A Husband's Regret (The Unwanted Series)(28)

  

"Silly man, stop distracting me," she chided, bracing her hands on his  chest. "Dinner will be spoiled if I allow you to lead me into  temptation."

"I can give dinner a miss," he growled as he reached for her again, but she giggled happily and danced out of his reach.

"But I can't," she laughed. "I'm starving. Why don't you go and shower off the day's grit and grime while I finish up in here?"

"God, you make it sound like I work on a construction site." He smiled down at her, indicating his disheveled gray suit.

"Hmm, I'd like that," she murmured as she eyed his tall, broad form critically. "It'd certainly help with all the flab."

"Flab?" He pretended to be outraged but was completely confident that he  sported no flab or excess weight of any kind. She laughed again and  wrapped her arms around his waist before stretching up to drop a sweet  kiss on his mouth.

"I love you," she told him, and he smiled back. He loved it when she  said those words to him, and he felt such overwhelming tenderness in  return that it nearly brought him to his knees. He brushed her silky  brown hair from her forehead and planted a kiss on her soft skin.

"My Bronwyn," he whispered against her forehead, tugging at the ponytail  she had secured in the nape of her neck and dragging her head back for a  proper kiss. When it ended he was aching with desire, and she looked a  little dazed.

"Get dinner done, woman, before I head straight for dessert," he growled  as his eyes dipped to the small breasts straining at her light-blue  T-shirt so that she could not mistake his meaning. She wasn't wearing a  bra-she hardly ever did when she was at home-her breasts didn't need the  support, and he could see her nipples tenting the soft fabric. The  sight made him hotter than hell, and he had to force himself to move  away from her. After two years of marriage, he was constantly surprised  by how much he still wanted her.

He eagerly rushed through his shower, and by the time he entered the  conservatory, she had laid out a picnic beside one of the  floor-to-ceiling plate-glass windows, the one with the ocean view. He'd  never seen her look more beautiful, and again his stomach tightened with  that feeling of tenderness. She was sitting on a blanket that she had  spread out on the floor, and he dropped down next to her. He reached for  the bottle of red wine that she'd placed within easy reach and frowned  when he noticed that there was only one glass.

"You're not having any wine?" he asked, and she shook her head. Her  beautiful eyes tangled with his, and he frowned as he tried to read the  emotion in them. He could usually read her pretty easily, but her eyes  were a mystery tonight and it unsettled him a bit.

"I'm having water tonight."

"Are you still worried about your reaction to that glass of wine at  Pierre's party last week?" he asked in concern, referring to her dizzy  spell. He'd attributed it to overwork and a bad vintage.

"That's not it." She smiled cryptically while her small fingers worried  the edge of the blanket. Bryce tried to puzzle through her odd behavior  as he poured his own drink.

"So tell me this news that you're so excited about," he prompted,  referring to her giddy phone call to his office that afternoon.

"After we've eaten," she said quietly, and his eyes dipped to the  Mediterranean feast that she had laid out before them. She had prepared  seed loaf, feta cheese, and black olives as appetizers, along with fresh  vegetables and dolmades with hummus, complemented by aubergine and  tzatziki dips and falafels in pita. She lifted an olive to his lips, and  he opened up, sucking at the tips of her fingers as he accepted the  tangy fruit into his mouth. He returned the favor, and they had the rest  of their meal in a similar fashion, laughing and murmuring intimacies  as they fed each other. By the end of the meal, she was leaning back  against his chest, with her head nestled in the nook between his jaw and  collarbone. They quietly watched the sun drop into the ocean and turn  the horizon into a painter's palette of red, orange, crimson, and  scarlet.

He had his arm draped over her shoulder and across her breasts, and she  was toying with his long and capable fingers. Bryce reveled in the  closeness, wondering, not for the first time, how the hell he had gotten  so lucky. He felt utterly at peace; they belonged together. They were  like two halves of a whole. God knows he had never believed that such an  utterly clichéd thought would ever cross his mind, but there it was;  she was his other half and he could spend the rest of his life with just  her by his side. They were a perfect unit. He shut his eyes to the  sunset and tightened his arm around her slender frame. She lifted his  hand to her lips and pressed a kiss into his broad palm.





  

"Bryce," she murmured quietly, and he made a slight sound to let her know that she had his attention. "I'm pregnant."



Their new living arrangements were not as bad as Bronwyn had feared they  would be. Bryce pretty much kept his word, and she hardly ever saw him  around the house and would have sworn that she and Kayla were alone in  the house if not for the little girl's constant references to her daddy  and what fun they had while Mummy was at work or at school. She had been  back at university for nearly a month; luckily her late enrollment for  the first semester in March had been easily accepted, and she had been  allowed to resume her studies with very little fuss. It was about six  weeks since she and Bryce had made their deal, and Bronwyn was starting  to relax and enjoy the freedom of movement that she now had. She worked  part-time in a bookshop. It was a job that Lisa, a bookshop proprietor  herself, had told her about. Most of Bronwyn's lectures were over by one  in the afternoon, so she worked from about two to six every day,  leaving her with enough time to enjoy her evenings with Kayla. It was so  quiet in the esoteric bookshop that she often had time to study. She  also had weekends off because the shop's owner was older and didn't like  having the business open on weekends. The pay was good, the work was  easy, and the hours were ideal; she could have kissed Lisa when the  other woman told her about it. Bronwyn also loved the challenge of  studying again; she hadn't even known how much she missed it until she  had gone back. Exercising and expanding her brain after such an extended  period of nothing but "mummy duty" felt wonderful!

She was making new friends at school, and she spent a lot of time with  Lisa and Alice as well as with Lisa's cousin, Theresa. The latter was a  year older than Bronwyn's twenty-eight and had a six-month-old baby  girl. They (unimaginatively) called themselves the "Mummy Club" and  spent most Saturdays actively avoiding mummy duty by leaving the babies  with their husbands and escaping for a well-deserved girls' day out.  They were all busy women: Lisa had her shop, Alice was a chef, and both  Theresa and Bronwyn had just started studying again, Theresa only  part-time because of the new baby.

Bronwyn was actually starting to enjoy her life again, despite the  unusual situation at home. Soon she started noticing that one of her  professors, a man in his mid-thirties, appeared to be taking more than  the usual interest in her. She didn't quite know how to react to that  fact. It had been so long since she'd felt even remotely attractive that  the male interest, while flattering, was a little unnerving. It also  felt so wrong to even be talking to a man who was so obviously attracted  to her while she was still married to Bryce. It made her wonder about  the divorce. She had assumed that Bryce would start proceedings, but she  hadn't heard a peep about it from him. She wasn't sure if he was  expecting her to do it or if he was content to let things stay as they  were for the moment. The uncertainty was driving her mad, so she took it  upon herself to speak to some of the law students about her options.  Being young and overly ambitious, most of them advised her to "take him  for everything she could get," but one young man had thoughtfully given  her his father's number after informing her that his parent was a  divorce lawyer. He also cautioned her to tread carefully when there were  custody matters to consider.

She hadn't used the number yet and wasn't sure if she should or even if  she could. The thought of finally ending her marriage, even if it could  only be described as such in the loosest possible terms, was not a  pleasant one. Not when she still cared for her husband, more than he  probably deserved.

The ambiguity of her feelings reached even greater heights when her  professor, Raymond Mayfair, acted on his interest in her and asked her  out. Bronwyn battled with the decision for a while before accepting his  invitation. She made sure to warn him that nothing would ever happen  between them while she was married. He graciously accepted her terms and  told her that he just wanted to spend time with her.

That night she deliberately sought Bryce out for the first time in more  than two months and found him hiding out in the den and watching  television with the sound turned down. For some reason, the den, with  all its audio visual equipment, was the last place she'd expected to  find him. An ignorant assumption, she acknowledged, since his deafness  didn't prevent him from watching television or enjoying music with  heavier beats. He sat in an easy chair and the only parts of him that  were visible to her were the back of his head and his right hand, which  was hanging over the arm of the chair with a glass of amber-colored  liquid dangling from his fingers.