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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.