title: The Rebel's Return
author: MacKenzie, Myrna
description: A man with a past…
  Jake Walker has been trouble from the day he was born. Son of a drunk and an ex-con, he grew up using his fists and his ability to antagonize even the saintliest of human beings. When student teacher Tess Buchanan caught him in a school closet making love to a local girl, he and the girl were both expelled just before graduation, and Jake left town. Now he's back—reluctantly—but he intends to be gone as soon as he sells his mother's house. The fact that the woman who ruined his life lives right across the road and is—once again—inserting herself into his business, only makes his departure more imperative.
  A maddening situation…
  Tess Buchanan has always been the type of person who never steps over the line of acceptable behavior, and she's engaged to marry the town's most admirable man. She has also been terribly, infuriatingly and reluctantly fascinated with troublemaker Jake since the day she first laid eyes on him. The fact that he never even knew she existed until she ruined his life and disappeared for the following eleven years makes their past even more pathetic and awful. And then there's the fact that the girl he was caught making love to gave birth to a child soon afterwards, a child who has never seen his father. Now Tess, an expert on local architecture, has been elected to make sure Jake's mother's historical house is in order before he can sell it, throwing her, his nemesis, right into his path.
  If they're lucky, they'll be able to finish this quickly and move on with their separate lives…but good luck has never been a part of Jake's life…
  Note: This book was originally published in 1997 as The Scandalous Return of Jake Walker.