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ADVANTAGE OF BACHELORHOOD Number 147: No wife to disapprove of a man’s passion for mountain bikes.

Nate Wilde added the latest item to his ongoing mental list as he closed up his mountain-bike shop, Cycle Sports, and strapped on his helmet. He’d been compiling the list ever since the snowy Whistler night a decade ago when Angela left him. Technically speaking, he wasn’t a bachelor because they were still married but for all practical purposes he was on his own.

Nate got on his favorite bike, the Balfa Belair. Blazing red with gold forks over the front wheel and a sweet-looking seat tower arrangement, the Balfa floated over the cobbled streets of Whistler Village. Nate turned down a flight of concrete stairs, causing a group of Japanese tourists to raise their cameras and click madly.

His brother, Aidan, had he known about the list, would have said Nate was rationalizing his loss. His cousin, Marc, who’d grown up with them after his mother died, would have told him he was full of shit, but that’s what happened when a guy married too young and too fast.

And Angela, the only woman he’d ever loved, would have put her nose in the air, sniffed and said “typical.” If she’d stuck around long enough to say anything, that is. She’d believed neither in him nor their future together. He’d wanted kids; she’d been adamantly opposed. They’d been fighting over when to start a family the night she’d run off, breaking his heart and shattering his pride.

Barely a day went by when he didn’t count his blessings that she was out of his life.

Barely a day went by when he didn’t also wonder how she was, and what she was doing.

In fact, he knew what Angela was doing more or less all the time because her sister Janice had kept him up to date on the steady rise in Angela’s fortunes since she left him. She’d studied business in Toronto then worked at the Globe and Mail newspaper until two months ago when she’d returned to Vancouver to take a high-powered job with a business magazine.

In all that time her only communication had been a brief phone call a month after her departure to say their marriage was a mistake followed by a garbled letter purporting to explain why she wasn’t coming home but which left him no wiser.

His attempts to contact her through Janice had failed, and he’d been forced to conclude she wanted nothing more to do with him.

How could she have left him simply because she wasn’t ready to have a baby?

Cycling home on the highway, Nate remembered that his fridge was seriously depleted so he stopped in at Nester’s Market to stock up on essentials.

Janice’s latest news flash was that Angela was coming to Whistler to baby-sit her ten-year-old nephew, Ricky, while Janice and her husband, Bob, went on a short vacation. In a small community like Whistler there was no way Nate and Angela could avoid seeing each other so he’d been preparing himself in advance to keep a lid on his anger, a tight rein on his libido and a watchful eye out for any assault on his pride.

ANGELA HAULED ON the steering wheel of Janice’s ancient green Dodge and the car lumbered around the tight curves on the Sea-to-Sky highway north of Vancouver. Mountains rose steeply to her right, the waters of Howe Sound lapped the shore to her left and signs warning of falling rocks appeared around every other bend. She’d seen her sister and brother-in-law off at the airport and now she and Ricky were heading back to Whistler.

Ricky had his head down and was stabbing away at his Game Boy. His blond hair was gelled to spiky peaks and freckles smattered his straight nose. Below his shorts, both knees were scabbed over and Band-Aids, some clean, some grubby, plastered several fingers and an elbow.

If the baby she’d been carrying the night she ran away had lived, he or she would have been about the same age as Ricky.

Angela had pushed away similar thoughts for years; the closer she got to Whistler and Nate, the more frequently the baby came to mind. Would he have been athletic and full of pride like Nate, or ambitious and stubborn like her?

She didn’t know much about kids in general, and she hadn’t seen Ricky since he was an infant. Frankly, she was terrified of making mistakes with him. What if he didn’t like her, or do what she told him to? What if he got hurt while under her care? According to Janice, he was both daring and accident-prone.

“What do you do for fun, Ricky?” she asked after her first few questions elicited only monosyllables.

“Ride my bike.”

Three whole words. That was an improvement. When Janice and Bob had won a trip to Europe in a supermarket contest she’d gladly offered to baby-sit, not stopping to consider that taking care of a boy wasn’t the same as watering a plant or even looking after a pet.

Cooking was another worry. If Ricky expected homemade meals every night he was in for an unpleasant surprise. “What do you like to eat?”

“Pizza.” He glanced up from the miniature screen, leaving his fingers poised over the buttons. “Hamburgers.”

“Great!” she said, relieved. “Those are my favorites, too.”

“Ice cream,” he went on loquaciously. “Candy, cookies, chips…that kind of stuff.”

“We’ll go shopping as soon as we get to Whistler.”

Angela rolled down the window and breathed the fresh, pine-scented air. Ahead, she could see the towering peaks of Whistler and Blackcomb Mountains where even now in early July, glaciers glistened whitely in the brilliant blue sky. It felt good to be coming home.

But she was nervous, too, at the prospect of seeing Nate. How would he react to her after all this time?

Maybe if he hadn’t loved his bikes more than he loved her they wouldn’t have fought in the first place. Maybe if Nate had known she was pregnant he would have tried harder to stop her from leaving. Maybe if she hadn’t run away she wouldn’t have miscarried and they would be a family now instead of two people legally united but who barely knew each other.

That was a lot of maybes.

She’d been too young, too immature and too insecure to admit she was wrong and ask him to take her back. The bottom line was he’d let her go without a struggle.

Angela’s hands felt stiff from being clenched around the steering wheel. She shook them until the blood returned to the knuckles and consciously tried to relax. She’d been in limbo for a decade, unable to settle. She’d always hoped that somehow she and Nate would get back together, but ten years had passed and neither had made the first move. So be it. Maybe their marriage was irrevocably damaged. Or maybe a spark existed of their former love.

One way or another, Angela thought, it was past time to resolve the situation.

LEAVING THE BALFA securely locked in front of Nester’s, Nate moved through the produce section, bagging fresh vegetables and fruit and tossing them into his shopping cart. Yes, sir, bachelorhood had lots of advantages, including healthy food instead of the junk Angela favored.

He rounded the end of the aisle and suddenly his cart collided with another, startling him.

“Whoops, sorry.” The grinning spiky-haired boy careening around the corner on the back of a loaded shopping cart looked anything but sorry.

“Careful, kid. You might have rammed an elderly lady instead of me. Hey, you’re Ricky, aren’t you?” Nate added, recognizing Janice’s son. “Where’s your mom? I thought she and your dad would be on their way to Europe by now.”

“They are. Look, I can do a wheelie.” Ricky, his feet planted on the frame, leaned back and pulled on the handle, causing the front of the cart to tip in the air.

“Ricky!” a woman called from the next aisle. “Where are you?”

Nate heard the voice and his heart jerked like a slipping bicycle gear.

An instant later Angela hurried around the aisle. “I’m so sorry about my nephew—” Seeing Nate she broke off as recognition dawned in her wide blue eyes. Polished fingertips raked through hair streaked with sunlight and honey. “Nate!”

“Hello, Angela. So you’re back.” He struggled to find a nonchalant tone. “That video you took out before you left is a tad overdue.”

Her V-neck top and cropped pants looked casual but expensive; gold circled her wrist and neck and hung from her earlobes. Clearly Angela had attained for herself the financial security she hadn’t believed him capable of.

Advantage of Bachelorhood Number 148: No extravagant wife to squander his hard-earned cash.

She planted one hand on a slender curving hip. “After ten years is that all you have to say to me?”

As if he should be the one to apologize. When they were married half the time he never knew whether he wanted to strangle her or make love to her. Nothing had changed. She might have the face of an angel but she had the devil’s own ability to make him toss common sense to the winds. Keep a lid on the anger, he reminded himself.

“I’ve got plenty to say but not in a public place.”

Her gaze dropped to the loose nylon shirt and reinforced shorts he wore for biking. “Are you still financing your hobby by working for your dad building log homes?”

Obviously, Janice didn’t keep Angela as well informed about him. Despite Angela’s lowly origins, or perhaps because of them, she’d been intensely dissatisfied with his apparent lack of ambition. Now that he was successful, he felt no inclination to justify himself to her. “I spend most of my time at the bike shop,” he said ambiguously.

“Ah, the same old Nate.” But she looked a little disappointed he’d lived down to her expectations.

“You look as though you’ve done well for yourself.”

Her chin tilted upward at a confident angle. “I’m marketing director for Businesswomen’s Weekly, a lifestyle magazine for professional women.”

“Very impressive.” He got the message. She was the same old Angela, too—tough as nails and in no need of him.

“It’s a temporary position,” she conceded. “The woman I’m replacing is on maternity leave but she may decide to stay away indefinitely in which case I’ll be permanent.”

The sound of tin cans falling over made Angela hurry on ahead. Ricky, one foot on the lower shelf, one hand gripping the top shelf, looked their way guiltily as canned tomatoes rolled at his feet.

“Ricky! Are you hurt?” Angela exclaimed as she reached his side. “If you want something from a higher shelf you should ask someone. What are you after?”

“Nothin’.” He hopped off the shelf and ran off down the aisle, leaving Angela frowning after him in frustration.

Nate came over, pushing both carts. “You’d better put the brakes on that boy before he takes complete control.”

“I’m perfectly capable of looking after my own nephew, thank you. Ricky’s just…high-spirited.”

Nate glanced at the assortment of cookies and doughnuts in her cart. “Sugar will do that to a kid.”

She took the cart from him and wheeled away. “I don’t need your advice.”

Nate followed. “I understand you’re looking after Ricky while Janice and Bob are in Europe. What prompted this outburst of familial devotion?”

“Janice and Bob haven’t had a vacation in years.”

“What about your job?”

“With e-mail and occasional trips to Vancouver I can work from here for a month.”

“A month!” Nate stopped in his tracks. “I thought their prize was a trip to seven countries in as many days.”

“A week seemed too rushed so they extended their vacation.”

“A month in Europe. Sweet. And expensive.” Janice was a waitress and Bob drove the shuttle bus that ferried skiers and sightseers between chairlifts. Nate had gotten the impression they were just scraping by.

“I helped them a little,” Angela said offhandedly. They came to the frozen-foods section and she paused to load some pizzas into the cart.

“You really haven’t changed,” Nate observed with a pointed glance at the pizza.

“There’s something different about you, though….” Wearing a puzzled frown, Angela paused and studied his face. Then she reached up to stroke one of his sideburns with her cool fingertips. “These are new.”

“What do you think?” He no sooner spoke than he wanted to kick himself for implying her opinion still mattered to him.

She took his jaw between her fingers and turned his face from side to side. Her perfume tickled his nostrils with memories and her touch was a torment. Play it cool, Wilde. And for God’s sake, keep that libido under control.

“I like them,” she said at last. “They’re kind of sexy.”

Sexy.

“How’ve you been?” he asked, and at that moment his voice decided to go all husky on him. He hoped he wouldn’t make an idiot of himself but with Angela there was no guarantee things would proceed according to plan.

Her gaze connected with his. “I’ve been okay. You?”

She dumped you, remember? Hardening his tone, he replied, “Great. Just great.”

Abruptly, her hand dropped from his jaw, as if she’d just realized what she was doing. “We need to talk. About us. Get things sorted out.”

“I agree.” He pushed his cart forward, remembering at the last minute to pick up some frozen juice. Angela could make him forget his own name if she looked at him the right way.

“You never wanted to marry again?” she asked conversationally as they moved into the next aisle.

He shook his head. “Some might say you scarred me for life.”

“Or spoiled you for anyone else.” She glanced sideways as if to see how he’d react to this and there was actually a twinkle in her eye.

Well, he wasn’t going to bite. He grunted and reached for a jar of pasta sauce to place in his cart.

“What about girlfriends?” Her words were delivered coolly, as if in only passing interest.

“Presently, no.” Something about her carefully averted profile made him ask, “Why? Do you want me back? Is that why you came to Whistler?”

“Oh! You are so arrogant.” She pushed her cart purposefully down the aisle. “I wonder where Ricky is.”

Nate thought about heading in the opposite direction but he refused to go out of his way to avoid further contact. It would look as though he couldn’t handle being with her. Following at a slower pace he caught up with Angela and Ricky in the confectionery aisle. Ricky was pulling bags of candy off the shelves and dumping them into Angela’s shopping cart.

“Not too many, Ricky,” Angela was saying. “Candy causes tooth decay.”

Unfazed by her remonstrations, Ricky tossed another bag into the cart.

“Sugar can also lead to diabetes and obesity,” Angela continued to reason unsuccessfully with the boy. “It stops you from eating more nutritious food.”

“Like pizza?” Nate couldn’t help interject.

Angela glared at him.

Ricky shrugged and pulled away from her. “I don’t care. It tastes good.”

Nate grasped the boy gently but firmly by the shoulder and turned Ricky around to face him. “While your aunt is looking after you, you do what she says. Now put all but one bag of candy back on the shelves.”

“You’re not in charge of me,” Ricky argued.

“Put it back.” Nate gazed steadily into the boy’s eyes. “Understand?”

“Yessir,” Ricky mumbled and squirmed out of Nate’s grip. Reluctantly he began to return the candy to the shelf.

Angela grabbed Nate by the arm and dragged him a few feet away. “How dare you interfere?” she demanded in a furious undertone. “I told you I would handle my nephew.”

Nate snorted. “Kids have to be taught limits. I’ll bet Janice doesn’t let him get away with stuff.”

“I suppose you’re an expert on children?”

“I have a young niece, and I work with kids, many of them from troubled homes.”

“Since when?”

“Since after you left. You know, an organized activity would help keep Ricky out of trouble.” Nate turned to Ricky who was kicking the wheels of the cart, bored with waiting for the adults. “Hey, dude. Do you like mountain bikes? I teach a course for ten to twelve-year-olds.”

“Mountain biking!” Ricky stopped kicking the wheels and perked up. “That would be so cool. I think my friend, Tim, is taking your course.”

“Tim Martin? Yes, he is.” Nate used to date Tim’s mother, Kerry, although for some months now they’d just been friends. “The course begins next week with classes on Tuesday and Friday. Do you have a mountain bike?” Ricky nodded. “Bring it down to Cycle Sports in the Village and my mechanic will check it over for you.”

“Wait just a minute!” Angela protested. “If you think I’m handing this unsuspecting child over to you, the king of daredevils himself, you’re nuts.”

“With appropriate precautions and proper training, mountain biking is perfectly safe,” Nate said, irritated.

“Oh, yeah? Remember the time you hit a boulder coming down Blackcomb Mountain and snapped your collarbone? Or the time you broke your arm when your bike hit a big root?”

Ricky listened eagerly, eyes round, mouth parted.

“I was riding tech trails, training for competitions.” Nate explained what Angela should have known perfectly well. “If Ricky doesn’t have protective gear I’ve got extra pads he can borrow.”

“And what about that close encounter with a spruce tree which ended with fifteen stitches?” She stood on tiptoe to peer at his right cheekbone. “I can still see the scar.”

“I don’t do stunts anymore and I haven’t had a serious injury in years.” He paused. “I stopped racing.”

That took her aback. “You gave up racing?”

Her skepticism wasn’t unfounded; for years racing had consumed him. He shrugged. “My priorities changed.”

“Too little, too late,” she muttered. “Come on, Ricky.” She walked away again, dragging Ricky by the hand while the boy looked longingly over his shoulder at Nate.

Fine, let her go. This time he wouldn’t follow. Nate lifted a hand in farewell. “Catch you later, dude.”

Nate finished his shopping and went through the checkout. By the time he’d packed his groceries into his empty backpack and unchained the Balfa, Angela was coming out of the store. Realizing that if they were going to talk they had to arrange a time and place, he followed her to her car.

While Ricky goggled at the Balfa, Angela opened the trunk of her car and began to lift bags inside. Her gaze flicked to the clouds massing above the mountains. “It looks like rain.”

Nate helped her load groceries and cast an educated eye over the sky. “The cumulus are building but higher up in the stratosphere winds are brisk. I don’t think we’ll see any rain until later tonight.”

Ricky took his awestruck gaze off the bike to peer up at Nate. “You sound like the weatherman on TV.”

“I study meteorology in my spare time.” Nate caught Angela’s surprised glance and added, “When you’re on a bike, facing a sheer drop off a mountain ridge, you want to know which way the wind blows.”

“Cool,” Ricky breathed. “Aunt Angela, I gotta go mountain biking.”

“Meteorology?” Angela repeated, ignoring her nephew. “Does this mean you finally decided on a direction in life?”

“It’s a hobby. Doesn’t Janice tell you anything?”

“She didn’t mention that.” She pushed her cart into the trolley bay and moved toward the driver’s side of the Dodge.

“You wanted to talk,” Nate said. He’d waited a long time for the chance to thrash things through; the sooner they got it over, the better. He glanced at Ricky who was watching them with avid curiosity. How much did the boy know about their situation?

Angela casually turned to her nephew. “Hop in the car, Ricky.”

Ricky glanced at Nate, Nate nodded imperceptibly, and the boy got in the passenger seat. Angela frowned at Ricky’s deference to Nate then seemed to shake off her irritation with an effort. “Where do we start?”

“How about with you running away?” He spoke forcefully, forgetting all good intentions about keeping his anger under control. “What the hell was that about?”

“We had a fight if you recall. You were pressuring me to start a family but you and your bike always came first. Face it, we weren’t even ready to marry. I was nineteen and you were twenty—way too young.”

“We had very different ideas of what marriage entailed, that’s for sure. I was in it for the long haul whereas you gave up when the going got rough.”

“It wasn’t like that,” she said indignantly.

“You can’t argue with the facts. You only lasted a few months. Then when we fought you didn’t stick around to talk things out. Instead, you left me.”

“You let me go.” For an instant her features contorted in pain. Her eyes closed briefly and when she opened them again her face was composed. “Obviously you didn’t care enough to try to find me.”

“I did try, the next day, after I realized you’d gone to Vancouver and not to Janice’s. I couldn’t find you in any of the places she suggested looking. Where were you?”

She looked away, one hand gripping the car roof. “Okay, I admit that at first I told Janice not to tell you where I was—”

He threw his hands up. “And you blame me for our breakup.”

“—then I changed my mind, but you’d gone back to your stupid bike race.”

“Because it never occurred to me you would leave me for good. The prize money was a considerable chunk of dough—well, it seemed like it at the time—and I figured we would need it if we were going to start a family.”

Angela paled under her tan as she stared at him in silence. A moment later she was back on the attack. “How could we have afforded a baby with you spending all your money and time with your bikes?”

“That was an investment that paid off.”

“How was I to know that? I didn’t want any kid of mine growing up the way I did, nor did I want to end up a single mom in a trailer park if you got yourself killed falling off the mountain.” She wagged a finger at him. “Don’t tell me it doesn’t happen because I know it does.”

“You never had any faith in me. If we’d had a baby do you really believe I would have let you and the child want for anything?”

“I don’t know and that’s the whole point. You were always off on your bike. The day after I left, instead of coming looking for me you were riding in some competition! I know bikes are important to you but they shouldn’t have been more important than me!”

“They weren’t! And if you hadn’t stayed away we might have worked out our differences.” That remark was met with a strained silence. Nate shook his head. They were going around in circles. “Now that you’re back, where do we go from here?”

Drawing a deep breath, she said, “We’ve been separated for ten years. It’s time to resolve the past and move on with our lives.”

His insides seemed to freeze. “Are you talking about a divorce?”

Her fingers twisted the strap on her purse. Her eyes were very bright. “Is that what you want?”

“Does it matter what I want?” he asked bitterly. After all this time the suggestion to make their split permanent and legal shouldn’t come as a surprise but somehow he wasn’t prepared for it. “Are you planning to marry again? Janice told me you were seeing someone in Toronto.” Damn. He sounded like a jealous husband.

“This has nothing to do with Albert. That’s over.”

A retired couple pulled their cart up at the camper van parked next to Angela and started loading groceries. Frustrated, Nate said, “We’d better finish this later. I’ll call you tonight.”

Angela started to turn away, then hesitated. “Ricky doesn’t realize we were married. It might be easier if we kept it that way.”

Now she was denying they were ever together. She got in her car and drove away, leaving Nate feeling as if he’d just cycled straight into a rock wall at eighty miles an hour.

He slung on his backpack, strapped on his helmet and pedaled off. Flipping the Shimano gears into a higher sprocket, he coasted down the ramp onto the highway with the wind in his ears.

Was this it, then? Were they finally going to break the last flimsy tie between them?

Advantage of Bachelorhood Number 149: Freedom.

Now that he thought about it, it sounded damn good.