Heart Throbs #44

When Steve returns home from overseas, Carol is thrilled to have her fiancé back—until she realizes the war has hardened him into a bitter, cynical stranger who doubts her faithfulness. As Steve struggles with suspicion and resentment toward the town and his old life, Carol must find a way to reach the man she loves beneath the walls he's built around his heart.

Vera has harbored a secret love for Bob Austin since high school, but when he starts dating Andrea Collins, she joins the cheerleading squad hoping to catch his eye—and eventually does, after an impulsive kiss at a football game. Though Bob breaks up with Andrea and pursues Vera, his feelings keep pulling him back to his old girlfriend, leaving Vera caught in a painful cycle of hope and heartbreak that tests whether she can finally walk away.

Wendy Evans arrives in Lansdale for a fresh start, only to be mysteriously mistaken for a hated woman named Claire Esterbrook—and when she meets the charming Russ Charteris on the bus, the town's cold treatment threatens to drive them apart. As Wendy desperately searches for answers about why the townspeople despise this stranger's name, she discovers a shocking double: Claire herself, and a tangled web of heartbreak involving a man named Larry Travers and an ex-fiancé, Peter Simms, who begins to fall for the girl he believes is his lost love.

Captain Joyce Prentice has harbored a secret crush on Sergeant Bert Wells through his newspaper photographs, and when he arrives at Camp Petticoat as a reporter, her dream seems to come true—until she witnesses him with Corporal Ruth Lynn and learns the painful truth about his real loyalties. Consumed by jealousy and wounded pride, Joyce uses her rank to strike back, but her conscience soon forces her to confront what kind of officer—and person—she's willing to become.