“I will take our son to baseball games,” Alek announced, “and the library.”

“I hope you intend to take your daughter and your wife while you’re at it.”

“Whoever wishes to go,” he said, as though their family was already complete and they were making ordinary, everyday plans.

Julia smiled to herself.

After the sports news, they watched the five-day weather forecast. “I hope it rains every day,” Alek whispered close to her ear. “That way I can keep you in the apartment, or better yet, in our bed.”

“I’ve got news for you,” Julia whispered, kissing his lips, still cold from the ice cream. “You don’t need an excuse to take me to bed. In case you haven’t noticed, I’m crazy about you.”

“I noticed,” he said with a satisfied smile. “And I approve.”

Soon they were kissing again. They would have continued, Julia was certain, if the newscaster hadn’t returned to announce the breaking news stories of the day.

“Ideal Paints, a national paint manufacturer based here in Seattle, has declared bankruptcy. As many as three hundred jobs have been lost.”

Julia was stunned. “I knew they were having financial difficulties,” she said, breaking away from Alek. “But I didn’t realize it was that serious.”

“They couldn’t hope to compete with Conrad Industries any longer,” Alek told her. “Stanhope hurt them, but it took them three years to feel the effects. Their whole developmental program came to a halt after he sold them the formula for guaranteed twenty-five-year paint. They had the latest advance without having gone through the learning process, without the trial and error that comes with any major progress. It set them back.”

Julia had never thought of it in those terms. What she did remember was something Ruth had told her years earlier, when revenge and justice had ranked high on her list. Her grandmother had insisted time had a way of correcting injustices, and she’d been right.

“I wonder what’ll happen to Roger,” she said absently, almost feeling sorry for him.

“He’s finished in the business world,” Alek said calmly. “It’s a well-known fact he sold out Conrad Industries. No company’s going to risk hiring an employee with questionable loyalty and ethics. He’ll be lucky to find any kind of job.”

“Everything’s come full circle,” Julia said, leaning into her husband’s strength. He wrapped his arms around her waist and she pressed her hands over his. “Everything I lost has been returned to me a hundredfold.”

Alek kissed her neck. “Same for me.”

“I didn’t know it was possible to be this happy. Only a few years ago I felt as if my whole life was over, and now it seems to get better every day.” Leaning back, she reached upward for her husband’s kiss.

BRIDE WANTED

For Eric, Kurt, Neal and Clay Macomber—the other Macombers. Love, Aunt Debbie.

Prologue

“Let me see if I’ve got this right,” the man behind the desk asked Chase Goodman. He spoke around the cigar in his mouth. “You want to rent a billboard and advertise for a wife.”

Chase wasn’t about to let a potbellied cynic talk him out of the idea. He had exactly three weeks to find himself a bride before he returned to Alaska, and that didn’t leave time for a lot of romantic nonsense. This was the most direct route he could think of for getting himself a wife. He was thirty-three, relatively good-looking and lonesome as heck. He’d spent his last winter alone.

Okay, he was willing to admit, his idea was unorthodox, but he was on a tight schedule. He intended to wine and dine the right woman, sweep her off her feet, but he had to meet her first. Although Seattle was full of eligible women, he wasn’t fool enough to believe more than a few would want to leave the comforts of city life for the frozen north. The way Chase figured it, best to lay his cards on the table, wait and see what kind of response he got. He also figured this would get noticed by women who wouldn’t necessarily look at newspaper ads or internet dating sites.

“You heard me,” Chase said stiffly.

“You want the billboard to read BRIDE WANTED?” The fat cigar moved as if by magic from one side of his mouth to the other.

“Yes, with the phone number I gave you. The answering service will be screening the calls.”

“You considered what sort of women are going to be responding to that advertisement?”

Chase simply nodded. He’d given plenty of thought to that question. He knew what to expect. But there was bound to be one who’d strike his fancy, and if everything went as he hoped, he’d strike her fancy, too. That was what he was looking for, that one in a thousand.

He was well aware that it wasn’t the best plan. If he had more time to get to know a woman, he could prove he’d be a good husband, and God willing, a father. He wasn’t like a lot of men who could blithely say the things a woman wanted to hear. He needed help and the billboard would make his intentions clear from the first.

“I’ll have my men on it tomorrow morning.”

“Great,” Chase said and grinned.

The wheels were in motion. All he had to do was sit back and wait for his bride to come to him.

One

Lesley Campbell glared at the calendar. The last Saturday in June was to have been her wedding day. Only she wasn’t going to be a bride. The wedding dress hanging in the back of her closet would eventually yellow with age, unworn and neglected. Given Seattle’s damp climate, the lovely silk-and-lace gown would probably mildew, as well.

Enough self-pity, Lesley decided, and with her natural flair for drama, she squared her shoulders. She wasn’t going to let a little thing like a broken engagement get her down. Even losing money on the deposits for the hall and everything else didn’t matter. Not really. Her life was full. She had good friends—really good friends. Surely one of them would realize the significance of today and call her. Jo Ann wouldn’t forget this was to have been her wedding day and neither would Lori. Lesley couldn’t ask for two better friends than her fellow teachers, Jo Ann and Lori. Both would have been her bridesmaids. They’d remember; no doubt they were planning something special to console her. Something unexpected. Something to chase away the blues and make her laugh.

Her mother and stepfather were traveling and probably wouldn’t think of it, but that was okay. Her friends would.

The hollow feeling in the pit of her stomach seemed to yawn wider; closing her eyes, Lesley breathed in deeply until the pressure lessened. She refused to give Tony the power to hurt her. The fact that they still worked together was difficult to say the least. Thank heaven, school had been dismissed for the summer the week before and she had three months to regroup and recuperate.

Lesley opened her refrigerator and looked inside, hoping some appetizing little treat would magically appear. The same shriveled head of lettuce, two over-ripe tomatoes and a soft-looking zucchini stared back at her. Just as well; she didn’t have much of an appetite anyway.

Men—who needed them? Lesley shut the refrigerator door. Not her. She refused to become vulnerable to any man ever again.

Several of her friends had tested their matchmaking skills on her in the past few months, but Lesley’s attitude was jaded. Whose wouldn’t be?

The man she loved, the man she’d dedicated five years of her life to, had announced six months before their wedding that he needed more time. More time. Lesley had been incredulous. They’d dated their last year of college, gone through student teaching together. They even worked at the same elementary school, saw each other on a daily basis and then, out of the blue, Tony had insisted he needed more time.

It wasn’t until a week later that Lesley discovered more time meant he’d fallen head over heels in love with the new first-grade teacher. Within three weeks of meeting April Packard, Tony had broken his engagement to Lesley. If that wasn’t bad enough, Tony and April were married a month later, following a whirlwind courtship. Since she was under contract and her savings slim, Lesley couldn’t just leave the school; she’d been forced to endure the sight of the happy couple every day since. Every school day, anyhow.

She worked hard at not being bitter, at pretending it was all for the best. If Tony was going to fall in love with another woman, then it was better to have discovered this penchant of his before the wedding. She’d heard that over and over from her friends. In fact, she’d heard all the platitudes, tried to believe them, tried to console herself with them.

Except they didn’t help.

She hurt. Some nights she wrestled with the loneliness until dawn; the feeling of abandonment nearly suffocated her. It didn’t help to realize how happy Tony and April were.

He’d tried to make it up to Lesley. He’d wanted her to assuage his guilt. Because they worked in such close proximity, there was nothing she could do but repeat the platitudes others had given her. For the last months of school, she’d had to make believe a broken heart didn’t matter.

But it did.

The last time she’d felt this empty inside had been as a six-year-old child, when her father had arranged for the family to fly to Disneyland in California. Lesley had been excited for weeks. It would’ve been her first trip in an airplane, her first time away from Washington State. Then, three days before the vacation was to begin, her father had packed his bags and left. He’d gone without warning, without a word of farewell to her, apparently without regret, taking the money they’d saved for the family trip.

Her mother was so trapped in her shock and anger that she hadn’t been able to comfort Lesley, who’d felt guilty without knowing why.

As an adult she chose to forgive her father and accept that he was a weak man, the same way she’d decided to absolve Tony of the pain he’d caused her. It would do no good to harbor a grudge or to feed her own discontent.

Although it was easy to acknowledge this on a conscious level, it took more than logic to convince her heart. Twenty-one years had passed since that fateful summer, but the feelings were as painful and as complex now as they’d been to the little girl who missed her daddy.

When neither Jo Ann nor Lori had phoned by noon, her mood sank even lower. Maybe they were thinking she’d forgotten what day it was, Lesley reasoned. Or maybe they didn’t feel they should drag up the whole ugly affair. But all Lesley wanted was to do something fun, something that would make her forget how isolated she felt.

Jo Ann wasn’t home, so Lesley left an upbeat message. The significance of the day seemed to have slipped past Lori, as well, who was all starry-eyed over a man she’d recently started dating.

“Any chance you can get away for a movie tonight?” Lesley asked.

Lori hemmed and hawed. “Not tonight. Larry’s been out of town for the last couple of days and he’ll be back this evening. He mentioned dinner. Can we make it later in the week?”

“Sure,” Lesley said, as though it didn’t matter one way or the other. Far be it from her to remind her best friends that she was suffering the agonies of the jilted. “Have fun.”