Big Sky Bride, Be Mine!

Big Sky Bride, Be Mine!
Victoria Pade

ALARM BELLS…OR WEDDING BELLS? Meeting Ian Kincaid set something off inside Jenna Bowen! Back in Northbridge, raising an infant niece, she needed to sell the family farm before the IRS took it away from her. The handsome dealmaker had an offer on the table – but he didn’t want to honour her terms. So why did her opponent have to be so irresistible?Ian savoured the idea of prolonging negotiations but this was a zerosum game. If he clinched the deal, this spirited woman and her adopted daughter would suffer. And letting down his family business was out of the question. But the bell was tolling for Ian. It was time for him to make a choice…

“I can be a pretty persuasive guy …”

“Persuasive or not, the farm has to stay a farm or I’m not selling. That’s my sticking point,” Jenna insisted.

“Hmm … Maybe I’ll just have to try to figure out how to get you unstuck …”

“Good luck with that,” she said, impervious to the hint of flirting in his voice.

He laughed. “It was good to finally meet you, though, Jenna Bowen.”

“You, too,” Jenna responded.

Good to meet the man who would very likely be instrumental in dashing her late father’s one wish?

She wasn’t sure how that could be.

“Didn’t I tell you?” Meg whispered from beside her as he left. “He’s nice, isn’t he?”

“Nice to look at,” was all Jenna would admit, while a part of her acknowledged that she had liked him quite a bit …

Dear Reader,

Loss and chaos have shaken Jenna Bowen in the past eleven months. Desperate to find some calm for herself and her fifteen-month-old adopted daughter, she’s returned to her hometown of Northbridge, Montana, where she’s sure the last of the chaos will pass and she and Abby can settle into being a family of two.

Ian Kincaid is a dynamic man, raised—along with his estranged twin brother—by a legendary football powerhouse. Ian has spent his life earning his place as the legend’s adopted son.

Jenna’s unfortunate circumstances and Ian doing his father’s bidding bring them together. On opposite sides of things, something still manages to click between them and before he knows what’s hit him, Ian wants Jenna’s family of two to be a family of three. Jenna isn’t so sure about that idea. On the other hand, there’s just something about the man …

Come see how it turns out.

Happy reading!

Victoria Pade

About the Author

VICTORIA PADE is a USA TODAY bestselling author of numerous romance novels. She has two beautiful and talented daughters—Cori and Erin—and is a native of Colorado, where she lives and writes. A devoted chocolate lover, she’s in search of the perfect chocolate-chip cookie recipe. For information about her latest and upcoming releases, and to find recipes for some of the decadent desserts her characters enjoy, log on to www.vikkipade.com.

Big Sky Bride,

Be Mine!

Victoria Pade

www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)

Chapter One

“Oh, look—this is where Mom hid J.J.’s princess costume!” Jenna Bowen exclaimed when she discovered the pint-size, ruffly, flouncy dress in the back of the hall closet she was clearing out.

“I remember that Halloween,” Meg Perry-McKendrick said.

They were both on the floor. Jenna was on her knees scooting in and out of the closet, while her best friend since childhood held a garbage bag and a cardboard box in front of her, awaiting Jenna’s decision about whether what she dragged out went to charity or into the trash.

Jenna sat back on her heels to hold up the costume she’d just discovered.

“We were sixteen that year,” Meg continued. “I remember because we’d both had our driver’s licenses for just a few weeks and neither of our parents would let us drive that night for fear we might hit a trick-or-treater. We thought that was crazy. So, since we were sixteen, that would have made J.J. what? Four?”

“Four, right,” Jenna confirmed, quickly calculating the age her much younger sister would have been at the time. “And instead of driving around, we ended up taking J.J. out. Rather than saying trick or treat at every door she regally stood there—”

“Just waiting to be given her due,” Meg concluded as they both laughed at the shared memory.

“She was so cute,” Jenna said affectionately. “But Mom couldn’t get her out of this thing even after Halloween. She’d only change into her princess pajamas to go to bed at night. Mom would wash the costume while J.J. was asleep, hoping she’d get tired of wearing it the next day. But by Christmas, Mom couldn’t take it anymore, and one morning when J.J. went looking for it, Mom said the washing machine had eaten it. I always figured she just threw it away, but apparently, she hid it in here.”

“She was probably afraid J.J. would refuse to wear anything at all if she couldn’t have the costume, so she’d better keep it, just in case. That’s what I’d do if it were Tia.”

Tia was the daughter of Meg’s new husband.

“J.J. did spend that whole day in the house, in her pajamas,” Jenna said. “Mom and Dad were worried she was going to start wearing those night and day, because one way or another, she insisted that she was a princess.”

“J.J. always was strong willed and determined,” Meg recalled.

Because she’d been around Jenna’s house so much growing up, Meg knew the goings-on in the Bowen family as well as Jenna did. Jenna was packing up her family home, and since Meg had some free Saturday afternoon time, she’d come by to help.

With that bit of reminiscence over, Meg said, “Shall we save the costume for Abby? Think she’ll take her turn at wanting to be a princess, too?”

“I have to streamline, remember?” Jenna answered. “That means, get rid of everything that isn’t necessary, because I won’t have room for more than Abby and I need. And after so many washings, the costume is pretty worn out. I don’t think it can even go in the charity box. Let’s just put it in the trash.”

Meg took the costume from Jenna and complied by jamming the worn garment into the black plastic bag. Jenna crawled partially into the closet once again and grabbed up an entire pile of old sweaters from the floor.

“These are Mom’s—they should all go to charity,” Jenna said as she shifted from her knees to sit cross-legged so she could help Meg fold the very large, very bulky sweaters that her sturdily built mother had worn. Sweaters that Jenna—at five feet four inches, a hundred and ten pounds—would be lost in.

“Abby looks just like J.J. did as a baby, doesn’t she?” Meg said then.

“Just like her,” Jenna agreed, thinking about her late sister.

The initials stood for Joanna Janeane. An early-menopausal surprise for Jenna’s parents, her sister had been named to appease both grandmothers after neither of them had been satisfied with the combination of their names that had produced Jenna’s. Abby was the late J.J.’s fifteen-month-old daughter.

And at that moment the baby was napping in Jenna’s room on the upper level of the old farmhouse that had now sheltered four generations of Bowens. Her grandfather had built the house and passed it down to her father, along with the small farm that had sustained the family until recent years.

Having both been twelve when J.J. was born, Jenna and Meg had done more than their fair share of babysitting for Jenna’s much younger sibling, so it was easy to recall what she’d looked like and to see the resemblance now in her daughter.

“J.J. was a beautiful baby,” Jenna added, fighting the grief that still rose at the memory of her sister.

“She was,” Meg said in a commiserating tone.