Nothing in My Heart by Peri Elizabeth Scott
Feeling trapped into marriage, Beckett Kilmer doesn’t hide his disdain for his young wife, although he certainly wants her physically.
Grace didn’t deliberately trap the man she loves, but ignorance is no defense, neither in a court of law nor the law according to Beckett.
When she loses their baby, he’s kind and supportive but remains distant. Grace despairs, also trapped—but by the skeins of love that bind her.
Mysteriously finding herself capable of resisting him, she plans to assert her independence when Beckett comes to his senses, recognizing his reprehensible behavior. He strives to make amends and convince Grace to reconsider.
Still determined to leave, she then finds out she is pregnant again and he redoubles his efforts to repair their relationship. Can Grace find it within herself to forgive and trust him again?
- File Name:nothing-in-my-heart-by-peri-elizabeth-scott.epub
- Original Title:Love Changes Everything (Romance on the Go Book 0)
- Creator:Peri Elizabeth Scott
- Language:en
- Identifier:uuid:f0d6f3b3-439d-4149-86a4-5e7018c706d7
- Publisher:Evernight Publishing
- Date:2018-05-20T23:00:00+00:00
- File Size:261.725 KB
Nothing in My Heart was about Beckett Kilmer and Grace Langdon Kilmer, two people who each felt trapped in their marriage. Beckett had pursued Grace with an intensity of a lion chasing its prey, determined to seduce the daughter of his competition. However, he had not been prepared to marry her...until the birth control failed and Grace ended up pregnant. So, forced to marry her due to her falling pregnant, Beckett felt trapped. Grace, though she had been in love with Beckett, had not meant to corner him by getting pregnant. However, it happened and they endured a loveless marriage. But fate has a way of playing cruel tricks. Months after the marriage was signed and sealed...Grace lost the baby. However, since that was the reason they were forced to marry, Beckett was more determined than ever for her to become pregnant again "to make the old men happy". So it became a nightly routine for him to bed her. But he made no secret of the fact that he had nothing but disdain for her. But thirteen months into their marriage, something had suddenly and drastically changed in Grace...and Beckett started noticing it almost immediately...and it troubled him. When Beckett placed a call late one night after having sex with Grace, his friend started questioning him regarding his attitude towards his wife, which further unsettled him because he hadn't been kind to his wife, not since they were forced to marry and definitely not since Grace had miscarried the baby. Though he had not been unfaithful to her, Beckett was seen frequently out and about with other women, even to the point that the tabloids were making a hash of his new bride. His conscience started pricking him...more and more as time passed. He suddenly began to realize and accept that he’d been acting like a total asshole. A vastly immature asshole where his attitude towards Grace was concerned. But then his friend took it even further and caused him to think of things not only from his own perspective...but from his wife's too. What if Grace also felt trapped by the circumstances surrounding how they were forced to marry? Believing that Grace would be amenable to the changes he wanted to make in their marriage, Beckett ended the conversation with his friend. After all, she said she loved him...had told him frequently that she did, and she had done everything she could to appease him after what he considered her betrayal...he had believed she deliberately got pregnant, that she had either stopped taking birth control or never had done so and had lied about it. So surely, she would be willing to accept "any effort on his part to improve their … relationship. He wasn’t a total asshole. Or at least he wouldn’t be from this point forward". Yeah, okay. Let's see how that works for ya, buddy... But the changes he had sensed in Grace the night before...continued. Beckett had returned home early in hopes of talking with Grace...but she wasn't there, and he couldn't reach her for several hours, sending him into near panic...until she finally called him back. But even then, Grace was...different and he wasn't sure he liked what he was hearing coming out of her mouth. When she told him she'd see him later that night, he was not happy and made a demand for her to return home right then so they could talk. She said no and hung up on him. But when she did return home...after learning she was pregnant again, Beckett was...drunk. After trying to get him to wait till he was sober to talk, he refused, so she informed him she wanted a divorce. He was definitely not happy about that, nor her refusal of his amorous overtures. The more Grace pulled away from Beckett, the more earnestly he tried to make things better. This guy was doing the groveling thing in spades. He knew he had been wrong, and he was doing everything he could to make it right...and Grace was growing more and more in strength and backbone at every turn. When Beckett finally learned that his wife had a flair for designing clothes and that she had been doing an online course to improve her talent, he was intrigued, especially as his family owned and operated their own clothing manufacturing business. She showed him some of her designs and he found them to be quite good. He offered to sit in on her meeting with her designer and give her pointers afterward, to which she agreed. he even offered to help with the fabrics if the ones she had chosen didn't work right. However, what he never took into consideration...or even bothered to ask her about...was that SHE "wanted to see all those beautiful fabrics utilized in her designs, to make them come alive and flatter all pregnant women, regardless of size or shape. But she hated feeling even a hint of obligation to the men who had essentially overpowered her life." Plus, she didn't trust him very much, and she didn't want HIM stealing her ideas and producing them through HIS company. "This was her project. Hers. She wanted to continue with it, having started the marketing campaign already. In fact, she’d been casting about for a model and his comment earlier made her wonder if she could do that as well. Save a little money. 'I’m not sure I want to be affiliated with the company.'" But he wanted to "help"...so, he took pictures of her designs and sent them to his Personal Assistant to "have them printed onto better paper in varying sizes", because "surprising Grace with them at a later date, as well as a format for a marketing campaign, would be his pleasure". This was starting to look like a HUGE error on his part. Would she see it as a theft of her designs...a betrayal? I guess we'll find out, eh? And, yes, it came back to bite him in the A$$...through both of their fathers finding the designs on Beckett's desk and wanting to control Grace through them. The two fathers, hers especially, wanted to force Grace to use their two companies to produce her clothing line, even though that wasn't what she wanted to do. But then Beckett got royally pissed when the two men stormed his home upon seeing the photos of the designs, both attempting to pressure Grace to conform to their demands...and Beckett stood up for Grace, telling both men that they either get with the program and learn to respect and love Grace, or they would never be welcome in their home again...let alone ever meet their grandchild when born...while simultaneously telling her father he needed to love his daughter...as much as Beckett did. This book was so different from the "normal" romance novels. Sure there was plenty of angst and drama, and Beckett started out as the biggest A$$hle imaginable...but the man grew a pair of steel blls and manned up to his mistakes...lickety-split. He started out as such an immature, arrogant bstrd who treated Grace horribly. But then, with the aid of his conscience...and his friend...he changed almost overnight. But when this guy changed, O.M.G., was it a pleasure to see! As soon as his eyes were opened to how childish he had acted, and how horribly he had treated Grace, he took immediate action to rectify everything...and boy oh boy did he fix it...even with all odds against him, knowing his wife was ready to walk away...had even started taking the steps to do so...he wasn't willing to give up on his marriage. Grace was an awesome character from the outset, and she only got better the more she grew in strength...and backbone. Like her name, she had grace, compassion, and a sternness most heroines lack. It was a pleasure reading her story. Most romance novel heroines don't have as much maturity as Grace did from the outset. Usually, when the arrogant, overbearing Hero treated the Heroines like sht, they crumbled...not this one! She dug her heels in and was ready to do everything she could to walk away because she was fed up with being treated like sht by the men in her life...her father included. Oh, when she stood up to THAT man it was priceless! The emotions in this book were off the charts HOT, especially the passion that exploded from the very first words of the book...until the very end. They ran the gamut and they didn't spare the reader an inch. The humor was enough to ease the tension that sprang up from time to time, and the white-hot temper that Grace developed was enjoyable. The only thing wrong with this book...and yes, sadly there was something wrong...was the ending. It was too abrupt and it felt like it left quite a bit of unresolved issues just hanging in mid-paragraph...and that wasn't enjoyable. It would have been nice to see it end better, or perhaps have a notation that there could be a sequel...but it didn't. However, even with that little bit of disappointment, the book overall was fantastic and deserved a five-star rating as well as being added to the Keeper for the Shelves collection.
good