First Comes Love

by Debbie Macomber

  “Hello,” he answered crisply.

  “Mr. Goodman, this is the answering service.” The woman sounded impatient and more than a little frazzled.

  “Someone responded to the ad,” Chase guessed. He’d nearly forgotten about the billboard.

  “Someone!” the woman burst out. “We’ve had nearly five hundred calls in the last twenty-four hours, including inquiries from two television stations, the Seattle Times and four radio stations. Our staff isn’t equipped to deal with this kind of response.”

  “Five hundred calls.” Chase was shocked. He’d never dreamed his advertisement would receive such an overwhelming response.

  “Our operators have been bombarded with inquiries, Mr. Goodman.”

  “How can I possibly answer so many calls?” The mere thought of being expected to contact that many women on his own was overwhelming.

  “I suggest you hire someone to weed through the replies. I’m sorry, but I don’t think any of us dreamed there’d be such an unmanageable number.”

  “You!” Chase was astonished himself. “I’ll make arrangements this morning.”

  “We’d appreciate it if you’d come and collect the messages as soon as possible.”

  “I’ll be there directly,” Chase promised.

  Five hundred responses, he mused after he’d replaced the receiver. It seemed incredible. Absurd. Unbelievable. He’d never guessed there were that many women who’d even consider such a thing. And according to the answering service, the calls hadn’t stopped, either. There were more coming in every minute.

  He reached for his car keys and was ready to leave when a knock sounded at the door. When he opened it, he discovered a newswoman and a man with a camera on the other side.

  “You’re Chase Goodman?” the woman asked. She was slight and pretty and he recognized her from the newscast the night before. She was a TV reporter, and although he couldn’t remember her name, her face was familiar.

  “I’m Chase Goodman,” he answered, eyeing the man with the camera. “What can I do for you?”

  “The same Chase Goodman who rented the billboard off Denny Way?”

  “Yes.”

  She smiled then. “I’m Becky Bright from KYGNTV and this is Steve Dalton, my cameraman. Would you mind if I asked you a few questions? I promise we won’t take much of your time.”

  Chase couldn’t see any harm in that, but he didn’t like the idea of someone sticking a camera in his face. He hesitated, then decided, “I suppose that would be all right.”

  “Great.” The reporter walked into his hotel room, pulled out a chair and instructed Chase to sit down. He did, but he didn’t take his eye off the cameraman. A series of bright lights nearly blinded him.

  “Sorry,” Becky said apologetically. “I should’ve warned you about the glare. Now, tell me, Mr. Goodman, what prompted you to advertise for a wife?”

  Chase held up his hand to shield his eyes. “Ah…I’m from Alaska.”

  “Alaska,” she repeated, reaching for his arm and moving it away from his face.

  “I’m only going to be in town a few weeks, so I wanted to make the most of my time,” he elaborated, squinting. “I’m looking for a wife, and it seemed like a good idea to be as direct and straightforward as I could. I didn’t want any misunderstanding about my intentions.”

  “Have you had any responses?”

  Chase shook his head, still incredulous. “I just got off the phone with the answering service and they’ve been flooded with calls. They said there’ve been over five hundred.”

  “That surprises you?”

  “Sure does. I figured I’d be lucky to find a handful of women willing to move to Alaska. I live outside Prudhoe Bay.”

  “The women who’ve applied know this?”

  “Yes. I left the pertinent details with the answering service as a sort of screening technique. Only those who were willing to accept my conditions were to leave their names and phone numbers.”

  “And five hundred have done that?”

  “Apparently so. I was on my way to the agency just now.”

  “How do you intend to interview five hundred or more women?”

  Chase rubbed the side of his jaw. This situation was quickly getting out of hand. “I’m hoping to hire an assistant as soon as I can. This whole thing has gone much further than I expected.”

  “If you were to speak to the women who’ve answered your ad, what would you say?”

  Chase didn’t think well on his feet, especially when he was cornered by a fast-talking reporter and a cameraman who seemed intent on blinding him. “I guess I’d ask them to be patient. I promise to respond to every call, but it might take me a few days.”

  “Will you be holding interviews yourself?”

  Chase hadn’t thought this far ahead. His original idea had been to meet every applicant for dinner, so they could get to know each other in a nonthreatening, casual atmosphere, and then proceed, depending on how they felt about him and how he felt about them. All of that had changed now. “I suppose I’ll be meeting them personally,” he muttered reluctantly. “A lot of them, anyway.”

  Becky stood and the lights dimmed. “It’s been a pleasure talking to you, Mr. Goodman. We’ll be running this on the noon news and later on the five o’clock edition, if you’re interested in seeing yourself on television.”

  “So soon?”

  “We might even do a follow-up report after you’ve selected your bride, but I’ll have to wait until I talk that over with my producer. We’d appreciate an exclusive. Can we count on you for that?”

  “Ah…sure.”

  “Great.” She beamed him a game-show-host smile.

  “Before you go,” Chase said, gathering his wits, “how’d you know where to find me?” He’d purposely made arrangements with the answering service to avoid this very thing.

  “Easy,” Becky said, sticking her pad and pen inside her purse. “I contacted the billboard company. They told me where to reach you.”

  Chase opened the door for the two, feeling very much like an idiot. He should never have agreed to the interview. They’d caught him off guard, before he realized what he was doing. If anything, this meeting was likely to generate additional calls and he already had more than he knew how to deal with.

  Chase slumped onto the bed. He’d tried to be honest and fair. He wanted a wife. For thirty-three years he’d been content to live and work alone, waiting until he could offer a woman a decent life. He was finished with that.

  The shortage of women in Alaska was well-known, especially in the far north. When Lesley had told him the details about those Seattle brides back in the 1860s, he felt a certain kinship with Asa Mercer and the desperate, lonely men who’d put up the money for such a venture.

  Lesley had told him Mercer hadn’t had much difficulty convincing women to move west. That had surprised him, but not as much as the response his own ad had generated.

  Lesley.

  He’d meant to tell her about the billboard that first afternoon. But then she’d mentioned it herself and implied that anyone who’d advertise for a wife was crazy and pathetic. He’d been afraid she’d never agree to their dinner if she’d known he was that man.

  He reached for the phone, intending to call her right then to explain. He fumbled for her phone number inside his wallet and unfolded it, placing it on the nightstand. After punching the first four numbers in quick succession, he changed his mind and hung up. This sort of thing was best said face-to-face. He only hoped she’d be more inclined to think well of him now that she knew him better.

  He’d wait until a decent hour and contact her, he decided. His one hope was that she wouldn’t watch the noon news.

  Lesley woke happy. At least she thought this feeling was happiness. All she knew was that she’d slept through the entire night and when morning came, the dark cloud of despair that had hung over her the past few months had lifted. Her heart felt lighter, her head clearer, her spirit whole.

&nb
sp; She wasn’t falling in love with Chase. Not by a long shot. But he’d helped her look past the pain she’d been walking under; he’d eased her toward the sun’s warmth. With Chase she’d laughed again and for that alone she’d always be grateful.

  She showered and twisted her hair into a French braid, then brewed a pot of coffee. While reading the paper, she decided to bake chocolate-chip cookies. Eric and Kevin, Daisy’s two boys, would be thrilled.

  Chase might enjoy them, too.

  She smiled as she held the coffee cup in front of her lips, her elbows braced on the kitchen table. No point in kidding herself. She was baking those cookies for him. Later she’d suggest an outing to Paradise on Mount Rainier.

  True, Eric and Kevin would appreciate their share, but it was Chase she was hoping to impress. Chase she was looking forward to hearing from again. Chase who dominated her thoughts all morning.

  The cookies were cooling on the counter when Daisy let herself in.

  “Say, what’s going on here?” she asked, helping herself to a cookie.

  “I don’t know. I felt the urge to bake this morning.”

  Daisy pulled out a chair. “It’s the nesting instinct. Mark my words, sweetie, those ol’ hormones are kicking in.”

  Lesley paused, her hand holding a spatula that held a cookie. “I beg your pardon?”

  “You’re how old now? Twenty-five, twenty-six?”

  “Twenty-seven.”

  “A lot of your friends are engaged or married. You’ve probably got girlfriends with kids.”

  “Yes,” Lesley admitted, agreeably enough, “but that doesn’t mean anything.”

  “Who are you trying to fool? Not me! As far as I’m concerned, marriage and a family were the big attraction with Tony. He was never your type and we both know it. What you were looking forward to was settling down, getting pregnant and doing the mother thing.”

  “We agreed not to discuss Tony, remember?” Lesley reminded her neighbor stiffly. Her former fiancé was a subject she chose to avoid whenever possible with her friends, especially with Daisy, who’d insisted from the first that Tony was all wrong for her.

  “You agreed we wouldn’t,” Daisy muttered, chewing the cookie, “but I’ll respect your wishes as long as you fill me in on your date last night.”

  Lesley smiled. “Ah, yes, my date.”

  “You must’ve gotten back late. I didn’t go into work at the bar yesterday because I had to study and I wasn’t through until after midnight and I didn’t hear you come home.”

  Lesley hadn’t stopped to chat with Daisy, fearing that sharing her experience would somehow diminish it. She’d gone to bed almost immediately, wanting to mull over her time with Chase, put some perspective on it, luxuriate in the memory of their kisses.

  She’d intended to think about all that. Instead, she’d fallen asleep almost immediately. Even now she wasn’t sure how to interpret their evening together.

  “Did you have a good time?” Daisy asked.

  “Wonderful. We walked along the waterfront, and then went to dinner.” She didn’t mention the ferry ride. She couldn’t. It was too special to share even with Daisy.

  She didn’t know what, exactly, had happened between them, only that something had. Whatever it was, she’d allowed it. Had participated in it, and in the end couldn’t deny him or herself the pleasure of those kisses.

  No one had ever kissed her the way Chase had, gently, with such infinite care, such tenderness. He’d kissed her the way a woman dreams of being kissed, dreams of being held. Trying to explain that was beyond Lesley. She had no idea where to even begin.

  Daisy yawned with great exaggeration. “Sounds like a boring date if you ask me.”

  “Maybe, but I’ve never had two men fight over me with switchblades the way you did.”

  “Both of ’em were staggering drunk. Besides, I had no interest in dating either one. After being married to Brent for five years, why would I want to involve myself with another biker wannabe? Charlie had the police there so fast my head spun. Good thing, too.”

  Personally, Lesley believed Charlie the bartender had a crush on Daisy, but she’d never said as much. He was a nice guy and he looked out for her neighbor, but in Lesley’s opinion, his feelings were more than just friendship for a fellow employee.

  “Don’t sidetrack me,” Daisy insisted. “We were talking about you and Chase. That’s his name, isn’t it?” Lesley nodded. “There’s not much more to say. I already told you I had a nice time.”

  “I believe you described it as wonderful. You seeing him again?”

  “We’re going to a movie…at least I think we are. He mentioned it last night, but we didn’t discuss the time. And he didn’t say anything about it when he phoned a few minutes ago.”

  “So he’s already called again?”

  Lesley tried not to show how pleased she was. Chase had seemed distracted, but there was no disguising the warmth in his voice. She hoped he’d tell her whatever was troubling him when he picked her up that evening. He’d asked for her address and Lesley had no qualms about giving it to him.

  “What’s this?” Daisy asked, reaching across the table to a stack of mail and pulling out a catalog.

  “A knitting catalog,” Lesley said, putting the cookie sheets in her sink to cool.

  “When did you start knitting?” Daisy asked, slowly flipping through the pages.

  “A couple of months ago.”

  “Aha! The nesting instinct strikes again.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” Lesley said impatiently. She walked onto her back porch, retrieved an empty coffee can and filled it with cookies. “Here,” she said, thrusting the can toward her smart-mouthed neighbor. “For Eric and Kevin.”

  Chuckling, Daisy stood and reached for the cookies. “I can take a hint. You don’t want me talking about Tony and you don’t want me saying anything about your hormones. It’s downright difficult to carry on a conversation with you, girl.”

  After shooing Daisy out the door, Lesley made herself a sandwich and turned on the local noon news. She was chewing away when the billboard she’d seen earlier that week came on the screen.

  Her interest was piqued, and she put her sandwich back on the plate.

  The camera left the billboard to focus on the reporter who was standing below it. Lesley liked Becky Bright and the offbeat stories she reported. It was a compliment to her professionalism, as far as Lesley was concerned, that Becky Bright could cover the billboard story and keep a straight face.

  “This morning I talked with the man who’s so earnestly seeking a wife,” Becky announced. “Chase Goodman agreed to an interview and…”

  Chase Goodman.

  Lesley didn’t hear a word after that. His face appeared on the screen and he squinted into the camera and said he only had a limited time in Seattle and wanted to be as straightforward as he could.

  Straightforward. He’d misled her. Talk about being unethical; why, he’d…he’d kissed her. He’d held her in his arms and… Mortified, she raised her hands to her face. She’d so desperately wanted to believe in Chase, but he was like all the other men she’d known. He was just like her father, who’d cruelly deceived her. Just like Tony, who’d broken her heart. Never again would she make herself vulnerable. Never again would she be so naive as to trust a man.

  Never again.

  “Your next appointment is waiting,” Sandra Zielger, the attractive middle-aged woman Chase had hired that morning, announced. He’d been interviewing women all afternoon.

  The first one who’d come was a pleasant woman a few years his senior who worked as an executive assistant for a big manufacturing company. She was congenial, well-educated and professional. When Chase asked her why she wanted to marry him and move to Alaska, she said she was ready to “get out of the rat race” and take life at a more leisurely pace. She’d been divorced twice, with no children. After ten minutes with her, Chase knew a relationship between them wouldn’t work. He wasn’t comfortable with
her the way he was with Lesley.

  The second interview turned out to be with a female plumber who’d been working in construction. She’d been out of work for three months and was looking for a change of scene. The first thing she asked was whether he wanted to sleep with her to sample the goods before making his decision. Even before he collected his wits enough to respond, she’d unbuttoned her blouse, claiming she didn’t mind a little kinky sex if that interested him, but she wasn’t overly fond of whips and chains. By the time he’d ushered her out the door, Chase felt shaken.

  He wasn’t sure what he’d expected when he’d placed the ad, but it wasn’t this. He was looking for a woman with a generous heart, one with pluck and spirit. A woman with depth and sensitivity. A woman like… Lesley.

  He rubbed the back of his neck, closed his eyes and sighed.

  He tried phoning Lesley just to calm his nerves, but she wasn’t home. He didn’t leave a message.

  By four, Chase had talked with so many women that their names and faces and stories had all started to blend together. Not a single one had strongly appealed to him. He couldn’t meet with these women and not compare them to Lesley. They seemed shallow by contrast, frivolous and, in some cases, reckless. There were a couple he might’ve liked under other circumstances, and he’d kept their names and phone numbers, but not a single woman to compare to the one he’d met yesterday, quite by chance.

  He glanced at his watch and knew he wasn’t up to interviewing another woman. The suite he’d rented at the hotel was packed with applicants. Word had gotten out that he was in the process of talking to prospective brides and they were coming in off the street now. Sandra Zielger seemed to have her hands full, and seeing that, Chase intervened, escorting the husband-seeking women from the room with promises of another day.

  “I’ve never seen anything like this,” Sandra said, pushing her hair away from her face with both hands. “You should’ve brought some of your bachelor friends with you.”

  Chase closed his eyes and expelled a weary sigh. “How many women did we see?”