The Guilt Trip(29)
“But do you not see the way he looks at you?”
Rachel shakes her head. “You’re being ridiculous.”
“Oh, come on, Rach, you can’t possibly be that naive,” he says loudly. “It’s so obvious, it’s staring you right in the face, and if you can’t see it, then you’re blind, unless you’re choosing to pretend it’s not going on.”
“I don’t even have the words,” she says, going to get her gold wedges from the top of the open suitcase that’s still sitting on the floor.
“I should be used to it,” Jack goes on, “but it’s hard, seeing him look at you the way he does. You don’t have to be Einstein to work out what he’s thinking about.”
“After everything that’s gone on today, you’re honestly going to throw accusations around about how I reacted or how he looks at me?” She tuts as if in disbelief. “Shouldn’t your overriding concern be that Noah’s okay?”
“Shouldn’t yours have been to make sure I was okay?” he snaps.
“You’re insufferable,” says Rachel, opening the door. “I’ll see you downstairs.”
“Hey,” says Noah, turning to look at her from where he’s standing on the landing, overlooking the living space below.
Rachel shrinks into herself, cringing at the thought of him having heard the conversation she and Jack have just had. By the way he’s looking at her, with expectant raised eyebrows, she’d bet that he has.
Every bone in her body wants to go to him, hug him and thank the Lord that he’s alive, but Jack has made that impossible by turning it into something it’s not.
“How are you feeling?” she asks, careful to keep a few feet between them.
“I feel fine,” he says, smiling. “It’s certainly swept a few cobwebs away.”
“Do you think you’re okay to come to the rehearsal dinner?” She doesn’t know whether she wants him to say yes or no. It would certainly be easier if he stayed at the villa, if Jack’s little outburst was anything to go by, but easy is not what she wants.
“Yeah, I think I’ll be okay,” says Noah. “I’ve taken some tablets just to ward off this headache and it’s probably wise to stay off the alcohol.”
“Good idea,” says Rachel. “Perhaps just stick to water to keep you hydrated.”
He laughs. “I don’t think there’s any chance of me being dehydrated,” he says, with an unmistakable twinkle in his eye. “I’ve got half the Atlantic Ocean keeping me afloat.”
Rachel can’t help but smile. “Well, just take it easy, okay? I think we’ve had quite enough drama for one day.”
“Oh, I don’t know,” says Jack, coming out of their room and walking past them. “There’s always room for a little bit more.”
8
“Oh. My. God,” says Paige under her breath.
Rachel follows her eyes to see Ali precariously climbing the steps beside the pool. She’s wearing a skin-tight red dress that leaves absolutely nothing to the imagination.
Rachel instinctively looks to Jack, whose eyes are staying firmly in his head; though she wonders how hard it must be for him to maintain that steely expression. Any red-blooded male would find it nigh on impossible not to react in some way to how Ali looks, though Jack is so unresponsive that Rachel would hazard a guess that even his pupils would be unchanged if she were to get up close enough to check. So, does that mean that he’s simply not bothered by what Ali says, does or wears, because he doesn’t care? Or has he conditioned himself not to react when his mistress, his brother’s fiancée, looks like she’s serving herself to him on a silver platter?
Mistress? She almost laughs out loud at the choice of words her brain has selected for what was surely a miscommunication on Jack’s part. Yes, there’s no doubt Ali was in their room this morning, but perhaps Rachel hadn’t been clear enough in her questioning. Had he actually said he hadn’t seen her or had Rachel taken it upon herself to assume that’s what he’d implied? She wonders whether there’s a difference.
Ali smiles and totters toward them on towering high heels, and Rachel can’t help but wonder what might be going through Jack’s mind. Is he imagining her on all fours with just her shoes on? She knows it would be his thing, as he’d just recently bought her a pair of Christian Louboutin red-soled spikes and they’d become something of a staple in the bedroom. They were often the last item she took off, if she took them off at all, as he loved the way they made her back arch. She liked wearing them because they made her feel more confident and it was easier to pretend to be somebody else. Though, if she’d known she was only helping him pretend that she was Ali, she may have thought differently.
She looks at him now, unable to believe that he would ever do anything to jeopardize what they have. Why would he? She gives him everything he could possibly want, as he does her in return. They are partners, in every sense of the word; promising to love and to cherish until death do us part, though it only occurs to Rachel now, as she watches her husband’s indifference to the blonde vision standing in front of him, that they’d skipped the part of their vows that promised to forsake all others.
No, she screams silently, hating herself for even thinking it. This is Jack we’re talking about. A man of principle. A man who has very little regard for anyone who resorts to cheating on their other half. He’d once called a guy out at work when his wife had turned up at the office to surprise him on his birthday, only to find that he’d already gone to a swanky restaurant to celebrate with his secretary instead. Jack had covered for him, but he’d gone storming round to the restaurant and taken his colleague to task in front of his shocked assistant.