I liked this holy mess.
There's much angst and one of the worst case of miscommunication ever.
The hero is much older than the heroine in a typical CM fashion, she's just 18 and he's some 35, and a man with experience.
The heroine is in love with him but hormonal and not very self assured.
The hero is a workaholic, and not very good at dealing with his feelings.
He and the heroine communicate only in the bedroom, having an intense and very passionate sex life.
They've been married for some months and she's pregnant, but as soon as the hero knew she's pregnant he got out of their bedroom and oh, no sex life any more.
Without any explanation.
So our poor teenager, bride of only 6 months (he got her pregnant the wedding night I suppose), thinks he's already tired of her and since he was a womanizer before marrying her, she is afraid he has another woman.
One day she goes to his office to see him and she listens to a very private conversation between him and his sexy pa, and she runs away, losing her baby.
Since the hero never showed any enthusiasm in becoming a father, she's very hard and hurt and after some weeks, she leaves him and goes back to her father's.
Five years later the heroine's father is badly hurt in a car accident and loses his memory: he doesn't remember his last five years and thinks the h/H have just married.
So they agree to pretend they are still together and they live all together at least until he has recovered his memory.
The hero is obviously smitten with the heroine and would like to get back together, but she still thinks he has affairs with every woman around, and let me tell you, I don't understand why he would always employ young and sexy pa.
Or maybe I understand very well.
They are very much attracted to each other, this seems the only thing they have in common, and they have sex together, but the heroine, who is in love with him but thinks he never loved her, decides they can have sex without commitment.
Of course the hero is not happy but she thinks he's having an affair with her father's nurse and maybe with his pa.
I can understand why.
He actually never said he loved her.
He's always flirting with those women, telling them how beautiful they are, in front of his wife, while he always criticizes his wife, telling her how bad she looks, how skinny she is, and so on.
Is it surprising that she thinks he doesn't even like her?
Love is not something implicit that must be guessed by sheer will, it must be proved.
With words. With facts.
And he didn't.
She is much younger, and inexperienced.
He's the grown up one. He should know better. And do better.
There's also a false friend of her, a woman who tried to seduce the hero, but he rejected her, so now he hates him and wants to sabotate his marriage.
Then there's this communication problem, that was the real reason their marriage didn't work the first time, until in the end thank god they have a real talk, and the heroine tells him what happened the day she lost their baby.
The hero was talking to his pa, but it was not him the man she was seeing, it was one of his associates, an engaged man.
But I must admit that what the heroine heard was very bad, and it would be very easy to understand that he was having an affair with his pa.
So I don't think the heroine overreacted.
There was also the matter of her pregnancy.
The heroine is pregnant a second time.
And when she goes to the doctor he tells her that since she's very delicate she will have to spend all her pregnancy to bed, and no sex with her husband.
So she understand why her husband didn't want to have sex with her the first time.
But he never told her! So she thought he didn't want her any more.
This two really dig their own grave.
And it's not over.
After the first real talk they have since their marriage, the hero tells her he has loved her since the first time he saw her, in an obsessive way, and he never stopped.
He was so scared to lose her when she was pregnant that he lived every day in a nightmare.
The heroine, knowing she's pregnant, decides to leave him, because she wants to have her baby.
She goes to a clinic and spends her pregnancy there in a bed, then she comes back with her to the hero with a surprise. In fact wto surprises.
All is well and the hero tells her he's a coward and I completely agree with him.
I don't thinks theirs is a good marriage.
A marriage is about sharing, the good times and the bad times, and they didn't really share anything important, only sex.
And the comminication is still a problem for them.
She didn't even tell him she was having his baby, because she didn't want him to suffer.
Not a healthy attitude.
I wish that when they met again they hadn't met only because of her father's accident.
The hero was always in touch with her father but never tried to win her back or to understand what went so wrong with their marriage.
Whatever.
The book is good, not boring, very fast in the usual CM way, and the hero is uber obsessed with the heroine.
I think he was celibate because he's really all on her. He isn't really a womanizer, his only fault is that he always has sexy blondes around him, and working for him.
I read some reviews where the heroine is described as a nasty bitch, I think she was only an insecure teenager, and he didn't really make many efforts to make things better between them.
So IMO the main fault is his.