Awakened Heart, chapter 9

There were many dull chapters in this book (5, 6 and 8, if memory serves me correctly). I'm not sure why the pacing is so off in this book. Rather a lot (relatively speaking, of course) happens in chapter 9; I'm not sure why some of this wasn't spread over the other chapters.
Sophie meets the mysterious Irena, and neither Sophie nor the reader is surprised to find out that she's the woman who was in the car with Rijk. They meet at a party, and the next day Irena comes over for lunch and to skate with Sophie and Rijk. Rijk drives Irena home, and then calls to say he will be out late.
It's a bit hasty of Sophie to assume he spent all those missing hours with Irena, but also out of line for Rijk to be furious with Sophie when she suggests that interpretation of the night's events. He has done remarkably little to earn Sophie's trust, so his fury at not having it is, well, very Rijk. Irena comes along, explains everything, and suggests that Sophie go find Rijk to apologize. There's some tiresome business about how Sophie has to leave him now, because she has said she loves him (thereby violating the terms of their platonic marriage). Turns out he has been waiting for her to break her word on this point, which - well, you can imagine what I think of that.
New book tomorrow!

All Else Confusion, chapter 6

Here's what happens at the end of Annis's and Jake's wedding day: Annis "wished him goodnight, giving him a quick kiss on the cheek, because all her life she had kissed her parents goodnight and it was going to be a habit hard to break" (p. 110). O-kay. I know it's a chaste Betts, and that they have an agreement to stay celibate for the first few months of their marriage (because it's essentially a marriage of convenience for Jake), but Annis's confusion between her parents and Jake is strange.
They dash off to Lisbon for a few days, because Jake has business there. Jake buys Annis several dresses. As always, good clothes transform a Betts heroine into something quite lovely. I can think of only one person in my acquaintance who looks noticeably different, and better, in formal dress, so I find this strange.
There's a tiresome - and red-flag raising, if either of these people thought - sequence where Jake asks Annis to eat lunch alone in their hotel room. But she sees him driving with an attractive woman before lunch, so she eats in a restaurant and sits with one of his colleagues. So he's cranky that she went against his wishes about her lunch (!), so she mentions the woman, and all is well. But were I a marriage counselor, I'd warn Jake about being controlling and Annis about jealousy.