Out of Step With Love — Bennie C. Hall

Hazel tried to put Dave Stewart out of her life, but his stubborn image refused to get out of her heart.

Her Handmade Halo

Hazel Gilmore believed she was born to live graciously, and she had no intention of settling for less. She had traveled to distant exotic lands as a teenager with her foreign correspondent father and was impressed with the life she had led. But upon returning home to a small Maryland suburb, Hazel met Dave Stewart, a handsome intern. Even though Dave fell in love with her, Hazel refused to play second fiddle to a stethoscope and struggle through a doctor's early years.

Given the opportunity to strike out on her own as a career girl in Washington, Hazel met sophisticated man-of-the-world Mark Graham, and she was forced to change her image and stop wearing her handmade halo. Could Hazel accept this change before she lost out on love?

After spending her teens in various glamorous places overseas, where her father had been a foreign correspondent, Hazel Gilmore returned with her family to their home town of Potomac Grove in Maryland, where they were to live while Phil Gilmore took a leave of absence to write a book. Not only was Hazel a stranger in the place she barely remembered, but she was resented by the town-folk because of her delusions of grandeur and exaggerated sense of self-importance.

Even the young intern who was on the point of falling in love with her was worried that she could never settle down to being the wife of a hardworking and dedicated doctor. And Hazel was as certain as he that their romance could come to no happy conclusion and that the best thing to do was to break it off at once before she submitted to an existence that offered only drudgery.

Hero: Dr./Doctor David "Dave" Stewart
Heroine: Hazel Gilmore

Original title: The Handmade Halo