“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.
“I wiped that smug grin off his face,” he’d said, as he’d furiously chopped onions that night. “It makes me so bloody mad. Why bother getting married in the first place, if you can’t keep it in your trousers?”
Rachel had laughed. “You sound like Paige. Are you sure you’re not a woman in disguise?”
She had never doubted his integrity for a second and she wasn’t about to start now. There were a hundred reasons why Ali could have been in their room this morning; she could have been taking him a coffee … asking him what he wanted for breakfast … seeing if Rachel was back from the supermarket. They were all perfectly justifiable. So why, then, did Jack deny seeing her?
Desperate to give him an excuse, Rachel wonders if Ali’s infatuated with him. If she thinks about it, every time they’ve seen each other recently, Ali’s been desperate to get Jack on his own. The last time they went for dinner, she disappeared to the bathroom as soon as he excused himself, and even that morning, she’d been quick to say she’d go running with him. Perhaps, he’s embarrassed by it; ashamed that he’s somehow led her to believe that something could happen between them, when all he’s done is be friendly. It’s not his fault that she doesn’t have the filter that most other women have when it comes to how you behave in that situation. She doesn’t have a filter in any situation.
“Is it too much?” Ali asks now in that little girl’s voice of hers.
Rachel hadn’t even known she was staring at her. She pulls herself up and forces a smile.
“It’s perfect,” she says. “You look stunning.”
Though Rachel can’t help but wonder that if this is Ali’s wedding eve outfit, what on earth is the day itself going to bring?
“You look gorgeous, honey,” says Will, grinning behind her.
“Thank you, baby,” says Ali.
“Doesn’t she, bro?” says Will, nudging Jack.
“Er, yeah,” says Jack awkwardly. As awkwardly as any man would, if he’d been asked by his brother what he thinks of his fiancée’s eye-popping outfit. “Yeah, you look great.”
Rachel can almost hear the squirm in his voice, not least because he’s been put on the spot, but also, she suspects, because he knows this very same woman, who purports to love his brother so much, was in his room that morning.
“Okay!” exclaims Ali. “That settles it. Let’s get this show on the road.” She excitedly grabs hold of Will’s hand and pulls her ever-riding dress down with the other as they head back through the house.
“I’ve never seen Jack look so uncomfortable,” says Paige as she follows Rachel into the minibus.
Rachel offers a tight smile. Her own erratic thoughts are enough to contend with, without Paige adding her unhelpful opinion to the shitstorm that is raging in her head.