Her body arched as the sensations heightened and he reached down between their bodies to find her sensitive little clitoris. His long, clever thumb rubbed across the excited nubbin and that, combined with his thickness inside of her, sent her hurtling over the edge of reason. Her breath hitched in her chest and her head tilted back while her entire body convulsed and clenched around him. She screamed as the powerful orgasm swept through her, and Bryce half-laughed incredulously.
He couldn’t take his eyes off her. So absorbed was he in her climax that his own took him completely by surprise. He shouted hoarsely as his entire body bucked and he jerked once, twice before with another shout—her name—he poured himself into her with a broken sob. His eyes closed as his brain shut down and his body went limp. He stirred himself only to remove the condom before flopping down beside her again, dropping a heavy arm over her waist.
“I miss your breathless little sounds.” He broke the silence five minutes later, after their heartbeats and breathing had returned to normal, just as Bronwyn was starting to feel awkward and wondering now what? “Those half-formed gasping little words, God they used to turn me on more than you can imagine.” She lifted her head from his chest to stare at him.
“You never mentioned that before,” she pointed out, and he smiled.
“Because I knew that if I’d said anything you would immediately have felt self-conscious about it.” His reminiscent smile became a wicked grin. “And I didn’t want you tensing up at crucial moments.”
“Yet you feel comfortable enough telling me about it now?” she asked, curious, and he snorted.
“I can’t hear them anymore,” he pointed out, and she tensed. “So getting self-conscious about any sounds you produce while we’re making love is a little pointless.”
“Are you going to tell me what happened to you, Bryce?” she asked faintly, and it was his turn to tense up. “Or are you never going to afford me the opportunity to defend myself?”
“You were there,” he reminded grimly, and she frowned irritably.
“Why do you keep saying that? What do you mean I was ‘there’?” she asked angrily. “Where the hell was I?”
“There when I had my goddamned accident!” he snapped before launching himself out of bed and stalking around the bedroom angrily, looking for his clothing. She leaped out as well and walked around his back until she was facing him again. She was stark naked, but she no longer cared about anything except getting to the bottom of this strange accusation.
“I was not there when you had your accident!” she retorted indignantly.
“I saw you,” he forced the words out between clenched teeth.
“What?” She was completely baffled now. “Saw me where? Bryce I don’t even know when you had your accident. Please just tell me what happened!”
“It burns me to have to tell you something that you already know, Bronwyn,” he gritted. “You’re playing me for a fool and I don’t like it!” He moved to step around her but she put her hands up against his broad chest to stop him. He felt about as immovable as a block of granite.
“Please, just . . . just . . .” Her eyes begged him when words failed her.
“I went after you that night, when you raced out of here like a bat out of hell,” he said so quietly that his lips barely moved. “As you knew that I would. You were going so fast that I was terrified you would get into an accident.” His lips twisted at that bit of irony. “It took me a few minutes to get my car out, so by the time I headed out in the direction you had gone, you’d disappeared. I was frantic and wasn’t paying attention to anything around me. I was so focused on trying to spot your car that I didn’t see the couple crossing the road until it was almost too late. I swerved to avoid them and the car rolled. I was drifting in and out of consciousness, trapped in the car, when I saw you standing there amongst the crowd, staring at me with nothing but ice-cold contempt on your face . . . you heartless bitch!” He hissed viciously. “You turned around and walked away without so much as a backward glance.
“I wasn’t even surprised when I woke up three days later in Intensive Care to be informed that you hadn’t even bothered to visit or call. I couldn’t have cared less if I never saw you again but for the fact that you were having my baby. You were having my baby and you had simply disappeared off the face of the earth. Is it any wonder I hate you? Not only is my accident your fault, but you walked away from me when I was at my most vulnerable, when I needed you most, and you took my daughter along with you!”
Bronwyn’s face was ashen with shock at his story. She ached to think of the agony he must have gone through in that hospital, wondering about his baby, but she was also filled to the brim with fury and offense that he dared to think she could do something so awful as walk away from him while he lay injured and bleeding. Not to mention his ridiculous statement that the accident had been her fault when he had caused the entire sorry situation.
“I concede,” she began quietly, with barely repressed sarcasm, “that maybe the accident was my fault because for some crazy reason I saw fit to flee after you drove me out of the house right when I needed you most. But I absolutely refuse to listen to this nonsense about me standing impassively by the side of the road while you lay bleeding and trapped in a car. Or, worse, walking away while you were still in the car!
“I didn’t know that you’d been in an accident until the day you walked into my hospital room. I would never have stood there watching you suffer, and if I had known you were in the hospital, no force in heaven or hell would have kept me away from your bedside, because, even though you had treated me like something to be scraped off the bottom of your boot, I still loved you so damned much!” He started to say something but she held up her hand.
“No. You’ve had your turn; it’s only fair I get a chance to defend myself against this . . . this insult! I did not think you would immediately come chasing after me—you were so irrationally angry that I knew you needed time to calm down. I headed straight for the beach house in Knysna. I stopped only for brief bathroom breaks and drove the distance in just under five and a half hours. I was confident that once you had time to calm down and think, you would change your mind about the baby.”
“I saw you,” he maintained, clearly not believing her. “Saw you with my own eyes!”
“You were sliding in and out of consciousness; you were in shock and in pain . . .” she pointed out reasonably. “You don’t think that maybe you were delirious as well? Seeing things that were not there?”
He frowned and shook his head.
“No, of course not,” she scoffed. “Not Bryce Palmer, he never makes mistakes.”
“God damn you,” he growled. “I know what I saw . . . you were standing there looking impassive and completely uncaring.”
“This?” She waved her hand back and forth between their naked bodies. “This thing that just happened between us? It was a mistake that shouldn’t be repeated. I should never have let you touch me, but you got me in a moment of complete weakness. That ends now. I won’t allow a man who just hours ago said I made his skin crawl use me like this again. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need a shower,” she informed him unsteadily. There was really nothing she could say or do right now to prove that she hadn’t been there that day. She didn’t know if she’d ever be able to convince him that she hadn’t been there. He seemed so convinced.
That a man she had once thought loved her could believe something so unspeakable about her was incredibly painful. Bryce was completely wrapped up in his thoughts and did not even seem to notice when she left the room. Bronwyn escaped to the en suite bathroom and locked the door securely behind her, afraid that he would come in and bombard her with yet more reasons he did not believe her. She ran the shower as hot as she could stand it but shivered beneath the relentless spray. God, if he had spent the last two years believing something so awful about her, it was no wonder he hated
her so much. It was an obstacle that could not easily be overcome because he had it firmly in his head that she had betrayed him in the worst possible way by leaving him literally broken and bleeding.
She knew how her stubborn ass of a husband’s mind worked. To his way of thinking, all of his sins were now superseded by her “unforgivable betrayal.” How very convenient for him. It made complete sense that he would believe something like this about her. It was easier for him to blame her and hate her rather than deal with the fact that due to his own thoughtless actions he had lost his wife, his child, and his hearing all on the same night. Unfortunately he didn’t doubt what he had seen that night, and while Bronwyn could understand why his mind had fabricated this bizarre coping mechanism, she couldn’t forgive it.
She hunched over and clasped her arms around her midriff, afraid that she would be sick. She swallowed down the nausea and leaned back against the tiles of the shower stall, sliding down against the wall until she was sitting on the floor with her knees raised to her chest. She had her face buried in her knees and her arms covering her head.
She did not know how long she sat there shivering, unable to get warm, unable to even cry as she tried to deal with the shock of knowing how very much her husband despised her. The needle-like spray suddenly stopped and Bronwyn raised her head hesitantly, a bit disorientated by the sudden cessation of water. She looked up to find Bryce standing at the entrance of the shower stall and was baffled by his unexpected appearance.
“But I locked the door,” she murmured in a small voice that he might not have caught if he’d had his hearing.
“You forgot to lock the other door,” he pointed out quietly, able to read her lips despite the steam, and she groaned, remembering that the luxurious bathroom was shared by two bedrooms. “Come on, Bron . . . you need to dry off. You’ll make yourself sick again.” She noticed, for the first time, that he had a huge, fluffy, white bath towel draped over his hands. She nodded but didn’t move, and Bryce shocked her by stepping into the wet stall, uncaring of the fact that he wore socks and was dressed in clean boxer shorts and a T-shirt. He hunkered down in front of her and draped the bath towel around her shoulders, helping her up in the process.
“You’ve been in here for nearly an hour,” he informed her grimly. She tilted her face to his, still shivering violently.
“I . . . I c-couldn’t get warm,” she stuttered, and he frowned, evidently not catching that, but probably understanding the gist of it. He wrapped his arms around her and dragged her nude, wet body to his. He held her so tightly and so closely that the trembling abated almost immediately. He led her out of the shower stall and unlocked the door, leading her back into the master bedroom. He gently steered her toward the bed and seated her on the edge, kneeling in front of her as he patted her dry with the fluffy towel.
“You’re wet,” she observed inanely, noting the dampness of his T-shirt and shorts while she tried not to stare at his muscular naked legs. He had showered as well, if his damp hair was anything to go by. He caught her words because he was looking directly at her when she said them and shrugged in response.
“I’ll dry,” he dismissed. She noticed that it was still dark outside and grimaced. She checked the time on the alarm clock on her bedside pedestal; it was just after three thirty.
“Why did you come to my room tonight?” she asked hoarsely, and even though she was looking right at him when she asked it, he did not respond. Instead he lowered his eyes and continued to pat her dry. He left her briefly to pad to the bathroom and returned moments later with a smaller towel for her hair.
“We’ll have to dry this,” he was muttering. “You’ve been so sick; I don’t think it would be wise for you to sleep with wet hair. Where is your dryer?” She pointed to her dresser and he picked her up, ignoring the jerky movement of protest she made. He deposited her on the padded seat in front of the dressing table, and Bronwyn was confronted by her own haggard reflection. She looked a sight; her face was gaunt and unnaturally pale, and her eyes looked feverishly bright and overly large. The towel was still draped around her shoulders, but it had fallen open to reveal the thin body beneath. To Bronwyn’s own eyes she looked too thin, and she wondered how Bryce had been able to bring himself to touch her when she looked like this. He switched on the machine and started drying her hair, running his fingers through it with a rough tenderness. She blinked in surprise and sluggishly raised her hands in an attempt to take the blow dryer from him.
“I can do it,” she protested. He lifted the machine out of her reach and watched her in the mirror until she dropped her arms in resignation. He grunted in satisfaction and went back to the task of drying her hair.
When it was dry enough to suit him, he ran a brush through the dark, silky mass and then tied it back with one of the hair ties lying scattered on the dressing table. He picked her up again and deposited her back onto the unmade bed, tucking her under the covers and tossing the towel aside before climbing in beside her and dragging her stiff body close to his. She lay with her head on his chest, listening to his heart beat steadily beneath her ear and wondering what this was all about. He remained silent though and eventually Bronwyn relaxed enough to drift off to sleep again.
CHAPTER FIVE
Bronwyn cautiously opened her eyes to a sunlit bedroom. There was no sign of Bryce, and instinct told her that it was way after midday. She heard Kayla’s joyful laughter outside, and she guessed the little girl was in the swimming pool, probably with her father, who was diligently teaching her how to swim. Bryce had had a childproof fence built around the pool sometime during her absence, another one of those preparations he’d made in anticipation of a child he’d had no idea if he’d ever meet.
Bronwyn sat up shakily, feeling refreshed yet strangely hollow. She felt like someone who’d had a long and desperately needed sleep after the death of a loved one, only to wake up to the discovery that even though life would go on, it would be forever marred by the tragedy of loss. She could not remember the last time she had slept so soundly, possibly that last night before leaving Bryce two years ago; she certainly had not had much peace of mind since then. She got up and made her way to the bathroom, trying not to think of the night before. She wasn’t sure what any of it had signified and definitely wasn’t sure where it left her and Bryce.
She made her way downstairs a little over half an hour later, wearing a pair of faded jeans and an old T-shirt. The clothes were from her old wardrobe and were too baggy on her. Bronwyn resolved to eat even more, still feeling incredibly unattractive because of her thinness.
When she reached the living room, she stood at the open patio doors staring out at the pair in the water for the longest time, feeling ambivalent about the obvious enjoyment they seemed to find in each other’s company. She felt a little left out and again bitter toward Bryce for allowing this to happen to them. She was about to turn away and head in search of something to eat when Bryce glanced up and caught sight of her. She could not see his expression because of the sun’s glare off the water, but he went strangely still before heading toward the side of the pool and depositing a protesting Kayla on the paving before heaving himself out alongside her.
“Daddy more swim . . .” the child was protesting, but he was watching Bronwyn and did not see her display of temper. Bronwyn watched in amazement as the little girl impatiently patted her father on his leg and made a clumsy sign that Bronwyn knew signified “daddy” or “father.” Bronwyn was familiar with it because she had been meaning to teach her daughter the word in sign language. Bryce looked down at his precocious offspring and grinned when she said “daddy” with one of her chubby hands again before making swimming gestures.
“Later, baby,” he laughingly promised, picking her up and depositing her on his wide, bronzed shoulders. “First we’ll have some lunch with your mummy.” The child looked up and noticed Bronwyn for the first time. The delight on her little face warmed Bronwyn�
�s heart. Bryce had pretty much monopolized the little girl’s time since their arrival eleven days ago. And while he sometimes seemed at a loss as to how to deal with Kayla, he was muddling through without asking Bronwyn for any assistance. It concerned her that he seemed so able around the child. She worried that he might start to wonder why he needed Bronwyn around at all. Now that she was feeling healthier, she vowed to spend more time with the little girl whom she had missed so much. She wouldn’t allow Bryce to usurp her so completely any longer.
Bryce made his way toward her, and she stepped onto the patio, relishing the feel of the hot, early autumn sun on her face. She picked up a bright-pink beach towel adorned with characters from Disney’s Finding Nemo cartoon and held it up as he deposited the happily chattering little girl into Bronwyn’s arms. She wrapped the towel around Kayla and hugged her small body close. Her daughter was bubbling on about swimming, her daddy, and various other concerns that were of great importance to any nearly nineteen-month-old little girl. Bronwyn nodded and made the appropriate noises, but she was preoccupied with Bryce, whose eyes were sweeping over her from top to bottom, making her feel naked and vulnerable.
“How do you feel?” he asked quietly, and she shrugged, managing a slight smile.
“Well rested.”
He nodded at her reply but seemed at a loss for words.
“I hope you’re hungry. You’re just in time for lunch,” he said, gesturing toward the glass-and-wrought-iron patio table situated close to the huge stone barbeque at the other end of the large patio. Celeste was just laying out what looked like a delicious lunch. The older woman, always one of few words, flashed them a smile and retreated with a nod.
“I’m famished.” She nodded and headed toward the table, depositing a still-prattling Kayla into her high chair and placing the provided plastic bowl and plastic spoon onto the surface in front of the toddler.
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