“I don’t know what you’ve heard, Rachel, but—”
“Oh, so you deny it? You deny that you had a threesome with them?”
Nick’s eyes flared in shock. For a moment, he wasn’t sure what to say. “I don’t deny it, but—”
“You asshole!”
Nick threw his hands up in despair. “Rachel, I’m thirty-two, and as far as I know I’ve never mentioned joining the priesthood. I do have a sexual history, but I’ve never tried to conceal any of it from you.”
“It’s not that you concealed it. It’s more that you never told me in the first place! You should have said something. You should have told me that Francesca and you had a past, so I didn’t have to sit there tonight and get totally blindsided. I felt like a total fucking idiot.”
Nick sat down on the edge of the chaise lounge, burying his face in his hands. Rachel had every right to be angry—it just never occurred to him to mention something that happened half a lifetime ago. “I’m so sorry—” he began.
“A threesome? With Mandy and Francesca? Really? Of all the women in the world,” Rachel said contemptuously as she struggled with the zipper on her suitcase.
Nick sighed deeply. He wanted to explain that Francesca had been a very different girl back then, before her grandfather’s stroke and all that money, but he realized that this was not the time to defend her. He approached Rachel slowly and put his arms around her. She tried to break away from him, but he locked his arms around her tightly.
“Look at me, Rachel. Look at me,” he said calmly. “Francesca and I just had a brief fling that summer in Capri. That’s all it was. We were stupid sixteen-year-olds, all raging hormones. That was almost two decades ago. I was single for four years before I met you, and I think you know precisely how the last two years have gone—you are the center of my life, Rachel. The absolute center. What happened tonight? Who told you all these things?”
With that, Rachel broke down and it all came flooding out—everything that happened at Araminta’s bachelorette weekend, all of Mandy’s constant innuendoes, the stunt that Francesca had pulled at the wedding ball. Nick listened to Rachel’s ordeal, feeling sick to his stomach the more he heard. Here he thought she had been having the time of her life. It pained him to see how shaken up she was, to see the tears spill down her pretty face.
“Rachel, I am so sorry. I can’t even begin to tell you how sorry I am,” Nick said earnestly.
Rachel stood facing the window, wiping the tears from her eyes. She was angry at herself for crying and confused by the tidal wave of emotion that had swept over her, but she just couldn’t help it. The shock of the evening and the pent-up stress of the days leading up to it had brought her to this point, and now she was drained.
“I wish you had told me about the bachelorette weekend, Rachel. If I had known, I could have done more to protect you. I really had no clue those girls could be so … so vicious,” Nick said, searching for the right word in his fury. “I’ll make sure you never see them again. Just please, don’t leave like this. Especially when we haven’t even had a chance to enjoy our holiday together. Let me make it up to you, Rachel. Please.”
Rachel kept silent. She stayed facing the window, suddenly noticing a strange set of shadows moving on the darkened expanse of lawn. A moment later, she realized it was just a uniformed Gurkha on his night patrol with a pair of Dobermans.
“I don’t think you get it, Nick. I’m still mad at you. You didn’t prepare me for any of this. I traveled halfway around the world with you, and you told me nothing before we left.”
“What should I have told you?” Nick asked, genuinely perplexed.
“All this,” Rachel cried, waving her hands around at the opulent bedroom they were standing in. “The fact that there’s an army of Gurkhas with dogs protecting your grandmother while she sleeps, the fact that you grew up in friggin’ Downton Abbey, the fact that your best friend was throwing the most expensive wedding in the history of civilization! You should have told me about your family, about your friends, about your life here, so I could at least know what I was getting myself into.”
Nick sank onto the chaise lounge, sighing wearily. “Astrid did try to warn me to prepare you, but I was so sure that you’d feel right at home when you got here. I mean, I’ve seen how you are in different settings, the way you’re able to charm the socks off everyone—your students, the chancellor, and all the university bigwigs, even that grouchy Japanese sandwich guy on Thirteenth Street! And I guess I just didn’t know what to say. How could I have explained all this to you without your being here to see it yourself?”
“Well, I came and saw for myself, and now … now I feel like I don’t know who my boyfriend is anymore,” Rachel said forlornly.
Nick stared at Rachel openmouthed, stung by her remark. “Have I really changed that much in the past couple of weeks? Because I feel like I’m the same person, and how I feel about you certainly hasn’t changed. If anything, I love you more every day, and even more at this moment.”
“Oh Nick.” Rachel sighed, sitting down on the edge of the bed. “I don’t know how to explain it. It’s true, you have stayed exactly the same, but the world around you—this world around us—is so different from anything I’m used to. And I’m trying to figure out how I could possibly fit into this world.”
“But don’t you see how well you do fit in? You must realize that aside from a few inconsequential girls, everyone adores you. My best friends all think you’re the bee’s knees—you should have heard the way Colin and Mehmet were raving about you last night. And my parents like you, my whole family likes you.”
Rachel shot him a look, and Nick could see that she wasn’t buying it. He sat down next to her and noticed that her shoulders tightened almost imperceptibly. He longed to run a hand up and down her back soothingly, like he did almost every night in bed, but he knew better than to touch her now. What could he do to reassure her at this moment?
“Rachel, I never meant for you to get hurt. You know I’ll do anything to make you happy,” he said in a quiet voice.
“I know,” Rachel said after a pause. As upset as she was, she couldn’t stay mad at Nick for long. He had mishandled things, for sure, but she knew he wasn’t to blame for Francesca’s bitchiness. This was exactly what Francesca had been hoping to achieve—to make her doubt herself, to make her angry at Nick. Rachel sighed, leaning her head on his shoulder.
A sudden gleam came over Nick’s eyes. “I have an idea—why don’t we go away tomorrow? Let’s skip the tea ceremony at the Khoos’. I don’t think you really want to stand around and watch Araminta get piled with tons of jewelry from all her relatives anyway. Let’s get out of Singapore and clear our heads. I know a special place we can go.”
Rachel eyed him warily. “Is it going to involve more private jets and six-star resorts?”
Nick shook his head rapidly. “Don’t worry, we’re driving. I’m taking you to Malaysia. I’m taking you to a remote lodge in the Cameron Highlands, far away from all this.”