Meant to Be (RightMatch.com Trilogy) Read Online Free PDF

everything he wanted in a woman slip beyond his grasp. So he said, “I just don’t. I’m fine the way I am. What’s your next excuse?”
    She slapped her hand on the table. “Even if I agreed with all you said, that doesn’t affect the fact that you lied to me. Boldly. Viciously, really.”
    “What was vicious about it?”
    Jesus, was he deliberately misunderstanding? “Damn you, you made me fall…” She stopped suddenly and her face blanched.
    He knew why. Again, he reached for her. “Finish the thought.”
    “No.”
    “Then I will. You were going to say I made you fall in love with me.”
    “No, I wasn’t. Nobody falls in love in two days.”
    “We’ve been talking to each other for six months. Our emails and IMs were the highlight of my day, every day. You said the same was true for you.”
    “I thought you were being honest with me!”
    “I’m sorry I wasn’t. If that’s what you want—an apology, you have it in spades.”
    Shaking off his hand, she stood so fast, the chair tipped back and hit the tile with a resounding crash. “Is that what you think I want?”
    “No? Then what? I’ll do anything you say to get you to forgive me.”
    “I want you to be forty-two, like you said you were.”
    He didn’t respond to a demand which was impossible to meet. Her heart began to ache, deeply. “I can’t change that, Beth, but you can change how you feel about my age.”
    “No I can’t. God,” she said running her hand through her hair. “MJ and I have talked innumerable times about falling for a younger man being our worst nightmare.”
    “Why? I don’t understand.”
    “Well, for one, we couldn’t keep up with someone in his early thirties sexually.”
    “You kept up pretty good this weekend.”
    “Don’t patronize me! I have stretch marks from my kids. Crow’s feet around my eyes.” She looked at his face closely then. “And you don’t have one single line or sag. Oh, God, maybe I’m partly to blame. I overlooked a lot of things when you got here.”
    “Like?”
    “Your body, for one. It isn’t like Peter’s was in his early forties.”
    His eyes must have flared with the anger he felt bubbling up inside him.
    “What’s wrong?”
    “Do you have any idea how jealous I am of Peter? Especially right now?”
    “What? Peter’s dead.”
    “But you’re still a part of him.”
    “Of course I am. I always will be.” She gave him a piercing look. “Someone older, with more life experience would know that.”
    He shot out of his own chair like a bullet and grasped her shoulders. “Now who’s the one who’s being patronizing?”
    She swallowed hard. What was she doing? Forcibly, she calmed herself. She cupped his face with her hands and gentled her voice. “Look, Cole, the last thing I want to do is hurt you. But some facts are immutable. And one is I don’t want to compete with young, nubile females for the rest of my life. Especially when I’m older.”
    Now that offended him. “Do you think I’m that shallow?”
    “No, I…” She shook her head. “I can’t do this, that’s all.”
    He stepped back but he knew the expression on his face was far from resigned. “Okay, I’ll accept your decision if you can give me a good enough reason for one question.”
    “What is it?”
    “Why was it acceptable for Peter to be fifteen years older than you, but it’s not all right for us to have an eleven-year age difference?”
    Beth stared at him blankly because, as he suspected, she was unable to come up with an answer.
     

 
    Chapter 3
    When Joey was upset, he kicked wastebaskets and punched walls. When Spence couldn’t contain what was inside him, he threw himself into his work. But Cole Porter Matheson was different. He turned to his music, as his dad had taught him to do.
    He’d phoned Joey on the way home from the lake and Joe answered his cell from his home. Kara had sprained her ankle executing a special dance move Dana was teaching her, and Dana was more upset than