Harlequin Romance March 2021 Box Set by Cara Colter (best novel books to read .TXT) 📕

‘Until you realised you quite liked things a little less windblown. Like I said, I was furious. I changed my hair for you, the way I dressed, gave up my job. Turned into the little wife waiting at home with your dinner drying out in the oven and was all self-righteously angry. I told myself I made all the compromises. But I didn’t, not in my heart. I should have accepted that if you are in the middle of a big business deal you probably can’t take a long lunch break to come picnic with me. I should have known that buying a dress from an experimental designer just out of art college is a privilege, but that doesn’t mean I should wear it to a fundraising ball full of clients you’re trying to impress. I told myself that you married me for me and I shouldn’t have to change for you. But I wanted you to change for me. How is that fair?’

Matteo sat back and stared up at the moon as he took in her words, took in the truth of them. He loved everything about Charlie, her vibrancy and her warmth and the way she lived every moment to the full. But the asymmetrical orange and yellow and lime-green dress, although probably very stylish in the end-of-year degree show where she had bought it, would have looked outlandish at the fundraising ball thrown by the philanthropic client he was trying to attract. But should he have asked her to tone it down next time, suggested she shop somewhere more conventional? Should he have told her that her hair was all very well for a primary school teacher but it was out of place in the royal box at Ascot?

He knew the answer.

Just as he knew that, much as he’d wanted to spend long lunches with her, to knock off early, to take long weekends, he simply hadn’t been able to bring himself to make the time. Those golden weeks after they’d met, his concentration had been on her, not work, and part of him couldn’t help thinking that lapse in concentration had contributed to his grandfather’s stroke, no matter what the doctor said. The problem hadn’t been his lack of time, just as the problem hadn’t been Charlie’s taste in clothes; it had been his reaction. He’d been so curt, so cutting by the end, knowing he was hurting her and taking out the guilt he felt about both her loneliness and hurt and about his grandfather’s stroke and slow recovery on Charlie. Maybe he had subconsciously blamed her after all. He knew that was what she suspected. But no; he had blamed himself. For taking his eye off work, for letting his grandfather shoulder so much while he was off staring at the stars on a beach with Charlie.

‘If you’d crashed a week later,’ Charlie said, ‘I wouldn’t be here. I’d have been in Vietnam.’

Matteo turned back to her, surprised by the apparent change in conversation. ‘Vietnam?’

‘Yes, because obviously I wasn’t going to just mope around and feel sorry for myself; I had to do something impulsive. Because that’s what I do. I don’t like to feel sorry for myself or look back. I like to move on to a new adventure and hope I get over whatever’s upset me soon. So I got in touch with a friend who I knew was travelling and arranged to meet her in Vietnam. I told her that I was going to party my divorce away, even though all I really wanted to do was to hide away and lick my wounds. I married you on impulse, walked out on you on impulse and was going to leave the country and put it all behind me on an impulse—only I impulsively decided to nurse you through concussion and lie to you instead.’ She gave a bitter little laugh that tore at his heart. ‘I live my life on a whim. What kind of person does that make me?’

‘Going on holiday doesn’t make you a bad person, Charlie.’

But she didn’t listen, half talking over him. ‘I’ve been taking a hard look at myself since we split up, trying to figure out why I reacted so badly to your suggestions.’

‘You have every right to dress how you want. And every right to be furious with me for speaking to you the way I did.’

‘I did and I do. But why is it so important to me to be so different? I was always an extrovert, the kind of kid who loves putting on plays and meeting people; embassies can be pretty boring places, full of protocols—where we went, who we went with, even friends had to be vetted. I felt so confined all the time, apart from two things. One was when I danced and the other was when my parents would say, Let’s just have fun today, and we’d head out without an embassy driver and just be normal tourists.’

‘That makes sense.’

She reached out and took his hand, her fingers laced through his, her smile tender as she looked at him. ‘I know it was worse for you, raised by nannies and boarding school. Now I know how lucky I really was to have parents who loved me, the chance to live in such amazing places. But back then I felt very hard done by. When I found out Phoebe was going to live with our grandmother I just decided then and there that I was going to as well. My parents tried to persuade me to come to Singapore with them but I talked them round, and it felt so liberating to make my own decision, to have some control of my own destiny, to do what I wanted when I wanted. I decided I always wanted to live like that, on my terms. My friends always said that there was no Keep Out sign that