They were too young, of course. I don’t think Ryan was twenty-one.” Elizabeth set down her wineglass. “Anyway, the wedding was all planned and everything and then, bingo, she dumped him. Left him high and dry—”

“No!”

“Yes. It was quite a scandal around here. No one ever thought anything like that would happen to Ryan Donnelly. But, to tell you the truth, I don’t believe she was ever in love with him. She’d been seeing some older guy, a married man, before she changed her mind and said yes to Ryan.”

Mary Ellen’s eyes were huge. “What happened?”

“Don’t know. She never showed up for the wedding. Took off for Vancouver. I heard she had a baby seven months later.” Elizabeth gave Mary Ellen a penetrating look, as though daring her to add it up. “A little boy.”

“Oh, Elizabeth! Maybe it was Ryan’s,” Mary Ellen said in a stricken voice. Zoey glanced over her shoulder. She hoped no one was listening in on their conversation.

“You really think so?” Elizabeth gave them both an “oh, don’t be dumb” look. “If so, why did loverboy leave his wife and run off to Vancouver to join the new mom and baby? Maybe he couldn’t count, either. Anyway, it was a big fuss and I don’t think Ryan’s parents ever really recovered but—” Elizabeth took a sip from her water glass “—what did they expect?”

Zoey leaned across the table, desperately curious. “What do you mean?”

“The Donnellys are not lucky in love,” Elizabeth said darkly. “They never have been. Ryan or his brother. Or most of the cousins, for that matter.”

“So, what happened to him? Ryan’s brother?” Not that she cared much. He’d been an old stick when they danced and after the initial surprise, she had the feeling he was checking her over on behalf of his brother. Like some piece of ranch machinery they were considering putting a bid on! Ryan was the one she felt sorry for. Left at the altar, just like in a bad novel.

“Same thing. Although in his case they were actually married and had a baby. That’s Lissy, of course. His wife wasn’t from around here,” Elizabeth said, as if that explained a lot. “I heard he met her in a bar. She took off with the baby, then came back two years ago and dumped her in Cameron’s lap. He’s not much for women anymore although quite a few have tried to change his mind, including, lately, one of the new teachers in town.”

“The blonde they were with on Saturday?” Zoey was itching with curiosity. Who said nothing ever happened in small towns!

“That’s the one. Sara Rundle. Cameron generally leaves the lady stuff to his brother. Ryan’s never changed. He likes women. Arthur told me Cam’s hauled him out of quite a few scrapes over the past few years. Of course, Arthur wouldn’t tell me what kind of scrapes but I can guess.”

“Funny neither of them left the valley, considering their experiences here,” Mary Ellen murmured. “Started over somewhere new.”

“Not everyone wants to leave the Cariboo, you know.” Elizabeth stared at her with something approaching disapproval. “You and Zoey did, but there’s a lot of us who stuck around.” Zoey thought she sounded a little defensive.

“Are they on the Donnelly place?”

“No. Family ranch was sold when the folks retired a few years back and moved to Kelowna. Leave it to his boys? Old Man Donnelly didn’t have any soft spots and if he did, no one ever found ’em, that’s what Arthur says.” Elizabeth laughed and shook her head. “What a bunch! No, they’re west of town, paying down a brand-new mortgage. At least, Cam is. Ryan works for him, and their aunt, Marty Hainsworth, lives with them, kind of takes care of the little girl. Hey, is this too complicated for you?”

Mary Ellen smiled and shook her head and reached for the menu. Zoey had been thinking of the crème caramel. She hoped it wasn’t made with soy milk. “Edith’s told me bits and pieces over the years,” Mary Ellen said. “She never mentioned the Ryan and Adele thing. What happened to her? Anyone ever hear?”

“The unnamed married man went back to his wife and family. They moved away. Some say Adele’s a high-class call girl now, but I don’t believe it. Small-minded people with not much imagination say that,” Elizabeth sniffed. “Someone told me she was a model. Makes sense. All she ever cared about was clothes and hair.” They all smiled, remembering.

“Hey, good for her. Looks don’t last.” Elizabeth sat back and rested her fork and knife diagonally across her plate. “Use ’em while you got ’em, that’s what Mum always said.”

“I feel sorry for Ryan,” Mary Ellen said softly. That was one of the things Zoey loved about her friend—she was so loyal. So caring, so sensitive.

Zoey examined her own feelings for Ryan. She’d been thrilled when they’d met, no question. Even after ten years, her pulse had ricocheted all over the place. He’d called her gorgeous! Of course, he’d always been a flirt. Still, maybe now that Adele was definitely out of the picture…

Zoey was happy with her situation but she wanted a partner in life, children one day. Back when she was twenty, she used to tell Charlotte and Lydia that if she hadn’t met anyone she felt strongly about by the time she was twenty-eight, she’d start looking. Well, she was nearly twenty-eight….

“Forget the Donnellys! Let’s talk about Edith and the wedding,” Zoey said suddenly, picking up the menu Mary Ellen had put down. “You’re right, Lizzie, this place sounds more complicated than a soap opera.”

“It can be,” Elizabeth said serenely. “If you believe half of what you hear, and I do. Just ’cause we’re small town doesn’t mean we’re boring. Hand over that menu, Zoe. You two feel like dessert?”

TWO DAYS LATER, Zoey was sitting at the beat-up fake mahogany desk beside the window in her hotel room, trying to decipher a particularly bad patch of her author’s handwriting. Despite making a ton of money, Jamie Chinchilla was cheap and persisted on writing down the margins of her badly typed manuscript and occasionally on both sides of the paper. Sometimes Zoey wanted to scream. She was glad she was paid top dollar to wrestle each manuscript into shape before it went to New York.

The hotel had told her she’d have to be out the following afternoon. She’d given up trying to find a decent place on such short notice and had reluctantly decided she’d have to accept Elizabeth’s offer of her guest room, for now. Edith and Mary Ellen had no extra room and the two motels in town were totally unsuitable. Arthur had said he’d put out the word with his business associates. Someone was bound to know of a cottage or a short-term apartment rental. Four weeks, that was all she needed until the wedding.

A rap at the door had her sitting up straight. She wasn’t expecting anyone. She waited until the polite rap sounded a second time, then put down her pen.

“Hello?”

Cameron Donnelly stood in the hall, a look of un-ease on his face, his hat in his hand. “Hello, ma’am. I’d like to see you for a few moments. May I come in?”

“Come in?” Zoey echoed like a speech-impaired parrot. She opened the door a bit wider. “Why, certainly. Come in and sit down.” She hoped she sounded gracious. What she felt was surprised. Cameron Donnelly stepped forward and she shut the door behind him.

Omigod, the place was a disaster. For company, anyway. She’d made the bed, in a fashion, but she had the manuscript spread all over the bedspread and desk, damp panty hose hanging from the old-fashioned radiator by the other window, a half-eaten bag of Fritos open by the phone and she was dressed—just barely—in her favorite working costume of tights and a Toronto Maple Leafs jersey. Her hair was a mess.

“I won’t take up much of your time, Miss Phillips.”

He was so proper and old-fashioned it hurt. “Please call me Zoey,” she invited. “It’s my name.” He cracked a smile. “Zoey, ma’am. I won’t stay long but I do have something I’d like to put to you.”

“Sit down, please!” She cleared a cardigan sweater off the back of the loveseat that, together with the upholstered chair and low scratched coffee table, formed the sitting area to one side of the room. Nothing disguised the size of the bed, though, or the mirror on the ceiling.

He sat down on the loveseat. She whipped a magazine off the seat of the chair opposite him and sat down, too. What in the world could this be about? She’d met him once, danced with him for one short dance and they’d exchanged about seven words.

He looked around the room silently for what seemed like ages. “So this is the honeymoon suite.”

“Yes. It’s all they had available.” She cleared her throat.

“I see.” Cameron looked around again, and this time Zoey noted that he’d spotted the mirror on the ceiling. He studied it, then glanced at her. She felt the heat rise in her face. “I, uh, I’ve never been in one quite like this,” he said finally.

“Me, neither!” It was an icebreaker. “In fact, I’ve never been in one at all.” Time to change the subject. “How are things at the ranch?”

“Fine.”

“Your daughter? Melissa? She’s all right?”

“Oh, yes. She’s in kindergarten this year.” He nodded slowly, the proud daddy trying not to show any emotion. Zoey felt her heart squeeze. She was dying to ask about Melissa’s mother but didn’t dare; she was hardly on personal enquiry terms with him.

“Ryan?”

“He’s okay.” Cameron met her eyes and took a deep breath. “I, uh, wondered if you’d had any luck finding a place to stay? Arthur mentioned that you’re looking.”

Zoey felt a surge of relief. That was all! “Well, no, I haven’t. I checked out a couple of bungalow rentals, but they were quite dreadful. The motel at the edge of town has a room, but I can’t say I’m crazy about it, either. The ceiling has cracks and there were bugs in the bathroom. The other motel was—yuck!”

She shuddered dramatically, remembering the horror of finding half a dozen beetles scrabbling about the corners of the shower stall.

He looked skeptical. “That bad?”

“Really!” She paused, then added, “I might stay with the Nugents for a few days until something turns up.”

“I see,” Cameron said thoughtfully.

“I’m just wondering why—you know, why you ask?” Zoey said, leaning forward. Did he know of a rental? If he did, couldn’t he simply come to the point?

“I can suggest a place,” he said, appearing more ill at ease than ever.

“You can? Why—why, that’s wonderful! I’d be prepared to pay any—”

“Never mind rent,” he said gruffly. “This is free, if you want it—”

“Oh, I couldn’t!”

“Wait until you hear what I have to say. You might not be so interested.”

Zoey stared at the man sitting across from her. He was certainly attractive, in a rough, outdoorsy kind of way. It was just that next to his brother he’d seemed rather…ordinary. Unexeptional. He had nice eyes, a sort of warm hazel, and thick, dark hair. Good teeth.

Zoey slapped herself mentally for letting her attention wander. “Do go on. Tell me what this is about.”

“Well, we have a little apartment at the ranch, self-contained, that we built over the garage when Marty—that’s our aunt—first moved out here. Then Ryan joined us. He’d had, well—well, he’d had some bad luck and needed a place to live.”

“You mean after his marriage fell through?” She couldn’t help it; she took some satisfaction in meeting the situation head-on. She hated beating around the bush, although she suspected Cameron Donnelly preferred it. Did he think he was sparing her feelings? Was he even aware that she and Ryan had had some history, pathetic though it was?

He frowned at her for a second or two. “Well, no. It was quite a few years after that.”

When he said nothing more on the topic of his brother’s aborted marriage, Zoey muttered, rather sheepishly, “Elizabeth told me about it.”

“I see.” He paused and gave her a stare that clearly said: women talk too much. “Ryan went to Alberta after the wedding fell through. He worked on the rigs and did some cowboying south of Calgary before he came back here.” He shrugged. “Ryan never moved into the apartment. Nor did Marty. The place is empty.”

He glanced at the mirrored ceiling again. It was like a two-ton elephant in the room; it couldn’t be ignored. Zoey bit her tongue, knowing he’d eventually continue.

“If you’re interested…”

“Oh, definitely!” Zoey blushed. What luck. Peace and quiet and nothing much to do out there in the country. The more she’d thought about it since she’d arrived in Stoney Creek, the more she wondered if there might not be some real basis to the feelings between her and Ryan all those years ago. Perhaps with Adele Martinez muddying the waters, that attraction—if any—had never had a chance to flourish.

“I, uh—” he shot a worried glance at her “—I wouldn’t feel right if I didn’t tell you the whole truth. I’ve got another reason for offering you the apartment. It’s to do with you and my brother.”

Zoey sat straight up in her chair. “And that is?”

“I know he used to see a fair bit of you in high school. Now you’re back and—well, I don’t need to tell you you’re a very beautiful woman. Very, uh, impressive. My brother, I believe, is still sweet on you…” He paused, studying her as though to see how she’d taken his information.

Impressive! She was glad he’d noticed, but couldn’t help thinking he was describing her more the way he would a new crescent wrench or a reliable snowblower than a woman.

And trying to match her up with Ryan—she was so embarrassed! Sweet on her? Ryan, obviously, had never told his brother that he’d used Zoey as a pawn in a ploy to snag another girl. “D-do you really think so?”

“I do.” Cameron Donnelly nodded. “In fact, I know he’s interested in you. He as much as told me so. He’s talked about you nonstop since the dance, you and this Mary Ellen. And I was thinking, well, if the interest ran both ways, it might be handier for the two of you if you were right there, on the spot, so—”

“So we could—what, fool around?” She’d realized what he was proposing. He had no inkling, of course, that she’d been thinking along the same lines. Some how it seemed a lot worse when it came from him.

Cameron had a strange look on his face. “I didn’t mean that, ma’am. Not at all. ’Course you are adults. No one would care much.” He shrugged broad shoulders. “I just figured, well, maybe you still liked him, and things might work out this time.”

“‘Work out.’ You mean, as in…forever? Love? Marriage? Kids? The whole nine yards?” Zoey couldn’t believe she was having this conversation. If Charlotte and Lydia could see her now. If Elizabeth could see her!

“That’s jumping ahead some, but as a matter of fact, yes, that’s exactly what I’m hoping. Ryan’s been at loose ends. He doesn’t have his heart in ranching, although he pulls his share. I’m not complaining. He’s got a good head for numbers. I believe he’s ready to settle down, maybe go into business on his own.”

“Move out?”

“Yeah. Get married, move out, start a family. He’s pushing thirty. He’s not a kid anymore. He sees a lot of women but nothing ever seems to come of it. Marty would like to move on, too. She feels kind of responsible for Ryan, though, and until something happens with him—” Cameron shook his head. “She’s always talking about going off and traveling with her sister.”

This was a very long speech for Cameron Donnelly, Zoey guessed.

“Sounds like you’re the one who needs the wife!” she quipped.

He flushed darkly and, remembering what Elizabeth had told her about his marriage, Zoey wished she’d kept her big mouth shut.

“No,” he said softly, looking away from her, to ward the window. “I’d hire someone to help me with my little girl, if necessary. That’s not the problem.”

Zoey felt like a heel. She took a deep breath and pasted a bright smile on her face. “So you’re thinking I might be a good prospect for your brother?” It was crazy even talking like this!

“You’d be a good prospect for any man,” he said seriously. Politely. “Definitely for my brother. It’s just an idea I had, ma’am—”

“Zoey.”

“Zoey.” He grinned, and suddenly Zoey had a completely different impression of him. Maybe he had a sense of humor. He was attractive when he smiled. Handsome, even. Well, after all, he was a Donnelly.

He put on his hat and stood. “You think it over and let me know.”

Zoey stood, too. “I have to be honest, Cameron, and tell you that your idea is quite far-fetched. I have a good life in Toronto. I’m here temporarily. Contrary to what you probably think, I’m not exactly desperate to find a man and get married…although, of course, I have an open mind.”

“Okay, forget the romance. Maybe it’s a dumb idea. The place is available, though, and Marty would appreciate the female company. If anything happens between you and my brother, well, it happens. Let’s leave it at that.”

“Fine,” Zoey said and he met her eyes directly. She had a strange sensation in her stomach, like she’d had when he’d laughed in Mr. Furtz’s store.

“Fine?”

She smiled. “You’ve talked me into it. I’m intrigued. I admit I had a crush on your brother in high school, but, that was ten years ago. Things change, right?”

His glance drifted from her face to her breasts, the hem of her jersey and lower. He seemed about to say something, but didn’t; instead, he opened the hall door. “Yeah, things change. What time shall I come for you?”

“Make it just after noon tomorrow. I’ll be packed up and waiting.”

“I’ll be here.” He put on his hat and nodded. He looked one hundred percent serious again. The steady older brother. “You can depend on me.”

CHAPTER FOUR

YES, ZOEY THOUGHT, leaning against the closed door after he’d gone. Yes, somehow she knew she could depend on Cameron Donnelly. Boring, steady, reliable. The kind of man you’d like on your side in a difficult situation.

Especially when you have something as difficult—ridiculous!—as rekindling a romance with his brother on your mind. Zoey moved, went to the window in time to see him cross the street and get into his truck. He didn’t glance up.

His proposition to her was probably just one more entry to be crossed off on his list this morning. If she’d said no, he’d just have moved on to his next item of business. It wasn’t as though he really thought she was perfect for Ryan, just that she was on the spot. An opportunity, that was all she was. A happy coincidence.

As she’d told the elder Mr. Donnelly, she was not on the hunt for a man to complete her life. But, on the other hand, she wasn’t averse to it either. Maybe Cameron was right. Maybe something could happen between her and Ryan.

As Elizabeth had told her point-blank a few days ago, she could do worse. She had done worse. Visions of her last boyfriend—hogging the conversation at parties, glancing in the rearview mirror to check his hair before getting out of the car—came instantly to mind. The worst of it was, she’d actually been prepared to put up with his vanity…until the day she’d caught him in flagrante delicto on his office sofa.

What did that say about her?

Ryan had been different, even at eighteen. Warm, loving, friendly. Considerate. And if it hadn’t been real love back then, it had sure felt like real love.

She remembered the agony when she’d first fallen for him, when he didn’t even know she existed. Then the utter delight that he’d chosen her—her!—to make Adele jealous and the overwhelming despair when he stopped calling. Endless tearful sessions with Mary Ellen, the quiet soothing voice of her mother, telling her not to take on so, there were as many men as there were fish in the sea. She remembered screaming that she didn’t want fish in the sea, she wanted Ryan Donnelly!

She’d never thought of looking him up again until that conversation at the Jasper Park Lodge last spring. But Mary Ellen’s invitation to return to Stoney Creek meant their paths were bound to cross. Fate? Maybe. Stranger things had happened.

If there was still a romantic spark that could be fanned to life, as Ryan’s brother seemed to think—who was she to take the high road?

They were all adults now, as Cameron had reminded her. Not teens anymore, wearing their hearts on their sleeves. Pursuing a flirtation with Ryan would be fun, she decided suddenly—fun and not terribly risky at all. Regardless of what came of it, no one would get hurt.

Either way, wouldn’t it be a knock-out story to take back to the Jasper Park Lodge reunion next year?

WITH THE VISIT from Cameron Donnelly, plus her determination to get through the first chapter of the Chinchilla manuscript, Zoey missed lunch entirely. At two o’clock, she decided to take a break and drive out to Edith Owen’s place, three miles outside town along the river. She grabbed a sandwich from a takeout deli and drove with the radio turned up full blast, singing along to Nellie Furtado as she drove.

Edith lived in a double-wide trailer on a big open lot. There used to be a small three-room log house in that location, long since demolished, where Mary Ellen had lived as a child. Widowed twelve years earlier, Edith Owen was remarrying, a surprise romance with her neighbor, a retired army man, according to Mary Ellen, a tireless fisherman and a lifelong bachelor.

Edith wanted a quiet civil ceremony and had no idea that Mary Ellen was planning a big party for the whole town. Zoey was going to help with the planning and, most importantly, bake the wedding cake. Call-a-Girl had catered a number of small weddings, and Zoey had helped Lydia with the cakes many times. She’d never made one entirely on her own, and was a little nervous at the prospect.

Zoey was dying to meet Tom Bennett, Edith’s fiancé. He must be quite a man, Zoey thought, knowing how madly in love Edith had been with Mary Ellen’s father. And what had entered a long-term bachelor’s mind to change his circumstances at this time in life? she wondered. Mary Ellen’s stepmother was in her mid-fifties, and Zoey guessed Tom Bennett must be of a similar age. Plus, Edith was wheelchair-bound most of the time these days, suffering from spinal stenosis, a crippling long-term spinal condition.

True love. Must be. You never knew where it would show up, she thought, signaling for the turnoff that led to the Owens’ place. Tom and Edith or—look at her. Who’d have guessed she’d even contemplate blowing on the embers of her long-ago romance with Ryan Donnelly?

Edith’s yard was tidy but plain, no flower beds or any kind of landscaping that took extra attention. At this time of year, the grass was brown, with occasional patches of snow under the trees and in dips and hollows, all that remained after the last snowfall, a week ago, Elizabeth had told her. The trees were bare.

Because of her condition, Edith relied on her neighbors for help. Tom Bennett, who lived in a small house nearby, had kept her lawns mowed and her table sup plied with trout, as well as vegetables from his small garden. In the fall, Mary Ellen said, he brought her fresh game for her freezer.

“Hi!” Zoey got out of the car and locked it. Mary Ellen was standing by the frame porch, holding an armload of firewood.

“This is a nice surprise!” Mary Ellen called. “Come in. Edith just put on the kettle for a pot of tea. She’ll be delighted to see you.”

Zoey followed her. The porch door opened directly onto the kitchen, a warm and welcoming room, with two cats sleeping in a tumble on an upholstered rocker. The furnishings were simple and the tiled floor was spotlessly clean.

“Zoey!” Edith held up both arms and Zoey hugged her. Zoey thought she’d lost quite a lot of weight since she’d seen her last, which had to be when she and Mary Ellen were still in high school.

“How lovely to see you, Edith!”

“Sit down. Have a cup of tea.”

Zoey sat as Edith busied herself in the kitchen, pouring the tea and getting milk out of the refrigerator. She was very adept at moving her chair around. Zoey noted the collection of framed photographs on the wall—landscapes and family pictures, including the wedding photo of Edith and Morris Owen, Mary Ellen’s father. Edith had always been an avid amateur photographer when finances permitted.

“Congratulations on your engagement, Edith. I’m so pleased for you.”

She blushed prettily. “Oh, some say I’m too old for this. But Tom and I will be very happy, I know. He’s a very fine man.”

Morris Owen had been killed in a logging accident. Zoey remembered the horrifying news as it spread through town, into the high school where a teacher had beckoned Mary Ellen from the cafeteria to the principal’s office so he could break the news privately.

Mary Ellen had been devastated. Her father had raised her on his own until he’d met Edith Lowry, a thin, pale woman a little older than he was and originally from Vancouver, working in the Stoney Creek Rexall Drugs. They’d been happily married for four years, and all the while, Edith’s condition had gradually sapped her strength. After her husband’s death, Edith had eked out a living making and selling handicrafts, working for telemarketers from her home and spending her husband’s Worker’s Compensation settlement, penny by frugal penny. Somehow, she’d managed to finish raising his daughter, to arrange for Mary Ellen’s education and to keep her house and property.

Mary Ellen loved Edith like the mother she couldn’t remember. More than anything, Zoey knew, Mary Ellen wanted to give her stepmother a wonderful wedding.

“You find a place yet, Zoey?” Mary Ellen called from the living room, where she’d dumped her load of firewood by the fireplace. She joined them at the kitchen table.

“Well, sort of. You’ll never guess who made me an offer I couldn’t refuse.” Zoey stirred her tea vigorously.

Mary Ellen shook her head. “No idea.”

“Cameron Donnelly! He says they’ve got an apartment out there built over a garage or something, and I can stay in it while I’m here.”

Mary Ellen had looked a little startled at her announcement. “You’re going to take it?”

Zoey stared at her. “Of course I am!” She reached for a cookie on the plate that Edith had shoved across the table. “It’s perfect. I can work on my book in peace and—” she winked at Mary Ellen “—who knows?” She hummed a few bars of “Young Love.”

Mary Ellen didn’t say anything. After a few seconds, she looked directly at Zoey. “You don’t mean, you know—you and Ryan again?”

“Hey, I’m just joking. What’s past is past and a good thing, too.”

“Amen,” Edith said quietly. “More tea?”

Zoey refused, and half an hour later, said goodbye. She’d wanted to see Edith and let Mary Ellen know where she’d be for the next little while, but she was anxious to return to the hotel and get herself organized for moving out to the Donnelly ranch. It wasn’t as though she and Mary Ellen could toss around any ideas for the wedding, not while Edith was right there.

On the way back to town, Zoey pondered her friend’s response to the news that she was going to be staying on the Donnelly ranch. Mary Ellen hadn’t seemed too thrilled. The more she thought about it, though, the more she realized that Mary Ellen was only thinking of Zoey’s welfare, worried she’d get upset about Ryan again. Zoey had been all primed to confess that she did have an ulterior motive in moving to the ranch. But, no, Elizabeth was the one to tell if Zoey really felt the need to confide. Elizabeth wouldn’t take everything so seriously, the way Mary Ellen might.

Mary Ellen was too sweet and sensitive. Too softhearted. Zoey recalled how horrified she’d been at the story Elizabeth had told about Adele dumping Ryan at the altar and was doubly glad she hadn’t spilled the beans about what she had in mind.

No, Mary Ellen would just worry and she had enough on her hands with Edith’s wedding coming up.

ZOEY WAS PACKED and ready to leave by noon the next day. She went down to check out and retrieve a trolley for her bags. Cameron was in the lobby, reading a newspaper.

As dependable as he’d promised, she thought with a smile. She paid for her room and started back to the elevator with the trolley, assuming he hadn’t seen her, when she heard a man clear his throat behind her. She half turned.

“Here. Let me take that.” Cameron reached for the trolley.

“I’m fine! I can bring down my stuff,” Zoey protested.

“I’ll give you a hand.” He strode down the hall beside her and they got into the elevator with the trolley. It made for close quarters. Frowning, he watched the lights on the ancient elevator as it laboriously ground its way up to the third floor.

Zoey eyed him sideways, wondering if she was making the right decision. Several weeks on a remote ranch with a high-school crush who hadn’t even remembered her at first, a surly brother with matchmaking on his mind, a widowed aunt who was probably going to talk her ear off and a kid she knew nothing about.

She must be insane.

She unlocked the door to her room, relieved that Cameron didn’t try to take the key and open it for her. On the third try, it meshed.

“That’s all you have?” Cameron surveyed the room quickly. She had the distinct impression that he was trying very hard not to glance at the fly-spotted mirror on the ceiling. So was she.

“Yes. I travel light.” She reached for the blue case that held the Chinchilla manuscript and her laptop. She’d carry that herself.

Cameron loaded her three bags onto the trolley, and as soon as they arrived back in the lobby, he strode ahead of her to the hotel doors. He hadn’t said a word in the elevator. Yesterday must have been a real stretch for him, convincing her to cooperate with his plan.

Maybe his talents—like hers, she sometimes thought—ran more to scheming than talking.

Well, how could she help it? Much of her working life was spent trying to figure out plot twists and tangles in Jamie Chinchilla mystery-thrillers. So far, she’d never thought of this as a particular talent that she could apply to life, but this Romancing Ryan plot of Cameron’s had definitely fired her imagination.

“Cameron?” she called when they reached the parking lot.

“Yes?” He was about to toss her bags into the back of his dark green pickup.

“I’ve got my own car,” she reminded him, indicating the white rental Toyota sedan a few spaces away from his truck. “I’ll follow you, okay?”

He nodded and carried her bags to the car and stood patiently while she fiddled with her keys, trying to open the trunk. Eventually it sprang open and he loaded her bags.

She closed the trunk, then turned to him. “Look, is there something I should know?”

He seemed startled. “Like what?”

“Well, you’re awfully quiet today. I get the impression you’re not as happy about this plan today as you were yesterday but you’re too polite to say so. Don’t feel obliged. We can drop the whole thing if you like—”

“Is that what you want to do?”

Did she? She dug in her handbag for her sunglasses, mulling over the difficulties of going to the Nugents for a few days and still having to look for a more suitable place. “No, I’m game. I’ve got quite a bit of work and I need a place to do it in.”

“Let’s go then.”

Cameron started his engine and immediately re versed. Zoey started the Toyota and decided to give it a minute or two to warm up. She never drove in Toronto, although she’d maintained her driver’s license over the years, and couldn’t remember if you were supposed to warm up a car or not. It couldn’t hurt. Plus, it wouldn’t kill Cameron Donnelly to wait.

Which he did. He was waiting for her at the en trance to the parking lot. She rigorously observed the speed limit as they set out in tandem. When she dropped behind, he slowed. Zoey suspected he’d prefer to go faster. But that was okay, too, she told herself, smiling just a little.

It was clear that Cameron Donnelly was used to taking charge. He ran his ranch and organized his own life and his child’s life and probably Marty’s life. Now he was shopping for a romance for his brother. Well, he couldn’t find out any earlier that she wasn’t all that manageable. In fact, she knew she could be ornery as hell at times, something she wasn’t exactly proud of.

But she was her own woman, with her own ideas and her own agenda. If she hadn’t been, she wouldn’t have gotten as far as she had in life.

And that she was proud of.

CHAPTER FIVE

THE TRIPLE OARLOCK was about fifteen miles west of town, not far as distances went in this country. It was snugged up against the rolling hills of the Fullerton Range. A rambling one-story ranch house, seventies style, was nestled against a windbreak of trees to the west, and the ranch buildings, most of them, were to the south and southwest. The sturdy pole fences weren’t painted and had weathered to a soft silver. The barns and outbuildings had been painted a traditional barn red; the lawns were tidy, the bare hedges clipped. Everything looked in good repair.

The apartment she was to occupy over the three-car garage stood about seventy-five feet southwest of the house. There was another parking spot, an open carport, attached to the house, probably a more convenient location for unloading groceries and passengers in inclement weather.

They parked by the garage and Cameron took Zoey straight up to the ranch house to meet his aunt.

“Marty? This is Zoey Phillips, you remember Harvey Phillips, used to be at the cement plant? This is his daughter.” He turned to Zoey. “My aunt, Marty Hainsworth.”

“How do you do?” Zoey said formally, extending her hand. The older woman she’d glimpsed at the firefighters’ dance shook it briefly, her grip firm and hard as a man’s. She was slight, thin-lipped, and had a pink chiffon scarf tied over her head. Zoey spotted old-fashioned hair rollers under the scarf.

“How d’ye do? I’m glad to meet you. Cameron’s been telling me about you.”

“He has?” She glanced at Cameron with a smile. He seemed faintly embarrassed.

“Oh, yes, and all of it favorable.” The aunt, who looked to be in her mid-sixties, put her hands on narrow, jean-clad hips. A toothpick bobbed in one side of her mouth. “Ryan, too. Matter of fact, he’s talked nonstop since Sunday about you and Mary Ellen Owen being back in town. You want a cup of tea or anything? You sure you want to stay out in that drafty old suite? I don’t like the idea. We got plenty of room up here in the house.”

“No to the tea, thank you very much. And, yes, I prefer to stay in the apartment by myself. I’m not a guest, you know, Mrs. Hainsworth—”

“Just call me Marty.”

“Marty.” Zoey smiled. She had decided that she was going to get along very well with the Donnellys’ aunt. “I have lots to do over the next few weeks—”

“What kind of work d’ye do, if you don’t mind me askin’?” Marty’s bright blue eyes, which reminded Zoey of Ryan’s, were curious.

“I edit books. Mainly, I edit Jamie Chinchilla’s novels and—”

“Oh, my! He’s one of my favorites. My sister Robin in Kelowna always sends me his books, when she’s finished with ’em. Or is this Chinchilla a she?”

The reading public had never seen a picture of the author, nor did most people know whether Jamie Chinchilla was male or female. For purposes of publicity, the author and publisher had decided to maintain the mystery.

“I’ve never met the author,” Zoey said truthfully. All her contact had been over the telephone. But she knew very well that Jamie Chinchilla was an elderly widow named Ruth Ohlmstad, who lived in Lunenburg, Nova Scotia, and who had never been farther away from home than Halifax and St. Andrews-by-the-Sea, New Brunswick. Well, she’d been to Boston once, when she was twenty, she’d told Zoey. But that was it. Unlike her characters, Ruth Ohlmstad had never had a hair-raising adventure in her life. Her stories were complete products of an amazingly fertile and inventive imagination. Even her neighbors thought she was just good old Ruthie, stalwart of the Women’s League, co-president of the Lunenburg Historical Society and envied grower of prize-winning sweet peas.

“Well, ain’t that something! You settle in and let me know if there’s anything you need. We can supply most everything from brooms to biscuits. And you’ll be eatin’ with us, won’t you?”

Zoey shook her head. “Oh, no. I can manage quite nicely on my own, thanks anyway.”

Marty Hainsworth shot a quick, questioning look at her nephew. “Well, you’ll be havin’ Sunday dinner over here at the house, that’s for sure,” the woman said decisively. “Roast beef and all the trimmin’s, six sharp. I won’t hear of you eatin’ all by yourself on a Sunday. It ain’t right.”

“Thank you,” Zoey said, smiling. “That would be lovely. This Sunday, though, I’m having dinner with the Nugents. They’ve already invited me.”

“Well, all right. Just this once.” Marty cracked a smile. She seemed as dour as her eldest nephew, but Zoey liked her immediately.

Cameron turned to Zoey, one eyebrow raised. “Okay?”

She followed him back to the garage. Where was his daughter? Mind you, it was Friday. She was probably at school.

The entrance to the apartment was up an outdoor staircase with a landing midway. It wouldn’t be very convenient in deepest winter but she’d be going home before Christmas. “Cameron?”

Cameron was getting her bags out of the Toyota’s trunk. “Yes?”

“Um. Ryan does know about this, doesn’t he?” She’d received the distinct impression from the aunt that this was something dreamed up by Cameron and, possibly, Marty herself.

He straightened and appeared to think deeply about her question. “Well, no. He doesn’t actually know about it, not about you moving in here today—”

“That’s ridiculous! Why haven’t you told him?” Zoey panicked. She wanted to order Cameron to put her bags back in her car, wanted to return immediately to Stoney Creek. She’d stay with the Nugents. Or in the motel with the cockroaches, if she had to.

“It was his suggestion,” he said, regarding her carefully. “When he heard you were looking for a place, he mentioned the apartment to me as a possibility.”

“I see.” Although she didn’t really. “Well, if he doesn’t like this idea, I’m moving right back to town!” Zoey picked up the case that contained the manuscript. “This is downright underhanded. I don’t like it. It makes everything seem…cheap. Like—like I’m actually part of this stupid romance plan of yours.” Which she was…sort of.

Cameron Donnelly had the grace to color slightly. “Believe me, it was his idea,” he repeated stubbornly.

Zoey sighed. She gave up. First things, first: move in and get to work.

BY LATE AFTERNOON, after a trip back to town to buy groceries, Zoey had settled in. She hung her clothes in the wardrobe in the tiny bedroom, furnished sparsely but comfortably with a double bed, a carpet on the floor and bright chintz curtains at the window, which looked over the mountains to the west.

The combination kitchen-living room was small but efficient, with a sofa, several lamps and a coffee table. There was also a table by the window; it was covered with plants, which Marty must have brought in recently and which Zoey would remove as she needed the table for eating. The bathroom had a shower and a tiny tub, trailer-size, and just off the kitchen was a little sunroom. Zoey decided she’d use it as a dining nook. She moved the small white-painted wooden table and two chairs from the kitchen to the sunporch, then dragged a rocking chair from the cramped living room into the space she’d freed up. An aging fridge, humming happily now and full of provisions, completed the kitchen equipment, along with a narrow three-burner electric stove.

Now, to let Lydia know… She found a blank card and envelope in her briefcase.

Dear Lydia,

Just a quick note to tell you where I’m living—at Ryan’s ranch! No kidding. His brother suggested a little apartment over their garage as a place to stay—

Zoey decided not to mention the bit about Cameron’s proposition. There was something sneaky and unsavory about the whole thing.

—and it’s going to be ideal for my purposes. Work plus getting to know a certain somebody again! I rearranged some furniture, got in some food and will be using my cell. You’ve got my number, right? Anyway, goodbye for now and send Charlotte’s address when she has one.

Luv,

Zoey

Zoey sealed the envelope, pasted a stamp on and looked around the little apartment again. It would do. In fact, considering her purposes, it was ideal. She needed quiet, freedom from ringing telephones and interruptions, and she’d certainly get that here. There wasn’t a sound to be heard beyond the whisper of the wind in the trees and the far-off bawl of a calf or the occasional bark of a dog.

She shivered, looking out the sunroom window at the long stretch of frozen pasture to the east and south. Way in the distance, she could see reddish brown dots. Cattle, probably. This was rural! The snow dumped so far hadn’t stayed, and the weather had been glorious—crisp, cold and sunny.

Zoey had a peanut-butter-and-cucumber sandwich on rye for her supper and settled down to work. She heard a vehicle drive past about half past nine as she sat at the table in the living room, trying to make sense of the first chapter of this book, which was about danger on the high seas, Caribbean skullduggery, kidnapping, murder, an impossibly rich and beautiful heiress and an ancient Egyptian curse. She’d read this chapter, such as it was, several times already. Chinchilla might be one of the world’s most wonderful storytellers, but she didn’t know diddly about spelling or grammar or syntax.

Ryan?

She peeked out the curtains, staring into the darkness. There were lots of lights on up at the house; perhaps Melissa wasn’t in bed yet. She’d seen the child when Cameron had brought her home that afternoon, skipping and chattering beside him, going directly into the house without even a curious glance toward the apartment. Had they told her about the stranger living over the garage?

Zoey felt like a peeper. Or a mad relative hidden away from the neighbors. She had to fight the urge to look out the window every time she heard a sound. A dog. A car door. An airplane overhead. It was so quiet here that any noise seemed not only more noticeable than in her downtown Toronto apartment, but more significant. Zoey sighed. Maybe she’d get used to it. The main thing was to focus, concentrate on her work. All this other stuff was only a distraction. Interesting, but still a distraction.

She’d just returned to her desk with a cup of hot milk, thinking about packing it in and going to bed, when she heard footsteps coming up the stairs outside. Footsteps in twos and threes. There was a bang on her door.

“Zoey!”

She peered out the small glass square in the door, then unlocked and opened it.

“Zo-ey, ba-by!” Ryan was grinning as he stepped into the apartment, swept her into his arms and hugged her tightly. “Man, this is terrific news! Cam just told me. I don’t know why he didn’t say something earlier, the old son-of-a-gun. Thought he’d surprise me, I guess.” He held her away from him, his eyes devouring her hungrily. Then he looked around the room. “Everything okay? Can I get you anything? Warm enough?”

He stepped away from her and bent to check the thermostat on the electric baseboard heaters that ran around the room. “I see they’re working fine. Good!”

He glanced at her cup, and she suddenly remembered her manners. “Would you like something to drink?”

“What are you having?”

“Hot milk.”

“Hot milk!” He laughed and shook his head. “No thanks. Now if that was a glass of brandy, maybe. Hell, I just wanted to come over tonight and welcome you to the ranch. Cam’s a terrific guy, eh? Doesn’t say much,” he said, winking at her, “but he’s got his head screwed on straight.”

Конец ознакомительного фрагмента.

Текст предоставлен ООО «ЛитРес».

Прочитайте эту книгу целиком, купив полную легальную версию на ЛитРес.

Безопасно оплатить книгу можно банковской картой Visa, MasterCard, Maestro, со счета мобильного телефона, с платежного терминала, в салоне МТС или Связной, через PayPal, WebMoney, Яндекс.Деньги, QIWI Кошелек, бонусными картами или другим удобным Вам способом.