All he ever wanted - Anita Shreve

'I believe an entire story, an entire marriage, was written in that embrace, though I could not have foreseen it then. And based on that experience, I would advise young lovers to be as attentive to the first embrace with the beloved as one would be to a soothsayer...'

It is a fire in a New Hampshire hotel that brings Nicholas Van Tassel and Etna Bliss together, a chance meeting that lights up a lifelong passion. But their life is not everything they could have imagined. Many years later, Nicholas recounts their courtship and their time together. And as the threads of the story begin to unravel, what is revealed is a patchwork of promises, truths, secrets and lies, and a man, madly in love, for whom his wife is all he ever wanted...