But although he’d been in constant agony needing Isabella, he’d been unable to reach out and take her. Even if she still wanted him, he’d feared reintroducing such tempestuous passion would destroy their delicate new status quo, messing up this harmony he hadn’t dreamed they could ever have.
That had only been his initial fear. He’d progressed to worse possibilities soon after. That if he pursued her, she’d let him have her again, but that intimacies would never let her see him beyond sex. Knowing the real her now, that would have never been enough. He feared she would have pushed him away sooner or later, but remained always near for Rico’s sake. He had no doubt someone as magnificent as her would have eventually found someone worthy to worship her.
He didn’t want to imagine what he was capable of doing if he saw her in another man’s arms.
Everything inside him roiled until he reached Numair’s penthouse.
The door opened before he rang the bell and, without a glance, Numair turned and left Richard to follow him inside.
A melodious voice heralded the approach of what he’d once thought an impossibility. Numair’s bride.
Before she noticed his presence, Jenan clung to her husband’s neck and they shared a kiss like the one he’d seen them exchange at their wedding. A confession of ever-present hunger, a pledge of ever-growing adoration.
The sight of his former friend so deliriously in love with his princess bride had been a source of contentment before. Now it tore the chasm of desolation inside him wider.
He longed to have anything even approaching this bond with Isabella. But there was no chance for that. He’d done her so many wrongs, he couldn’t dare hope she’d ever forgive him, let alone love him as he loved her.
Yes, he’d long admitted the overpowering emotions he felt for her were love. Far more. Worship and dependence that staggered him with their power. He believed he’d always felt all that for her, with the events of the past weeks turning their intensity up to a maximum. He’d only spent years telling himself she was nothing to him so he could live on without her. But while he’d destroyed Burton, he’d also damaged something infinitely more vital. Isabella’s budding love. Which had only been possible when she’d been oblivious of his true nature. He’d made reclaiming it far more impossible since he’d barged into her life...
“Richard, what a great surprise!”
He blinked out of his oppressive musings as Jenan strode toward him, still spry in her third trimester of pregnancy. Her hand embraced her husband’s, as if they couldn’t bear not connecting. She glowed with Numair’s love, her body ripe with its evidence. It was literally painful to look at her.
He’d missed it all with Isabella. He hadn’t been there to cherish and protect her while she’d carried their child. Instead, his actions had put her in distress and danger. If not for her strength and resourcefulness, the outcome could have been catastrophic. As it was, he’d caused her years of strife and misery, had caused Rico’s premature birth. He could have caused his death, and Isabella’s.
“If my presence is a surprise—” he growled his pain “—then your beloved husband neglected to tell you that he made me drop a crucial matter to answer his clearly fraudulent red alert.”
Jenan pulled a leave-me-out-of-it face. “And that’s my cue to leave you colossal predators to your favorite pastime of snapping and swiping at each other.” Planting a hot kiss on her husband’s neck, she murmured, “No claws or fangs, hear?”
Numair’s love-filled gaze turned lethal the instant he directed it at Richard. “No promises, ya habibati.”
Chuckling, supremely confident in her husband’s ultimate benevolence, Jenan passed Richard, dragging him down for an affectionate peck before striding out of the penthouse.
The moment she closed the door, Numair growled, “What the hell is the matter with you?”
“With me?” Richard’s incredulity immediately turned to anger. “Numair, you’ve never caught me at a worse time—”
“Tell me about it,” Numair interrupted.
“And it’s not in your best interest to provoke me after—”
Numair talked over him again. “After I almost took a bullet for you.”
Everything went still inside Richard. “What?”
“I trust you remember Milton Brockovich?”
Richard frowned, unable to even guess at the relevance of Numair’s question. He had no idea how he knew of Brockovich.
Four years ago Brockovich’s older brother had raped and almost killed a client’s daughter. Richard had saved the girl, would have preferred to take the scum in, but he’d pulled a gun on him. So Richard had put a bullet between his eyes. He’d seen the younger unstable Brockovich in the precinct, and he’d ranted that he’d get even with him.