Harlequin Romance March 2021 Box Set Cara Colter (the mitten read aloud TXT) 📖

hands gripping her opposite elbows. ‘I rang Mr Dunkley. He knew nothing about it, though he told me the firm was a reputable one that he’d often used and recommended.’

Damn. He hadn’t thought to clue the lawyer in.

‘Then I rang the firm to find out when they’d been booked, and they told me it was a rush job and they’d only been hired on Monday.’

He grimaced. Sprung.

She stared at him. ‘So it was you. You want to tell me why?’

Things inside him knotted. ‘Are you mad at me?’

‘I don’t know yet.’

Why would she be mad at him? He’d organised it for her benefit.

‘The truth is it should’ve been done before you arrived in New York…’

‘But you didn’t want to change things.’ She turned to face him fully. ‘That’s understandable. You were grieving.’

‘But seeing you in the apartment—getting used to seeing you there—has made me realise how damn gloomy the place is. You’re spending a lot of time in it—working, living, sleeping there. You deserve something better than a…a dreary brown box.’

He’d been about to say prison, but checked himself. It wasn’t a prison. And he refused to think of it as a prison for Frances either. It had been a haven.

‘Why did you lie about it being something you’d organised ages ago?’

His collar threatened to cut off his air supply. ‘I didn’t want you feeling it was a nuisance or that I was going to a lot of bother—which I wasn’t, by the way.’ He glanced at her briefly then back at the road, and swallowed. ‘I didn’t want you refusing and putting up with all that depressing brown. I didn’t want you getting into a funk.’

Something flashed through her eyes and her lips briefly flattened. A bad taste stretched through his mouth.

‘I’m sorry. I should’ve been upfront with you. But it’s been an emotional time and…’ His words petered out. ‘You’re mad.’

‘I’m not mad.’

He didn’t believe her.

‘I’ll be glad to be rid of the brown. It was nice of you to think of it.’

All he’d done since Callie had landed in New York was think about her. He stretched his neck, first to the left and then to the right. As soon as she started her new job and her new life things would return to normal.

‘But…’ she said.

Something in her tone had everything inside him clenching twice as hard.

‘Can I ask you not to make any more decisions like that? I know you’re Frances’s executor, but for the time being at least the apartment belongs to me. I should be the one to make any decisions about it. I mean, what if I’d organised painters myself?’

He stiffened.

She huffed out a laugh. ‘Relax! I haven’t. It seemed too much trouble to go to when the future is still so uncertain.’

He tapped his fingers against the steering wheel. ‘This is what’s been bugging you since you hopped in the car?’

‘Technically it’s been bugging me since the painters knocked on my door.’

‘Why didn’t you have this out with me earlier instead of sitting there stewing in silence?’

‘If your actions had been mean-spirited, Owen, I’d have raked you over the coals before I even entered the car. But you organising the painters wasn’t mean-spirited. You were trying to look after me in the same way you do with Lissy.’

‘But it’s still irked you?’

‘Because I’m a grown up! You took a decision I should be making out of my hands. You’ve no right to do that!’

He snorted. ‘You sure you’re not mad?’

Her eyes flashed and he berated himself for poking at her.

‘Sorry…’

From the corner of his eye he saw her haul in a deep breath, as if trying to compose herself.

‘I’m not long out of a relationship with a man who…’

He found himself gripping the steering wheel too hard again. ‘Who what?’ He barely recognised his own voice.

‘Who tried to rob me of my power. Who almost succeeded.’

He swung to her, appalled. ‘I wasn’t trying to do that.’

‘I know—which is why I’m not mad. I know you’re looking out for me because of the obligation you feel towards Frances.’

Except it was starting to feel like a whole lot more than that.

‘I’m really sensitive to anyone taking advantage of me or overstepping boundaries at the moment. Normally I’d have let it pass. But after Dominic I swore to myself I’d stop being a doormat.’

He mulled her words over. ‘So me going over your head to organise something you were more than capable of organising yourself…?’

‘Pushed all my buttons.’ She twisted her hands in her lap. ‘It’s not so easy to slap someone’s wrist for overstepping boundaries when the service offered is kindly meant.’

He reached out and clasped her hands. The tension radiating from them told him it had taken courage for her to raise the topic and stick up for herself, to claim her power. But she’d still done it, and he admired her for it.

‘You have my sincerest apologies—along with my promise to observe all appropriate boundaries from now on. I’ve no wish to make you feel less capable or less anything, Callie.’

‘Thank you.’

The smile she sent him had heat gathering in his veins. He reefed his hand back, hastily reminding himself about appropriate boundaries.

‘So…’ She shuffled down in her seat, the movement easy and relaxed. ‘Did you get my party invitation?’

It had been slipped under his door yesterday afternoon. ‘Yes, thank you.’

‘It’ll be nice to have the apartment looking fresh for that.’ She surveyed her fingernails. ‘Are you going to come?’

‘Wouldn’t miss it for the world. Who else have you invited?’

‘All the other tenants. I so hope they come.’

He made a vow to ensure each and every one of them turned up.

She rattled off three names in quick succession. ‘They’re the girls you met in the park, plus their parents.’

She’d met their parents?

‘And I’ve invited your mother, Jack and Lissy. Mr Dunkley and his wife. As well as Josephine, Eliza and Betty. Melissa Hitchcock and her husband.’ She waved a hand in the air. ‘And a few other people.’

He started to laugh.