Laura Abbot - Second Honeymoon

Scott nodded. “One incision. Swift. Neat.”

Like hammer blows his words penetrated Meg’s consciousness. Her throat clogged with sudden tears, and she struggled to keep her voice even. “Is that what you want, Scott?”

Head down, he marched another thirty yards, then stopped and whirled to face her. “Want? I’ll tell you what I want. I want the girl I married.”

Anger replaced shock. “What’s that supposed to mean? Am I so awful?”

“You’re not awful.” His shoulders sagged, and he ran a hand tiredly through his hair. “You’re just…different. Meg, we started out with big dreams, and, hey, we’ve even achieved a lot of them.”

“But apparently they didn’t buy happiness.”

“That doesn’t mean they can’t, does it?”

“That’s up to you,” she said.

Laying his hand on her shoulder, he sought her eyes with his. “No, Meg. It takes two of us. But is there any us left?”

Dear Reader,

In most of my previous books, setting has been an important element. I’ve enjoyed researching various areas of the country and discovering how my characters not only belong in their particular environments but are molded by them.

This story, however, could take place anywhere in suburban America. The landscape is not one made up of mountains and rivers or rolling farmland. Rather, it is the territory of family.

Often when we think of romance, we envision the thrill of attraction and courtship or dewy-eyed newlyweds walking dreamily into an everlasting sunset. Yet the most enduring love stories are not always pretty. Sometimes it is not until a relationship is tested in the crucible of real-life crises that a genuine, lasting understanding of love and commitment is forged. This, then, is a love story that unfolds in the most important place of all—within a marriage.

In Second Honeymoon, Meg and Scott Harper are not unlike many of us who face the challenges of work commitments, child rearing, social obligations, community involvement and responsibility for extended family. As life grows more complicated, Scott buries himself in work, Meg devotes herself to their children and, along the way, they forget that marriage is a lifelong effort and that love can never be taken for granted. Bur where there is a spark, there can be fire. I hope you’ll enjoy discovering how Scott and Meg learn to tend the flame.

Laura Abbot

P.S. I enjoy hearing reader comments. You may write me at P.O. Box 373, Eureka Springs, AR 72632, or access the Superromance authors’ Web site, www.SuperAuthors.com.

www.millsandboon.co.uk

For my tolerant, accepting and loving daughters-in-law,

Lailan and Lynne.

Thank you for being such blessings to me and our family.

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

EPILOGUE

Tulsa, Oklahoma

Early September

WHEN THE AUDITORIUM LIGHTS flickered, Meg Harper twisted around in her seat, scanning the latecomers straggling in the door. Where was Scott? He’d promised her. Promised their son. She glanced at her watch. Two more minutes.

The seat beside her remained conspicuously empty, but what else was new? She watched other children’s parents—other children’s fathers—scurry to find seats before the program began. Meg faced the front again, her eyes darting to the stage where in a few moments Justin would lead the Pledge of Allegiance. Her manicured nails bit into the flesh of her palms. She didn’t ask much of her husband, but Scott should be here supporting his son, and later accompanying her to the classrooms for the middle-school open house.

She craned her neck toward the door again. Her tennis partner, Jannie Farrell, and her lanky, absentminded husband, Ron, scuttled in just as the lights dimmed, leaving behind a deserted lobby. Meg’s jaw tightened in anticipation of Scott’s apology. Sorry, babe, something came up at the last minute. As if his son were a mere afterthought to some business deal. In all honesty, she hadn’t expected Scott to show up. But that didn’t make her disappointment any less painful or quell the childhood memories of all the times she’d searched the audience for the father she knew would never come, the father buried in the cemetery on the hill.

The balding principal stepped up to the podium, greeted the assembled parents and uttered the usual platitudes about the school year getting off to a great start. When he finished, he introduced Justin, who strutted with his athlete’s swagger toward the microphone, his baggy khakis bunching at his ankles, pretty much obscuring the new Nikes he’d insisted on wearing. “Please stand and join me in the Pledge,” he croaked into the mike.

As the crowd stood, Meg moved to the left for a clear view of her son, his spiked black hair, so like Scott’s, gleaming in the spotlight; his tall, skinny body braced at attention. He looked angelic, a far cry from the mouthy thirteen-year-old who, only an hour ago, had resisted wearing the freshly-ironed dress shirt she’d laid out for him. He’d held it up as if it were some odious life-form. “This is nerdy! I suppose you think I’m wearing a tie, too.” After a brief battle, they’d achieved a compromise. The shirt, yes. The tie, no.

Yet watching him now, seriously intoning the Pledge of Allegiance, she could almost believe that one day he’d grow into a responsible young adult.

As the audience sat back down, Meg felt a tap on her shoulder. Her neighbor Carrie Morrison leaned forward. “Justin did great,” she whispered. Then came the infuriating question Meg had heard all too often in the past several months: “Where’s Scott?”

WHEN SCOTT PULLED his SUV into the garage of their two-story Tudor-style house, he noted Meg’s missing Lexus. He slumped over the wheel. Hell. The middle-school open house. He buried his head in his hands, as if that act would both absolve his oversight and wipe away the exhaustion riddling his nerves. It would be only a matter of minutes before Meg returned and recited the litany of her complaints: his thoughtlessness, his forgetfulness, his self-absorption, his selfish disregard for her, his willingness to sacrifice his family on the altar of his ambition. He’d heard it all. And then some.

What was it about his goals she didn’t understand? She had no concept of the pressure he was under at the agency or how responsible he felt for his employees. Beyond that, didn’t she know that the reason he worked so hard was to support her and the kids in the lifestyle to which they’d grown all too accustomed?

Wearily, he picked up his briefcase and headed into the house, which was for once blessedly quiet. He set down the case and loosened his tie while he sorted through the mail—all of it bills, except for the monthly country-club newsletter and a cruise brochure from his university alumni association. It was no mystery why the brochure was prominently displayed instead of thrown in the trash. Meg’s suggestions that he needed a break had become tiresome. She kept pointedly reminding him that the Farrells took annual trips, just the two of them.

He slung his suit jacket and tie over the kitchen bar stool, grabbed a beer from the fridge and plopped down on the family-room sofa, foraging under the cushions for the TV remote. Tuning into the replay of a golf tournament, he took a swig of beer and rested his head against the sofa back. He felt burdened by challenges on all sides. The Atkisson project had hit a huge snag, John Miller’s sudden resignation had left the firm perilously shorthanded and there was the unsettlingly provocative behavior of his colleague Brenda Sampson. On the home front, he and Meg couldn’t have a simple conversation without its deteriorating into an argument. The subject didn’t matter. Child-rearing practices, social obligations, current events, the household budget. The list of triggers was never-ending.