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