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.