Judith Bowen - Zoey Phillips

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.

www.millsandboon.co.uk

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

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?