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

it’s opened up some of those old wounds. That’s why I wanted to say something. It’s not too late to right some of those wrongs. I’m realising that myself.’

‘Nobody was invited to the wedding,’ Matteo said. ‘Charlie’s parents couldn’t get away and so I promised her that we would have a big party, renew our vows in front of everybody who loved us. But somehow I never found the time and then it was too late.’

‘Too late?’

‘She left me,’ Matteo said, and as he said the words he realised that maybe he had been waiting for that ending all along. He’d always thought Charlie loving him was too good to be true. Part of him had known he was never enough for her, the boy whose mother didn’t want him, whose father didn’t want him. The boy not good enough for his only parental figure, always trying to live up to expectations. The boy condemned to boarding school, an ever-changing series of nannies, abandoned by all who knew him. How could that person be worthy of anyone, especially someone like Charlie? At some level, Matteo had been waiting for Charlie to realise she had made a mistake since the day they’d met.

The question was, had he been pushing her away, not willing to live waiting for her to realise she’d made a mistake any longer? Was that what had happened? Because when she’d left he felt almost vindicated, alongside the devastation. She’d proved him right.

But this time he had decided to fight. He’d put his grandfather’s expectations first as a teenager and nobody knew what it had cost him to turn his mother away. He’d never even admitted it to himself. This time he’d realised that he had to risk himself, to make himself vulnerable, to ask for another chance. And fate had given him that chance. So why was he here in a gentlemen’s club in Mayfair with his father, not back in Italy? Charlie had a gala in just two days’ time and he had promised to be there. Just this morning it had seemed impossible that he’d ever be able to keep that promise; now he knew it was impossible not to.

He had to prove to her that he meant it, meant that she was the most important thing in his life and that if his life didn’t have space in it for her then he needed to make changes and find that space. He needed to prove to himself that he wasn’t scared. That he could be all in, publicly, privately, emotionally and for ever.

He had to be vulnerable. Matteo took a deep breath and looked up at his father. ‘I need your help,’ he said.

* * *

‘Charlie, don’t look so worried.’ Lucia patted Charlie reassuringly on the arm. ‘I’m sure it will all come together tomorrow.’

Charlie groaned. ‘I have put on literally countless shows,’ she said. ‘And I do not recall a single dress rehearsal that has gone as badly as that. I hope you are right; I don’t know what else I can do…’

Everything that could have gone wrong during the dress rehearsal had. The sound system had broken and Charlie had ended up playing the music from her phone, which barely made enough sound to reach the stage. Three girls had tripped over their costumes, four had cried because they didn’t like the colour they were wearing, countless had forgotten their cues, their spots and which way to turn.

She’d hoped for a straightforward run-through; instead she had endured four hours of tears, tantrums and children threatening to quit. Mentally, she’d also indulged in all three, but her job was to try and stay calm, unflappable and keep everything together.

Why was she doing this again? This wasn’t her home, she didn’t really know these children, this wasn’t even her family. It was Matteo’s family, and he wasn’t here. Again.

She summoned up a weary smile. ‘It’ll be fine,’ she said, not knowing who she was trying to convince most. ‘I’ll see you tomorrow.’

The walk back up the hill towards the villa seemed to take for ever. The footpath seemed long and lonely and deserted when it was just her, steeper than she remembered when she had thoughts weighing her down, not conversation distracting her. Things didn’t improve when she got back. Maria was popping in to clean, but Charlie had reassured her that she didn’t really need her services when she was out most of the time rehearsing. This meant she came back to an empty building and what felt like an endless lonely evening to dwell on everything that might go wrong the next day.

Some salad was waiting for her in the fridge, along with a chilled bottle of wine, but she wasn’t really hungry, nor did she want a drink; she just knew it would make her thoughts churn even more.

It had been four days since Matteo had left. He’d managed a few quick texts and just one hurried, distracted call. She’d known taking care of the bribery business would be time-consuming, but his very presence back in London seemed to have unleashed a storm of unrelated and equally urgent work and he had been inundated. He’d mentioned that his grandfather seemed ill and he needed to clear some of his workload before he could return.

Charlie didn’t want to dwell on what had happened before and be pessimistic about the future but history seemed to be repeating itself in a pattern she was already familiar with and she didn’t know how to handle it any better this time than she had last time.

Maybe they were kidding themselves that this marriage could work. They were too different, wanted different things, had different values. Love and desire could only get a marriage so far; there also had to be shared goals, communication—and actually spending time together couldn’t hurt either. She hadn’t made a fuss when he’d returned to London, nor had she made it some kind of test, but it was turning into a test