Joan Kilby - Homecoming Wife

Nate struggled to find a nonchalant tone. “That video you took out before you left is a tad overdue.”

She planted one hand on a slender curving hip. “After ten years is that all you have to say to me?”

As if he should be the one to apologize. When they were married, half the time he hadn’t known whether he wanted to strangle her or make love to her. Nothing had changed. She might have the face of an angel, but she had the devil’s own ability to make him toss common sense to the winds. “I’ve got plenty to say, but not in a public place.”

“Ah, the same old Nate.” Angela started to turn away, then hesitated. “Ricky doesn’t realize we were married. It might be easier if we kept it that way.”

Now she was denying they were ever together. Was this it, then? Were they finally going to break the last flimsy tie between them?

Advantages of Bachelorhood Number 149: freedom.

Now that he thought about it, it sounded damn good.

Dear Reader,

Imagine a man so gutsy he launches his mountain bike down sheer rock face, so strong he cycles uphill for hours, so focused he wins every competition he enters. Then picture the woman who can turn his insides to mush with her smile, make his knees weak with her touch and forget his vow never to fall for her again.

Nate Wilde is that man and the woman is his runaway bride, Angela. Homecoming Wife is the first in a trilogy of stories set in Whistler, British Columbia, a rugged mountain resort famed for world-class outdoor sports.

Such a spectacular setting demands heroes who are larger than life, with uncommon physical and mental strength. Ride along with Nate as he faces the toughest challenge of his life—winning the love of his one special woman.

I love to hear from readers. Please write to me at P.O. Box 234, Point Roberts, WA 98281-0234, or send an e-mail via www.joankilby.com.

Sincerely,

Joan Kilby

www.millsandboon.co.uk

To my beloved mother, Ruby Friesen. 1924–2003

I’m grateful to Kevan Kobyashi for information on

mountain biking in the Whistler area. Any errors are mine.

The biking trail in the book is part real, part fiction,

based on the needs of the story.

Several books on mountain biking proved invaluable in the

research for this book: Mountain Biking British Columbia (2nd

edition) by Steve Dunn, Dirt! by John Howard and Mountain

Biking Skills compiled by the editors of

Mountain Bike and Bicycling magazines.

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

ADVANTAGE OF BACHELORHOOD Number 147: No wife to disapprove of a man’s passion for mountain bikes.

Nate Wilde added the latest item to his ongoing mental list as he closed up his mountain-bike shop, Cycle Sports, and strapped on his helmet. He’d been compiling the list ever since the snowy Whistler night a decade ago when Angela left him. Technically speaking, he wasn’t a bachelor because they were still married but for all practical purposes he was on his own.

Nate got on his favorite bike, the Balfa Belair. Blazing red with gold forks over the front wheel and a sweet-looking seat tower arrangement, the Balfa floated over the cobbled streets of Whistler Village. Nate turned down a flight of concrete stairs, causing a group of Japanese tourists to raise their cameras and click madly.

His brother, Aidan, had he known about the list, would have said Nate was rationalizing his loss. His cousin, Marc, who’d grown up with them after his mother died, would have told him he was full of shit, but that’s what happened when a guy married too young and too fast.

And Angela, the only woman he’d ever loved, would have put her nose in the air, sniffed and said “typical.” If she’d stuck around long enough to say anything, that is. She’d believed neither in him nor their future together. He’d wanted kids; she’d been adamantly opposed. They’d been fighting over when to start a family the night she’d run off, breaking his heart and shattering his pride.

Barely a day went by when he didn’t count his blessings that she was out of his life.

Barely a day went by when he didn’t also wonder how she was, and what she was doing.

In fact, he knew what Angela was doing more or less all the time because her sister Janice had kept him up to date on the steady rise in Angela’s fortunes since she left him. She’d studied business in Toronto then worked at the Globe and Mail newspaper until two months ago when she’d returned to Vancouver to take a high-powered job with a business magazine.

In all that time her only communication had been a brief phone call a month after her departure to say their marriage was a mistake followed by a garbled letter purporting to explain why she wasn’t coming home but which left him no wiser.

His attempts to contact her through Janice had failed, and he’d been forced to conclude she wanted nothing more to do with him.

How could she have left him simply because she wasn’t ready to have a baby?

Cycling home on the highway, Nate remembered that his fridge was seriously depleted so he stopped in at Nester’s Market to stock up on essentials.

Janice’s latest news flash was that Angela was coming to Whistler to baby-sit her ten-year-old nephew, Ricky, while Janice and her husband, Bob, went on a short vacation. In a small community like Whistler there was no way Nate and Angela could avoid seeing each other so he’d been preparing himself in advance to keep a lid on his anger, a tight rein on his libido and a watchful eye out for any assault on his pride.

ANGELA HAULED ON the steering wheel of Janice’s ancient green Dodge and the car lumbered around the tight curves on the Sea-to-Sky highway north of Vancouver. Mountains rose steeply to her right, the waters of Howe Sound lapped the shore to her left and signs warning of falling rocks appeared around every other bend. She’d seen her sister and brother-in-law off at the airport and now she and Ricky were heading back to Whistler.

Ricky had his head down and was stabbing away at his Game Boy. His blond hair was gelled to spiky peaks and freckles smattered his straight nose. Below his shorts, both knees were scabbed over and Band-Aids, some clean, some grubby, plastered several fingers and an elbow.

If the baby she’d been carrying the night she ran away had lived, he or she would have been about the same age as Ricky.

Angela had pushed away similar thoughts for years; the closer she got to Whistler and Nate, the more frequently the baby came to mind. Would he have been athletic and full of pride like Nate, or ambitious and stubborn like her?

She didn’t know much about kids in general, and she hadn’t seen Ricky since he was an infant. Frankly, she was terrified of making mistakes with him. What if he didn’t like her, or do what she told him to? What if he got hurt while under her care? According to Janice, he was both daring and accident-prone.

“What do you do for fun, Ricky?” she asked after her first few questions elicited only monosyllables.

“Ride my bike.”

Three whole words. That was an improvement. When Janice and Bob had won a trip to Europe in a supermarket contest she’d gladly offered to baby-sit, not stopping to consider that taking care of a boy wasn’t the same as watering a plant or even looking after a pet.