The Groom Came Back

“I won’t do it. I won’t sign the divorce petition.”

“No problem. I’ll sign it. As long as one of us has been resident here. And we qualify on just about all grounds.” Jack’s eyes narrowed. “Except impotence.”

“I’ll contest the divorce,” Callie said.

“You can’t contest irreconcilable differences.”

“Yes, I can – and that’s not all I can do. The judge can order us to attend counselling for a month.”

He waved a hand dismissively. “I’m not doing any counselling.”

“You never know. You might even benefit from some relationship counselling.”

“We don’t have a relationship,” he snarled, losing all pretence at calm.

Abby Gaines wrote her first romance novel as a teenager. She typed it up and sent it to Mills & Boon, who promptly rejected it. A flirtation with a science fiction novel never really got off the ground, so Abby put aside her writing ambitions as she went to college, then began her working life at IBM. When she and her husband had their first baby, Abby worked from home as a freelance business journalist…and soon after that the urge to write romance resurfaced. It was another five long years before Abby sold her first novel in 2006.

Abby lives with her husband and children – and a labradoodle and a kitten – in a house with enough stairs to keep her fit and a sun-filled office whose sea view provides inspiration for the funny, tender romances she loves to write. Visit her at www.abbygaines.com.

Cover Page

Excerpt

About the Author

Title Page

Dedication

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

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Preview

Copyright

For Victoria Curran,

with thanks for your support – and your patience! Thanks for helping me become a better writer.

CALLIE SUMMERS RECOGNIZED her husband the moment he walked in the door of Fresher Flowers. He, however, clearly had no idea who she was.

Her smile of welcome faded in the face of Jack Mitchell’s utter lack of recognition. Could eight years, ten thousand dollars’ worth of orthodontic treatments and a great haircut make that much difference?

Jack ducked a hanging basket of trailing clematis and stepped around the center display of post-Arbor Day markdowns. As he neared Callie, his glance skimmed her sky-blue tank—she’d grown breasts since she’d last seen him, too—and swooped down her short blue-and-white skirt to her ankles, then back up to her face. There was nothing as blatant as admiration in his gray-green eyes—more a keen observation.

You didn’t get to be a top neurosurgeon without developing powers of observation, Callie supposed. Even if his memory was somewhat deficient.

“Hi,” he said. “I hear you’re the best florist in Parkvale.” Had his smile been that sexy eight years ago?

Of course not. At seventeen, she’d viewed Jack’s twenty-six years as a source of comfort, of protection. Besides, those hadn’t been happy days.

“Good morn—uh—afternoon.” Callie’s attempt at formality to mark this one-sided reunion fizzled as she struggled to remember if it was past twelve yet; she closed at twelve-thirty on Saturdays. She finished arranging stems of gerbera—orange and crimson and pink—in a galvanized steel bucket set on an iron stand. Then she stepped forward, brushing her hands against her skirt, in case Jack had actually recognized her and planned to shake her hand or…something. “I like to think I do a great job for my clients—not that Alice at Darling Buds isn’t very talented,” she added hastily.

She totally lacked the killer instinct she needed for Fresher Flowers to flourish on the scale her loan officer demanded.

Jack’s smile turned confiding. “I’m in a hurry. I need—” he glanced around in the blankly searching manner common to most men who walked into Callie’s store “—some flowers.”

She might be short on killer instinct, but her sense of mischief was in full working order. “Are they for your wife?”

He recoiled. “I’m not—”

She saw in his frown the sudden uncomfortable realization that here in Parkvale, Tennessee, he was indeed married. Even if no one else knew about it.

He folded his arms and looked down at her—she’d forgotten how tall he was—his mouth a wry twist. “They’re for my mother, Brenda Mitchell. Do you know her?”

“I know her well. She’s wonderful.” Callie let a trace of what she felt for Brenda into her voice. But although Jack picked up on it—his dark eyebrows lifted a fraction—there was still no flash of recognition. Nor did he endorse her comment about his mother.

So much for Brenda’s insistence that Jack missed his family. That he wanted to come home from his prestigious job at Oxford University Hospital in England. That he would have come home sooner, if only there wasn’t always another life to save.