The Groom Came Back. Abby Gaines
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her lips together as Jack turned right and joined the interstate. She adjusted her seat, tested the smoothness of the leather upholstery with her fingers, then checked the glove compartment. Empty. She fiddled with the climate control for her side of the car. Cool air fanned her face, lifting her hair. She flipped the visor down to check if her hair was mussed. Hmm, not the best…She combed her fingers through it.
“Are you ADHD?” Jack asked.
Callie froze midcomb. “Will you stop doing that?”
“What?”
She dropped her hands into her lap. “Stop suggesting there’s something wrong with me every time I pull a face or scratch my nose.”
“I don’t.” He sounded genuinely surprised.
“Sometimes a squint is just a squint and a scratch is just a scratch.”
“I’m a doctor. I notice these things.” He was using his calming-a-crazy-patient tone again.
“And stop talking in that irritating voice.”
“You mean this one?” he said soothingly.
She reached across and smacked his arm. Encountering solid muscle beneath his polo shirt, she whipped her hand away. Neurosurgery must be a lot more physical than she thought.
He looked down at his arm, where she’d touched him, then glanced sidelong at her. “ADHD might explain—”
“Stop,” she ordered. “You don’t have to be a doctor every minute of the day.”
He frowned. “Of course I do. You can’t tell me you haven’t noticed what those are.” He waved at the variegated-leaved, deep red wildflowers growing alongside the interstate.
“Trilliums, Sweet Betsy variety,” she said automatically. “Common throughout the state.”
“See? If you can be a florist every minute of the day, I can be a doctor.” He paused. “So…no ADHD? Just a bad case of the fidgets?”
“I was keeping myself occupied so I wouldn’t get mad at you.”
He rubbed his chin. “You’re mad about me not recognizing my cousins?” His tone suggested there was no end to her unreasonableness.
“Yes…no…it’s more than that.” Callie chewed her lip, wondering where to start.
“We’re having a truce,” he reminded her.
“The only reason I’m holding back.”
He laughed. “Let’s talk about something that won’t make you mad. How’s the flower business?”
She twisted to face him. “Are you planning on offering more advice?”
“I have a responsibility to make sure you’re financially stable before we divorce.”
“Excuse me?”
“I promised your mother.” He didn’t sound as if he was kidding.
“I’m twenty-five,” Callie said. “Mom wouldn’t expect you to worry about me now.”
That was met with silence.
“I’m the least of your responsibilities.” A tiny dig she didn’t count as breaking their truce.
“Humor me,” he said, “and tell me how you’re doing. As soon as we get this divorce, you’re on your own.”
Callie shivered.
“You can turn the air down if you’re cold.” He adjusted the dial on her side.
He was doing it again. Callie’s fingers curled on her knees.
“I can’t figure out if you suffer from a total lack of sensitivity,” she said, “or if diagnosing a physical cause for every action comes with the high-handed, I-know-best doctor territory.”
With exaggerated care, he turned the temperature dial back up again. “If this is truce talk,” he said, “I’m glad we’re not fighting.”
Callie bared her teeth at him; it couldn’t be called a smile, but stopped short of a snarl.
Jack, on the other hand, did smile. “So, your finances. I assume your mom didn’t leave you much?”
“Her insurance was just enough to cover my orthodontist bills,” Callie said. Sensing his surprise, she added defensively, “At the time, it seemed good use of the money.”
Another of those sideways glances from Jack. She almost covered her mouth with her hand, the way she used to before her teeth were straightened. Talking about the past made her feel like that awkward seventeen-year-old again.
“Then, what, there was no money left for college?” He flipped his turn signal and zipped past a Winnebago.
“I got a one-year business diploma at community college, mostly paid for by your parents,” she said. “Even if there’d been the money for college, I would have chosen to stay in Parkvale.” In the interests of their truce, she kept any comparison with his leave-and-don’t-look-back attitude out of her voice.
“I guess you would, given the lengths we went to so you could stay with my folks,” he said, equally neutrally.
Callie relaxed. If they stayed on their best behavior, she could envisage them having a mature discussion about Dan and Brenda. The kind of discussion they should have had years ago, if only she’d been able to dump the image of Jack as the authoritative figure who’d made all the decisions, starting with their wedding.
“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.