The Groom Came Back

“Do you realize,” she said, “the last time I traveled in a car with you was on our wedding day?”

Chapter Three

JACK STARED STRAIGHT through the windshield. “You were a nervous wreck. I didn’t think you’d go through with it.”

“You had enough confidence for both of us,” Callie said.

“Did I?” His face was inscrutable.

“So did Mom. It was the last big decision she made.”

By then, Jenny had been fighting leukemia for two years. And for six months, she’d been fighting a losing battle with her ex-husband’s parents, who’d petitioned for custody of sixteen-year-old Callie the moment they’d heard about Jenny’s illness. They’d also lodged a claim for immediate temporary custody on the basis her mom could no longer look after her.

Jenny’s own parents had died years earlier, and she was determined those wicked people, as she called her in-laws, would never have custody of her daughter. Callie had been equally determined not to go to her unknown grandparents. Parkvale, and more specifically Dan and Brenda Mitchell’s home, was the first proper home she’d known. Besides, her mother had needed her, and Callie had needed to stay with her mom until the end.

“But you weren’t convinced getting married was the right decision,” Jack suggested, bringing her back to the moment.

“I didn’t have any better ideas,” she hedged. She pointed to a police car up ahead; he nodded and eased off the gas. “I couldn’t think at all, what with Mom moving into long-stay hospital care…and then Lucy drowning.”

Jack, home from Boston for his sister’s funeral, had been accepted for postgraduate study at Oxford University. Brenda was already upset at the thought of him being so far away. After Lucy’s death, she was distraught.

It was Jack who’d come up with the brilliant idea that if Callie married him, which she could legally do with her mother’s permission, she would be beyond the reach of the Summers’s custody suit. Brenda and Dan would continue to have Callie, Lucy’s best friend and someone they doted on.

And Jack could escape, worry-free, to England.

“You have to admit, we were…underhanded,” Callie said.

He shifted his grip on the steering wheel. “We couldn’t have told Mom and Dad. They’re so hung up on the sanctity of marriage, there’s no way they’d have condoned it. And Mom wasn’t well.”

Brenda had plunged into a black depression when Lucy died. Only the routines of her normal life—which for her meant lavishing care on Dan and Callie—kept her going.

Jack was right. Keeping the wedding a secret had been the right thing to do—then and now.

Callie’s mom had been allowed out of the hospital for a couple of hours for the wedding, and the three of them traveled to the chapel in Jack’s beat-up Mustang. He’d presented Callie with a corsage—a pink rose, with baby’s breath. Unimaginative, but she’d thought it beautiful.

If she closed her eyes she could still smell that rose.

She’d literally been shaking from nerves. Jack had taken her hand, with nothing remotely sexual in his touch, and steadied her.

If the marriage celebrant thought there was anything odd about a handsome, assured doctor marrying a tongue-tied, gap-toothed schoolgirl, he didn’t show it. The ceremony took minutes, and afterward, Jenny cried tears of relief.

“It’s too late to regret our wedding now,” Jack said. “You need to think about your future. Is the flower business where you want to be long term?”

“I like the independence, being my own boss,” she said. “When I started Fresher Flowers nearly a year ago I’d been working at that store by the hospital for three years. I kept thinking I could do a better job than my boss.”

Jack nodded.

“The day I decided I could no longer stand seeing work that was less than perfect go out the door, I quit to go it alone.”

“Wasn’t that risky? It seems to be a competitive industry these days.”

She shrugged. “I travel up to Memphis at least a couple of mornings a week for the flower auction. It gives me an edge over my rivals, who mainly buy from wholesalers.”

“Do you own the building?”

“I rent, but I paid for the refit. With my money, not yours.”

She’d borrowed money from Jack five years ago to fund the down payment on her first house. After she’d renovated, buying her materials at cost from Dan’s hardware store, she’d sold the house and channeled part of the profit into the next one, part into her savings. Then repeated the pattern several times. The last two houses, she’d used all her own money. The shop refit had come out of her savings. She didn’t like to think how precarious that left her, but she couldn’t keep borrowing from Jack.

“You still use me as security for your mortgage, right?” he asked.

“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?”

“Of course,” he said, too easily.

Callie telegraphed her disbelief.

He grinned, but he didn’t back down. “I’ll order a special bouquet from Fresher Flowers for the occasion.”

“You know what she’d like more than flowers?”

“Yes.”

Callie blinked. “You do?”

“You’re going to say half an hour of my time, or something else that makes me look mean.”

She bit back on a smile. “She’d love for you to take her shopping.”

“You mean, to choose a gift?”

Callie shrugged. “Not necessarily. Brenda always runs into at least thirty people she knows when she’s out shopping. She’d get to show you off.”

“I’m not a prize exhibit,” he muttered, irritated.

Callie folded her arms across her chest. “The limited sightings of you over the past several years convinced me you’re a rare species.”

“I may not have been in Parkvale, but I’m always only a phone call or a flight away.” His voice was tighter now.

“You mean in case of a medical emergency?”

“I didn’t mean for a shopping emergency.”

“Your folks aren’t sick, but I think your mother is close to her emotional breaking point.”

Jack paused. “That diagnosis seems a little extreme. If there’s anything seriously wrong, believe me, I’ll see it.” He switched into the right lane, ready to exit the interstate. “But, Callie…” he flashed her the smile she suspected was calculated to make her roll over to have her tummy tickled “…I really appreciate your concern, and I know Mom and Dad do, too.”

His crazy-patient voice was back.

THEY ARRIVED IN Germantown, an affluent part of Memphis, at seven, and pulled up outside a solid three-story Georgian-style house.

Callie shook herself out of her contemplation of Jack’s arrogant denial that she might have a better handle on his parents than he did. “What’s this guy’s name again?”

“Sam Magill. His wife is my friend Adam Carmichael’s stepmother.”

“Adam Carmichael, the TV network guy?”

He nodded. “His family owns Memphis Channel Eight—do you know him?”

“A few years back, a girl from Parkvale—Casey Greene, whose sister Karen is one of my best friends—conned her fiancé into a surprise wedding show on Channel Eight. The guy dumped her on air and she ended up marrying Adam Carmichael in a fake wedding. Only it turned out to be legit.”

“None of that makes the slightest sense.” When Jack said things like that, his voice held a hint of a British accent that in other circumstances Callie might have found appealing.

“Casey and Adam must be the ‘irregular marriage situation’ you were talking about,” she said.

He pulled the key from the ignition. “If Sam dealt with the mess you just described, our divorce will be a piece of cake.”

The tall, slim woman who opened the wide front door was in her late fifties and extremely stylish.

“I’m Eloise Magill. You must be Callie.” She gave Callie’s hand a sympathetic squeeze. “And you must be Jack.” Her tone was cool, as if whatever was wrong with their marriage had to be his fault. Callie decided she liked Eloise.

“Sam’s just finishing a phone call.” She led them into a living room where the décor was an eclectic mix of chunky masculine furniture and feminine fripperies. Leather couches flanked a pink-and-gray-striped love seat; a silk fan, beaded glass coasters and a copy of Vogue cluttered the solid wooden coffee table. Somehow, it worked.

Sam, who had eyebrows bushy enough to house a small colony of beetles, and punctuated his telephone conversation with a startling smoker’s cough, acknowledged them with a wave.

A moment later, he hung up. “Thanks for looking after my guests, darling.” He took Eloise’s hand for a moment, then reluctantly relinquished it. The way he looked at her, and the way she looked right back, suggested this couple would never need a divorce lawyer.

Callie put a few more inches between her and Jack. Sam shook hands with them, directed them to one of the two leather couches, and sat down opposite. Eloise left the room with a promise to bring coffee.

“Why don’t you two tell me your situation?” Sam unscrewed the cap of his pen. “Then we can work out how best to proceed.”

Jack relaxed into the couch. He liked the look of Sam, and his calm logic. Even better, Callie had gone unexpectedly quiet. For the first time since he’d landed back in the U.S.A., he felt as if he was making progress toward the purpose of this trip.

He outlined to Sam how and why they’d got married. Even keeping it to the bare bones, the story didn’t get any better with the telling. He had a sudden inkling why Diana, his ex-girlfriend, had been so shocked to learn the truth, and why the gossip had spread so mercilessly among his colleagues.

“And now you want a divorce,” Sam said mildly, as if the end to this charade wasn’t long overdue. He tapped his pen against his legal pad. “Normally I’d recommend a husband and wife seek separate representation.”

“It’s not a proper marriage,” Jack said. “We both want to end it, as soon as possible.” He glanced at Callie for corroboration, but she was staring down at her hands, her cheeks sucked in as if she might start carping on about his parents again if she opened her mouth the tiniest bit.

It was probably best she didn’t talk.

Sam flipped his pen between his fingers. “My first duty as your lawyer is to recommend that you attempt to resolve your differences through mediation.”

“We barely know each other. We don’t have differences. ” Jack discounted the disagreement they’d had in the car, which had been pretty tame. Beside him, Callie’s fingers twitched.

Sam nodded. “Okay, you’re waiving mediation. Next, you need to consider that under Tennessee law, the default position is an equitable division of the matrimonial property.”

Callie perked up. “Do neurosurgeons earn more than florists?” she asked brightly. “I mean, I know they’re a lot more important.”

Jack shot her a look, one that worked well to crush know-it-all medical residents. She was entirely uncrushed. Her blue eyes sparked the way they had the day he’d arrived in town. Ignore her.

“We’ve agreed we’ll each take out of the marriage what we brought into it,” he told the lawyer.

Sam raised his eyebrows at Callie, who sighed theatrically, then nodded. The lawyer pursed his lips, and Jack was pretty sure the man was stifling a smile.

So much for their truce. Jack gritted his teeth. He’d gone easy on Callie in the car when she’d hassled him about his parents. Big mistake. Now she thought she could mess him around. He shouldn’t have given in to that unexpected sense of guilt that he might have exploited her desperate situation all those years ago.

“I’ll prepare the paperwork you’ll both need to sign in order to waive your share of your spouse’s assets,” Sam said. “Now, have a look at this.” He held out a sheet of paper, which Callie took before Jack could. “It’s a list of the permissible grounds for divorce in Tennessee. You’ll need to choose one.”

Jack refused to crane his neck to see over Callie’s shoulder. He could wait.

She made a show of tapping her chin with a finger, apparently deep in contemplation, then pointed to an item high on the list. “I like this first one. ‘Either party is naturally impotent and incapable of procreation.’” She jerked her head in Jack’s direction and gave Sam a significant look.

Jack clenched his teeth, but by superhuman effort refrained from declaring to Sam that he was not impotent. Because on that subject, there was such a thing as protesting too much. Still, he couldn’t hold back a growl.

Callie patted his knee. “Sweetie, it’s nothing to be ashamed of.”

A muffled sound came from Sam.

Okay, Jack was going to throttle her. Not here in the lawyer’s house; that would be stupid. He’d do it after they left, somewhere near the airport, where he could jump on the next plane before they found her body. The prospect of such utter abandonment of his Hippocratic oath cheered him.

“You know,” Callie reflected, “I’m thinking ‘willful or malicious desertion or absence without a reasonable cause’ might be more appropriate.”

He looked down his nose at her. “I don’t think any judge will consider my commitment to saving children’s lives unreasonable.”

“Touché,” she said sadly, and read on. “‘Cruel and inhuman treatment,’” she murmured with interest. “Oh, wait, I guess they mean toward me, not your parents.”

Jack snatched the list from her and began reading. “Here we go,” he said, triumphant. “All I have to do is make an attempt on your life, ‘by poison or any other means—’ and we have guaranteed grounds for divorce.”

She put a hand to her throat, as if she’d sensed the modus operandi of her imminent demise. “Go ahead. Your parents will see more of you when you’re in jail than they do now.”

She was driving him nuts. Jack turned away, so he wouldn’t be tempted to respond. “Do we need to decide the grounds now?” he asked Sam. “What’s the time line on this thing? I know we have to wait until I’ve been here thirty days before we can file.”

Oh, heck. Callie dragged air into her suddenly constricted lungs. She’d known her lie would come out, but she’d rather it wasn’t right after she’d been goading Jack. Was there any chance Sam wouldn’t expose her?

The lawyer’s shaggy eyebrows shot up. She was dead in the water.

“That’s not right,” Sam said. “As long as you have grounds, which it seems you do on several counts, and as long as one of you has been resident in Marquette County the past six months—” he looked at Callie, who reluctantly nodded “—and you’ve lived apart for a continuous period of two or more years without cohabiting as man and wife during that period…” He took a breath as he finished the spiel, then sealed Callie’s fate. “You can file the papers tomorrow.” He spread his hands. “Your divorce will be through in sixty days.”

“You mean,” Jack said slowly. “I have to stay for sixty days from when we file?”

Sam shook his head. “You don’t need to stay—in fact, you don’t have to be here at all. Callie can file for the divorce.”

Callie sucked in her cheeks and tried to appear surprised.

But Dr. Megabrain, who more often than not talked to her as if she had a whole bunch of screws missing, didn’t consider for one second that she might have misunderstood the Tennessee Code.

He twisted on the couch. Anger darkened his eyes to gunmetal, and he aimed an accusing finger at her jugular. “You lied to me.”

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