She’d been proud of her love for Thom, and before she left to meet him that fateful evening, she’d boldly announced her intentions to her family. Her stomach twisted at the memory. Her parents were shocked as well as appalled; she and Thom had kept their secret well. Her mother had burst into tears, her father had shouted and her two younger sisters had wailed in protest. Undeterred, Noelle had marched out the door, suitcase in hand, to meet the man she loved. The man she’d defied her family to marry. Except that he didn’t show up.

At first she’d assumed it was a misunderstanding— that she’d mistaken the agreed-upon time. Then, throwing caution to the winds, she’d phoned his house and asked to speak to him, only to learn that Thom had gone bowling.

He’d gone bowling? Apparently some friends from school had phoned and off he’d gone, leaving her to wait in doubt and misery. The parking lot at the bowling alley confirmed his father’s words. There was Thom’s car—and inside the Bowlerama was Thom, carousing with his friends. Noelle had peered through the window and seen the waitress sitting on his lap and the other guys gathered around, joking and teasing. Before she went home, Noelle had placed a nasty note on his windshield, in which she described him as a scum-of-the-earth bastard. Their supposed elopement, their so-called love had all been a fraud, a cruel joke. She figured it was revenge what for her mother had done, losing Thom’s grandmother’s precious tea service. Not losing it, actually. She’d borrowed it to display at an open house for another real estate agent—and someone had taken it. That was how the feud started and it had escalated steadily after that.

To make matters worse, she’d had to return home in humiliation and admit that Thom had stood her up. Like the heroine of an old-fashioned melodrama, she’d been jilted, abandoned and forsaken.

For days she’d moped around the house, weeping and miserable. Thom hadn’t phoned or contacted her again. It was difficult to believe he could be so heartless, but she had all the evidence she needed. She hadn’t seen or talked to him since. For ten years she’d avoided returning to the scene of her shame.

The grinding sound of the conveyor belt gearing up broke Noelle from her reverie. Luggage started to roll out from the black hole behind the rubber curtain. Thom stepped forward, in a hurry to claim his suitcase and leave, or so it seemed. Noelle was no less eager to escape. She’d rather wait in the damp cold outside the terminal than stand five feet across from Thomas Sutton.

The very attractive Thomas Sutton. Even better-looking than he’d been ten years ago. Life just wasn’t fair.