A Husband's Regret (The Unwanted Series) (23 page)

“He’s gay,” she said. Her lips formed the words clearly enough, and he frowned in confusion at the non sequitur.

“What?” he asked. She was so bloody enchanting like this, but at the same time utterly confounding.

“Massive Marvin. He’s gay.”

“And that disappointed you?” he asked levelly, trying not to sound jealous at the thought of his wife ogling some other guy. Of course, he had no idea if he succeeded or not, but he hoped that he managed to sound as neutral as he was pretending to be.

“No, it was more of a scientific experiment.” Her eyes were on his lower lip, and he wondered what the hell she found so fascinating about it.

“Going to a strip club was a scientific experiment?” He knew that he sounded like a complete idiot, but he wasn’t sure he was following this weird conversation correctly. He kept feeling like he was missing something.

“You have such a gorgeous mouth.” She totally threw him with that one. “Much better than Massive Marvin’s.”

“Are you going to compare me to this Massive Marvin guy all night?” he asked resentfully, feeling ridiculous even saying the stupid name.

“No . . . not fair, he’d lose.” She went up on her toes and completely slammed him by kissing him. Her arms crept around his neck, and her body was flush against his. He could feel every single curve of her body through their clothes. His arms went around her waist and his hands cupped her firm butt and lifted her until he could feel her feminine heat against his aching hardness. God, it felt amazing having her in his arms again. It would be so easy to strip her naked, push her up against the wall, and . . .

Whoa there, buddy!
He lifted his head and his hands, raising them up with his palms out in a gesture of surrender, and wondered, with the slightest hint of hysteria, why
he
was always the one calling a halt to things. One day he was going to give her what she so desperately wanted and to hell with the consequences. But, he conceded wryly as he looked down into her frustrated face, that day was not today. She was weaving on the spot and if not for the fact that she still had her arms tightly wrapped around his neck, she would probably have fallen.

“Babe, you can’t keep torturing me like this,” he could feel the hoarseness in his throat and wondered if he’d managed to get the words out loudly enough for her to hear. “Come on, let’s get you to bed.” Her expression brightened at the word “bed,” and Bryce rolled his eyes, dragging her arms away from his neck and assisting her up to her room. After another frustrating battle in her bedroom, where she seemed to have grown at least six extra arms and put them to good use, he thankfully managed to get her into bed.

He stared grimly down at his passed-out wife, his body hard, aching, and heavy with suppressed lust. He couldn’t live like this anymore; it was enough to test a saint, and he was no bloody saint. He shook his head in disgust before heading for his usual cold shower.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

W
hen Bronwyn joined them in the sunny kitchen for breakfast the following morning, she was wearing a gigantic pair of sunglasses and moving gingerly, with the caution of someone nursing a hell of a headache. She was dressed in a faded shirt and an ugly pair of sweat pants that had seen better days. Her hair was a complete mess. She tried to swallow down her nausea when Bryce gestured toward a pile of pancakes with a raised eyebrow.

“Coffee,” she grunted as she sat down carefully in the chair immediately to Bryce’s right. His lips twitched as he poured some of the hot, dark brew into a mug and placed it on the table in front of her. Kayla was staring at her mother curiously.

“Mummy sick?” she asked worriedly, and Bronwyn shook her head before wincing as the movement set off the annoying little drummer gremlins that seemed to have taken up residence in her brain.

“I’m okay, sweetie.” Her voice was hoarse and she cleared her throat self-consciously before smiling reassuringly at her little girl. Satisfied with her answer, Kayla went back to playing with her food and singing her off-key little ditty.

Bronwyn flinched at the noise before daring to glance up at Bryce, who was still watching her quietly. She remembered embarrassing bits and pieces of what had happened after she had returned home the night before and didn’t quite know what to say to him this morning.

“You know, Bron,” he said, breaking the awkward silence between them, and she looked up a little too quickly at the sound of his voice. She bit back a groan and looked at him fully, bracing herself for his censure.

“Yes?” she prompted when he remained silent a little too long.

“I’m all for it if you want to use me for . . .” He glanced over at Kayla before lowering his voice. “
S-e-x
, as long as we come to some sort mutual of agreement over it. No more of this coming-on-to-me-in-a-moment-of-weakness crap. At least that way we both know exactly where we stand, and I won’t feel like an utter bastard when I act on these mixed signals that you’re sending.”

“I’m so . . .”

He made a rude sound, cutting off her apology.

“Don’t. Just
don’t
apologize. I don’t think I can handle it right now.”

“Bryce, I think that I should move out. Not far from here, close enough for you to have access to Kayla. You’ll still have her when I’m at school of course, and she could have a sleepover here at least once a week. I’ve been thinking about it . . .”

“Clearly.”

“. . . and it’s a workable solution,” she continued, ignoring his sarcastic little interruption. “One that would suit our lifestyles.”

“And how can you afford a place of your own on the salary you’re earning?” He looked shell-shocked by her words, but Bronwyn refused to allow her resolve to weaken. Theresa’s vehement words the night before had made her think that maybe she
did
deserve something more than this warped arrangement that he had suggested.

“Well, you’ll have to pay for it,” she told him resolutely, and his eyes narrowed. “You will pay for my new place, my studies, and child support. I think that it’s the least you can do. I don’t want hundreds of thousands or half of your company or any other kind of payday, but it would be stupid of me not to ask for your support until after I’ve finished my studies.”

“I don’t want you to move out,” he said grimly.

“I know, but if I don’t move out, we’ll keep repeating the same cycle. I don’t
want
to want you, Bryce. But I do, and if I stay here we
will
wind up in bed together again and that’ll be a huge step backward for us. For me.”

“Bronwyn, what will it take to convince you that I don’t want to lose you, or Kayla? That I honestly want to save our marriage?”

“Bryce, there’s nothing left to save,” she said with a bitter smile. “Yes, I’m physically attracted to you, but we can’t base a marriage on that alone.”

“That’s all you feel for me? Physical attraction?” he asked hoarsely.

“Yes,” she lied, happy that the sunglasses hid her eyes from him.

“What about Kayla?” he asked.

“Kayla will be fine; we’ll
all
be fine, Bryce.”

“Bronwyn.” His voice dropped to an urgent whisper, rife with despair. “Please, don’t do this. Give us a chance. I know that I’ve done horrible things and behaved reprehensibly, but . . .” She held up her hands, hating to see him beg and knowing that if she allowed it to continue, she would cave.

“Bryce, you’ve hurt me and I’m finding it . . . a little difficult to move on from that.” She removed her sunglasses, grimacing a bit as the bright light burned into her retinas, but she wanted him to see the truth in her eyes. “I’m trying to forgive you, but I’m only human, and the mistakes you made were enormous. Try seeing it from my point of view. Try to imagine how it felt to be so completely rejected for getting pregnant. Imagine how lost I felt when you didn’t call, when you refused to take my calls, when you seemed to reject me at every turn.” He opened his mouth to say something but after a quick, painful breath closed it again, and he allowed her to speak. “You’ve made some cruel comments about the clothes and toys Kayla had when you found us again. But every single cent I made went into keeping her clean, clothed, fed, happy, and healthy. It was a huge responsibility that I had to bear by myself. You weren’t there, Bryce. It was just me and I had to make the best I could of our situation.

“And then, when you found us again, you behaved like
you
were the wronged one! Your deafness was somehow
my
fault and I had ‘abandoned’ you at the scene of an accident.” She could hear the stark bitterness in her own voice and knew that it had to be visible in her eyes and on her face. She was still so very
furious
at the unjustness of those particular indictments. “Do you not see how unforgivable those accusations were? How insurmountable these problems are? And now
you
want us to be a family,
you
don’t want a divorce, and you expect me to somehow be grateful for that? You expect me to forget all the pain you’ve inflicted? Well, I can’t do it, Bryce. I wish I could, but since I have no idea what set you off in the first place, how on earth am I supposed to trust you not to go off the deep end again? What if I inadvertently trigger your rejection button again? I can’t live with the uncertainty. I don’t want to and I refuse to allow my daughter to experience the same pain and confusion.

“I know I’ve said it before, but I’m also heartily sick of your secretiveness, Bryce. This situation has made me recognize how much you’ve kept from me. You’re completely closed off and that’s not something that’s only recently developed. I’ve come to discover that you’ve always kept things from me and I don’t even
care
what those secrets are anymore.”

It was a long speech and it had been difficult to maintain her focus and keep facing him so that he could catch all of it. She had tried to intersperse it with as much sign language as she could, but she still couldn’t be sure that he had caught all of it. The hangover headache had quite happily invited a tension headache to join the wild party in her brain, and the pain was becoming almost unbearable.

“I was trying to protect you,” he confessed after a long silence, and Bronwyn cast an eye over to her daughter, who was starting to watch her parents with a worried frown, not as oblivious to the tension as they had hoped. Bronwyn cast a reassuring smile at Kayla. Not quite sure what to make of that last statement.

“You and the baby,” he said. “I wanted to protect you.”

“Protect us from
what
, Bryce?” she asked, combining the spoken words with broken sign language to convey her frustration. Every little bit that he so begrudgingly revealed made her recognize how very much he was still keeping hidden from her. She’d seen only the very tip of this iceberg, and she was astounded by her own former ignorance. How had she never recognized the magnitude of this problem? She had been so blinded by her love and happiness that she’d never known what an unhappy and troubled man her husband was. She had been so naïve and stupid.

“From what?” she asked again, and he shook his head helplessly. “Why did you react that way to the news of my pregnancy?”

He sighed deeply and the sound seemed torn from the depths of his chest. His eyes were stark with unhappiness and fear. He shook his head again before pushing himself up and dropping a kiss on top Kayla’s head. The little girl managed to smear some scrambled eggs across his cheek but he didn’t seem to notice as he straightened up to look at Bronwyn again. The naked vulnerability on his face tore at her heart and she bit the inside of her cheek to prevent herself from blurting out something stupid. Something like she loved him or that she would stay. She felt like she would do anything to wipe that look of utter isolation and agony from his eyes.

“I’ll get my assistant to look into viable homes for you. Once we’ve compiled a list of possibilities, you can decide which one suits you best.” He turned and walked out of the room, leaving Bronwyn feeling wrung out and deflated by the hollow victory.

Bryce waited until he was safely back behind the closed door of his study before bending at the waist and inhaling deeply as the consequences of his promise hit him like a freight train. She was going to leave him and he was going to let her because she deserved her freedom, because it was cruel to saddle a vibrant and affectionate woman like her with an emotionally crippled husband, and most importantly because he still didn’t know how to explain his actions on that long-ago night.

A
baby
, Jesus God, he had thought. He wasn’t ready to be a father! He would be terrible at it. He would be like his
own
father—abusive, mean, and absent in both heart and soul. He couldn’t have a child yet, not until Bronwyn healed him some more. Over the last couple of years, she had been a balm to his restless and damaged spirit. In time, her gentle calm and kindness would have spread to him, would have seeped into his soul and made him the kind of man that he longed to be. He would have been ready to be a father then and responsible for a brand-new life. And yet she was pregnant
now
. . . she had his baby inside of her at this very moment. His breath hitched on a sob as he saw her in his mind’s eye, getting rounder, softer, her breasts growing full and heavy with milk. He saw her giving birth, saw their baby: angry, red, naked, and crying and loved it with all his heart. He wanted that life with his entire being.

Not just the two of them but the
three
of them: A family.

Yes, he wanted that life badly, and with Bronwyn by his side, he was almost certain that he could have it. He wasn’t his father. He had practically raised Rick without harming a hair on his head, so why would he be any different with his own children? God, Bron probably hated him so much right now, but he would try to explain it to her. Maybe he could
finally
tell her about his father and she would understand. She wouldn’t think he was a monster just because one had sired him. She would forgive him. She
had
to. Surely she loved him enough to forgive him?

He was already back on his feet and ready to go talk to her when he heard the engine of her BMW roar to life, followed by the unmistakable sound of tires squealing in the driveway. His stomach clenched and his heart just about stopped.

“No . . . nononononono . . .” The litany sounded like a prayer as he lurched from the room. He heard a screech as she battled with the clutch and then the throaty purr as the car obeyed her commands and sprang to life. He was just out of the front door when the car went hurtling out of the driveway. “God, please . . .” he begged as he turned back and palmed his own set of keys from the table in the hall before diving for the Maserati that he had left parked in the front. She wasn’t a good driver, and she usually battled with the curves on the steep, winding road. He followed her at a distance, careful not to spook her; he could see her taillights a few bends down and knew he would be able to catch up to her in his faster car. He only prayed that she didn’t misjudge a curve and get hurt. God, he would die if she were injured or if the baby got hurt. She would
never
forgive him if anything happened to the baby, would never believe that he wanted it as much as she did but had just been too damned cowardly to admit it. He wanted them safe. He wanted them with him. He would give anything in the world to take back the last half an hour. He was petrified that when he managed to catch up with her, she wouldn’t want him anymore, wouldn’t
love
him anymore!

He couldn’t live without her love. All that stupid overwhelming tenderness he had told himself he felt for her, how the hell had he not recognized it for what it was? The road was leveling out when it happened—a young couple, hand in hand, stepped into his path. They were so absorbed in each other that they didn’t see him coming. He swerved to avoid them and went off the road. He had just enough time to feel gratitude that he had left the steep curves behind him before the car flipped and rolled several times. He was briefly aware of feeling excruciating pain everywhere, and his last thoughts before he passed out were regret that he might never see his baby and absolute terror that he might never hold Bronwyn again.