A Husband's Regret (The Unwanted Series) (17 page)

“It’s okay,” he said out loud, shrugging slightly. He didn’t mention the sign language she had used, and she was both relieved and somewhat disappointed by that. He brushed by her and headed toward the large wooden island in the middle of the kitchen to drop the ingredients on the black marble–topped surface, while Bronwyn used a damp paper towel to wipe up the mess on the floor. When she was done, she rounded the island to face him again while he busily went about constructing an imaginative sandwich. He kept his eyes on his task and Bronwyn sighed in frustration before waving her hand beneath his eyes to get his attention. Finally, reluctantly, he looked up to face her.

“I have to talk to you about something,” she half signed, half spoke, and he nodded warily. “I need you to watch Kayla tomorrow night.” Something akin to relief flickered in his eyes, and he smiled slowly, nodding again.

“Of course.” His eyes dropped back to his sandwich. “I know that you have to start studying, mid-terms can’t be that far off.” Bronwyn groaned, this was going to be more difficult than she had originally anticipated. She waved her hand beneath his eyes again.

“Bryce,” she began when she had his attention again. “I have a date.” She said the words aloud, choosing not to sign them, and his eyes remained fixed on her lips for such a long time that she began to wonder if he might have misunderstood her. His large hands were resting on the wooden surface of the island, his sloppy sandwich teetering unsteadily between them, and as she dropped her eyes, wondering if she should repeat the statement, she noticed them curling into huge fists and knew that he had not misunderstood or misread her lips. He was trying to figure out how to deal with her words.

“You’re married,” he reminded, almost absently, his voice sounding strangely hoarse. She raised her eyes to his face again and was startled to see how strained and pale he looked.

“We’re not married, Bryce,” she whispered. “Not really. Not for a long time now. You know that. You said it yourself; there
is
no marriage. We’re separated and merely sharing a house.”

“Who . . .” He began to frame a question but then simply turned the one word into a question. “Who?”

“One of my professors. He’s a nice man, decent.”

“How
decent
can he be if he dates his students?” Bryce hissed furiously.

“I’m not a child, Bryce, and Raymond is only two years older than you are. It’s hardly unethical for us to go out on a perfectly harmless date.”

“I don’t think you should do this,” he began, but she held up a silencing hand.

“I didn’t come to you for your blessing, Bryce,” she told him firmly. “I felt that telling you would be the right thing to do, because we
are
still legally bound. Yes, we have a child together and we’re sharing a house, but our marriage, if we can call it that anymore, is over. I want to move on with my life, and the only way either of us can do that is if we get a divorce. So if you won’t start the proceedings, then I will. I’ll be seeing an attorney as soon as possible.” He lowered his gaze back to his sandwich.

“It’s probably better that way,” he agreed quietly. “If you need me to watch Kayla tomorrow night, I will.” He raised his enigmatic eyes back to hers and she smiled gently.

“One more thing, Bryce,” she said tentatively. “I don’t want a security guy hovering in the background while I’m out tomorrow night. So I’m dismissing Paul early. Please clear it with Cal.” Poor Paul would probably be relieved to have the time off. Her life was pretty mundane, and while he was too professional to ever show it, she suspected that he was bored out of his mind for the most part.

“Fine,” he gritted after a long pause, clearly not happy with that idea but acquiescing when he realized that she wasn’t going to budge on the matter.

“In fact, I would prefer it if Paul didn’t come to campus or work with me. It’s a waste of your resources. I’m perfectly safe, and I would just feel more comfortable without him constantly hovering in the background.” She knew that she was pushing it and that Bryce wasn’t likely to budge on this, but she really felt like a pretentious freak with a bodyguard constantly dogging her steps. It made her feel completely conspicuous.

“Bronwyn, I take your and Kayla’s safety very seriously,” he said darkly.

“Look, of course I want Kayla to be safe, and I absolutely agree on the issue of security for her, but I’m not quite in the same boat. I’m your all-but-estranged wife. Not quite the prime target for kidnappers.”

“Prospective kidnappers don’t know the intimate details of our marriage, Bron,” he pointed out reasonably. “You’re living with me, you’re the mother of my child, and you’re a target. End of story. Paul stays.”

“Well, can you at least give me some time to myself on Monday then? I have something to take care of.” While she
had
just informed him she would be seeing an attorney, she didn’t want Bryce hearing about it from the hired help before she had a chance to tell him about it in person. That wasn’t the way she wanted him to learn the news.

“What?” he asked suspiciously.

“Bryce, I don’t ask you for much, just grant me this one request and allow me to cling to the illusion that I still have some semblance of privacy in my life.”

“Only on Monday?” he clarified reluctantly, and she nodded. “Very well, I’ll inform Cal.”

“Thank you,” she said, and he inclined his head curtly before turning away from her and heading to the refrigerator, his rigid back telling her that he wanted her gone by the time he turned back. Bronwyn wasted no time in beating a hasty retreat. She headed to the nursery to watch Kayla sleep and silently mourned the loss of the life she could never have with the man she so desperately loved.

Bryce wanted to break something, wanted to hurt someone, preferably the smarmy bastard who had ingratiated himself to Bryce’s
wife
!
God
, this was so much worse than he’d imagined. Bronwyn was moving on with her life and seeing other people. What if she let this guy, this
Raymond
, touch her or, worse, make love to her? His stomach rebelled at the thought, and he picked up his half-made sandwich and tossed it into the trashcan.

He pressed the heels of his hands to his eyes and frantically tried to figure out what to do, how to make this right, but he didn’t know how. He no longer had any control over his own life. Everything was sliding so swiftly downhill that he knew it was only a matter of time before it all ended. Bronwyn didn’t see herself as his wife anymore. She wanted nothing to do with him, and who could blame her? After the way he had behaved, it was nothing less than he deserved. He could threaten her with a custody battle, but he didn’t have it in him to do that to her or Kayla.

After all those months of self-righteous anger and believing
he
was the wronged one, while his Bronwyn suffered unimaginable horrors on her own, he now had to face up to the fact that he had brought all of this upon himself. Blackmailing Bronwyn to stay with him, after everything else that he had done wrong, would in no way, shape, or form restore his self-respect. He had to let her go; she deserved to be happy and it was obvious that he couldn’t make her happy, that he had very
rarely
made her happy. That was his failure, his shame, and his cross to bear, and he would no longer have her share that burden.

“What the hell do you mean, you’re
pregnant
? What about your studies and the mutual decision we made when we first got married? We were going to wait, Bronwyn, remember? Just tell me you’re joking.” The fury he had felt that night scorched its way through his body and obliterated his ability to think rationally. He moved away from her and jumped to his feet to glower down at her. She had looked so confused and hurt that for a moment he nearly softened, nearly took her into his arms to comfort her. But then those two words echoed their way through his brain again and his white-hot, bitter anger reasserted itself. The sense of betrayal left an acrid taste in his mouth.

“I know that it’s sooner than we’d planned,” she said softly, trying to maintain an even tone of voice. “But this is the reality of our situation now and it can’t be changed. We’re having a baby . . . a
baby
, Bryce. Don’t you understand how wonderful that is?”

“I can’t believe you did this. I can’t believe you would stoop to this,” he gritted out bitterly. “This was supposed to be a joint decision. I’m not ready for this, Bronwyn. I don’t
want
a kid, damn it!”

“But it’s our
baby
. . . we made it together,” she protested, and he could hear the pain and confusion in her voice but just couldn’t keep the venom out of his own, knowing that if he allowed her to see through his anger to his own pain and confusion, she would think that what she had done was okay, and he was too furious with her to allow her to think that yet.

“You mean
you
made it, without my consent.” He could barely look at her. He didn’t want to see her tears—he hated her tears—but he could hear them in her gasp and in her voice when she spoke.

“I don’t know why you’re being like this,” she cried. “I didn’t plan this, it just happened. Our birth control failed. I asked the doctor and he said that if I’d had a stomach virus or anything like that it could provide a window of opportunity. And you know that I was sick a couple of days before your company party three months ago.” Damn her, she was trying to cover her tracks. He strode out of the conservatory and downstairs into their en suite, while she trotted behind him, still trying to tell him about a stomach bug that she had had three months ago. How the hell could she expect him to remember something like that, anyway? He pushed back the niggling voice that told him he
did
remember it and that he had pampered her ridiculously while she had been sick. Instead, he convinced himself that he couldn’t recall whatever insignificant bug she was referring to. He opened the medicine chest and yanked out her birth-control pills.

“
What are you doing?
” She sounded scared and appalled as she watched him count the pills in the box. His eyes clouded over with a haze of red when he realized that the numbers were right.

“God, have you been chucking pills down the drain every night?” he wondered out loud, hating himself even as he asked the question.

“You
know
I wouldn’t do that,” she defended urgently.

“Is that so? I obviously don’t know you as well as I thought I did, do I?”

“Of course you
know
me, Bryce.” she laid a tentative hand on his rigid forearm, and his flesh burned beneath the contact. He yanked his arm away and turned away from her. His eyes flooded with tears, he needed time to think, but he couldn’t think with her standing in the same room, not when she was crying, not when
he
was the one responsible for her tears.

“Get out of here,” he whispered harshly, wanting her out of the room, not wanting her to hear or see how much he ached to take her into his arms.

“What?”

“Get the hell out,” he snarled, bracing himself before turning to face her. He
barely
kept himself from flinching when he saw her tears. “Go
now
.” She uttered a low cry and whirled from the room, fleeing as quickly as she could. Bryce finally allowed himself to break, sinking back against a tiled wall as his legs gave out and sliding down to the floor. He clasped his head in his hands and shook uncontrollably as he tried to imagine his life from this point on.

CHAPTER TEN

B
ryce had to go in to the office the following morning—the day of Bronwyn’s Big Date. He hadn’t done so in months, but he and Pierre had an urgent meeting with a very important client and the man had requested Bryce’s presence. As he was the business’s CFO and Vice President of Marketing, Bryce knew that it was time to pick up the reins of his life again. He had responsibilities to Pierre, their employees, their clients, and to himself. It was time but it was just unfortunate
timing
. Celeste was down with the flu, Bronwyn had a test, also her all-important
date
was that night, and Bryce wasn’t about to bail on this fatherhood business just because things got a little sticky. He hadn’t even told Bronwyn about this meeting, but he figured that she had coped with much worse crises over the past couple of years, so he could deal with this one all on his own.

That meant taking Kayla into the office and she was in a terrible mood. He dressed her in her prettiest pink frock, promising her all kinds of treats if she just did this one thing for Daddy today. He didn’t need his hearing to know that she was muttering a whole lot of “Kayla no want tos” into his hair as he tied the laces on the tiny red sneakers she’d
insisted
on wearing with the girly little dress. He’d relented on the shoes because he was getting pretty sick of trying to reason with her. Bad parenting, he knew, but it was a matter of picking his battles, and he was running late. He was also terrified of losing his temper with her while there was no one else around and wanted to get out of the house and to the office as soon as humanly possible.

By the time Cal—who also acted as his driver these days—parked the car in the underground parking lot of the huge building in Central Cape Town, which hosted DCP Jewellers Inc., he was exhausted and feeling more than a little harassed. Petulant, angry tears were seeping down his daughter’s rosy cheeks, and he could more than imagine her nagging crying. He knew her well enough by now to know when she was acting up and when she was just being difficult.

“Kayla.” He hoped his voice was firm enough. “Stop crying. You’re going meet some nice, new friends.” She was shaking her head in response to his promise, and he could read her lips well enough to understand that she didn’t want “new fwends.” He groaned and dropped a kiss on one wet, chubby cheek.

“Of course you want new friends.” His plan was to drop her off at the company’s day-care center. Quite a few of the young executives who were present stopped in their tracks to stare as he made his way through reception. He nodded at them abruptly, not caring for the open-mouthed shock they were all displaying but knowing that his presence, especially with a toddler in tow, would fuel gossip for months to come. They were naturally curious because not many of them had seen him since his accident; also God only knew how much noise Kayla was making. Pierre loomed in front of him and grinned as his eyes dropped to the fractious child on Bryce’s hip.

“Hello, Mikayla,” he smiled down at her, signing so that Bryce could catch what he was saying. “Why so grumpy?” He reached over and tried to tug the resisting child into his arms. Kayla refused to go, burying her wet face against Bryce’s neck and tightening her small, surprisingly strong arms around his shoulders. Bryce met Pierre’s amused eyes and groaned.

“A little help, if you please?”

“Hey, mine isn’t old enough to throw tantrums yet.” Pierre shrugged, dropping his hands into his trouser pockets and rocking back on his heels. “I have
no
idea how to deal with this.”

“I’m taking her to the nursery but she’s going to hate me for deserting her,” Bryce informed as he hugged the crying child closer.

“By the time you fetch her again, she’ll be having so much fun, she’ll cry when you try to take her home.”

“God, this parenting business is tough,” Bryce muttered. “I don’t know how the hell Bronwyn coped on her own for two years.”

“That’s why Mother’s Day is so much bigger than Father’s Day will ever be,” Pierre quipped. “I’m off to the Mezzanine Conference Room; meet you there in ten minutes?”

“Sure,” Bryce agreed. Naturally, that was easier said than done. Kayla stubbornly clung to his leg when he set her down in the nursery, and he and one of the nursery school teachers tried desperately to bribe and cajole her into letting go. Twenty minutes later, exhausted and rumpled, Bryce made his way into the Mezzanine Conference Room, troubled that he’d had to leave his crying and begging daughter behind and wondering how often Bronwyn had had to go through the same ordeal over the past two years. How difficult it must have been for her, especially being able to
hear
Kayla’s begging and crying, when she turned to walk away.

His first big business meeting outside of his home, after the accident, was not as tough as he’d expected it to be, largely due to the sign language interpreter Pierre had thoughtfully employed. The same woman would be Bryce’s new assistant and would ease his transition back into the office. He still intended to spend a lot more time at home than before the accident, but the meeting made him realize just how much he’d missed being in the thick of things and at the heart of the deal.

Bronwyn could barely focus on what Raymond was saying; her mind kept straying back to the lonely image of Bryce sitting in front of that television with her image frozen on-screen. There was something so stark, sad, and desolate about the memory that it ate her up inside every time she thought about it.

“You seem preoccupied.” Raymond’s gentle voice intruded on her thoughts, and Bronwyn was startled back to the present and the man sitting opposite her. He really was a nice man, tall, lean, and almost handsome, with dark eyes, slightly thinning black hair, and a warm smile. Bronwyn really liked him but not enough to seriously consider dating him.

“I think this was a mistake,” she mumbled, and he frowned. “It’s too soon. It just doesn’t feel right for me to be out with you.” He smiled in understanding.

“I was wondering where your mind was,” he said.

“Maybe . . .” she began, and he covered one of her helplessly fluttering hands with his own.

“Some other time?” he completed, and she nodded gratefully. “That’s okay. I can wait until you’re ready.”

The crazy thing was Bronwyn wasn’t sure if she would
ever
be ready. Despite everything that had happened, she still loved Bryce, and she didn’t know how to stop. While his past behavior had been unforgivable, it had also been completely out of character. How could the man who now loved his daughter so unreservedly have rejected the idea of Bronwyn’s pregnancy in the first place? It made no sense. And yet, while she was confused and conflicted, she still couldn’t forget about or forgive those two years that she had struggled to keep both herself and her baby alive and safe. She loved him and yet she resented him for abandoning them so completely. And there was just no way she could reconcile those two conflicting feelings in any kind of emotionally satisfying manner.

“Thank you for understanding, Raymond.”

He shrugged.

“I can’t say I’m not disappointed, Bronwyn. I would still like to get to know you better and spend time with you. I hope I get that chance.”

“You’re a really nice man, Raymond,” she responded. “But I shouldn’t have come out with you. I’m still married, and while my husband may not be perfect, he’s the father of my child and at one point, he was my whole life. I don’t know what I’m doing here. I can’t make any promises, you understand?”

“I understand.” He smiled again, squeezing her hand in reassurance. “I hope you know that I’m here, as a friend. If you need a shoulder to cry on or someone to listen, I’m always here.”

“Thank you,” she whispered, trying desperately to blink back her tears at his graceful acceptance of the situation.

Bryce, who sat alone in the darkened den, was startled when the unmistakable flash of headlights coming up the drive disturbed the unrelenting dark. He jumped up and stepped out onto the wide balcony that overlooked the driveway, knowing that he would not be spotted in the dark. It was Bronwyn, home a lot sooner than he had expected. She was standing beside the car, her head bent over her bag as she fumbled for her house keys. He frowned, making a mental note to talk to her about her carelessness. She really should have her keys out before she got out of her car; they had the best security money could buy, and there were guards all over the property, but he still didn’t want her taking unnecessary risks. He could see her clearly in the light that was spilling from the front porch, and his stomach clenched at how beautiful she looked in the pale blue wraparound skirt that molded to her long legs with every move she made. Her white top dipped low enough to show off her modest cleavage and it set his blood boiling. She looked too provocative, too bloody
tempting
! He was sure that the pervert professor could not possibly have kept his hands to himself.

Burning up with the need to know if that bastard had laid his grubby paws on her, he made his way downstairs, sure he would be able to read her expression and know if she had let the man touch her. He just needed to
know
. . .

“How was your date?” The deep voice, sounding so unexpectedly from behind her, made Bronwyn jump in shock. She was busy setting the alarm and botched up the code when he startled her. She took a deep steadying breath and quickly reentered the correct code before turning to face him.

“It was fine,” she murmured, knowing it was too dark for him to read her lips; she used her hands as well.

“When did you get so good at signing?” he asked huskily, stepping into the small pool of light in the hall and neatly trapping her between his body and the door.

“All those times I met Alice for lunch? Before going back to university? We were going to the same center Pierre went to for
his
sign language lessons. I go mostly on Saturdays now.”

“Why?” She shrugged awkwardly, trying to step back when he took a small step forward but finding herself with no place to go when her back hit the door. He was so close she could feel his body heat and smell his wonderfully clean scent.

“I don’t know,” she said quietly. “I wanted to be able to talk to you.” He very gently lifted his thumb and forefinger to her chin and used it to tilt her face up to his.

“I didn’t catch that,” he whispered. She repeated her previous statement and his eyes darkened.

“You wanted to talk to me? Despite the way I’ve treated you?” There was a
world
of vulnerability in his voice, and Bronwyn tried not to let it disarm her.

“I know how it feels to have no one to talk to,” she said, closing her eyes to hide her pain from him.

“Oh
God
, sweetheart . . . Bron . . .” The anguish in his voice undid her, and she found herself unable to resist when he lowered his head and rested his forehead against hers. His warm breath washed over her face, her lips, and she shuddered before going up onto her toes and brushing his mouth with hers. He went so still that she thought he would shatter, but when she moved her small hands up to cup his face, his breath escaped on a strangled sob. He tentatively wrapped his strong arms around her slender body to gather her close and responded to her sweet kiss with unbelievable tenderness and reverence. The kiss did not last long; it was over before it properly began, and Bryce took a step back, lifting a hand to gently palm one of her cheeks, his eyes bright with some inscrutable emotion. Bronwyn tilted her face into his hand and lifted her own much smaller hand to cover his. They stood that way for what seemed like an eternity but what was, in reality, only a few seconds before Bronwyn stepped around him. She left without a word, unable to find the right words, not even sure if there
were
words for what she was feeling.