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Reggie’s eyes flashed anger.
“Don’t turn virtuous all of a sudden, Jocelyn,” he snapped. “You’ve got your ass in a ringer and it’s about to get squeezed.”
“But I don’t know anything,” she replied honestly. “For a smart woman, I haven’t been very smart these last few months. I never once connected Ian’s weird habits with anything illegal.”
“Maybe so. But you’ll figure out enough to make the gendarmes happy.” That was nothing less than an order.
Neither spoke for several minutes, each scrutinizing the other, both realizing how strange it felt to be reunited under these conditions.
“Reg?” she was the first to speak.
“Yes.”
“We are still married, aren’t we?” she asked.
“Only because I couldn’t find you to serve the papers.”
Her heart sank.
“The fact is I’ve been unofficially engaged to another women for the past couple of weeks.”
“You what!” she exclaimed, breathless.
“Gwen and I are compatible in a lot of ways, especially sexually. I was hoping to find you so I could end our relationship properly.”
“You can’t be serious!”
“You seriously left me,” he reminded her.
“But that’s not you,” Jocelyn objected, more tears beginning.
“What’s not?”
“You, you Reggie Harold falling in love so quickly.”
“I surprised a lot of people. And I suppose myself.”
“But when you first came in…” she was thinking back to the hug. “That means you’re only here to…”
Reggie let her linger in that bittersweet moment, suspended between the present and the future while Jocelyn’s heart determined that her unexpected reason for joy just the moment before was now a reason to grieve.
“No. My plans have changed,” he admitted at last.
“In what way?”
“We’re going to work this out, Jocelyn,” he said, sounding like a stern father and a concerned husband.
“We are?”
“Do you still love me?” he asked.
“Oh, my yes I do!”
“Then we’ll work it out,” he repeated. He paced the room with hands in pockets, pensive, then sat down opposite her, the table between them. “I never knew what it was like to hurt someone until yesterday when I broke off the engagement with Gwen. Of course, I never knew what it was like to be hurt until you left. I’d always stayed out of that game, remaining happily aloof. I fought off dozens of women. Good god, I fought off Alexandra. But you? You I couldn’t resist. You made me join that game of love and war. You made me love, you made me hurt and you made me love again. And as long as I’ve made a commitment to you, we’re going to see it out. You’re going to see it out,” he emphasized. “We still have a marriage by the skin of our teeth. It’s still a binding contract, and we will not throw it away easily. You may have shown your willingness to toss our marriage out with all your other problems, and I may have been too proud to set you straight. But there is still love, and you will be repenting, and if I can take a lesson from an old friend…” He recalled Will’s determination to forgive Alex. “…there is nothing so serious that cannot, with a little forgiveness and ingenuity, be resolved in a relationship built on love. We just need to begin being honest.”
The fact that Reggie Harold could make such a passionate speech about love and forgiveness brought a fresh burst of tears to Jocelyn’s eyes.
Chapter Seventeen
