by Lynne Graham
The other men filed out and the door snapped shut behind Betsy. Her attention had not once wavered from Nik. Even his business suit couldn’t hide the lean, powerful perfection of his athletic body. She remembered the appalling nightmares he used to have and how even though it was the middle of the night he would go down to the basement gym to work out afterwards, before finally falling back exhausted into bed still wet from the shower.
Immobile as a statue now, she could hear her own breath scissoring audibly through her tight throat while her heart thumped so hard with stress she would have liked to press a hand to her chest to slow it down. But that, much like apologising, would have been a dead giveaway of her inner turmoil and Betsy had no intention of making such a crucial error in Nik’s forceful and assured presence.
‘What the hell are you playing at?’ Nik demanded in a harsh undertone, appraising her unfamiliar appearance with a frown of incomprehension.
For some inexplicable reason she was dressed like a student and she looked impossibly young, blue eyes huge in her delicate heart-shaped face. She was five years younger than him, only five and yet sometimes the distance between them had seemed an unbridgeable gulf because she had a quality of innocence and a level of trust in other people that he had lost at a very early age. But then if he was honest that difference in their outlook had been a strong part of her appeal, he acknowledged reluctantly. He had known she would always need his strength to protect her while also knowing that love made her loyal and naively trusting and that she would always be there waiting for him in the background.
And even with her dressed as carelessly as she was now, Betsy’s beauty still rocked him where he stood. That awareness shook him because it seemed as though all his mental prompts that she was imperfect had only highlighted the fact that she somehow made imperfection the absolute definition of pure exquisiteness on his terms. Instinctive desire kindled in him, his temperature rising, his libido purring into gear. His keen gaze lingered on the lush curve of her mouth and the tender white of her fragile throat where it emerged from a roll-neck sweater while he remembered the taste of her mouth and the feel of it on him.
‘It’s payback time...the magic moment when all your sins come home to roost,’ Betsy told him in direct challenge, absolutely determined not to be apologetic or, indeed, understanding of the mistake he had made. ‘And you have to explain something to me. You had a vasectomy, so how the heck did you get me pregnant?’
Disconcerted by that highly provocative opening assault, Nik froze to the carpet in front of her, sleek ebony brows rising, nostrils flaring. Betsy worked really hard at not noticing his glossy gorgeousness. But memory was flashing debilitating images through her brain: her fingers sliding through the shiny black silk of his hair, her thumb smoothing the sexy line of that full, wonderfully sensual lower lip. With great difficulty she suppressed her wandering thoughts.
‘Pregnant?’ Nik repeated that word in outright disbelief. ‘What are you talking about?’
Betsy recognised that she still had the advantage because she had taken him totally by surprise. ‘I’m pregnant and I haven’t been with anyone but you,’ she informed him bluntly. ‘So explain to me how that is possible.’
For the first time in his life, Nik was speechless. Pregnant? All his natural colour drained from beneath his bronzed skin as he took a sudden step back from her, stunned eyes locked to her in unconcealed shock while a shard of bone-deep fear sliced unequivocally through his big frame. ‘You’re...pregnant?’ he breathed in a roughened undertone, his scepticism concerning her claim blatant.
‘Explain that to me,’ Betsy urged impatiently.
Nik raked long brown fingers through his blue-black hair, a dazed aspect to his usually shrewd gaze as he stared steadily back at her. ‘You’ve found out that you’re pregnant? Seriously?’
‘Do I look like I’m joking?’ Betsy shot back at him defensively.
A deep frown line pleated Nik’s brows and there was a pause before he spoke again because his brain refused to accept what she had just told him. ‘I had the vasectomy reversed,’ he admitted without any expression at all.
Betsy took a sudden step forward, moving closer to him without even being aware of the movement. ‘Reversed...when?’ she queried, suddenly desperate to hear that answer.
‘After you threw me out—’
‘But...why?’ she prompted, wondering if he had hoped to get her back with that news and if so why he hadn’t approached her at the time.
‘I realised it was time that I trusted myself to be in charge of my own fertility. I didn’t even know the vasectomy could be reversed when we broke up. I always assumed it was final,’ he admitted curtly, speaking with a candour she was unaccustomed to him using. ‘When I found out that a reversal may well be successful if done within ten years of the original op, I decided to go for it. I was supposed to return for tests after the procedure to see if it had worked but I’m afraid I was so busy I never got around to it...’
Betsy’s lashes wavered slowly up and down as she tried to process that unexpectedly detailed reply. But no matter how often she thought that response over she couldn’t make sense of it. What did he mean about trusting himself to be in charge of his own fertility? What on earth was he talking about? And why the heck would he have had the procedure reversed after they had separated and not even bother to tell her about it? Well, that was one question answered loud and clear, she acknowledged painfully. Evidently his decision to have his vasectomy reversed had had nothing whatsoever to do with either her or her longing for a baby or the saving of their marriage. It was yet another slap in the face for Betsy, another wounding reminder that she never had understood and never would understand what made Nik Christakis tick.
‘You are honestly pregnant?’ Nik pressed her, studying her with frowning intensity and a lingering sense of disbelief because that possibility still didn’t feel real to him. He might now have the proof that the reversal had worked but he was equally appalled by the risk he had unwittingly run and the unthinkable consequences of his evidently restored fertility. This result was his fault, solely his fault for neglecting to recall the fact that for the first time ever with Betsy he would need to take precautions.
Diavelos, suppose he had slept with another woman? Suppose he had been having this exact same conversation with a woman who was almost a stranger? But then would he have been so careless with anyone other than Betsy? He didn’t think so. Once again familiarity had worked against him with Betsy, but then it had been so many years since he had had to guard against the risk of an unwanted pregnancy that he had behaved as imprudently as a teenager eager to have sex for the first time at any cost.
‘One hundred per cent pregnant,’ Betsy extended curtly, whipping her attention off his lean, darkly beautiful face when she felt it wanting to loiter, stifling her reaction to him with every fibre of her self-discipline because it was screamingly inappropriate. For the sake of the future and her unborn child she had to stick to cold, hard facts. ‘So you accept that you’re to blame for this pregnancy and that this will be your child?’
Lush spiky black lashes narrowed over suddenly astute green eyes, bright chips of colour in his lean, strong face. ‘Have you any doubt on that score?’ he questioned drily.
Betsy lifted her chin, azure eyes full of scornful dismissal. ‘None at all.’
‘Are you pleased?’ Nik asked her without warning because he literally couldn’t think of anything else to say and was wary of saying the wrong thing. A baby. Betsy was having a baby, his baby. Her announcement had plunged him deep into shock. He couldn’t compute a concept so foreign to him for he had never once actively considered becoming a father. Reversing the vasectomy had been much more of an intellectual and philosophical exercise than an actual wish to see a child of his own blood born. Indeed that was a development that even at his most optimistic he had never once dared to envisage. After all,
children were so vulnerable and no matter how hard one might endeavour to protect a child bad things still happened to them. At the thought, Nik paled.
Betsy breathed in so deep and long that she felt giddy. ‘Am I pleased?’ she repeated in charged disbelief, her small body turning rigid with the force of her feelings. ‘Are you kidding? I wanted a baby when we were married. I wanted a family. This...’ she spread her arms wide in emphasis, as if encompassing the distance now between them ‘...is not what I wanted!’
‘So you don’t want the baby,’ Nik assumed, wondering how he felt about that but still too shaken by her news to know. A baby. Betsy was going to have a baby, the first Christakis infant to be born since his own birth.
‘It’s my baby...of course I want it!’ Betsy slung back at him with an aggression she had never shown him before, no, not even on the day their marriage had tumbled down like a pack of cards and she had virtually thrown him out of their home. ‘You need to know now upfront that there’s no way I’m having a termination—’
‘I am not that stupid,’ Nik fielded flatly. ‘Nor would I ask you to do such a thing.’
‘No?’ Betsy’s voice was steadily rising in volume even though she was struggling to stay calm, well aware that a loss of temper was a handicap she didn’t need. ‘Wouldn’t you? Wouldn’t a termination suit you much better than the birth of a child you don’t want?’
‘Don’t put words in my mouth. I didn’t say I didn’t want the child,’ Nik countered darkly. ‘Obviously, you do—’
Betsy was in no mood to allow him to make assumptions and she was frustrated by his failure to give her a single hint of his true feelings. ‘Why? What’s obvious about it? Because you’re wrong—everything’s changed. I never wanted to be a single parent raising a child alone!’
Nik clenched his teeth together on an ill-considered retort. She was pregnant. Betsy was pregnant, he reflected abstractedly, marvelling at the development that had come too late to save them. Whether she would admit it or otherwise, he had finally contrived to give her the one thing she truly wanted and he was violently disconcerted by the flare of satisfaction that infiltrated him at that acknowledgement. He didn’t want to think about the baby; he wanted to think about what the baby would mean to her, and he was convinced that that child would mean the world to Betsy.
He remembered the secret stash of baby clothes he had stumbled on in the back of the closet and the sickening sensation of futility and powerlessness that had engulfed him that evening. He couldn’t tell her the truth about his past; he could never tell her the truth, for how would she regard him afterwards? He had only had his pride left to sustain him. He had known from the outset that silence was his only possible defence, but her announcement had engulfed him like a hurricane, throwing into chaos everything he had believed he felt and thought.
‘You made it that way for me!’ Betsy continued in angry condemnation. ‘You didn’t give me a choice. You didn’t warn me I could get pregnant—’
Nik released his breath in an impatient sound and replied with innate practicality, ‘I don’t think contraception was uppermost in either of our minds that day. I didn’t think about anything that prosaic—’
‘Oh, I can believe that all right!’ Betsy flamed back at him, eyes hurling furious derision, ripe mouth curved with unfamiliar scorn. ‘All you were thinking about was sex!’
‘Be practical...what else would I be thinking about?’ Nik traded evenly, not one whit perturbed by that indictment. ‘You didn’t hold back either.’
Betsy wanted to slap him for that insolent reminder. Had she behaved like a sensible, self-respecting woman, nothing would’ve happened. She would have looked at him in shock and said no straight away when he came on to her. But she had never found it possible to look at Nik and say no and that went right to the heart of their relationship. The balance of power in the sex department had always been his until she had thrown a spanner into the works by craving a child and a whole new schedule during which Nik’s desire for her had noticeably declined. Colour infusing her cheeks, she studied his desk. ‘I totally hate and despise you—’
‘We must be practical,’ Nik murmured softly, much as if she hadn’t spoken. ‘Drama and accusations of blame will get us nowhere—’
‘That’s very easy to say from where you’re standing,’ Betsy riposted bitterly. ‘Your whole life isn’t going to be disrupted by single parenthood!’
‘Both our lives will be disrupted,’ Nik countered drily. ‘But as lack of resources is not a problem I believe we will survive the challenge. I will naturally ensure that you have all the support you require from this point on—’
People he would pay to take the physical work and round-the-clock responsibility out of parenting, Betsy interpreted in even greater disgust. He wasn’t volunteering himself; he wasn’t willing to make a single sacrifice. And why would he be when he didn’t want to be a father in the first place? she asked herself painfully.
‘Stuff your blasted resources!’ Betsy slung at him, vitriolic in the grip of her resentment, her heart-shaped face flushed with fury, eyes hurling don’t-give-a-damn defiance. ‘All I ever wanted was a father for my baby, not access to your wallet!’
Nik settled lacerating sea-green eyes on her, derision shimmering in every angle of his lean dark features. ‘Am I supposed to be impressed by that statement? Until very recently you were claiming half of everything I own,’ he reminded her with razor-edged cool.
Betsy squared her slim shoulders and hitched her bag, determined not to show weakness. ‘And instead I’ve done even better,’ she quipped. ‘A baby has to be a virtual lifelong meal ticket!’
Nik surveyed her with chilling detachment. ‘Go home, Betsy, before I lose my temper,’ he urged.
And Betsy couldn’t get out of his office fast enough and didn’t breathe again until she was safe in the lift, whirring back down to the ground floor. Playing up to his view of her as a gold-digger might momentarily have seemed a way to save face, but in the long term it was a very bad idea, she reflected shamefacedly, particularly if it soured relations between them even more. What happened to her brain around Nik? She had just called her baby a lifelong meal ticket and she cringed at the awareness, knowing that even screaming abuse at Nik would have been preferable to the not so subtle weapon she had employed to fight her own corner.
And why had she behaved that way? She hated the way he had made her feel, hated that a moment that should have been exceptional and a cause for celebration had been destroyed by his shocked recoil in the face of her news. But then why was she still looking for the kind of response from Nik that he could never give her? He didn’t want a child and she was having a child. Being disappointed wasn’t an option, she told herself angrily. It was time to grow up and accept her world as it was, not as she would like it to be. In any case, hadn’t Nik reacted better than she had hoped? There had been no demand for DNA testing, no suggestion that he suspected she might have fallen pregnant by another man.
Emerging into the fresh air, Betsy glanced across the street to where the bistro in which she had once worked had long since been replaced by an upmarket estate agency. Her troubled face tensed and then softened when she allowed herself to remember that, with savage irony, Nik Christakis had truly treated her like a queen before their marriage.
Sadly, Betsy had fallen in love with Nik so fast and so terrifyingly deeply that she had lost herself in him. When he had been with her he had become all that mattered and when he had been abroad he had been all she could think about and she had been wretchedly unhappy without him. Until she had met Nik she had not even known that she could feel such powerful emotion. She had begun skipping her night classes when Nik had wanted to see her and soon she had fallen behind with her assignments and stopped attending altogether. She was still ashamed of that short-sighted loss of drive back then and the inherent weakness of dropping her
life plan in favour of a man and a relationship that might not have lasted. She had never dreamt that she was that kind of woman, but loving Nik had humbled her.
When Nik had asked her to marry him, she had been stunned, for she’d had no idea that he was that serious about her. At that point she hadn’t even slept with him and his restraint in that department had already surprised her.
‘You’re a virgin, aren’t you?’ he had prompted after dinner in a trendy restaurant one evening. ‘I don’t mind waiting until you feel ready to share my bed. In fact the very act of waiting is refreshing and remarkably exciting.’
They had married in a welter of orange blossoms and flash photography, surrounded by hundreds of guests she hadn’t known and only a handful that she had. Within weeks of the wedding, however, Nik had begun to change and recently she had wondered if he had changed towards her for the most demeaning reason of all. With the exciting chase ending on their wedding night when he finally got her into bed, had her driven alpha-male husband then begun to steadily lose interest because he was bored with her? After all, an inexpert non-virgin had little in the way of novelty to offer a sexual sophisticate.
But Betsy had predictably hung on in there, struggling to make a success of a marriage with a constantly absent partner. She had foolishly believed that a baby would bring them closer together and break through Nik’s increasing detachment and reserve. And then one evening when Nik was abroad on business she had attended a dinner party at Cristo’s, where Zarif, Nik’s royal kid brother, had made an effort to chat to her and get to know her. When he had asked her how she managed when Nik was out of the country so often, she had briefly mentioned that now that the work on Lavender Hall was complete she was hoping to start a family soon, and Zarif had given her a startled look and asked how she planned to achieve that when Nik had had a vasectomy. That bombshell had come at her out of nowhere and within days had blown their marriage sky-high.
Now the world seemed to have turned full circle, Betsy acknowledged forlornly. She was getting the baby she had once craved but she no longer had a husband or a man willing to play the role of father. Their marriage was over even though the divorce had yet to be finalised.
