The Billionaire Husband's Regret

Chapter 1

TWO YEARS LATER

She had been working for less than two hours and already she knew that it had been a mistake to come in. But not showing up for work meant not getting paid, and that would be disastrous. She needed her job desperately and couldn’t risk losing it.

A bout of flu had wiped her out for nearly a week, leaving her without an income and dangerously low on resources. Though she still felt a bit shaky, she had dragged herself in to work that morning. But no sooner had she walked through the front door of the busiest, trendiest beachfront restaurant in Plettenberg Bay, than she comprehended what a grave error in judgment she had made. She was muddling up her orders, breaking dishes, and walking blindly into her fellow servers. She knew that the manager—who already felt that her personal circumstances were incompatible with her working environment—was just itching to fire her. Now she was basically handing him an excuse to get rid of her.

She valiantly soldiered on, hoping against hope that Gerhard would, by some miracle, take pity on her and keep her on his books. A young couple with a baby cart made their way into her section and she shuffled over to them, her lack of enthusiasm obvious with every reluctant step. The couple were leaning into one another, whispering and laughing intimately, while the baby slept peacefully in its stroller. The pair looked very much in love and pretty much oblivious to the rest of the world.

“Good afternoon,” she murmured, so focused on keeping her nausea at bay that she barely glanced at them. “Would you like anything to drink?” The woman looked up and started to say something, but she was interrupted by her companion, who swore viciously before jumping to his feet like a scalded cat.

“Oh my God! Alice?”

Alice gasped and raised one shaking hand to her mouth to stifle a shocked cry when she recognized the handsome man standing in front of her. Her vision blurred and she blinked rapidly to clear it. The baby, clearly startled by the man’s harsh voice, started crying.

“So this is where you have been hiding out all this time?” The shock had disappeared from his voice to be replaced by contempt.

“Ricky,” she moaned shakily, overwhelmed by love, fear, and relief all at the same time.

“Don’t call me that!” he growled in warning, and she flinched. “God, you’re an ice-cold b***h, aren’t you? How could you stay away all this time? How could you live with yourself?”

“Please,” she implored in the smallest whisper. “Please don’t . . .”

“Don’t what? Call a spade a spade?” He sneered.

“Rick,” the woman, whom Alice had forgotten about, spoke up. She kept her voice low, while she rocked the still-crying baby. “Take it easy, for heaven’s sake, she doesn’t look well. What’s going on here?”

“Of course she doesn’t look well,” he scoffed, his harsh tone of voice totally unfamiliar. “Why would she look well when she has finally been caught, like the miserable little sneak that she is?”

Alice swayed even more. Rick had never spoken to her like this before—it wasn’t in his gentle nature to be deliberately cruel—but he was firing on all cylinders today, and Alice flinched with each terrible barb.

“Rick.” The woman was speaking again, but her voice sounded hollow, like it was coming from down a long tunnel. “Rick, stop it . . .” She was saying something else but this time her voice had disappeared behind the angry buzzing in Alice’s head. She shook her head but the sound got worse and louder until it was as deafening as a chainsaw. She groaned weakly and lifted her hands to her ears. That didn’t help, and she sobbed as her field of vision got narrower and narrower, until she could not see them at all, until there was only blackness.

Voices faded in and out of her consciousness and Alice struggled to make sense of what they were saying. She was comfortable again, no longer dizzy and no longer achy. She felt like she was floating and was enveloped by an incredible sense of well-being. But this feeling was not quite right, and that awareness prevented her from being entirely at ease. She was sure that this uneasiness stemmed from the raised voices in the background, and again she attempted to filter out the garbled speech from the few words that she could understand.

“. . . Don’t get . . .” it was a man’s voice, recognizable and well loved but unfamiliarly harsh. “. . . What she did . . . unforgivable . . . left him . . . b***h!” An unfamiliar female voice intervened, her gentle voice soothed Alice’s overwrought nerves.

“. . . Is she? What . . . she do . . . so bad?” Alice strained to open her eyes but it felt like a colossal effort.

“. . . Deserted Jack . . . needed her most . . .”

Alice managed a weak gasp at that, outraged by this blatant lie. The couple went abruptly silent.

“. . . Waking up,” the woman said urgently. “. . . The doctor! Now, Rick!”

Doctor? Alice frowned. Why a doctor? For the first time since regaining consciousness she wondered where she was and managed to drag her heavy lids apart with great effort. She stared up into the vaguely recognizable features of a pretty woman who seemed to be a couple of years younger than Alice’s twenty-eight. The woman’s warm smile transformed her gentle features from plain to almost pretty and had the effect of immediately calming Alice down.

“Try not to panic,” she instructed gently. “You passed out at work. At first we assumed it was shock but your fever and pallor soon made it pretty clear that you’re seriously ill.” Her sea-green eyes were grave behind the lenses of her trendy prescription eyeglasses, and her voice took on a chastising tone. “You should never have been at work in that condition. You should take better care of yourself.”

Alice frowned, wondering who the woman was, before deciding that being offended by her admonishment would require way too much of her strength. Clearly she was going to need that strength in the face of Rick’s unexpected and unprecedented hostility. An alarming thought struck her, and she sat up in a blind panic, ignoring the sudden onslaught of dizziness.

“Passed out at work?” Her voice sounded weak, even to her own ears. “Oh no . . . I have to call my boss!”

“Alice.” The woman placed gentle hands on her shoulders to push her back onto the cot, her lovely eyes brimming with sympathy. “I’m afraid that he wasn’t very sympathetic about any of this. He said something about having had enough of your drama and that you shouldn’t bother coming back. I’m so sorry.”

“Oh no,” she moaned. “No, no. I needed that job!”

“Well if you wanted to keep it, you shouldn’t have gone to work in the condition you were in today, young lady.” A stern voice intruded from the doorway, where a harried-looking older man in a white coat stood framed. “Are you trying to kill yourself? You’re just barely over a very bad bout of flu, possibly even pneumonia from what I can gather, and you were so dehydrated when they brought you in that I’m amazed you didn’t pass out sooner! The mere fact that you’ve been out like a light for nearly five hours is proof of how close you are to relapsing. You’re completely run-down.” She went dramatically pale at that bit of news, and the doctor wrongly assumed that he had shocked her into taking her illness seriously. “I would like to keep you overnight to monitor your condition.”

“No!” They were all taken aback by her sudden, shrill vehemence. “No, I can’t stay here. I have to go home. I should be there right now. My shift would have ended an hour ago; I should be at home.”

“That would be stupid and downright dangerous in your condition, Mrs. Palmer,” the doctor admonished, and Alice’s world reeled.

“What did you call me?” she asked in a shocked whisper.

“He called you Mrs. Palmer,” Rick taunted from where he stood in the doorway with his arms folded across his broad chest. “That is still your name, isn’t it?” She stared at Richard Palmer helplessly, not knowing what to say and suddenly hating him with a ferocity that shook her.

“Well?” he prompted sarcastically, and she nodded mutely, not understanding this hostility from someone who had always loved and respected her.

“Please . . .” she whispered. “Please, Rick, I have to go home.”

“You’re going home all right,” Rick informed her coldly. “Just as soon as it can be arranged.”

“Mr. Palmer, I strongly advise against that,” the doctor interjected firmly, but Rick ignored him, keeping his eyes on Alice.

“Just prescribe whatever medication she’ll need, Doctor,” he ordered in a manner that went completely against his usual easygoing nature. “We’ll make sure that she gets plenty of rest.” The doctor glared at them before shaking his head and leaving the room abruptly.

“Rick, do you think this is a good idea?” The other woman asked worriedly, and he raised his eyes to her anxious face before smiling gently, his expression now reminiscent of the Rick that Alice knew and loved.

“It’ll be fine,” he murmured reassuringly, but the woman made an irritated sound and shook her head angrily.

“I’ve had enough, Rick,” she seethed, revealing claws beneath the sweet exterior. “You’d better tell me what’s going on and fast. I’ve been sitting here for hours without getting a single straight answer from you, and I’m fed up with it. Tell me what’s going on, or I’ll pack up and head off to Knysna on my own!” Alice watched in fascination as his eyes flared in panic and he lost all semblance of his previous icy coolness.

“Nancy,” he choked. “You wouldn’t go off on your own when we just . . .”

“Don’t test me,” she warned. “Now I think that it’s past time you did some proper introductions and try to be civil, please.” He frowned sullenly, looking about as menacing as a little boy with his hand caught in the biscuit tin.

“Nancy, meet Alice Palmer. Alice, my wife, Nancy.” Alice’s eyes lit up with genuine pleasure as her eyes flew from one face to the other. His wife? Well, then, that would explain the baby. She glanced around the room, looking for the child. She smiled when she saw the pram parked close to the window on the other side of the room and marveled at how much his life had changed in the last two years.

“Your wife? Ricky, you got married?” He winced in response to her words.

“Alice, don’t call me that,” he muttered uncomfortably, sounding so much like his old self that Alice’s heart swelled with love for him. She smiled and turned her attention to the slender woman who stood beside him.