by Cara Colter
They can’t throw away a second chance…
Widow Kayla Jaffrey is hoping this summer she may just find the girl she was: one who believed love could conquer all! And literally falling in the path of childhood friend David Blaze, a man who once left a hole in her life, she tells herself it can’t be just fate….
Returning home to Blossom Valley was the last thing millionaire David wanted to do, but his family must come first. And seeing Kayla, as beautiful as ever, causes David to wonder if maybe they’re being given a chance to rewrite history…this time together….
“Do you miss it here? Ever?”
His silence was long. “No, Kayla. I don’t have time to miss it.”
“If you did have time, would you?”
Again the silence was long. And then, almost reluctantly, he said, “Yeah, I guess I would. Blossom Valley was the place of perfect summer, wasn’t it?”
The longing was poignant between them.
“I can’t remember the last time I looked at the stars like this,” she murmured. But she thought it was probably in those carefree days, those days before everything had changed.
“Me, either.”
It was one of those absolutely spontaneous perfect moments. The pure scent of the dew on the grass and the night air and those flowers drooping under their own weight that had made the night so deliciously fragrant.
“Is that Orion above us?” he asked.
“Yes,” she said, “the hunter.”
“I remembered how you impressed me once by naming all the stars in that constellation.”
So she did, naming the stars of the constellation one by one, and then they lay in silence, contemplating the night sky above them.
He didn’t answer. He just reached out and slid a hand through her hair, and looked at her with such longing it stole her breath from her lungs.
The air felt ripe with possibilities. Kayla, again, felt seen somehow, in a way no one had seen her for years.
Dear Reader,
I love summer. It has a feeling about it that is light and carefree. I love the summer canvas: afternoons at the beach, swimming in refreshing lake water, going for ice cream, hot nights where you can lie on your back and look at the stars.
This summer threw me some curves, though. My niece, who usually visits me, had to go home just a few days into her stay with a very serious medical condition.
And so the carefree days of summer became threaded through with the weightiness of worry and sadness, and feeling powerless in the face of pain.
I used to think if I did everything right, my life would be a joyous unfolding, unencumbered by suffering. Though it is popular (and reassuring) to believe we can control our world by our attitude alone, my great-grandmother was both wise and realistic. She used to say, “Into every life, some rain must fall.”
Over the long days of this summer, I have seen lives where the rain came in torrents. And I have seen people rise to their most inspiring and courageous. Love is my brother-in-law taking weeks off work to be there for his daughter; love is my sister, who sat in the emergency ward, night after endless night, refusing to give up hope, advocating for her child until, finally, finally, an answer came.
Really, this is the story I have been telling for over twenty-five years: of people finding uncommon courage in the midst of strife; finding hope in the hardest of circumstances; finding the resiliency to say a resounding yes to life, even though it can wound. This is love, not on the starlit night, but in the trenches, and I stand in awe of it. I hope this story honors those who showed me love, at its highest and best, over the past few months.
Cara
THE MILLIONAIRE’S HOMECOMING
Cara Colter
Cara Colter lives in British Columbia with her partner, Rob, and eleven horses. She has three grown children and a grandson. She is a recent recipient of an RT Book Reviews Career Achievement Award in the Love and Laughter category. Cara loves to hear from readers, and you can contact her or learn more about her at www.facebook.com/CaraColter.
Recent books by Cara Colter
RESCUED BY THE MILLIONAIRE
SNOWFLAKES AND SILVER LININGS*
HOW TO MELT A FROZEN HEART
SECOND CHANCE WITH THE REBEL**
SNOWED IN AT THE RANCH
BATTLE FOR THE SOLDIER’S HEART
THE COP, THE PUPPY AND ME
TO DANCE WITH A PRINCE
RESCUED BY HIS CHRISTMAS ANGEL
WINNING A GROOM IN 10 DATES
*The Gingerbread Girls
**Mothers in a Million
This and other titles by Cara Colter are available in ebook format from www.Harlequin.com.
This story is for my sister, Anna, for my brother-in-law, Dale, and especially for Courtenay.
You are my greatest teachers.
Contents
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
EPILOGUE
EXCERPT
CHAPTER ONE
BLOSSOM VALLEY. IN A fast-paced world, David Blaze thought, a trifle sardonically, his hometown was a place unchanging.
Built on the edges of a large bay that meandered inland from Lake Ontario, it had always been a resort town, a summer escape from the oppressive July humidity and heat for the well-heeled, mostly from Canada’s largest city, Toronto.
The drive, two hours—with the top down on David’s mint 1957 two-seater pearl-gray ragtop convertible—followed a route that traveled pleasantly through rolling, lush hills dotted with contented cattle, faded red barns, weathered fruit stands and sleepy service stations that still sold ice-cold soda pop in thick, glass bottles.
Upon arrival, Blossom Valley’s main street welcomed. The buildings were Victorian, the oldest one, now an antiques store, had a tasteful bronze plaque that said it had been built in 1832.
Each business front sparkled, lovingly restored and preserved, the paned windows polished, the hanging planters and window boxes spilling rainbow hues of petunias in cheerful abundance.
Unfortunately, the main street had been constructed—no doubt by one of David’s ancestors—to accommodate horses and buggies and the occasional Model T. It was too narrow at the best of times; now it was clogged with summer traffic.
David, though he had been here only on visits since leaving after high school, found himself uncharmed by the quaintness of the main street, pretty as it was. He still had a local’s impatience with the congestion.
Plus, once there had been two carefree boys who raced their bicycles in and out of the summer traffic, laughing at the tourists honking their horns at them....
David shook it off. This was the problem with being stuck in traffic in his hometown. In Toronto, being stuck in traffic was nothing. He had a car and driver at his disposal twenty-four hours a day, and it was a time to catch up on phone calls and sort through emails.
He was accustomed to running Blaze Enterprises, his Toronto-based inve
stment firm, and he had only one speed—flat out. His position did not lend itself, thank God, to ruminating about a past that could not be changed, that was rife with losses.
Then, up ahead of him, as if mocking his attempts to leave the memories of those kids on bicycles behind, he saw a girl on a bike, threading her way through traffic with a local’s panache.
The bicycle was an outlandish shade of purple, and the old-fashioned kind, with a downward sloping center bar, high handlebars and a basket. Pedaling away from him, the girl was in a calf-length, white, cotton skirt. The midday sun shone through the thinness of the summer fabric outlining the coltish length of her legs.
She was wearing a tank top, and it was as if she’d chosen it to match the bike. The girl’s narrow, bare shoulders had already turned golden from the sun.
She had on a huge straw hat, the crown encircled with a thick, white ribbon that trailed down her back.
He caught a glimpse of a small, beige, wire-haired dog, or maybe a puppy, peeping around her with a faintly worried expression. The dog was sharing the bicycle basket with some green, leafy lettuce and a bouquet of sunflowers.
For a moment, David’s impatience waned, and he felt the innocence of the picture—all the things that had been so good about growing up here. The girl herself seemed familiar, something about the slope of her shoulders and the way she held her head.
He could feel himself holding his breath. Then the girl shoulder checked, and he caught a glimpse of her face.
Kayla?
Someone honked at a jaywalker, and David began to breathe again and yanked his attention back to the traffic.
It wasn’t Kayla. It was just that his hometown stirred a certain unavoidable melancholy in him. The loss of innocence. The loss of his best friend.
Kayla. The loss of his first love.
Grimly, David snapped on his sound system and inched forward. The street, if he followed it a full six blocks, would end at Blossom Valley’s claim to fame, its lakefront, Gala Beach, named not because galas were held there, but after a popular brand of apples that grew in the local orchards.
Gala Beach was a half kilometer stretch of perfect white sand in a protected cove of relatively calm, shallow water. The upper portions, shaded by fifty-year-old cottonwoods, held playground equipment and picnic tables, concessions and rental booths.
It had been a decade since David had been a lifeguard on that beach, and yet his stomach still looped crazily downward when he caught a glimpse of the sun-speckled waters of the bay sparkling at the end of Main Street.
David Blaze hated coming home.
He turned left onto Sugar Maple Lane, and the difference between it and Main Street was jarring. He was transported from the swirling noise and color and energy of Main Street to the deep, shaded silence of Sugar Maple: wide boulevards housed the huge, century-old trees that had given the street its name.
Set well off the road in large, perfectly manicured yards were turn-of-the-century, stately homes—Victorians. Solid columns supported roofs over deeply shadowed verandas. On one he caught a glimpse of white wicker furniture padded with overstuffed, color-splashed cushions that made him think of sugary ice tea in the heat of the afternoon.
And there was the girl on her bike again, up ahead of him, pedaling leisurely, fitting in perfectly with a street that invited life to slow down, to be savored—
He frowned. There was something familiar about her. And then, as he watched, the serenity of the scene suddenly dissolved.
The girl gave a small shriek and leaped from the bike. It crashed down, spilling sunflowers out onto the road. The puppy, all five pounds of it, tumbled out of the basket and darted away, tiny tail between tiny legs.
The girl was doing a mad jig, slapping at herself. It momentarily amused, but then David realized there was an edge of desperation in the wild dance. Her hat flew off, and her hair, loosely held with a band, cascaded out from under it, shiny, as straight as the ribbon around the brim of her hat, the soft light filtering through the trees turning its light brown tones to spun gold.
David felt his stomach loop crazily for the second time in a couple of minutes.
Please, no.
He had slowed his car to a crawl; now he slammed on the brake and shoved the gear stick into Neutral in the middle of the street. He jumped out, not even bothering to shut the door. He raced to the girl, who was slapping at her thighs through the summer-weight cotton of the skirt.
His shadow fell over her and she went very still, straightened and looked up at him.
It wasn’t a girl. While he had denied it could be her, his deepest instincts had recognized her.
Despite the snub of the nose and the faint freckles that dusted it, making her look gamine and eternally young, it was not a girl, but a young woman.
A woman with eyes the color of jade that reminded him of a secret grove not far from here, a place the tourists didn’t know about, where a waterfall cascaded into a still pond that reflected the green hues of the surrounding ferns that dipped into its waters.
Of course, it wasn’t just any woman.
It was Kayla McIntosh.
No, he reminded himself, Kayla Jaffrey, the first woman he had ever loved. And lost. Of course, she had been more a girl than a woman back then.
He felt the same stir of awareness that he had always felt when he saw her. He tried to convince himself it was just primal: man reacting to attractive woman.
But he knew it was more. It was summer sunshine bringing out freckles on her nose, and her racing him on her bike. Look, David, no hands. It was the way the reflection from a bonfire turned her hair to flame, and the smell of woodsmoke, and stars that she could name making brilliant pinpricks of light in the inky black blanket of the sky.
David Blaze hated coming home.
* * *
“David?”
For a moment, the panic of being stung was erased from Kayla’s mind and replaced with a different kind of panic, her stomach doing that same roller-coaster race downward that it had done the very first time she had ever seen him.
Except for the sensation in her stomach, it felt as if the world had gone completely still around her as she gazed at David Blaze.
She tried to tell herself it was the shock of the sting—knowing that she was highly allergic and could be dead soon—that made the moment seem tantalizingly suspended in time. Her awareness of him was sharp and clear, like a million pinpricks along her arms.
Kayla didn’t feel as if she were twenty-seven, a woman who knew life, who had buried her husband and her dreams. No, she felt as if she were fifteen years old all over again, the new girl in town, and the possibility for magic shimmered in the air around her that first time she looked at David.
No, she told herself, firmly. She had left that kind of nonsense well behind her. That pinprick feeling was the beginning of the allergic reaction to the sting!
Still, despite the firm order to herself, Kayla felt as if she drank him in with a kind of dazed wonder. It seemed that everyone she ran into from the old days had changed in some way, and generally for the worse. She’d seen Mike Humes in the hardware store—her new haunt now that she had been thrust into the world of home ownership—and the former Blossom Valley High senior year class president had looked so comically like a monk with a tonsure that she had had to bite her lip to keep from laughing.
Cedric Parson ran Second Time Around—an antiques store that she also haunted, ever on the lookout to furnish her too-large house—and the ex-high school football star looked as if he had an inflated tire tube inserted under his too-tight shirt.
Cedric was divorced now, and had asked her out. But even though she had been a widow two years, she was so aware she was not ready, and that she might never be. There was something in her that was different.
Even the f
act that she judged her two high school pals in such a harsh and unforgiving light told Kayla something about herself. Not ready, but also harder than she used to be, more cynical.
Or maybe “unforgiving” said it all.
But trust David Blaze to have gotten better instead of worse. Of course, she knew what he did—the whole town took pride and pleasure in following the success of a favored son.
Even though she’d been back in Blossom Valley less than two weeks, one of the first things Kayla had seen was his picture on the cover of Lakeside Life. The magazine was everywhere: in proud stacks at the supermarket, piled by the cash registers of restaurants, in leaning towers of glossy paper at the rental kiosks.
The magazine had recently done a huge spread about his company, and the cover photo had been of David standing in front of the multimillion-dollar Yorkton condo he had developed, in a suit—even her inexperienced eye new it was custom—that added to his look of supreme confidence, power and success.
Though she had contemplated the inevitability of running into him, given where she lived, the photo hadn’t really prepared her for the reality of David Blaze in his prime.
How was it that someone who made investments, presumably from behind a desk, still had the unmistakably broad build of a swimmer: wide shoulders, deep chest, narrow waist, sleekly muscled limbs?
David was dressed casually in a solid navy-colored sport shirt and knife-creased khaki shorts, and despite the fact a thousand men in Blossom Valley were dressed almost identically today, David oozed the command and self-assurance—the understated elegance—of wealth and arrival.
His coloring was healthy and outdoorsy. That combined with that mouthwatering physique made Kayla think his appearance seemed more in keeping with the lifeguard he had once been than with the incredibly successful entrepreneur he now was.
His hair, short enough to appear perfectly groomed despite the fact he had just leaped from a convertible with the top down, was the color of dark chocolate, melted. His eyes were one shade lighter than his hair, a deep, soft brown that reminded her of suede.