Big Sky Bride, Be Mine!. Victoria Pade

       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.

      “But so far, Abby doesn’t seem quite as headstrong, and I’m grateful