New Year Wedding for the Crown Prince by Meredith Webber

Author:Meredith Webber
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Harlequin
Published: 2018-08-14T15:03:20+00:00

CHAPTER SEVEN

THEY’D WATCHED THE fireworks from the bluff, Dottie sitting between them in the deckchairs Charles had set up, eating fish and chips from cardboard boxes at Jo’s insistence that it was a summer carnival must.

The fish, freshly caught by one of the trawlers moored on the harbour wall at the mouth of the creek, was delicious, the chips hot and crispy.

Charles leant back in his chair and watched the rockets shoot into the sky, bursting into brilliant bouquets of light that reflected on the water below so the whole world seemed to glow with colour.

He watched Jo’s face, too, from time to time, surprising a child-like wonder in the gaze of this seemingly practical woman.

But he couldn’t sit and stare at Jo. Dottie would be sure to notice and right now whatever it was they had between them was too new and fragile to be put under Dottie’s blunt scrutiny.

He turned his thoughts back to his grandmother.

Her talk of seeing snow at Christmas had come as such a surprise he could barely take it in, but she’d said it, and it could only mean she’d accepted him as her grandson.

It might only be a small crack in the wall of silence she’d built around his mother, but it was there.

And was he thinking of Dottie so he didn’t have to think about too much about Jo—another woman he knew but really didn’t know? He was reasonably sure the attraction he felt ran deep—but for a virtual stranger?

He’d picked up snippets about her life here and there, and seeing her around the house, watching the consideration with which she treated Dottie, he knew she was kind, thoughtful and very caring.

But why the surrogacy?

Because she was kind and caring?

And what kind of life had she led before it?

Hadn’t Dottie mentioned a man?

A woman as beautiful as Jo would attract most men.

‘...no work clothes here, and I don’t want to disturb my locum and his family, so I might go into Anooka tomorrow and get some basic mix and match things there. The stores are all open seven days a week right through the holiday period.’

He’d missed the first part of the conversation. Had she asked if he wanted to go along?

The question lost relevance when Dottie said, ‘And while you’re away, Charles can take me down to the harbour, and we’ll walk along the jetty, and I can show him where the big boats used to come in when the town was first settled.’

‘Do you think she’s mellowing?’ he asked Jo when he’d put the deck chairs away and found her in the kitchen, making Dottie’s night-time cocoa.

‘Definitely,’ Jo said.

‘That was a “definitely” with a “but” hovering above it,’ Charles told her.

‘The “but” is your mother, isn’t it? You’re learning more about Bertie but, apart from the crystal ornaments, she’s still tight-lipped about your mother, though it’s hard to fathom why. Okay, so she ran off with someone Dottie didn’t approve of—or maybe it was Bertie who disapproved. Maybe it

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