Sweethearts #40

Jim Bracken returns home after years of chasing success in the city, only to find that Doris—the girl he abandoned years ago—has withdrawn from their town's social scene entirely, living quietly at her family's beach cottage. When he tracks her down and their old feelings resurface, Doris refuses to forgive him for running away, but Jim is determined to prove that this time things will be different. Their volatile reunion at the country club dance forces them both to confront what they've lost and what they might still have a chance to find.

When bookkeeper Babe Leeds meets the new, serious department head Henry Slater, she can't resist needling him with jokes and flirtation—but her casual teasing masks something deeper on his side, and the line between laughter and genuine feeling gets dangerously blurred. As Babe keeps up the act to save face with her coworkers, Henry's patience wears thin, and a chance encounter at the train station forces them both to confront what's really at stake beneath all the kidding around.

A flight attendant named Martha has written off Captain Pat Dolan as nothing but a smooth-talking ladies' man—until a turbulent flight and an evening out reveal there's more substance beneath the glamorous surface. When Pat finally turns his attention toward Martha instead of the parade of other women, she discovers that the "glamor boy" might be exactly the man she's been waiting for all along.

A young woman desperate to escape an arranged meeting with a man named Vic Brennen flees to a secluded mountain hotel—only to fall for a charming stranger called Red without knowing his real identity. When their true names are finally revealed, Lila and Vic discover that the "chance meeting" they believed in was orchestrated all along by their fathers, who'd been banking on a spark between them.

A young woman watches her friend Dot thoughtlessly break an honest young contractor's heart during a summer romance, then abandon him without care when she returns to the city with another boyfriend. When Anne can't bear to see Deke hurt anymore, she finds herself returning to set things right—only to discover her feelings for him run far deeper than she ever realized. This 1957 romance from Sweethearts explores how the greatest love sometimes comes from an unexpected place.