Despite her deep-seated feelings of animosity toward Bryce, Bronwyn tried very hard not to begrudge them this time together, if only for Kayla’s sake. The little girl needed Bryce in her life. And Bronwyn had to acknowledge that the toddler, with her boundless energy, would have sapped her last reserves. Now she cuddled the affectionate child lovingly, delaying the moment when she would actually have to look at her grim husband. When she managed to summon up the guts to glance at him, she was surprised by an expression of unguarded vulnerability on his face. The expression was quickly shuttered when he noticed that she was staring at him, and the habitual frown took its place.
“What did you and Daddy do this morning?” she asked Kayla, keeping her eyes trained on his face so that he would not feel excluded.
“We play horsy . . . giddup.” The child chortled in remembered glee. She bounced on her mother’s lap, and Bronwyn winced as Kayla’s shoes dug into her thighs. “Giddup mummy . . . giddup, giddup!” Bryce plucked the child from Bronwyn’s lap before she could do any damage.
“You’re hurting your mummy,” he told the child in his carefully modulated voice. He spoke very quietly, and Bronwyn guessed that he had difficulty judging the volume of his voice. He kept it so soft that she strained to hear him sometimes. Not that anything he said was ever directed at her. She guessed that the volume of his voice would grow in proportion to his anger, and he was perpetually angry with her. He stared at her thoughtfully for a little while before totally shocking her and sitting down next to her, putting Kayla down to play with the toys that were scattered all over the floor.
“You look much better,” he observed, his eyes continuing to run over her face and form. “Not as gaunt, and you’re getting some color in your cheeks. How do you feel?”
“Better.” She nodded. “Bored.” He shocked her by gracing her with the smallest of smiles.
“Yes, you were never one for long periods of inactivity.” He nodded. “Have you given any thought to what you want to do once you’ve recovered?” She stared at him in dismay, having no clue how to answer that question. She hadn’t dared think about the future; she had no idea what Bryce wanted from her. Did he expect them to just continue to live together in the same soulless fashion for the next fifty years or so? Because Bronwyn couldn’t do that. She absolutely refused to live like this for much longer; she would rather get a divorce. Did he want a divorce? For that matter, were they divorced already? She was certain of only two things; he wanted his daughter but he did not want Bronwyn.
“I don’t . . . what do you mean?”
He frowned. “It wasn’t a trick question, Bronwyn,” he responded scathingly.
“I’m not sure . . . I suppose I’ll find a place to live?”
He didn’t like her response. That much was evident from the way he was glowering at her.
“You’re not taking Kayla away from me again, Bronwyn. You’ll both be staying here. You’d best reconcile yourself to that fact!”
“Staying here as what?” she asked pointedly. A divorce was looking increasingly appealing right now. She had no idea why she hadn’t instigated proceedings herself long ago. She supposed she had clung to the remnants of a fairy-tale marriage that had never existed outside of her imagination.
“My wife and my daughter,” he responded angrily, his voice rising marginally. “I could do without the wife, but I realize that it’s a package deal for now, so I’m willing to suffer your presence in my life again.”
“How long do you expect us to continue to living like this?” she pressed. She was trying very hard to keep the emotional strain off her face.
“Live like what? You have it made, Bronwyn, you’ll never want for anything, you have everything you need right here. I’m the one who will be making the sacrifices, shackled to the wife who crippled me and stole my child from me. I’ll be the one saddled with a wife whom I have absolutely no respect for. But I want my daughter, and for now this is the only way that I can have her.”
“Oh please, Bryce,” she retorted, her face pale with anger and hurt. “You’re not quite the prize you think you are. You forget that I’ll be trapped in a loveless marriage with a man who kicked me out of the house when I told him I was pregnant with his child. A man who hates me for absolutely no reason at all and who makes no secret of the fact that he doesn’t respect me. How on earth do you call that having it made? I’d rather we divorce and try to reach an amicable custody agreement. Kayla and I could live close by and . . .”
“The only other option you have here is if I took her from you, Bronwyn. No compromises. You live here with us, or you leave without her. What’s it to be?”
“You can’t take her from me . . .” she began helplessly, going ice cold as he pulled the rug out from under her again. Damn him, he held all the cards and he knew it. Her bravado was just empty posturing. She didn’t have his resources, and for now she’d have to toe his line until she could find a way out of this mess.
“Can’t I?” he asked frostily. She floundered beneath his steady gaze, lowering her eyes to where Kayla was happily playing on the floor. “You’d better start thinking about what you want, Bronwyn. Stay or leave. But if you stay, I suggest you start finding ways to make your life here more tolerable.”
“But what about . . .” she began before biting her tongue and blushing to her toes. The blush gave her away.
“Sex?” he prompted, and she nodded miserably. “Well, I don’t know about yours but my sex life is perfectly fine.” He shrugged. “Naturally, I don’t expect you to deprive yourself either. If you’re concerned that I’ll come creeping into your bed one desperate night, don’t worry about it. You’re the last woman in the world I want to sleep with.” His expression was filled with such distaste that Bronwyn’s eyes filled with tears of shame. She knuckled them away, infuriated by the display of weakness. His contempt hurt more than she could possibly have imagined. She glanced down at their daughter. The innocently playing little girl remained oblivious to the tension in the room, and Bronwyn was grateful for that. She refocused her attention on Bryce.
“You wanted me the other day,” she reminded him defiantly, and he laughed.
“I felt sorry for you,” he corrected. “Trust me, Bronwyn, the mere thought of touching you makes my skin crawl!” She flinched and struggled desperately to keep her tears at bay and her emotions in check, but one single scalding drop escaped to scorch its way down her cheek. His eyes followed the tear’s progress. His jaw clenched, and his expression remained emotionless. He looked like a man under enormous strain. She wiped at the moisture on her face, wanting to be as unemotional as he was but failing dismally when another tear escaped. She averted her face, not wanting to see the scorn in his eyes and pushed herself up as she sought an escape route out of the room. He got up too and stood in front of her, blocking her way to the exit, so she turned away from him and walked to one of the windows, staring blindly out at the magnificent scenery as she fought to control her emotions.
He watched her narrow back quiver as she bravely tried to bring herself back under control. Damn her! Her tears had always had the power to unman him, but that was something she did not know, something he had never dared reveal to her for fear that she would use them as a weapon against him. But he could tell that Bronwyn hated having him see her tears. He could see her struggling to be strong, but she was so transparent that every devastating emotion showed clearly on her face. The very fact that she was trying so hard to hide any sign of weakness from him made her tears difficult to ignore. He clenched his fists and forced himself to remain where he was, not to give in to the temptation to go and comfort her.
She looked out at the ocean but didn’t appear to be admiring the view as she wrapped her slender arms around herself. She seemed so incredibly lonely that it almost physically hurt him not to go to her. But Bryce refused to fall into her trap again; he was calling the shots now. The last time he had been so smitten with her that he had barely been able to see straight.
He remembered the first time he’d laid eyes on her, how he had stared at her that day, trying to figure out what he found so fascinating about her.
She was tall, about five eleven, but she lacked the grace inherent in a lot of tall women. In fact, on that first day, she had seemed to fall over her feet just about every five minutes. She wasn’t even pretty. Her features taken separately were attractive enough, a long straight nose, lush mouth, high arching eyebrows, and the most beautiful, thickly lashed, brown eyes that he had ever seen. Yet when put together in her narrow, oval face, those features just didn’t seem to match. Still he had been compelled to stare for hours, drowning every time she shifted those huge, velvet-brown doe eyes of hers to him.
Now he watched her warily, almost wishing that he had never laid eyes on the treacherous bitch. He damned her for looking like a fragile waif with her badly trimmed dark-brown hair curling around her face where it had escaped from its sloppy ponytail. He watched as she straightened her back, coming to some sort of resolution, and turned back to face him. She walked toward him until they were separated by less than a meter.
“I will stay,” she said, her beautiful mouth forming the words concisely. It was hell, this lip-reading business. Every time his gaze fell on her full lips, he found himself remembering what they tasted like. “It looks like I have no other choice. When I have completely recuperated and Kayla is settled in, I want to resume my studies.” He nodded; one of his objections to her pregnancy had been that she was in the process of obtaining her undergraduate degree in zoology, her ultimate goal to become a veterinarian. He hadn’t been comfortable with the idea of her giving that up and maybe one day resenting both him and the baby for having to sacrifice her dreams. He couldn’t recall telling her that at the time though but he knew that he hadn’t been at his most logical after hearing the news that she was pregnant.
“If this is to be an open marriage,” she continued, “I will start seeing other people too. All I ask is that we be as discreet as possible, for Kayla’s sake.”
She intended to see other men? That thought did not sit too well with him, and he opened his mouth to protest before remembering that it had been his own stupid idea for her not to deprive herself. After all if he did not want her, why should she not feel free to find someone who would? Some other guy who would hold her and kiss her? Someone who would be free to wipe away her tears and comfort her? Some other man who would love her and take care of her? Someone who would do what Bryce no longer wanted to do? He nodded, hoping that none of the confusion he was feeling was evident in his eyes or on his face.
“Sounds fair,” he agreed smoothly before dropping his gaze pointedly to her bare ring finger. “But open marriage or not, you have to start wearing your wedding rings again.”
Bronwyn covered her left hand self-consciously with her right, her own eyes dropping to his strong hands. She had noticed, couldn’t help but notice, that he still wore his wedding ring, a broad brushed gold and platinum band with a complex Celtic design that had matched her much smaller band.
“I . . . I don’t have them,” she confessed, and he made an impatient sound at the back of his throat.
“I’m deaf, remember?” he prompted sarcastically. “Show me your mouth when you speak!” She raised her face and met his gaze unflinchingly.
“I don’t have them.”
“You don’t have the rings?” he asked in disbelief. “What the hell did you do with them?”
“I sold them,” she said before fleeing from the room, not wanting to see his reaction to that confession. She would have given anything to hold on to those rings even though they had come to symbolize nothing but lies.
CHAPTER FOUR
Bronwyn hadn’t really expected to see the handsome Mr. Palmer again after that disastrous first time, yet there he was, waiting outside the restaurant the following evening after her shift ended. He had looked moody and uncertain, leaning against the wall outside the staff entrance. When she saw him, she hesitated, not sure why he was there.
“Oh . . . sir, are you waiting for someone? Would you like me to deliver a message?” He was frowning down at her in consternation and seemed a little bewildered.
“Have you eaten?” he asked unexpectedly, and her brow wrinkled as she tried to make sense of the bizarre situation.
“Not really.” She shook her head.
“Have dinner with me?” The request was so abrupt that it took a few seconds to sink in.
“Uh . . .”
“Look, I know how this must seem,” he acknowledged gruffly. “But I assure you, I am not in the habit of lurking around outside restaurants and ambushing the female staff with invitations to dinner. I won’t harm you in any way. I’m not some creepy pervert or anything. I just . . . I just . . .”
She waited, watching in absolute fascination as he glowered in frustration and ran an agitated hand through his hair while swearing beneath his breath. He dropped his gaze to the ground as he made a visible effort to gather his scattered wits.
“God,” he was muttering to himself. “I sound like a complete psychopath . . .” Her lips curved into a slight smile at the tone of disgusted self-discovery, but she quickly wiped it from her face when he shifted his eyes back to her.
“I had no intention of coming back, but I wanted to see you again.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know.” He sounded so baffled that the smile crept back into her eyes. “Will you have dinner with me?”
“Okay,” she said lightly, and his frown deepened. He nodded, pushing himself away from the wall and turning to lead the way before pausing to turn back to her.
“Do you have absolutely no sense of self-preservation?” he growled, and her eyebrows shot up in surprise at his stern tone. “Promise me that after tonight you won’t agree to have dinner with any more strange men off the street! It’s dangerous. There are all manner of crazies out there. Murderers and rapists and God knows what else. You have to be more careful, Bronwyn. Promise me.”
“I promise,” she vowed, a little stunned by this unexpected protectiveness from a man she barely knew.
He had smiled in relief and she noticed, for the first time, that he had a rather sexy dimple in his right cheek. “Good. Then let’s eat . . .”
Bryce had been in an unpredictable mood since she had confessed, earlier that day, to pawning her wedding and engagement rings. Bronwyn eyed her husband nervously across the dinner table. They tended to have late dinners, so Kayla had been fed and put to bed an hour before. She had toyed with the idea of skipping dinner, but she knew that it would be foolish to miss any meals when she was already so weak, and eating in her room would be the coward’s way out. Bryce had insisted, soon after her arrival, that they dine together. He seemed to want everyone to think that this was some kind of happy reconciliation. Not that anyone other than the maids had been around to see them together. Rick, Lisa, and their thirteen-month-old baby—Rhys—had resumed their family vacation in Knysna and wouldn’t be back in Cape Town for another few days.
Bronwyn was still amazed by how much things had changed since she left. She wondered where Bryce’s friends were. Pierre De Coursey, his business partner at DCP Jewellers Inc. and good friend, used to be a regular visitor in their home; she had liked the Frenchman, although she knew he must have wondered what Bryce was doing with a small-town hick like her.
“Where is Pierre?” She got sick of the silence and decided to take the bull by the horns. When she received no response, she looked up to find Bryce contemplating his wineglass. She sighed sadly, immediately realizing her mistake. She waved to catch his attention and he looked up absently. She repeated her question and he frowned.
“You want beer?” he asked in surprise.
“Pierre De Coursey?” She used the Frenchman’s full name, hoping that it would help, and watched as Bryce’s lips quirked in amusement, causing his dimple to wink briefly. She was a little shocked at the self-deprecating humor she saw in his eyes.
She nodded and dared a slight smile. “What about Pierre?”
“Well he hasn’t been around at all since my return. I find this rather strange, since he used to come by most evenings before . . . before . . .” Her voice petered off, and his eyebrows rose.
“Before you ran away?” he inserted smoothly.
“Before I was driven away,” she corrected, just as smoothly, fed up with being the villain of the piece. His eyebrows raised a notch higher, but he let it slide for once.
“Pierre spends most evenings at home with his family these days.”
“His family?” Pierre hadn’t been married when she left.
“Yes, he has a wife and son.”
“Pierre De Coursey got married?” She couldn’t quite keep the shock out of her expression.
“Came as a surprise to me too.” He grinned unexpectedly and looked so much like his old self that Bronwyn’s mouth went dry with longing. “Last year, nearly a full year after you’d left, he quite unexpectedly announced that he was getting married. Admittedly, I had been very much out of commission and not too aware of what was happening in the world around me at the time, but Pierre, who had been a regular and concerned visitor and friend had never even mentioned meeting a woman he was serious enough about to marry.”
A Husband's Regret (The Unwanted Series) Page 5