This is well-written tackiness with dubious morality and ethics. You have been warned. Also, trigger alert: death of an infant from SIDs.
Second chance story that opens a week before the heroine is set to marry OM. The H, heroine's ex-husband, has been called from Italy by the h's mother. She thinks the h is making a big mistake and wants the H to talk her out of it.
Okay that's bad enough - but there are elaborate wedding preparations going on, the snobby in-laws visiting, and the heroine meeting with landscape gardeners for her new house - all while she is pining over the hero and he is ladling on the Italian charm. Nothing fits together. None of these characters are acting like real people:
The OM isn't jealous of the hero.
The OM and h are both divorced and have never slept together.
The OM's mother is openly hostile to the heroine.
The h's mother is actively sandbagging a wedding that is costing a fortune.
The H is showing nothing but love and kindness to the confused heroine (until they almost have sex in the heroine's new house - then he turns on her).
The heroine, after four years, still blames the hero for their son's death. (At three months he stopped breathing in his sleep.)
The heroine cries all the time, acknowledges she loves the hero, but CAN'T DECIDE about the wedding?
Good Lord - At this point in the story, I was at the end of my patience with this cheating coward of a heroine.
Hero walks out after the heroine calls a halt to their lovemaking for the *second* time. Then - and only then - does she decide to cancel the wedding.
OM is PERFECTLY FINE with that.
Who ARE these people? And Good Lord - OM's a stick figure of a man.
Hero meanwhile, goes back to Italy to find another wife and to sleep around.
A year later, heroine has resolved her issues (We don't know how - we're told, not shown) and is going to ask the hero for a second chance. He's rude and nasty at first, but he eventually agrees. The last scene is their wedding with the heroine pregnant. HEA
There was so many gross moments in this story. The mother going behind her daughter's back "for her own good." The hero still feeling married to the heroine even though he had been sleeping with countless woman.
And the cheating! It was *on the page* in front of me - twice. There was no penis in vagina penetration, so heroine doesn't feel she totally cheated - just kinda cheated. God. But as the hero pointed out they both orgasmed. And he doesn't feel guilty about cuckolding the OM because he hasn't made promises to the OM while the heroine has.
Hey, I hate him, too.
This is not what I want in an HP.