by Lynne Graham
‘That might have been easier for both of us,’ Nik quipped, striding to the foot of the bed to gaze down at her from his considerable height.
‘How so?’
‘I’ve heard that this...’ he shifted a fluid brown hand in a gesture that encompassed both her and the bed ‘...is quite common for couples going through a divorce.’
Betsy felt as if he had punched her in the stomach and she lost colour, her skin pulling taut across her fragile bone structure. ‘Really?’ she queried with no expression at all.
‘Yes, really,’ Nik fielded drily. ‘It happens but it doesn’t mean anything, doesn’t change anything.’
For the very first time in her life, Betsy wanted another human being lying stone dead at her feet. But even then she wouldn’t forgive Nik, she reckoned wildly, plunged as she was into an abyss of mortification and pain and, worst of all, the dreadful conviction that it was her mistake that had unleashed such a humiliation on her.
‘Obviously, we’re still getting a divorce,’ Nik assured her, underlining the point quite unnecessarily as though he feared that she might be too stupid to get that message.
‘Yes,’ she agreed, knowing that even the sight of him falling down dead at her feet wouldn’t satisfy her sufficiently. Hatred now leapt through her as fierily as the passion that had betrayed her. In spite of everything he had done to her, she had missed him, missed sex, and she was paying the price for her wretchedly poor judgement now.
‘We both need to move on,’ Nik breathed curtly.
‘Until now I never appreciated what a taste you have for platitudes,’ Betsy responded grittily. ‘You have patronised me, insulted me and used me. Now I know what it feels like to be a booty call.’
Nik ground his teeth together. He had said what he had to say. He was exceptionally intelligent and he knew the score, even if calling it was insensitive. They had both made a mistake and it was his place to spell that out. He wasn’t built to closely connect with another human being. After the abusive childhood he had endured, how could he possibly be? There was a lack in him, not in her, and he could never give her what she wanted and deserved.
‘I’ll let you keep the house as well,’ he told her flatly.
‘It’s good to know I profited from prostituting myself,’ Betsy hurled back at him shakily, tears burning the backs of her eyes like acid. ‘For goodness’ sake, go!’
And without fanfare that was exactly what Nik did. The door snapped shut in his wake but not before Gizmo had inserted himself through the gap and hurtled towards his only recently rediscovered mistress.
‘Oh, Gizmo...’ she gasped, her voice catching on a sob as she hugged the shaggy little dog to her chest.
Nik had just walked out on her again. His driver would have sat outside waiting for him all these hours. That wouldn’t bother Nik and he wouldn’t apologise for his thoughtlessness either. The only child of a fabulously wealthy Greek heiress, Nik was accustomed to staff who never questioned or complained and he paid highly for a very high standard of service. A wife with a similar attitude would have suited him so much better than Betsy ever had. She had wanted too much from him and had fought her own corner too hard while demanding an independence of thought and action that had frequently infuriated him. But then bearing in mind his behaviour on their first catastrophic date, she really couldn’t say that she hadn’t been warned that nothing would be plain sailing with Nik Christakis at the helm...
And because the far distant past was less threatening than the turmoil of the present, she let her mind drift back to that evening and a wry smile formed on her lips. Nik had taken her to a glitzy party, where her little black dress unembellished by jewellery or a designer bag or shoes had failed to cut the mustard. Ten minutes after their arrival, Nik had excused himself and abandoned her, leaving her alone in a sea of strangers to be hit on by strange men and visually crucified by much-better-dressed women. After an hour and a half during which she had failed to find him she had angrily embarked on the long journey home by bus and train. He had turned up on her doorstep after midnight to furiously demand to know why she had walked out on him. And they had had their first row, a flaming no-holds-barred argument where he insisted he had only left her alone for about fifteen minutes.
‘You were away well over an hour... You treated me like dirt. I should’ve known what kind of treatment I was in for when you picked me up and then spent the entire drive to the party talking to someone on your phone!’
He had forgotten the time; she knew that. It was also possible that he had even forgotten he had brought Betsy to the party in the first place because an old friend had offered him a deal and business always took precedence with Nik. He had sent her flowers every day for a week afterwards and had then visited the bistro for coffee every day the following week.
‘You’re acting like a stalker,’ she had warned him.
‘Give me one more chance. I’ll treat you like a queen,’ Nik had promised.
‘You know, Mr Christakis doesn’t usually go to so much trouble with women,’ one of his bodyguards had told her chattily. ‘You must be special.’
And when she had returned with Nik’s coffee and those brilliant green eyes clung to her, she had realised that he did make her feel special. Everyone made mistakes, she had thought forgivingly; she would give him the chance to prove that he could act differently. And for a very long time afterwards she had not regretted that decision because Nik, she now recognised, had been on his very best behaviour. She even remembered the day he had asked her how she felt about having children. She couldn’t remember how the dialogue had progressed in that direction but with hindsight suspected that he had guided it there.
‘I don’t want children!’ she had proclaimed, wincing at the very idea. ‘I spent my teenage years in foster homes and I spent a lot of time helping to look after the younger ones and the babies. Kids are so much work and such a tie. I don’t think I’ll ever want any.’
But Betsy had discovered the hard way that Mother Nature had amazing ways of working her wiles to persuade a woman that what she wanted most in the world was a little baby. When she’d first married Nik she had been Cinderella and he had been Prince Charming. He had given her so much in terms of material things that she had somehow never dared to complain that he was rarely at home and was invariably preoccupied with business even when he was. He had missed her birthday and their first anniversary and slowly but surely she had become incredibly lonely and had begun to crave what she had never dreamt she would crave—a baby to love and keep her company.
In the grip of that desire she had made stupid optimistic assumptions, believing that Nik would spend more time at home if they had a child, that a child to share would bring them closer, hopefully breaking through his reserve as she had already discovered she could not.
She had made so many mistakes with Nik, Betsy acknowledged wretchedly, dabbing her damp cheeks dry on the sheet, soothing Gizmo when he whined and pushed his muzzle under her hand. But Nik had made just as many mistakes with her. Getting back into bed with him again, however, had to qualify as her crowning act of stupidity. Her face burned hot while her body ached in silent evidence of her weakness. Afterwards, Nik had been so cold, so sure that their renewed intimacy meant nothing. Why? Because it had meant nothing to him and he had been appalled by the idea that she might think otherwise.
Once again, Nik had taught her a hard lesson. A woman worthy of being treated like a queen had to maintain standards to exercise that power over a man. When she abandoned those standards, she was infinitely more likely to be treated like a booty call.
CHAPTER FOUR
‘BETSY?’ CRISTO’S WIFE, Belle, questioned eagerly. ‘Why haven’t you been answering your phone? Where have you been? What have you been up to?’
It was a bad moment for her friend to have phoned because Betsy couldn’t conce
ntrate. Betsy sank weakly down on an armchair and contemplated the results of her insane shopping trip to the nearest pharmacy: no less than five separate pregnancy-testing kits. And each and every one of the kits had given her the same answer. Ironically she was deeply familiar with such testing procedures. When she and Nik had still been together, whenever her menstrual cycle had shown the slightest deviation, she had rushed out to buy a test, inwardly praying for a positive result and each and every time she had been disappointed it had broken her heart afresh.
This time around, however, everything was very different. Betsy had been feeling out of sorts for weeks before she finally went to visit her GP and she had gone there without the smallest suspicion of the truth now facing her. Indeed she didn’t know how she would ever walk through the door of the doctor’s surgery again without feeling embarrassed. A simple test had disclosed the fact that she had inexplicably conceived and her response to the news had been more than a little hysterical while she told first the doctor and then the nurse that there had been a mistake, that they must have mixed up her results with someone else’s and that in any case, a pregnancy was a complete impossibility.
‘Betsy?’ Belle exclaimed. ‘Are you still there?’
‘Yes, sorry, I’m just a little preoccupied right now.’
‘It’s the divorce, isn’t it?’ her friend said grimly. ‘You’ve been upset. That’s why you haven’t been in touch. What has that wretched man done to you now?’
Betsy compressed her lips, because astonishingly it seemed that Nik had contrived the impossible. In spite of the fact that he’d had a vasectomy and he was sterile, or whatever people chose to label it, and she had endured many months of striving to get pregnant by him and failing, a miracle or a catastrophe—depending on one’s viewpoint—had occurred and she was now carrying Nik’s baby. How on earth could that be possible? Betsy breathed in deep and slow because even sitting down she felt giddy and more than a little nauseous.
‘It’s not something I can share,’ Betsy said, inwardly wincing at that severe understatement.
‘Something happened when Nik brought Gizmo back to you...didn’t it?’ Belle prompted worriedly. ‘You haven’t been yourself since then—’
‘Yes, something happened,’ Betsy confirmed reluctantly. ‘But not something I can talk about right now—’
The pregnancy that she had once craved had actually materialised but she no longer had the support system of either a marriage or a father for her unborn child. That awareness put a very different complexion on the situation.
‘I just knew it was too good to be true when he gave you the dog back!’ Belle exclaimed heatedly. ‘And then the house, for goodness’ sake! Nik Christakis suddenly starts playing Santa Claus! There’s something wrong with that image—’
‘I promise I’ll phone you in a few days when I’ve sorted stuff out,’ Betsy cut in ruefully. ‘I’m sorry but I just can’t talk about this yet.’
Betsy switched off her phone and stared into space, rather than at the testing kits and packaging. There was no avoiding her next step: she needed Nik to explain how she could have fallen pregnant by a man who’d had a vasectomy. She could not possibly keep her condition a secret from him. Nik had to be told that he was going to be a father, whether he liked the idea or not. No, without a doubt, Nik had to be informed that he had got her pregnant and he had to be forced to accept that fact even if it meant the humiliation of having to undergo DNA testing as evidence after their child was born. Betsy was already excruciatingly aware that Nik would not want their child and would probably much prefer to believe that she had fallen pregnant by some other man, thereby absolving him from all responsibility and the threat of a continuing connection to the wife he could hardly wait to divorce.
Over the past two months Betsy’s spirits had steadily sunk into the doldrums. Coming to terms with the explosive passion that had plunged her into renewed sexual intimacy with her estranged husband had proved a mammoth challenge. The emotional wound Nik had inflicted was almost as great as the agony of feeling that she had seriously let herself down. Yet she wasn’t a victim, wasn’t a weakling, wasn’t one of those women who forgave a man no matter how badly he treated her. She had not forgiven Nik and she was mortified that she had gone to bed with him again.
What had made her feel even worse was the painfully obvious fact that Nik could not wait to draw a double black line below their marriage and mark it finished. He had returned Gizmo, and just two weeks earlier had offered her a very generous final financial settlement through his lawyers. All the writing was on the wall. He wanted out of their marriage fast. She knew how Nik operated. He was stubborn and impatient and as cutting as a polished steel blade. He didn’t waste time with anything he didn’t want, and anything he did want he wanted it yesterday and he most definitely wanted the divorce.
So, how was she to approach a male so eager to cut their final ties and forget about her and tell him news that he couldn’t possibly want to hear? Her small shoulders straightened with sudden spirit and purpose. Well, tough for Nik! He had got her pregnant, hadn’t he? He was the one who had neither warned her of that risk nor guarded her against it and the consequences were as much his fault as her own. He might not want children but the warmth stealing through Betsy at the knowledge that she carried her first child was already infiltrating the shock value of the same discovery. She wanted her baby and she knew he would not. The facts were there. A male who had had a vasectomy at such a young age could never have wanted a child. But mercifully what Nik wanted no longer needed to influence her, Betsy acknowledged with relief, and allowing herself to be intimidated by a development for which they were both equally responsible would be silly and spineless, and Betsy was neither of these things.
* * *
‘It’s not convenient. Inform her that I will be in touch.’ With difficulty Nik swallowed his ire at the polite lie he was being forced to utter before setting his phone down and returning to his business meeting.
Evidently Betsy had shown up uninvited and was waiting outside his office to see him. What on earth had come over her? She was well aware that he hated being interrupted for any reason during working hours. His perfect white teeth gritted, anger at her lack of consideration stirring. If she had something she needed to say to him she had a lawyer to act as her spokesperson, as did he. He did not want personal contact with her; he wanted a smooth, clean and civilised divorce.
Even so, a defiant image glimmered in the back of his mind, a frankly licentious image of Betsy’s slender, perfect body splayed across that bed at Lavender Hall, and outraged by that unwelcome intrusion, he kicked the image out again, wide, sensual mouth settling into a tense line of compression. Sleeping with Betsy again had been like turning over a stone, because all sorts of things he would rather not deal with had come tumbling out in the aftermath. Given time, however, the memories would fade and disappear, he assured himself resolutely.
He had paid absolutely no heed to his therapist’s suggestion that he was deeply conflicted on the subject of his marriage. In that line the lady talked a lot of nonsense! Nik believed in keeping things simple and he fully understood why he had done what he had done. He had gone off the rails and fallen back into a better-forgotten past for a few hours...that was all. Soon his marriage would be as decently buried as the terrifying nightmares and flashbacks that had plagued him for years already were.
Betsy listened with a polite smile to the message Nik’s stalwart PA, Steve, passed on with fervent apologies that she was persuaded had not fallen from Nik’s lips. But Steve, unlike his boss, was a nice guy. Once upon a time Betsy’s very rare visits to Nik’s office building had been greeted with disconcerting attention and servility because she had been deemed a person of importance in Nik’s world. Now, however, it was clear that she had lost that polished passport to special treatment and was viewed as being about as relevant to Nik as yesterda
y’s newspaper.
‘Thanks, Steve,’ she said, sweeping up her sensible leather rucksack bag, ruefully conscious that her casual jeans and plain black pea coat had attracted raised brows of surprise since her arrival.
But then probably for the very first time ever, Betsy was happy to simply be herself in Nik’s sophisticated radius, not the more glossy, artificial self she had long believed he found infinitely more attractive. So, she hadn’t dressed up for his benefit and wasn’t wearing high heels, designer clothing or even very much make-up. Nik was the husband who had deceived her, hurt her and humiliated her and she was determined to seek neither his approval nor his admiration.
As the PA walked away Betsy moved purposely in the opposite direction to head straight for Nik’s office. Nik had wasted enough of her morning and she wasn’t prepared to kick her heels any longer on his behalf! Why should she? She was no longer eager to please and conform to nonsensical rules that had once made her feel more like an irrelevant nuisance than a legally wedded wife with rights and needs of her own.
Betsy thrust Nik’s office door wide, scanning the half-dozen men seated round the small conference table with flaring midnight-blue eyes of enquiry before settling her attention on Nik’s lean, hard-boned face. ‘I need to see you...now,’ she declared without hesitation.
A feverish glimmer of dark colour rose to accentuate the exotic line of Nik’s hard cheekbones, his green eyes flaring like emeralds in bright sunlight to betray more than a glint of outrage. He stood upright, lithe and fit as the predator he was, and shifted a hand in dismissal as Steve raced through the door a mere breathless step in Betsy’s wake.
‘Gentlemen, we’ll have to take a break. I’ll see you in an hour,’ Nik informed his companions flatly.
