by Jess Dee
“I…I hadn’t expected to see you here.” She hiccupped. “Then, when I crashed into you, I thought, maybe we could pretend to be strangers. Pretend we had no history. Wipe the slate clean and start again. I didn’t have very high hopes or expectations, I just thought we could try and see where it went.” Another hiccup. “But…but it was just bloody stupid of me. We aren’t strangers. We know each other, and we have a history. We can’t pretend it’s not there.”
“We also can’t pretend the last year didn’t happen. Can’t pretend that we didn’t live apart. We’re getting divorced, Bianca. I have a ream of documents back in Newcastle stating that fact in black and white. I may have stopped dreaming this year…” Hollow pain filled his voice. “Stopped hoping and stopped wishing, but God help me, I didn’t stop living. I still ate and drank and slept and tried to find some kind of facade of a normal life. And if in doing so I had sex, that is not a crime.”
“You’re right. It’s not.” Bianca took a deep breath, found the air that had been eluding her and let it fill her lungs. She’d been wrong. Oxygen didn’t make her feel any better. It just helped her breathe. That was all. The pain still rained down on her, the betrayal tugging even tighter around her neck. “We’re over, you and me. You have the freedom and the right to make love to whomever you want to.”
“That’s just the thing, Bee, it wasn’t making love. It was just sex. That’s what I recognized—”
She flung her hand up. “I can’t. I can’t hear this. Can’t listen to you speak about sex with another woman. I…I’m just not strong enough for that.”
“So I can’t tell you the stunning realization I came to because of that sex?”
“No. Not interested.”
Rick fisted his fingers in his hair, a telltale sign of his frustration. “You just told me I shouldn’t protect you from the truth. Not anymore. Now look. You’re not giving me a choice. You’re forcing me to do the very thing you confessed to hating me doing.”
His words slammed into her with such force she had to take a step back to gain her balance.
That’s exactly what she’d done. Exactly what she’d always done when Rick had told her something that was too hard to hear. She’d stopped him from saying it, blocked it out.
She floundered, stunned. Walked to the door. Turned back. Gasped and walked back to the door. How could she not have seen that before?
No wonder Rick had stopped telling her anything. No wonder he’d stopped talking so openly to her. She was never strong enough to hear him. Yet this, his confession, this conversation about him fucking some else—three someone elses—was tearing her heart out.
“We just made love, Rick. We just connected again. Connected in a way we haven’t connected for in a year. More, damn it. Of course I don’t want to hear about your sharing your penis with another woman. It’s ripping my insides out. It’s breaking my heart all over again.”
“If I can’t tell you the truth, then what can I tell you?”
“You can tell me the truth. Always. Just not about your antics with other women.”
He narrowed his eyes, and she knew she’d given him a mixed message: Tell me the truth, but only when I want to hear it. Christ, she must have driven him crazy. “Fine. Tell me what you’re doing here. Why you’re on the island. Why you’re staying in the room next door mine. Tell me that.” She still reeled from the shock of finding him here. No one had mentioned he’d be attending the wedding. Not Mack or Danny, not her parents, not even Kylie, who’d assigned all the guests their rooms. Surely they’d all known.
“Aidan’s getting married. The man who’s been as close to me as a brother for ten, more, twelve years is tying the knot. Do you honestly think I would miss this? You and I may be getting divorced, but he is still my family.” His shoulders shook. “I’m losing you, Bee. Do I have to lose everyone I love in the process?”
Damn it. How did she argue with him? How did she deny him access to her—and his—family? Danny thought of Rick as his little brother. He had ever since she and Rick had married. She couldn’t deny either of them the right for Rick to be at the wedding. She nodded her acceptance warily. “And the room next to mine? How do you explain that?”
He looked at her, trapping her gaze with his, an ocean of agony in his eyes. She couldn’t turn away. Couldn’t stop staring at the face she knew so well.
“Kylie. I phoned her from Newcastle and asked her to arrange it.”
“W-why?”
“Why do you think?”
She shrugged, at a loss.
His face creased in sorrow. “Because I love you, Bee. Because divorce is not what I want. It was never what I wanted. And this year apart, my experiences without you, they’ve only cemented that fact. I’ve known since I was seventeen that you were the only girl for me. That hasn’t changed. Not ever. Even through the fights and the unhappiness and the discontent and the misunderstandings, I never doubted you were the one. I stare at those fucking divorce papers every night, pen in hand, and I can’t do it. I can’t sign them. I don’t want to sign them. I don’t want to lose you. Don’t want to lose us. I’m here, in the room next to yours, so we can try to find each other again, so we can remember who we once were together. So we can identify what went wrong and where and change it. I don’t want to lose the best damn thing that ever happened to me. You.”
Bianca stood rooted to the spot. She couldn’t move, couldn’t breathe again. He loved her still? Rick loved her?
Her heart expanded, overflowed. His confession stuck in her head. He loved her. Always had. He didn’t want the divorce, didn’t want them to end.
“I…I love you too.” The words came out sounding all choked up.
He stepped towards her. “Then let’s do something about it. Let’s make us work again.”
“Y-you think that’s all it takes? We admit we never stopped loving each other and the problems are gone? Shit, Rick. The issues are still there. All of them.” The biggest problem of all haunted her every day. But she couldn’t bring it up now. Didn’t have the strength to argue her case again. “You’ve still kept things from me, and I’ve refused to listen to you. I still do. I can’t talk to you—we can’t have a decent conversation. I don’t know who you are anymore.”
He’d hated his work. Hated it so much he’d started another business just so he wouldn’t have to face going into a job he despised everyday. Why didn’t she know that about him? How could she have been so blind to the fact? She’d lived with him, gotten up with him every morning, and they’d gotten ready for their day together. And she hadn’t known that every morning he faced his business with a knot of aversion in his stomach.
What about her? She’d never told Rick just how much Aidan’s accident had affected her, just how damn traumatized she’d been that she’d almost lost her brother. How could two people who lived together neglect to speak about vital life issues?
How could their marriage possibly work when their basic communication skills didn’t?
“I’m not naïve enough to think the issues are gone.” Rick’s hand was in his hair again, tugging. “And I’m no longer an idealist. I don’t think the problems will be magically resolved if we just know we love each other. But damn it, Bee, we can work on them, together. Look what happened today. Just by talking honestly we’ve already discovered two major issues of contention. I carry the weight of all our problems by not speaking to you about them, and when I do, you won’t listen. Imagine if we forced ourselves to sit down. Forced the truth out. Forced ourselves to hear what the other was saying. Imagine what we’d be able to work out then.”
“You sound so logical. So…rational.” He made perfect sense. And if they worked together, maybe they could untangle some problems. But no matter how many times they discussed the real issue that stood between them—the main reason for their separation—they’d never come to an agreement. And now, to top it all, there was a new setback: today’s unwelcome revelation.
Rick had slept with someon
e else. And as much right and reason as he’d had to do that, Bianca just couldn’t get past it. She still felt as betrayed, as hurt, as she would have if he’d done it while they were together.
“But?” He dropped his hands. They now curled into tight fists at his sides.
“But every time I blink, every time my eyes close, all I visualize is you, naked, with another woman. A faceless woman. You—you’re making love to her. Fucking her. Fucking them. I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to just see you, alone, again. And—” She broke off, heaved in a mouthful of air. “And I just don’t think…” Fuck, this was hard. So damn hard. “I don’t know if…if…I could ever believe it was just you and me in bed again. They…those three…would always be right there with us.”
“Bee, please, listen to me. Let me explain. I learned so much about myself and about us, because of them.”
“I can’t.” She shook her head, barely holding it together. “I just can’t. N-not now. I‘m about to fall apart, and I can’t be near you when that happens.” Yes, she refused to hear him again, but she was already way too vulnerable, had already revealed way too much of herself to her almost ex-husband. She wasn’t physically strong enough to reveal any further weakness. And she didn’t think she could bear to hear him, yet again, deny her the one thing she’d wanted so desperately for so many years. “M-maybe tomorrow. Or the next day I’ll be ready to listen.” She walked backwards, headed for the door. “J-just not now.”
And then her hand was on the handle, and she was running outside, breathing fresh air. Air untainted by Rick’s revelation and by their past.
She sprinted to her own room, let herself in, slammed the door and locked it behind her. Racing into the bathroom, she turned the shower on as hard as it would go, needing the sound to muffle her cries.
She didn’t make it inside the cubicle, though.
Instead she slid to the floor, lay her head on the cool, tiled floor and let every ounce of hurt and betrayal out in a low, keening wail. She sobbed for her broken marriage, she sobbed for her year of loneliness—complete and utter aloneness, she sobbed because she’d missed Rick so damn much, and she sobbed because they still loved each other. But most of all she sobbed because even though the day had been perfect—right up until Rick’s revelation—she just could not see a way to being with him again.
Chapter Seven
The cocktail party proved to be excruciating. Bianca had to apply heavy makeup to hide the puffiness around her eyes, and she despised makeup. Felt like her face was caked in muck every time she put the stuff on. But even the sweet kiss of the island sun on her cheeks hadn’t been adequate to hide the devastation wrought by her earlier breakdown.
If the face paint wasn’t bad enough, she’d also slipped on a pair of her highest heels—much to Mack’s distaste.
“We’re on an island, Bee,” Mack had chastised. “Thongs would be too much footwear.”
But Bianca had felt so low, she’d needed something to lift her spirits. Anything at all. At least the heels lifted her physically if not emotionally. But the payback to that was her feet were killing her. Every step was an exercise in agony, and sitting down just made her feel low again, so she was forced to stand, grin and bear it.
Then there was the effort involved in avoiding Rick.
She knew she was being stupid. Knew she was acting like a two-year-old. But she couldn’t help it. Her spirit was just too raw to face him again today. She was still too vulnerable. Maybe tomorrow she’d listen to him. Maybe. If she squared her shoulders and pretended hard enough that she didn’t care, perhaps she’d be strong enough to hear his truths. She owed him that much. She’d refused to listen to him while they were married. The least she could do was show him the respect of listening when they weren’t.
For now, she pasted a smile on her face, pretended she was filled with the sparkle and verve she’d left in Brody’s bungalow, and did the rounds with a studied ease.
She spoke to every guest there, filled all the women in about the hen’s night the next evening and even endured Great Aunt Alberta’s lecture about the evils of divorce.
Bianca spent a lot of effort hiding from Rick. She felt his gaze on her all the time. Had caught him staring at her more than once—but maybe that was because she couldn’t seem to look away from him all that often. She thanked God her father and Aidan were both built like mountains, because they provided great hiding spots. Every time the intensity of the distance between herself and her almost-ex-husband became overpowering, she stepped behind her brother or father.
She’d have hidden behind Aidan’s mate and fellow firefighter, Luke, as well—the guy was almost as big as Aidan—but he was consumed by watching someone else. Someone he hadn’t taken his eyes off the whole night: Kennedy, the photographer. Come to think of it, he hadn’t even come on over to say hello or give her a hug. Which was odd, because Luke always made time to give her a comforting hug. Of all of Aidan’s friends, he seemed to be the one who most understood her pain of the divorce. He was the one who asked almost daily how she was feeling.
She kind of wished he’d give her a hug now, because she hadn’t felt this low for a while.
Once again, she lifted her chin high, stuck a smile on her face and had a grand old festive time of it all. But as soon as she could, she slipped away from the party and escaped back to her room. She didn’t bother to adjust the lighting once she got back. Didn’t want Rick to think she was even there. She simply stripped and climbed into bed alone.
When the knock came on her door, she ignored it.
When Rick’s voice filtered through the night air, asking her to open up, she ignored it too. When his declaration of love came again, she blocked her ears. Well, kind of, but she could still hear him vowing to her that it wasn’t over between them. That she could run for now, but eventually they would talk.
The last thing she heard before his footsteps told her he’d left was his muffled oath. She had no doubt his hand was twisted in his hair, tugging it in frustration.
Rick may have come back to her bungalow first thing in the morning, but Bianca wouldn’t have known. She’d made sure she was out of there at the crack of dawn. First she’d walked the length of the island, watching the exquisite sunrise over the east side, then she’d headed over to the beach, hoping it would be deserted.
It was. Almost. As her feet touched sand, she passed a young woman she recognized from school heading off the beach. Hayley Bryant was a few years younger than Bee, but a close friend of Mack’s. Mack had taken a special interest in her and had mentored her for years.
Hayley looked…shell-shocked, and although she tried, she couldn’t seem to manage more than a, “Hello, how are you,” which suited Bee just fine. She wasn’t in the mood for chatting to anyone.
She even managed to avoid the only other person on the beach as she slipped into the ocean. Mack’s brother stood staring out at the sea, looking even more astounded than Hayley had. If Bee had been in a less pensive state of mind, she might have stopped to give it another thought. But she wasn’t. Rick consumed her every thought.
She spent ages in the ocean, first swimming off her frustration and emotion and then treading water as she watched a pod of dolphins frolicking less than a hundred meters away. They hadn’t been there when she’d first walked onto the beach, so seeing them while in the water was an extra special treat.
She bet none of them had to deal with their dolphin mates sleeping with other dolphins.
Bianca would have stopped in for brekky at the Secret Cove, the hotel’s main dining room, but she had absolutely no appetite—despite her three hours of activity. Instead she grabbed a bottle of water and hightailed it to Kylie’s office. As Kylie was a bridesmaid and she the matron—maid—of honor, the two had some serious organization to do for tonight.
There the two of them, and Sienna—Mack’s other bridesmaid—sat giggling like schoolgirls while they finalized the entertainment for Mack’s hen’s night. At Bee’s reque
st, Kylie had tracked down a stripper on the mainland and was flying him in by helicopter to give Mack a show. Of course he was coming dressed as a firefighter.
Bee couldn’t wait for him to show Mack his hose.
The good thing about working with Kylie and Si on this was that if Mack expressed any discontent at the idea of a stripper—which she wouldn’t, because seriously, who turned her nose up at a stripper?—Bianca could just point a guilty finger at the resort manager and her friend.
Kylie took them into the kitchen to finalize the menu with the chef, and even though Bianca still had no appetite, she couldn’t resist stealing one of the millionaire’s shortbread slices off the cooling rack. It tasted as decadently rich and delicious as it looked.
She met her parents for lunch, and wisely chose a fresh orange juice and Greek salad, which she nibbled at with disinterest. A part of her—a very large part—hungered for grilled cheese and a glass of red wine.
Then she snuck back to her bungalow, keeping a careful eye out for spare car part shop owners as she went, determined to slip behind trees, shrubs, pools or firefighters if necessary. She still wasn’t ready to face Rick.
Her efforts to avoid him came to naught. She couldn’t flee from the man who’d settled into a deckchair on her balcony, giving her no option of escape once she’d put her key in the lock.
Her hand shook so badly she couldn’t open the door.
Rick helped. He walked over to stand at her back, put his hand around hers and turned the key. Then he opened the door, nudged her so she’d walk inside and followed, shutting out the world behind them.
Trapped.
With the man she loved behind her. So close his breath feathered over her neck. So close the heat from his body surrounded hers, and every breath he took echoed with a loud rasp in her ear. Even the unsteady, jerky breaths. And regardless of the fact that every cell in her body was conscious of his proximity, of the strain and rigidity in his muscles, she still wasn’t prepared for the muttered oath that came from his lips, or his sudden action.
