A Husband's Regret (The Unwanted Series) (11 page)

Bronwyn blinked stupidly at that. Pierre hadn’t known about her pregnancy? She had a sudden vivid flashback of Rick in her room at the hospital. It hadn’t really sunk in at the time; she had been frightened, panicky, and floating on a medicated cloud, but her brother-in-law had looked startled at Bryce’s first mention of a child. How could Bryce not have told Rick or Pierre about their baby? Had he told his “crack” team of private investigators? It was a bizarre detail to leave out. If he really wanted to find her, why wouldn’t he have told anybody about her pregnancy? Surely it would have made his search easier. Granted, some instinct had urged her to use her maternal grandmother’s maiden name over the last two years, just in case Bryce decided that he wanted her baby and not her. It had been bothersome because she’d had to keep changing doctors and clinics; nobody would have believed her “forgotten ID” story twice.

“Bronwyn?” Alice’s voice seemed to come from a great distance away, and Bronwyn had a hard time focusing on Alice again. “Are you okay?”

“Why wouldn’t he have told Pierre or Rick about the baby?” she mused aloud, and Alice frowned

“That’s a good question,” Alice murmured. “But one that only Bryce can provide the answer to.” Bronwyn nodded absently but found it hard to focus on anything else for the rest of the afternoon. She enrolled in the sign language classes after lunch. The clinic offered afternoon and evening classes, and Bronwyn opted to attend a day class once a week. She and Alice also arranged a standing lunch date on the day that she would attend the class.

“So every Tuesday? Same time and place?” the other woman double-checked as they said their good-byes a couple of hours later. “And next time, let’s keep the husbands out of the conversation!”

“I’m sorry if I seemed a little distracted,” Bron apologized quietly. “It’s just . . .”

“Forget it, you and Bryce obviously still have a great deal to work out.”

CHAPTER SEVEN

T
he house was in chaos when Bronwyn returned home half an hour later. Kayla was screaming her head off in the den while Bryce held her writhing little body in his arms as he frantically tried to soothe her. Celeste stood to the side, wringing her hands nervously, a concerned look on her plain face.

“Oh my God! What’s going on here?” Kayla’s crying worsened when she heard her mother’s voice. She managed to pull herself out of her father’s arms and launched herself toward her mother, her unsteady gait nearly sending her off balance.

“Mummy! Kayla
ouch
! Kayla ouch, Mummy!” Bronwyn sank to her knees, and her heart dropped like a stone when she registered the genuine fear and pain on her little girl’s face. As the child crept into her mother’s open arms and snuggled against her chest, Bronwyn allowed her furious eyes to meet Bryce’s. His face had closed up like a shutter, a remote look in his eyes as he stood watching them, his hands thrust into his trouser pockets.

“What did you
do
to her?” she hissed, her maternal instincts on full alert. “I trusted you to look after her and I come back to this?” Kayla had stopped her hysterical sobbing and was hiccupping into Bronwyn’s chest, her tense little body relaxing as she clung to the familiar comfort her mother represented. Bryce’s shadowed eyes revealed absolutely no emotion; his clenched jaw the only visible sign of his tension. She got up, Kayla in her arms, and advanced toward him, a stalking lioness intent on protecting her cub.

“What happened here?”

His eyes remained level but he refused to say a word.

“Bryce, answer me! She
never
cries like this unless she’s hurt. How did she get hurt?”

His eyes flickered a little, as he cast an involuntary look down at the little girl who was staring up at him with huge, tear-drenched blue eyes. Her thumb was propped in her mouth and her breath still hitched. Bronwyn glanced over her daughter’s little body, doing a damage assessment. Her eyes detected no visible signs of injury until she reached one plump little bare foot. Her big toe was bleeding and looked somewhat swollen. Bronwyn made a soft sound of dismay and lifted the foot to inspect it more closely. Fortunately the damage seemed minimal, and judging from Kayla’s ever-lessening sniffles, the immediate shock of pain had worn off already. As the haze of panic dissipated, Bronwyn began to recognize that the damage
she
had done by storming blindly into the fray may have been a lot worse than the injury to Kayla’s toe. She had shown an appalling lack of trust by assuming Bryce had been responsible for the toddler’s injury, and she was beginning to feel like an overprotective fool.

“Bryce,” she began hesitantly, taking a step toward where he stood. He was as still and remote as a statue. He ignored her and swung on his heel to leave the room abruptly. Bronwyn made a dismayed little sound, and Kayla, her pain mostly forgotten already, dragged her thumb from her mouth to add her own opinion.

“Daddy go bye-bye,” she observed solemnly before resting her head on Bronwyn’s shoulder and sticking her thumb back into her mouth.

“Yes,” Bronwyn whispered, burying her face in her daughter’s silky curls. “Daddy’s gone away.” But that wasn’t entirely true; he hadn’t left the house, she had heard his study door slam and knew that he was probably brooding in there. She knew that she would have to get to the bottom of things sooner rather than later and also had the sinking feeling that she was the one who would have to make serious amends. She glanced over at the appalled Celeste and nodded down at the drowsy little girl in her arms.

“I’ll take care of her toe,” she said hoarsely, and Celeste mumbled that she’d be in the kitchen. Bronwyn fussed over Kayla for a while, her mind on Bryce while she kissed the toe of her now-giggling baby all better and placed a cute
Finding Nemo
Band-Aid on the tiny cut. Kayla’s eyelids started to droop after half an hour of cuddling and playing with her mother—it was way past time for her afternoon nap. Bronwyn carried her to the housekeeper in the kitchen.

“Celeste, would you mind . . .” She left the question unfinished, and Celeste nodded immediately and bustled forward to take an unprotesting Kayla into her arms. Bronwyn dropped an affectionate kiss on the sleepy child’s forehead before hurrying out of the room toward Bryce’s study. With each heavy step she took, she felt more and more like Daniel preparing to beard the lion’s den. When she reached the ominously shut study door, she paused to listen but couldn’t hear a sound coming from behind the door. She cautiously knocked on the solid wood before berating herself for her thoughtless action. Now she faced an unfamiliar dilemma: did she just enter? Or did she wait until he eventually came out on his own? She regarded the suddenly insurmountable obstacle of the door cautiously before deciding to take the bull by the horns and open the door.

Bryce sat behind his huge desk, with his elbows resting on the gleaming wooden surface and his face buried in his hands. His large shoulders were shaking slightly. He looked terribly vulnerable, and in that moment Bronwyn felt like a voyeur of the worst kind. She cleared her throat to alert him of her presence and then swore softly beneath her breath when she realized that the gesture was as futile as her knock had been.

“Bryce . . .” Again she swore, feeling like a complete idiot, and hesitantly took a few steps toward him, lifting her hand to his shoulder in the process. He leaped out of the chair like a scalded cat and swore furiously. He glared at her, looking a bit a shaken and a lot furious.

“
Don’t
sneak up on me,” he berated hoarsely.

“I didn’t,” she protested, shocked by the near violence of his reaction. “I knocked but . . .”

“You knocked?” His voice dripped with derision. “I can’t
hear
, damn it!”

“Well, what was I supposed to do, then?” she responded defensively.

“There’s a doorbell,” he informed, calming down marginally, and she stared at him in confusion.

“A doorbell? But how . . .” her question trailed off when he pointed toward the lamp on his desk.

“The lamp is rigged to flicker when the bell rings. It works for both the front door and the study door. Two flickers for outside, one for inside.”

“Oh. That’s quite clever,” she murmured, impressed by the ingenious device and feeling like a complete idiot for not realizing sooner that the flickering lights that she had absently noticed intermittently since her return were not the result of an electrical fault as she had assumed.

“Clever, yes.” He smiled humorlessly and practically sneered the words. “It’s a common-enough device for the deaf. There are so many ways to make our lives as convenient as possible, clever little toys that light up and vibrate, tablet computers and smart phones with face-to-face call capabilities, SMSes and various other little gadgets designed to ease my life. Yet not one of these clever little toys would ever be able to alert me to the fact that my little girl is standing right behind me, trying to get my attention, not one of them could prevent me from turning around and treading on her before I’m able to stop myself.”
Oh God!
After her initial panic at finding Kayla in floods of tears and obvious pain, she had suspected that it might be something like this. Of course it was an accident, something that Bryce would tear himself up over, a situation that she had worsened with her stupid overreaction. His eyes were tormented, and she swallowed back a sob as she cupped his jaw in her slender hands.

“Bryce,” she whispered, her eyes liquid with regret and sympathy. He saw nothing but the sympathy and mistook it for pity. He jerked away from her and turned his back on her.

“No,” she moaned softly, not willing to allow him to close himself off when he was clearly in pain. She stepped around him and forced him to meet her eyes.

“Mikayla and I are going to have to learn not to sneak up on you then,” she told him firmly. “You are not at fault here, Bryce, it was an accident!”

“You’ve changed your tune rather quickly,” he mocked, and she flushed.

“I overreacted,” she conceded. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have gone off the deep end like that. I know that you would never intentionally hurt our daughter.”

“Intentionally or not, I did hurt her,” he pointed out harshly. “And I can’t promise that it won’t happen again in the future. And she—she’s frightened of me now. I don’t think . . .”

“She’s a baby, Bryce,” Bron pointed out firmly. “She was shocked and in pain, but she’ll soon forget. Children are resilient and have a much larger capacity for forgiveness than we do. She has also learned her lesson, and I doubt she’ll be coming up behind you without warning you in some way in the future. One thing about your daughter”—she smiled fondly—“she’s a fast learner!”

“She was crying so much,” he remembered in a shaken voice. “I couldn’t make her stop! Her little face was so sad and confused. I felt like a
monster
.”

She took a step closer to him, her heart going out to him.

“Oh, Bryce,” she began, not sure how to make this better. “I’m so sorry.”

“I don’t need your pity,” he snarled, as defensive and dangerous as a wounded animal. Bronwyn blinked, his abrupt mood swing throwing her completely off guard.

“I don’t
pity
you,” she denied, placing one tentative hand on his forearm, but he shrugged her off and signed something at her, glaring wildly while he did.

“I don’t understand,” she said helplessly, and he responded with another mutinous flurry of sign that left her completely adrift. His eyes were burning with anger and some other emotion that she could not define.

“Bryce, please . . .” she begged, not sure why it mattered to her that she comfort him. “Don’t shut me out like this.” He said something else, again with his hands, and then quite abruptly turned his back on her. Once again shutting her out as completely as he could. She sobbed a little before lifting a clenched fist to her lips and biting down on her knuckles, not sure how to deal with this. She stared at his broad, stiff back through burning eyes. She refused to let him do this.

Bryce had
always
been much too good at shutting her out. After a bad day at work, he used to closet himself in his study and refuse to speak to her about it until after it was resolved. She had never told him how much that had hurt her, and the
one
time she had dared mention it, he had quite condescendingly informed her that she wouldn’t understand anyway and not to worry about it. That had made her so furious, but she had let it slide. She had let a lot of things slide back then, in an effort not to upset Bryce. But she wasn’t that silly, spineless girl anymore, and she was determined not to let him shut her out again, not this time. Not when it was so important to their future as a functioning family. She threw back her shoulders resolutely before stepping around him again to meet his glare with a ferocious one of her own. She chose to ignore the scorching anger in his eyes.

“I won’t allow you to turn your back on me this time, Bryce. And I refuse to leave until you acknowledge me and we talk about this!” she told him resolutely, and his lips tightened as he signed something particularly vicious looking back at her.

“I don’t
know
what you’re saying,” Bronwyn all but screamed in frustration, and he smiled, a feral showing of teeth that bore no resemblance to his normally beautiful smile. He signed again and quite abruptly grabbed her upper arms and kissed her.
Hard!
His tongue forced its way into the tender interior of her mouth, assaulting and insulting rather than caressing and loving. There was nothing remotely affectionate in the embrace, nothing but contempt and anger.

“I
said
,” he told her scornfully, when he lifted his head to end the vile kiss. “That since you refuse to leave, you might as well make yourself useful!”

God, what on Earth had made her think she could deal with this man on an equal footing? Whenever she tried, he moved the goalposts and left her floundering. She couldn’t take him on and win; she couldn’t even hope to try. More fool her, for thinking that she could.

“Not so eager to stick around now, are you?” he taunted when she took a step back. “Then again, you never were any good at seeing things through, were you? Important things like your studies and our marriage.”

“You’re the one who abandoned our marriage, Bryce. And then you compounded your sins by believing, and
telling
, the most despicable lies about me!”

“Will you ever stop singing this same pathetic tune over and over again? Your self-righteous indignation does not sit well with me, Bronwyn. This air of injured dignity is wearing thin and getting on my nerves.”

“Since we’re apparently ‘forced’ to make a life together, don’t you think we should try to set our differences aside and be a family?”

“Then
let’s
be a family Bronwyn,” he muttered smoothly. “Let’s be man and wife.” He took hold of her thin upper arms again and dragged her toward him, securing her lips in another kiss. This time the kiss contained all the elements the former had lacked—heat, sensation, and desire. Bronwyn moaned in despair, but his mouth captured the desolate little sound and swallowed it hungrily. His lips were soft but insistent against hers; they opened her mouth with the skill that she had always been unable to resist, and his tongue flowed in, skilfully subduing any protest she may have made. But Bronwyn was beyond protest, hadn’t even
thought
of protesting. She knew that this wouldn’t solve any of their problems—would probably worsen them if anything—but she had always melted at the first sign of tenderness from him, and this mocking kiss was so humiliatingly tender.

His hands moved up to cup her face, thumbs caressing her jaw as he coaxed her to open up a little more, to respond despite herself and, God help her, did she respond. She kissed him back, parried with his tongue, and ran restless, seeking hands over his shoulders, his neck, and his face. He made a satisfied little sound when her questing hands burrowed beneath his T-shirt and found the silky hot skin beneath the cotton. Somehow, together, they managed to rid him of the T-shirt without once losing contact. Her blouse soon followed suit. Before she knew it, the rest of their clothes were off, and they were skin-to-skin, with nothing between them but a fine sheen of sweat. He closed his hands around her waist and lifted her up. Bronwyn immediately knew what he wanted and obliged him by wrapping her long legs around his waist and her arms around his neck.