Harlequin Romance March 2021 Box Set by Cara Colter (best sales books of all time .TXT) 📗

aunt had been when she had found it and brought Krissy to see it, how excited they both had been when it was priced reasonably, well within Krissy’s minuscule budget.

Now, she saw exactly why her aunt Jane’s business account had been so meager. Her aunt had spent all her money when she had paid for the majority of the cost of the carriage house.

Stunned by this gift, her fingers trembling, Krissy opened the file with Jonas’s name on it. She was not sure if she was relieved or aggrieved that there was no application form inside the thin file.

There was nothing there at all, except a carbon copy of a receipt for five thousand dollars with words written across it: Satisfaction guaranteed.

She was going to close the file when she realized something was written on the back of the receipt.

She turned it over.

In her aunt’s spidery, oh, so familiar handwriting, were the words Krissy’s perfect match.

Her house. And her husband. Aunt Jane looking after her. Except the husband part had gone so terribly wrong.

But there was the baby. Someone to care about. Someone to lavish love on… She heard another vehicle stop in front of her house. That was more traffic in the last hour than she’d had since she arrived home from the Boyden family reunion.

Krissy went and peeked out the curtain again.

Finally he had come. Her relief was instant and acute. It was real, after all. They could figure this thing out.

But as she watched, it wasn’t Jonas who got out of the car. First it was Chance, racing toward the door, and then it was Theresa.

She might have been able to keep that door closed to Theresa, but the dog? She cried harder as she saw how fast he was running to the door. He was scratching on it, now, whining, giving hysterical little barks.

Krissy went and opened the door. She collapsed in a puddle of feeling, threw her arms around the dog, who lavished her with kisses and whined his admonishment for being abandoned.

Theresa’s feet moved into her range of vision.

“Oh, my,” Theresa said sadly.

And Krissy realized the sight she must make, in her crumpled, stained wedding dress, hair uncombed and eyes puffy from crying.

“Let’s go in,” Theresa said gently. “I’ll make you a nice cup of tea.” Once they were in the door, Theresa took her in solemnly, and said, “Where’s your bathroom? I’m going to run you a nice bath and make you tea while you have a soak.”

Stop this, Krissy ordered herself, but the truth was, she was so relieved to have someone take charge that she just pointed the way to the bathroom. While the bath ran, she shucked the wedding dress and put on her robe.

Minutes later, she was soaking, the dog was hanging his head woefully over the side of the tub, looking at her accusingly, and she could hear Theresa humming away in her kitchen.

It was the first time Krissy had felt sane since she had left Boy’s Den. Feeling restored and stronger, she finally pulled herself from the tub, wrapped herself in her robe and padded down the hall.

“How do you like our new car?” Theresa asked her, setting a cup of tea down in front of her and taking the seat across from her.

“He told you about the bet.”

“Bet?” Theresa said, cocking her head at Krissy. “No, he told us he hated that car. He didn’t want it anymore.”

“Oh,” Krissy said.

“Just for the record, he looks as bad as you. Maybe worse.”

She couldn’t even be offended that Theresa thought she looked bad. Her heart twisted at the thought of Jonas in pain. Somehow, she had pictured him shrugging the whole thing off, getting back to normal quite quickly, leaving the whole debacle behind with a certain ease.

“Maybe you’d better tell me about the bet,” Theresa suggested.

“The bet. The one where Mike would get the car if Jonas turned thirty and wasn’t in a committed relationship.”

“That wasn’t really a bet,” Theresa said. “It was a joke between the three of us.”

“Well, he didn’t see it that way. And neither did Mike. They were laughing about it the morning after the wedding. I heard them.”

“You better tell me how our silly bet relates to you,” Theresa said quietly.

And suddenly Krissy needed to tell someone, as if in the telling of the entire story, she would herself be able to figure out the truth. She started at that night they had set off the alarm at Match Made in Heaven and told Theresa the entire story.

“And then today,” she finally finished, nearly half an hour later, “I found this.”

She went and got the receipt her aunt had written and flipped it over so Theresa could see the back of it.

Her almost sister-in-law looked at it, then sighed. “Do you think I would have pushed you two to get married if I didn’t think this very same thing, Krissy? You two, together, were something to see. You know, Mike and I have the best relationship. It’s as solid and as comfy as an old T-shirt you love to wear around the house.

“But you and Jonas have something else. It’s the same thing I saw in my parents. It’s like a light goes on in both of you when you’re together, and it makes the very air around you shimmer with radiance.”

“But we barely know each other!” Krissy wailed. “It started over a bet!”

“Maybe that is how it started,” Theresa said, “but you can’t possibly believe he married you because of that! I saw the look in his eyes. And our bets go back and forth all the time. They’re games, that’s all. He might have lost the car. Mike would have enjoyed tormenting him for a week or two and then made sure he won it back on a bet about a hockey game or something. So what’s really going on with you?”

Krissy faced what was really going on with her. It felt like a relief to say it. “I don’t