A Reason For Marriage
'Jamie, it's great to have you here. We were so pleased that you could come. I hardly ever get to see you these days.You're looking tired though, Uncle Mark says you work very hard.'
A brief smile curled Jamie's lip-glossed mouth as her cousin mentioned her stepfather. She had been lucky there, she acknowledged mentally; more than lucky when she listened to other people's stories of their parents' second marriages.
Of course the fact that her own father had died before she was two probably had something to do with the fact that she had accepted Mark so readily; that and the fact that he had been as ready to love her as his daughter as she had him as her father.
'He exaggerates, Beth,'Jamie told her cousin, lifting her eyes from the second coat of lacquer she was applying to her nails.
Her cousin's invitation to spend the weekend with her and her husband in their Bristol home had coincided with a gap in her work schedules. But now that she was here… She stifled the sense of unease that had been growing in her ever since her arrival just after lunch.
'Tell me about my goddaughter,'she instructed her cousin. 'It's been almost six months since I last saw her.' ... read full excerpt from: A Reason for Marriage ebook
