“We never liked him,” Georgie said. “Shit!” She pressed her lips tight together and closed her eyes.

“Oh, Georgie Porgy Pudding and Pie,” Brendon exclaimed, suppressing a grin. “Really, how could you? What a thing to say.”

“You never liked Dylan?” Megan asked slowly. “Is that the truth?”

Georgie took several more big gulps of wine then held her glass towards Brendon.

He topped it up.

“I’m sorry, Megan,” she said. “I shouldn’t have mentioned that.”

“It’s okay.” Megan rubbed her hand over her forehead. “But…I mean…what didn’t you like about him?”

“It was the way he spoke to you, mainly,” Brendon said. “And how he told you to behave, ordered for you when we went out to eat, insisted on you wearing certain things that, quite frankly, darling, weren’t particularly flattering.”

Megan opened her mouth then shut it again.

Really?

Brendon had seen all that?

“He just didn’t seem to love you for you,” Georgie said, her voice gentle. She set down her wine and took Megan’s hand. “And we do love you. We love how you laugh and speak and dress. How you get completely over-excited about Christmas and birthdays, how you always drop money into the hat belonging to that busker by the station even though he’s always singing off key. The fact you’re shoe crazy and cry sometimes when it hurts so much that your family live on the other side of the world.”

“And even when your roots need doing, and you’re cranky because it’s the time of the month, we love you,” Brendon said. “When you tell your awful jokes we don’t laugh at them, we laugh with you.”

Megan juddered out a breath.

Her friends had just listed all the things about her that had irritated Dylan. There were many more—it seemed she had really got on his nerves.

So why had he wanted to marry her so badly?

“The thing is it was him who needed to change,” Georgie said, rubbing her thumb over Megan’s knuckles. “People who truly love you have no desire to change you. They love you for all of your imperfections, that’s the definition of love. Taking the good with the bad, taking everything that person has to offer.”

“Is that how you love Tom?” Megan asked.