One Snowbound New Year's Night by Dani Collins

Author:Dani Collins
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Harlequin
Published: 2021-10-15T12:46:05+00:00

CHAPTER EIGHT

“BECCA.”

The timer on the oven sounded as Van tried to call her back. Damn it.

He rose to check the cake, then had to find and wash an empty wine bottle to set the thing to cool upside down on the neck. What a ridiculous procedure, but he’d be damned if he would burn or ruin it.

I’m making you a cake, aren’t I?

It was nostalgia, Van. You think we’re the first couple to have one for the road?

He’d been stung by that, still awash in postorgasmic chemicals and wanting to keep that train rolling. But she didn’t think they should put much stock into it.

Any leftover tenderness from their passionate clash had completely faded as he revisited his father’s treachery. He’d almost forgotten the part Becca had played in all of that. Not that she’d done it on purpose, but his father had seen Van’s decision to stay in Sydney as choosing Becca over plans that had been in place for at least a decade.

That final altercation had been a lot worse than Van had revealed to Becca. Even though he had been determined to do his own thing and genuinely didn’t want to work with his father, his father’s accusations had landed hard. Van had wondered if he was more like the rest of his family than he wanted to be, using people when they were convenient, walking away from a commitment when it no longer suited him.

In his mind, he’d been sticking by the vows he’d made to Becca—only to have her tell him their marriage was over. That had been enough for him to pigeonhole her under “people who screwed me over” and expect her to do it again.

She’d been injured by his accusation, though. He’d watched her big brown eyes dim with startled hurt. The fact was, Becca was exactly sentimental enough to come all this way for a modest locket. That earnest softness in her was the reason he’d been drawn to marry her. She wasn’t like most of the people who surrounded him, all pushing and shoving for higher returns and status symbols and whatever else they thought he could give them.

Was the locket her only reason for being here? He just didn’t know. As he’d been thrust back into the swamp on the heels of his father’s departure, he’d resented Becca for leaving him to navigate that alone. For not having her calm warmth to come home to. It wasn’t like her. He’d grown used to her being there for him.

He closed his eyes in a wince, recognizing his father’s selfishness in that thought. Worse, Van had been busy when he returned. So freaking buried under work, traveling, taking calls at all hours... He would have fallen into the pattern they had already established. Instead of telling her he had to train, he would have said he had to work. Despite his best claims in Sydney, nothing would have changed for her.

I was alone here so often, I forgot I was married.

She was divorcing him because she hadn’t had a husband in the first place.

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