Return to Monte Carlo by Cate C. Wells EPUB & PDF – eBook Details Online
- Status: Available for Free Download
- Authors: Cate C. Wells
- Language: English
- Genre: 20th Century Historical Romance
- Format: PDF / EPUB
- Size: 2 MB
- Price: Free
DIANE, 1982
My husband is four hours late for our first anniversary dinner.
Every second that passes, my guts twist tighter, and it’s harder
and harder to breathe. I can’t let it show on my face. The in-laws
would be too pleased.
So instead, I examine a vase, an Etruscan reproduction from the
seventeenth century. It’s beautiful, and an heirloom, but I don’t know which
branch of my husband’s venerable family bought it off the black market.
Before I married into old money, I thought folks like the de Noli family
would never dirty their hands, but as it turns out, crime is rampant in Monte
Carlo. It’s just no one ever gets caught, and once you’ve gotten away with
it, no one cares if you showcase your stolen goods on a Connemara marble
pedestal in the east salon and rig up a special light to shine down on it
twenty-four hours a day.
My mama would hatch an egg if she knew there were folks who left
lights on all day and all night, even when no one’s in the room.
The salon is full now. The whole household is here, except Marco and
my father-in-law. They’re stuck at the office again. Sienna, Marco’s pitchperfect PA, rang to let me know earlier, right before we sat down to dinner.
Her tone conveyed nothing but polite regret, even though she would know
that today is our anniversary. As I’ve been told a hundred times, Sienna is
indispensable to the operations of De Noli International. Nothing gets past
her. She knows what today is.
Did she remind him, and he didn’t care?
My guts twist tighter, and my lungs ache. I feel like I’m dangling over
the side of the Grand Canyon by a yarn hair tie, the kind I wore as a girl that
seemed made to unravel.
If I’d made a point of reminding Marco about our anniversary, he’d
have made sure to make it home on time, even if he didn’t want to. He’s a
standup guy. He always does the right thing.
I could have mentioned it this morning when he woke me by sitting on
the edge of the bed and scratching the sculpted abs that never fail to
mesmerize me, but I didn’t.
I was limp and blissed out—still reeling from what he’d done to me the
night before—but still, I had a working brain cell. I could have told him I’d
planned something special.
The empty chair at the head of the table and the awkwardness tonight
are my fault, as is the tension now thickening the air as the minutes tick past
with no sign of my husband. I didn’t have to make tonight a public test of
whether my husband cares about me or not. I did this to myself.
And why? I don’t know. It feels like how you can’t help but stick your
tongue in the empty socket after a tooth is removed, that kind of irresistible
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