Abby Gaines - The Groom Came Back

“Uh-huh. One look at your supersurgeon income and a loan officer is putty in my hands.” There was no risk to him, because she only bought properties she could acquire for below market value.

“Will our divorce make it harder for you to get a loan?”

She eyed his hands on the steering wheel—surgeon’s hands with long, tapered fingers. No rings. Just like hers.

“I’ll manage.” At their wedding, she’d worn her mother’s ring, then returned it to Jenny. It had come back to her in the plastic bag of her mother’s personal effects. Callie had put it in a box in her lingerie drawer, along with a shark-tooth pendant that had reportedly belonged to her father. She suspected Jenny had bought the pendant to give her some souvenir of the drifter dad who’d drifted away for good when she was eight.

Jack frowned as he downshifted to pass a semitrailer. The truck was an enormous red blur alongside the car. “I could continue to back your loans, I suppose.”

“Once the shop is doing better, it’ll serve as security,” Callie said. “I won’t need you.”

He pounced. “The business isn’t doing well?”

“It’s a start-up. These things take time.”

Jack drummed his fingers on the steering wheel. “If you got married again you’d be more secure.”

She drew herself up in the seat. “You don’t think I can make a go of the shop?”

“Not if you see it as a hangout for the poor and lonely. You don’t want to get married?” he asked, mimicking her tone.

“To someone I love, sure,” she replied. “Not to get a bank loan.”

“Do you have a boyfriend?” Jack said, as if the possibility had only just occurred to him. As if she were chopped liver.

“I still see Rob sometimes,” she said coolly.

He frowned. “Rob?”

“Rob Hanson, the guy I was dating when we got married.”

Jack’s head jerked around. “I don’t remember that you were dating anyone.”

“Are you kidding?” Callie said. “I was crazy about him. As in love as only a teenager can be.”

He snorted. But he shifted in his seat, as if the news discomfited him.

“We dated for three years,” she said with relish. “Then we got engaged.”

Jack’s foot hit the brake, jolting the car. Instinctively, he flung out an arm to protect Callie as he fumbled for the gas pedal. He accidentally smacked into the softness of her breasts.

“Sorry,” he muttered, concentrating on keeping the car straight in the lane. Behind him, someone honked. Dammit, if he crashed this thing it would be her fault. He waved an apology to the other driver, brought the car back up to eighty. “How could you get engaged when you were married?” he demanded.

“We planned a long engagement.” She rubbed a hand across her breasts where he’d touched her; Jack tried not to look. “I figured you and I would have gotten around to a divorce by the time Rob and I set a wedding date.”

“Quite the juggling act.” The comment came out surly, which didn’t make sense. He cleared his throat.

“I’m surprised Brenda didn’t tell you I was engaged.”

“I don’t always get time to read every word of her e-mails,” he admitted.

Callie’s lips clamped together in a thin line that suggested considerable self-restraint.

“Did you say you’re still with, uh, Rob?” Jack asked.

She shook her head. “I broke off the engagement after a year. Four years ago.”

“Why?”

She didn’t answer. The hum of the tires against the pavement changed its rhythm as they started across a bridge. Callie looked out the window. Below them, the Mississippi River flowed high and fast, fed by the spring rains.

“Was he ugly?” Jack prompted.

“He’s very good-looking.”

“Dumb?”

“He’s not a brain surgeon, but he’s smart. Not arrogant,” she added, her meaning only too clear. “Rob’s a great guy. Anyone would be lucky to have him.”

“Except you.”

“We get along well, we go out sometimes.”

Jack looked across at her, and noticed her white skirt had ridden up to show an alluringly smooth length of thigh.

Something tugged inside him…something elemental that wasn’t on the list of appropriate feelings for Callie.

He banished it, disentangled his thoughts. He did not want to know exactly how much of each other she and Rob saw.

Then she ran her tongue across her lower lip and it was—dammit—it was sexy.

Appalled, Jack wrenched his gaze away. He needed to see her only as Callie, bratty kid sister, to keep this whole process simple.

Damn.

CALLIE WAS ASKING HERSELF for the thousandth time why she hadn’t gone ahead and married Rob, when she realized Jack had stopped coming up with helpful suggestions about how she should live, and had fallen silent.

It must be her turn to interfere in his life. Of course, she’d be more tactful than he was.

“A career like yours must make it hard to find time for meaningful relationships.”

Jack’s eyes narrowed; he wasn’t buying it. “I shouldn’t have stuck my nose into your love life, and I’m sorry.”

“I’m talking about your parents.”

He slowed the car as the traffic grew heavier. They were near Memphis now. “I admit I get busy, but I keep in regular contact.”

Was he deluded or lying? Callie decided not to use the word neglect, because that sounded negative. Ditto for abandon, selfish and uncaring. Where was the guy who’d squeezed her arm in comfort when she’d developed a bad case of shivers after their wedding? Who’d laughed out loud when she’d blurted an ancient Doctor, Doctor joke to lighten the moment? His kindness had convinced her everything would be okay. As okay as it could be.

Stick with the facts, the way a doctor would. “When you called to say you were coming home, they hadn’t heard from you in two months—that was just a quick e-mail—and before that it was a five-minute phone call three months earlier.”

An ominous silence filled the car. “Did Mom complain to you?”

“She would never criticize you.”

“Maybe you should take a leaf out of her book.” The reasonable words had an acid edge. “Because if she’s happy…”

With a finger, she traced the scalloped hem of her skirt over her thighs, saw his gaze dart in the direction of the movement. “They’re not getting any younger,” she persisted.

“They’re not old, either. Mom’s fifty-seven—”

“Fifty-eight,” she corrected.

“Which makes Dad sixty. They’re in good health. Right now, my patients need me a lot more than my parents need to hear about the weather in Oxford.”

Callie recalled the way Brenda made self-deprecating excuses for her son’s lack of contact, and her pride when she relayed whatever scant information he deigned to share. “I’m not talking about physical health. Or did you not have time to ‘read every word’ of my e-mails?”

“You mean that bunch of cryptic communications that took two thousand words to say Mom ‘isn’t herself’?”

Callie drew in a long, slow breath. When this conversation was over, she’d have qualified for sainthood on the grounds of a miracle of forbearance. “I know your time is valuable. But so is everyone’s.”

“Very true,” he said. “Arranging flowers, performing brain surgery—there’s only so much we can fit into our days.”

She nobly refrained from calling him on his arrogance, and pressed on. “But while you’re in Parkvale you won’t have those pressures. So maybe you could take time to find out why she’s so down.”

“ If she is,” he said.

Callie didn’t rise to that. “You know it’s her birthday on the fifteenth, right?”