The Billionaire Husband's Regret

Chapter 15

Rick, Nancy, and Rhys arrived just after one o’clock. The couple was holding hands and looked tanned, healthy, and happy. Rick’s greeting of Alice was strained; merely a curt nod before he grinned at his older brother and immediately struck up a conversation in SASL, rather rudely excluding both Alice and Nancy. The other woman shared a wry smile with Alice before clasping her hand warmly and planting a totally unexpected kiss on her cheek.

“You look so much better than the last time I saw you,” she said with a friendly smile.

“Rest and sunshine will do that,” Alice responded easily before stepping back and giving Nancy an all-encompassing once-over.

“I don’t remember much about you, beyond your kindness that day, but I have to say, you’re looking very good too.” She snuck a glance over to her expansively signing brother-in-law. “I’m happy the whole . . . situation with Jack and I didn’t ruin your holiday!” Nancy shook her head with a smile.

“Rick was a bit withdrawn for a while, but Rhys and I soon dragged him out of it.” She nodded down at the sleeping baby in his stroller and grinned good-naturedly.

“Oh, I’m so relieved to hear that.” Alice couldn’t help but respond to Nancy’s warm personality. The woman was absolutely lovely. She could see how Rick fell for her so quickly.

“So where is your beautiful little girl?” Nancy sent a questioning glance around the sunny patio as if expecting Kayla to pop out from some nook at any moment.

“Poor little thing. Jack was preparing her for your impending visit all morning and while she has no idea what cousins, aunts, and uncles are—I think she’s expecting some exotic form of animal—she kept chattering on about it throughout her lunch. She wore herself out and drifted off to sleep almost immediately after completing her meal. It’s for the best; she gets cranky if she doesn’t have her afternoon nap. She’ll be up again in an hour or two.” She glanced over to where Jack and Rick were still immersed in conversation and frowned.

“Can you understand sign language?” she asked quietly, and Nancy’s eyes became pools of liquid sympathy.

“A little. Rick has been teaching me,” she admitted softly.

“What are they talking about?” Alice wondered wistfully, and Nancy squeezed her hand again.

“I think Rick is telling Jack about his shark cage dive.” She shuddered at the unpleasant recollection.

“Oh dear . . . Rick still does stuff like that?”

“Apparently it was the first time he’s ever gone shark cage diving. He loved it but told me that he doubts he’ll do it again, now that he’s experienced it. I should hope not. It gives me jitters whenever I think of him down there with all those huge great whites circling the flimsy little cage he considers protection!”

“He’ll settle down a bit now that he’s married with a child, I suspect,” Alice stated confidently.

“Sure he will.” Nancy rolled her eyes. “Or maybe he’ll simply drag Rhys and me along with him. Back when we were dating, before I got pregnant, he did a brilliant job of talking me into doing the crazy stuff with him! In fact I’m pretty sure getting pregnant so soon was my body’s defence mechanism kicking in to save me from Death by Crazy.”

“No,” Alice gasped, unable to picture the sweet, bookish-looking woman participating in some of the extreme sports Rick commonly did for fun.

“Well let’s see: bungee jumping, parasailing, parachuting, hang-gliding.” She ticked off her fingers as she itemized. “Navigating in some crazy off-road race, white-water rafting . . . these are just a few of the insane things I found myself roped into doing back then.”

“Ballet recitals, operas, poetry readings, symphony orchestras, shopping for really old furniture,” Rick interjected.

“Antiques,” Nancy inserted smoothly, smiling affectionately as her husband came over to join them.

“. . . Art exhibitions,” Rick continued to recite as if she hadn’t interrupted, dropping an arm around his wife’s narrow shoulders and angling himself so that Jack was able to lip-read what he was saying. “These are just a few of the really boring things I have found myself participating in since getting married.”

Nancy snorted and rolled her eyes again.

“At least I don’t have a thing for jumping off high mountains and out of perfectly good planes,” she scoffed, and he grinned before dropping a quick kiss on her lips and whispering something in her ear.

Alice watched them enviously and unconsciously found herself raising her eyes to Jack’s face. She was startled to see that he was studying her intently, and she lowered her gaze quickly but he came over to stand beside her. They stood side by side for a couple of moments, not touching, watching the younger couple whispering and giggling with each other. Alice nearly jumped out of her skin when she felt the first tentative, wholly unexpected touch of his large hand in the small of her back. Her eyes flew to his impassive profile, but he kept his eyes straight ahead, watching his brother and Nancy with a slight smile playing about his lips.

His hand moved up hesitantly, until it was in the nape of her neck, beneath the thick fall of her hair and the heat of his skin singed the delicate flesh of her vulnerable neck. He massaged her soft skin gently before clearing his throat to get the younger couple’s attention; they jumped apart guiltily, grinning like kids.

“Ready to eat?” Jack asked quietly before turning toward the patio table that was laden with delicious food and fruit. He kept a possessive hand on Alice as he led her toward the table and let her go long enough to pull out a chair for her. Alice glanced up at him warily before accepting the seat. He used to do things like that for her all the time in the past, unconscious acts like opening doors, helping her into coats, seating her. It was an old-world chivalry that Alice had found completely charming. He hadn’t done anything like it since her return, and Alice realized with a pang that it was one of the small details she had forgotten, yet subconsciously missed, about him. She nodded her thanks, wondering what was behind the sudden courtesy. His hand unexpectedly lowered to her cheek and his thumb stroked her flesh briefly, but he moved away before she had any chance to react to the unexpected caress.

Baffled, Alice’s eyes followed his progress as he sat opposite her, next to Nancy, leaving Rick no option but to sit beside Alice. Rick largely ignored her in favor of his brother and wife, leaving Alice feeling snubbed and ridiculously hurt. She knew why he was behaving the way he was, knew that he was merely being loyal to his brother, whom he felt had been treated unfairly. Yet Alice still couldn’t help but feel almost betrayed by Rick’s blatant display of hostility. By the time they were halfway through the meal, Nancy was glaring daggers at her husband, and Jack was looking almost as strained as Alice felt. Rick was either oblivious to the tension he was creating or—more than likely—ignoring it.

“Alice,” Jack’s quiet voice interrupted Rick’s animated description of some of the more exotic sights he and Nancy had been treated to during their “and baby makes three honeymoon,” as he had so delightfully described the holiday. “You’re not eating . . .”

Alice looked down at her barely touched meal and shrugged helplessly, a bit thrown by the abrupt shift in topic.

“I’m not that hungry,” she responded with a strained smile. “And I was wrapped up in Rick’s story.”

“You should eat,” Jack prompted. “You’re still too thin . . .”

Alice snapped, instantly and utterly fed up with everything. The ridiculous untruths he believed about her, Rick’s hostility, and her own weakness in both body and spirit.

“It’s always something with you, isn’t it?” she hissed furiously. “I wasn’t well spoken enough, pretty enough, graceful enough, educated enough . . . I was never good enough for you. I doubt I’ll ever be good enough. No wonder you jumped at the opportunity to get rid of me,” she reflected bitterly. “All you needed was an excuse, and I very conveniently provided you with one when I got pregnant. And then, to add insult to injury, you came up with that ridiculous . . .” She stopped abruptly, remembering her resolve to let him muddle through the facts and find the truth for himself. She shook her head furiously, turning to a gaping Rick.

“And as for you . . . How dare you sit there judging me with nothing but the so-called facts your stupid brother gave you to go on?” She was so furious, hurt, and frustrated that she couldn’t stop herself from clenching her fist and punching him on his arm. He winced and angled his chair away from her. “I thought you were smarter and fairer than that, Rick!” She got up and turned to face Nancy, who was staring up at her with an approving grin playing about her lips.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered, her eyes burning with the tears she refused to shed. “Please excuse me . . .”

Nancy nodded and Alice turned to flee, leaving absolute silence in her wake.

“Well,” Nancy drawled into the shocked silence. “I think she’s a little angry, don’t you?”

“Stop it, Nancy,” Rick grunted irritably. “This is none of your—”

“Don’t say it,” she warned direly. “Don’t even think about saying it!”

Rick wisely shut up.

“Your behavior was atrocious, and I was so ashamed of you.”

“Nancy, you don’t know—”

“She claims that she tried to call me,” Jack interrupted the squabbling couple quietly, and Rick frowned.

“What?”

“Before having Kayla, as little as a week after leaving me and then again after she gave birth.” He knew enough to read between the lines of her sarcastic responses of that morning. “She said she tried to call me. She said she tried my cell phone, but of course that was wrecked in the accident. She also professes to have tried the house but you’d given Celeste and the staff time off while I was recuperating. But then she also says that she tried to contact the office and was stonewalled by my people.”

Rick gaped at him.

“Alice tried to contact you?”

“So she claims.” Jack shrugged, trying to disguise his unease behind the careless movement. “My staff would not have given her the run-around, not unless I’d given specific instructions to that effect. Something I could not have done while laid up in hospital. So she has to be lying. But why the hell does she keep telling the same lie, over and over again?”

“Jack,” Rick looked aghast. “You did give an order to that effect.”

“What?” Jack leaped to his feet at the outrageousness of the remark. “What in God’s name are you talking about?”

“It was the same night as your accident. Pierre, Cooper”—Cooper had been Jack’s personal assistant at the time, a young and ambitious self-starter who had since moved on to bigger and better things—“and I were all there. You had just gotten out of surgery and you were still groggy, but when I asked you where Alice was, you were very adamant that you did not want to see her or hear from her ever again. You were in so much pain and the fact that I had to write down everything I said was adding to your emotional strain. I knew that something pretty awful must have happened between the two of you. The mere fact that she wasn’t at the hospital was testament enough of that, but I still figured the words were bluster and that you two would work things out, so I shrugged them off.”

Jack’s face revealed absolutely no emotion as he got up from the table and dug his cell phone out of his pocket.