Caleb's Bride. Wendy Warren

huge and glorious, she waited for Dean to arrive at the Fourth of July celebration downtown. But when he showed up, there was a girl clinging happily to his arm, a lovely girl he introduced to everyone as the woman he hoped to marry.

      Numb at first, feeling frozen inside, Gabby somehow managed to smile and congratulate Dean along with everyone else. Two hours past the fireworks display, however, her emotions thawed and the misery poured out in waves so overpowering it was difficult to breathe.

      She had expected to become a woman in Dean’s arms. The best moments of her life were supposed to have happened with him. At eighteen, she had yet to experience her first kiss. Suddenly, it all seemed like such a horrid waste.

      That was when Gabrielle Coombs decided enough was enough and threw herself at a boy for the very first time.

      And Cal Wells took pity and made love to her.

      Cal slipped on a pair of ridiculously expensive sunglasses, a gift from his ex-wife, who had never met a label she didn’t like. The dark glasses gave him the comforting illusion of privacy. He preferred not to make eye contact with others this morning. Not that many people in town were likely to remember him or would rush to welcome him back even if they did, but Cal’s emotions were running so high at the moment that he didn’t want to make small talk.

      Gabrielle Coombs. She was still here, in their hometown. Still single from what he gathered. And, even though she hadn’t admitted a thing, he’d bet his last paycheck that she was still in love with Dean Kingsley.

      Beneath his breath, Cal muttered a word that would cost his ten-year-old daughter a dollar if she said it.

      “I acted like a jackass.” He spoke out loud to himself, a habit he’d gotten into since his marriage disintegrated. He’d gone years during which his lengthiest adult conversations occurred as he looked into the mirror while he was shaving. “Gabby never got over him,” he muttered.

      Fifteen years ago, when Cal headed back to college after what had amounted to the best and worst summer of his life, he’d assumed that if he ever returned to Honeyford, he’d find Gabby married with kids, a home, a PTA membership. Her husband, he figured, would love her, but would have no clue as to how lucky he was to be part of the Coombs clan.

      Cal would have known.

      For five years—from the time he was thirteen until he’d gone off to college—Cal had spent every minute he could on the Coombses’ farm, making himself too useful for anyone to complain about his constant presence, studying every detail of normal family life as if there’d be a pop quiz at the end of each week.

      He’d met two of Gabby’s brothers in wood shop at school, and they’d invited him home one afternoon to hang out. Their mother, Nancy, had made an enormous platter of sandwiches as a snack—not even for dinner, which had astounded him. At that time in his life, he was lucky to scrounge up enough food for a single daily meal at home. Nancy had insisted they all wash their hands before they touched a bite. While her sons had rolled their eyes and protested, their perpetually smiling mother had kept up a running commentary about the baseball jerseys she had mended that day, the old clothes she’d boxed and wanted her sons to drop off at the church, and the barn dance she would like them to attend, because “Lord knows your wives will thank me someday.” Cal had listened to the woman’s every word and followed her instructions without a peep.

      For years he had wondered whether such a family existed outside of television reruns. After he’d found them, and even though they hadn’t belonged to him, he had known instantly that he wanted to be asked back again and again. And he had been. To this day, he counted what he had learned in the Coombses’ old farmhouse to be one of his greatest blessings.

      Maybe you wanted Gabby so you could become a permanent part of the family. Maybe that’s all it ever was.

      The old explanation, the one he’d been running through his head for years, cropped up again, and as always he played with it awhile, half-hoping he could make it ring true.

      The thing was, that very first day on the farm he realized Gabby was someone special. His first clue had been when she’d admitted to her father, Frank, that she’d hidden one of their older lambs, Chester, until she could “talk some sense into” Frank and make him see that the little guy should be a pet, not a lamb chop. She spoke with persuasive passion and loyalty, claiming that vegetarianism would be better for the whole family. A few weeks later she saved a spider from the shoe her brother Ben had been about to hammer it with, and more times than Cal could count, Gabby showered the people in her sphere with a similar protectiveness. In school she befriended the new, the awkward and the adrift, pulling them into her circle of friends. She wasn’t one of the most popular girls, but she was well-liked.

      Despite the fact that she’d never shown him quite the same level of concern, Cal felt drawn to the sensitive girl. He enjoyed feeling like one of her brothers and reminded himself that he didn’t want anyone treating him like some defenseless lamb or brainless bug, anyway, so who cared if sometimes she kept her distance? By the time he turned fifteen, however, he knew he was nursing a crush on Gabby. She represented something innocent and good. Something he wanted in his own life. Something that could change him.

      At seventeen, he’d realized he didn’t stand a chance with her. In a million years he wouldn’t be able to measure up to the golden boy Dean Kingsley, whom Gabby appeared to love with a loyalty Cal would happily die to feel…from someone.

      At eighteen, Cal graduated from high school, the first person in his family of drug addicts and wastrels to do so, and he graduated on the honor roll. He had a college scholarship, a student loan, a dorm room waiting for him and more self-esteem than ever in his life. And he still thought about Gabby.

      So, when he found her crying in the gazebo in Doc Kingsley park after the July Fourth fireworks display, her spirit crushed because Dean had returned from college for the summer with a girlfriend on his arm, Cal claimed that exquisitely vulnerable moment for himself and became Gabby Coombs’s first lover. He and Gabby had been two young people hungry to be held.

      It had been an aching, tender, heartbreaking night… each of them wanting someone who didn’t return the feelings.

      Cal’s steps slowed as he realized he was abreast of King’s Pharmacy, the business Dean’s father had owned. Dean had worked here through high school. And Gabby had gone in on one fabricated excuse or another every chance she’d gotten.

      Turning toward the window with its large gold lettering, Cal noted the sign that read, Dean Kingsley, Pharmacist on Duty. The golden boy had not disappointed. Cal shook his head. “You could have had her if you’d crooked your finger.”

      In the morning sun, Cal studied his reflection in the glass. Well-groomed, well-dressed and, when he wasn’t acting like a petulant imbecile, well-spoken; he was a far cry from the boy he’d been. Back then, he’d been a struggling youth with a messy past, and he doubted that anyone, including Gabby’s parents and brothers, would have preferred him over Dean Kingsley as her boyfriend. Against the bright light of the doctor’s perfect son, Cal hadn’t been able to shine at all.

      Turning away from the pharmacy, Cal strode up the street. Some of the best advice he’d ever gotten had come from Gabby’s own grandfather. Max was the only person Cal had ever told about his confusing feelings for Gabrielle. He’d even considered turning down his scholarship so he could remain in Honeyford, near her.

      Begged for a clue about how to claim Gabby’s attention, Max had put a hand on Cal’s shoulder. “Son, if you keep one foot in the past and one in the future, you’re going to piss all over today. Just keep moving.”

      Sound advice. There had been more, but that was the plainspoken guidance Cal had followed.

      He planned to follow it again now.

      His heart both hardened and softened as he thought of Minna, his beautiful, smart, talented, anxious daughter, who, so far, had been as unlucky in love as Cal. He had returned to Honeyford to give Minna the family they hadn’t been able to build in Chicago. The Coombs clan was the example he wanted