by Lynne Graham
‘I appreciate you coming to this with me. I know you don’t like parties unless you’re tucked away somewhere quiet talking solely about business,’ Betsy remarked ruefully. ‘But you’ll have your brothers there for company—’
‘And all the little half-brothers and sisters,’ Nik reminded her wryly. ‘I’ll make an effort to get to know them but, as I lack small talk and Belle’s probably already given them a poor impression of me, I can’t make any promises.’
‘A little bit of an effort is all that is required from you,’ Betsy assured him, trying not to smile at his willingness to extend an olive branch to Gaetano Ravelli’s youngest children. He had listened to her and he was prepared to change the status quo and to her way of thinking that was more than enough to earn him four gold stars.
‘Obviously I’m willing to make any effort required,’ Nik countered.
Betsy looked up at him with her very blue eyes. ‘Why?’
Nik linked his arms round her still-slim waist, slowly easing her slender body into connection with his while he stared down at her with green eyes that had flared to jewelled brilliance with desire. ‘I want you to be happy with me, Betsy.’
‘I am happy,’ she assured him, colour rising in her cheeks, hugely erotically aware of his big, powerful body and the erection he was making no attempt to hide. She stared up at him, treacherously enthralled by his sleek, dark, masculine beauty. The knowledge that in every way that mattered he was still hers in spite of the separation they had endured thrilled her and played merry havoc with her defences. Her body hummed at her feminine core, desire stirring in her, even while common sense fought to suppress it and remind her that she was all dressed up and keen to arrive on time for the party.
Nik lowered his handsome dark head and in an abrupt motion Betsy twisted her head aside, fighting her natural inclinations before he could succeed and wreck her lipstick. ‘I’m all done up now,’ she reasoned in breathless excuse and then glanced up at him, disconcerted when she recognised a fleeting flash of wounded uncertainty in his gaze. Her heart leapt in dismay at the memory that look provoked. He had looked at her precisely like that the day he had walked out, as if he didn’t understand quite what he had done by making a secret of his vasectomy, couldn’t credit her reaction to the revelation and was incredibly hurt by it. She hadn’t understood it then but it still wasn’t an expression she could be comfortable seeing him wear again.
In an equally sudden movement she pulled free of his arms and spun to present him with her back. ‘Unzip me,’ she instructed.
‘But I thought—’ he began in apparent mystification at her change of heart.
‘Since when was I so fussy?’ Betsy teased shakily, eyes over-bright with sudden tears, her pregnancy hormones all on override because she wanted him, she always wanted him and she marvelled that he should not immediately grasp that little fact.
The dress shimmered down to the floor and she stood revealed in lacy underwear. He feasted his eyes on her tiny, increasingly curvy body while she scooped up the gown and laid it carefully over a chair. ‘Sometimes I want you so much it almost hurts,’ he told her in a hoarse undertone.
Colour mounted in her cheeks as he shed his jacket and shirt with none of the care she had employed. She strolled back to him and unfastened his trousers, slender hands delving beneath to find the long, hard evidence of his arousal and stroke his velvet-smooth, rigid shaft with wondering fingers until he swore in guttural Greek under his breath and wrenched off the remainder of his clothing with less patience than he had shown a moment earlier. She knelt at his feet pleasuring him with her lush mouth and knowing fingers, excitement lancing almost painful waves of arousal through her heated body with every groan she wrenched from him.
‘I want to make love to you,’ Nik growled, bending down to scoop her up and plant her down squarely on the end of the bed. He skimmed off her knickers and ran the tip of his tongue across the pointed evidence of her achingly sensitive swollen nipples before testing the honeyed welcome between her thighs with the single dip of a long, appreciative finger.
Even before he came down over her, Betsy was gasping and arching, unbearably eager for the finale she longed for. Nik tipped her legs over his shoulders and sank into her slick channel hard and fast, stretching her with delicious force.
‘You’re incredible in bed, kardoula mou,’ he told her rawly, angling back his hips before thrusting back deep inside again in a movement that wrenched a helpless cry from her convulsed throat.
Her heart raced and she struggled to breathe as the excitement built, backed by the ever-tightening constraint of tension gripping her pelvis. His fast, fluid rhythm became rougher, rawer as he pounded into her and finally she lost control, overwhelmed by the passion and the wild explosion of pleasure that assailed her when she could hold it back no longer. Even afterwards little tremors of delight continued to rock through her in rippling waves while she buried her face in Nik’s damp shoulder and drank in the hot, musky scent of the lean, powerful body pinning hers to the mattress.
‘I think we’d better make a move if we want to make the party before midnight.’ Mocking light green eyes rested on her dazed expression and he laughed as awareness reclaimed her, dismay flashed across her face and she shoved against his shoulders, scrambling to get up and reclaim her party finery.
* * *
‘I was really chuffed to see Nik taking some time to chat to Bruno about his art course,’ Belle confided as she urged Betsy into the conservatory at the rear of the vast and luxurious London town house she and Cristo lived in. It was two in the morning and most of the party guests had already taken their leave.
‘Nik probably finds Bruno less intimidating than his sisters,’ Betsy joked.
‘I invited far too many people tonight. I haven’t been able to get five minutes alone with you all evening,’ Belle complained, waving her glass of champagne in an emphatic gesture of annoyance, which sent a quantity of the golden liquid spilling over the lip of the goblet and down the stem.
Betsy laughed because the birthday girl was definitely a little tipsy. ‘It’s your party. Naturally everyone here wanted to speak to you personally—’
‘But you and Nik...it’s definitely all back on again?’ the lively redhead asked with a fascination she couldn’t conceal. ‘When Cristo first told me that Nik had moved back into the hall, I refused to believe it.’
Betsy resisted an urge to admit that she too had initially been incredulous about that development. But some things were better kept private. ‘The divorce is off,’ she confirmed. ‘We’re going to try again.’
Smooth brow furrowing, Belle studied her with keen curiosity. ‘In spite of everything that’s happened between you? Regardless of everything he’s done?’
Betsy chose to respond to those thorny questions with honesty. ‘Apart from the fact that Nik’s not the only one of us to have made mistakes, I never stopped loving him. I thought I had but then once I was with him again, I realised I’d only been kidding myself.’
In receipt of that confession, Belle unexpectedly looked surprisingly thoughtful and then she sighed in grudging surrender to the argument. ‘I think we’ve all been there at some stage,’ she confided with unexpected feeling. ‘When I thought Cristo was in love with you, I honestly thought I hated him because I was devastated and so unbelievably jealous.’
Betsy froze to the spot in disbelief and wondered if she had misheard the other woman. ‘You thought that Cristo could be in love with me? For goodness’ sake, when?’
‘After we got married I discovered that he carried a photo of you in his wallet,’ Belle admitted ruefully. ‘Before that find I had assumed that you were only friends—’
‘But we were only friends,’ Betsy retorted with uncomfortable stress, wondering just how much alcohol Belle had imbibed that evening. ‘There was never anything else, not even a m
Belle wrinkled her nose in embarrassed dismissal. ‘Of course I know that now but I didn’t know that back then and Cristo had quite a job convincing me because, let’s face it, you are beautiful and very feminine, Betsy, so obviously I could see your appeal. At the time I was so afraid that you were much more Cristo’s type than I could ever be—’
At that instant Belle’s rambling speech was interrupted by a sudden noise behind Betsy and a harsh bitten-off masculine exclamation. She spun in consternation, just in time to see Nik’s tall, broad-shouldered figure swinging round in the doorway to fire back out into the corridor.
‘Nik?’ she called after him anxiously while she wondered how long he had been standing there waiting for her to notice his presence. ‘Were you looking for me? Wait for me...’
‘Oh, hell!’ Belle gasped in undiluted horror. ‘Nik must’ve heard what I told you about Cristo...’
The two women raced out of the conservatory to return to the party and reached the hall just as Nik grabbed his brother Cristo by the shoulder and punched him in the face. A split second later Nik had Cristo physically pinned to a wall, black fury and outrage etched in every flushed line of his lean, rigid features. ‘My wife...you were in love with my wife?’ Nik was growling with enraged incredulity.
Betsy realised that Nik had indeed overheard Belle’s deeply damaging admission that she had once believed that Cristo was in love with Betsy and she gritted her teeth in frustration at the realisation, because it was not at all the sort of revelation that Nik was likely to take lying down or with a large forgiving pinch of salt. Nik was a proud and possessive man and even his close friendship with his brother would not excuse what Nik would regard as an unforgivable betrayal of trust. Even so, it was all a stupid storm in a teacup, Betsy thought in exasperation, reluctant to credit that Belle’s suspicions could ever have had any foundation in fact.
‘Calm down, Nik. Think this through,’ Cristo was urging with admirable cool for a male who had blood running from the corner of his mouth. ‘You’ve got this all wrong—’
‘You had a photo of Betsy in your wallet?’ Nik was roaring, apparently deaf to any plea for calm.
‘It’s not like it sounds,’ Cristo protested.
‘My own brother? I trusted you, totally trusted you around my wife and you deceived me!’ Nik growled as if Cristo hadn’t even spoken and with that embittered accusation he threw back his arm and hit Cristo again.
Cristo finally tore himself free of Nik’s punishing hold and shot a string of words at his brother in fast, fluent Italian.
‘For goodness’ sake, someone stop them!’ Betsy exclaimed in consternation as the two brothers began to exchange punches in earnest with both of them so well matched in powerful build and strength that there was no hope of a quick conclusion to the fight.
Belle darted across the hall to the main reception room, which still contained a handful of lingering guests, and called her brother-in-law Zarif out to join them.
Zarif appeared in the doorway. Tall and startlingly handsome with olive skin and very dark eyes, the young King of Vashir took in the situation at a glance and waded between his brothers, ducking a blow that would have sent him flying had he not been so agile. Mercifully that near miss of their sovereign was all it took to provoke Zarif’s four accompanying guards into plunging straight into the fight to forcibly separate the battling siblings. An exchange of furious Italian and Greek followed but Zarif flung open the door of Cristo’s study and said drily, ‘We will discuss this in a more private setting.’
Betsy dealt the younger man an appreciative appraisal, grateful for his intervention. While Zarif was technically merely a kid brother, he had been raised as an Arab prince in a royal palace and, having trained as a soldier and seen actual combat, he had a habit of command and a mature and level-headed presence far beyond his years.
‘Oh, my heaven, what have I done to this family?’ Belle was whispering, distraught, dashing her auburn hair off her brow in a feverish gesture. ‘I’ve caused so much trouble between the brothers. Cristo will never forgive me for opening my big mouth.’
‘No matter how he felt, Nik shouldn’t have just exploded like that and assumed the worst,’ Betsy breathed ruefully. ‘He should have talked it over with Cristo first.’
‘Nik would still have hit him,’ Belle opined without hesitation. ‘Nik’s very much the dark, jealous, passionate type.’
Somehow Betsy had never viewed her husband in that light before and her lashes fluttered in confusion.
‘And Cristo explained to me once that Nik’s not good with emotional things, which I suppose explains why you almost got all the way to the divorce court before it finally dawned on Nik that you’re still the most important person in his world.’
‘I wouldn’t put it quite like that,’ Betsy muttered uncomfortably, wishing that she could crash into Cristo’s study to find out exactly what was happening between the three brothers. It was the very first time that she had seen Nik lose his temper and his self-control to that extent and she was still in shock, her legs feeling a little wobbly at having been witness to the kind of violence she abhorred, even more particularly when it broke out between members of the same family. That welter of exchanged blows had torn apart the brothers’ close relationship and she was distressed by that reality.
‘Nik’s absolutely crazy about you!’ Belle protested. ‘And Cristo says he always has been...from the first moment he saw you.’
A lump formed in Betsy’s throat. Was it possible that Nik truly cared about her? That he could have been as misled as she had been about her own feelings? After all, hadn’t she believed that she hated Nik for a while? Hadn’t that been her way of coping without him? Her way of getting by and surviving life without him?
‘Cristo is just going to kill me for this mess,’ Belle muttered guiltily, tears sparkling in her lovely eyes. ‘I don’t always think before I speak. Deep down inside me, I never forgot that time when I believed Cristo might care more for you than for me—’
‘I don’t believe that could ever have been the case,’ Betsy countered staunchly.
‘Maybe I wanted to test you, see how you reacted,’ Belle acknowledged shamefacedly.
‘I’ve just never seen Cristo as fanciable.’ Intercepting Belle’s rather chagrined glance, Betsy smiled wryly. ‘There’s never been anyone but Nik for me.’
Her steps uncertain, Betsy approached the study door and knocked on it before opening it. From the threshold she peered in at the brothers, all three of whom were posed with varying degrees of strain and annoyance etched in their remarkably similar lean features. ‘I think we should go home now,’ she told Nik flatly.
‘Good idea.’ Nik crossed the room with a flash of his long, powerful legs.
‘And when you get there, you should explain some things to Betsy,’ Cristo urged ruefully.
‘That kind of interference is not within our remit,’ Zarif chimed in, his tone one of reproach at that offering of advice.
As he listened to his brothers a line of colour flared along Nik’s high cheekbones and then receded, leaving him curiously pale and extremely tense. Lush black lashes dipped down over his bright eyes as he dropped a protective arm round Betsy’s slim shoulders. ‘Home,’ he agreed with unconcealed relief.
‘Did you apologise to Cristo?’ Betsy prompted as the limousine drew away from the town house.
Nik flashed her a stunned glance. ‘No, I did not. Why would I apologise?’
Betsy breathed in slow and deep. ‘You attacked him—’
‘He got what he deserved,’ Nik countered with caustic bite. ‘It may be a little late in the day that he’s getting it but he did deserve it. You’re my wife and I trusted him with you—’
‘And he never once betrayed that trust,’ Betsy declared, choosing to be tactful rather than point out that during that period of their lives Nik had turned his back on their marriage and left her alone to sink or swim. ‘If it’s true that he did develop some sort of silly crush on me, I had no suspicion of it because he never said or did anything around me that even suggested that.’
‘Never?’ Nik pressed, shooting her a troubled and still-unconvinced appraisal. ‘And how did you feel about Cristo at the time? I had gone, the divorce had started and you were alone but for my brother’s supportive visits.’ He spoke the word ‘supportive’ with deeply derisive emphasis.
‘I was grateful for his support and the fact that he was willing to listen to me rambling on,’ Betsy admitted honestly. ‘I had nobody else to talk to. He was your brother. Talking about you to Cristo didn’t feel disloyal and I knew that anything I said wouldn’t go any further.’
‘I encouraged him to connect with you,’ Nik confided grittily, his jawline clenching hard at the recollection. ‘I had total trust in him. I should have known better—’
‘You encouraged him to be my friend?’ Betsy repeated in surprise. ‘But why?’
Nik shifted uneasily in his corner of the back seat. ‘I wanted to know that you were all right, that you had everything you needed—’
‘But I wasn’t all right,’ Betsy responded in a small, tight voice of commendable restraint. ‘How could I have been? You had refused to even discuss your vasectomy and why you’d had it done and then you simply walked out on our marriage.’
Nik frowned, clearly thinking that evaluation unjust. ‘Because you told me to leave. You said you could never forgive me, never look at me again and that I had killed your love. You said our marriage was over,’ he replied.
Betsy studied his lean, darkly handsome face, taken aback to have her words of many months earlier thrown back at her when she’d least expected to hear them. ‘But that’s just the sort of thing people say when they’re angry and hurt and crazily confused—’
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