As Long As I Have You by Bella Andre

Author:Bella Andre [Andre, Bella]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Romance, Fiction
Publisher: Oak Press
Published: 2019-10-15T18:30:00+00:00

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

All day, Owen had been tethered to his telephone. The conference calls with the producers in France that he’d put off earlier in the week could no longer be ignored. But as they hammered out details and timelines, he’d been thinking of Mari.

His grandmother had left fifteen minutes ago for the bookshop. He’d wanted to accompany her, but that was right when the president of the French network joined the call. Planning to follow as soon as he could, he had gestured for her to go without him.

His grandmother’s text made his chest tighten with concern: Bringing Mari home for tea after a huge shock. Please put the kettle on.

Though the network president didn’t seem ready to wrap up the call just yet, Owen made his excuses, then left his desk without giving work another thought. For the past year, he’d lived and breathed business. At last, he could see how far overboard he’d gone. Yes, his work on behalf of his grandmother’s books was important, but it should never have become the be-all and end-all of his life. There was no question that last night’s talk with Mathilda had helped absolve him of a great deal of the guilt he’d been carrying around for the past year. But what felt just as momentous was that he hadn’t been able to shake Mari from his thoughts since the moment they’d met.

He didn’t want to shake her away. Just the opposite, in fact.

He wanted nothing more than the chance to know Mari better. And not only because of their spectacular kisses…although he wouldn’t deny just how many times he’d replayed them in his head.

As he made tea, he tried to figure out what the latest shock could be after yesterday’s nasty pile-of-bills surprise. Owen loved Charlie—they all had. And he dearly wished Mari’s father had still been here today. But that didn’t mean he could ignore the man’s faults, especially where his daughter was concerned.

On top of being absent for nearly Mari’s entire life, Charlie had left her with a filthy flat, a run-down bookshop, and a stack of unpaid bills. Owen knew his perspective on families was different from many others’. His parents had been happily married for more than three decades, and he was close to his four siblings. But was it too much to ask for parents to openly love their children without making them feel as though they’d done something wrong at some point along the way?

The kettle was whistling by the time he heard the front door open. He poured water into the pot and brought it over to the table just as Mari and Mathilda came into the kitchen.

Mari’s face was pale, and she was clutching a stack of black art journals.

“Thank you for making tea, darling.” His grandmother led Mari over to a chair and sat her down, then moved to the cupboard to get out her stash of chocolate Hobnobs, her special biscuits that Owen knew not to eat, or suffer the consequences.

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