by Lynne Graham
‘Only you can’t afford to say stuff like that to me because I took it all literally and I believed that you meant every word that you said,’ Nik admitted in a raw undertone.
Her brow indented. ‘We should have talked again more calmly back then.’
‘There were issues I wasn’t prepared to discuss with you,’ Nik vented grittily. ‘I’m useless at discussing emotional stuff. If I don’t even know quite how I feel, how am I supposed to know what anyone else is feeling?’
Frustration and bitterness roughened his dark deep drawl and she turned her head away, dropping her eyes, wondering what he was talking about but reluctant to put pressure on him after the upsetting evening they had had. ‘Have you made up with Cristo?’ she asked baldly.
‘Were... Are you attracted to him?’ Nik asked abruptly, his eyes light and bright in the dimness of the car interior. ‘Most women would prefer him to me. I’m darker, rougher round the edges, a lot less smooth.’
Betsy swallowed hard, astonished that Nik could still seem so insecure and marvelling that he was still shaken up by Belle’s revelation to continue feeling suspicious. ‘All I can tell you is that I met the two of you together the same day at the bistro and I never really noticed him. I mean, I realised that there was a guy with you and I eventually worked out that you were brothers, but Cristo might as well not have been there for all the interest he inspired in me,’ she confided quietly. ‘It was you I noticed, you I couldn’t take my eyes off—’
‘And...later?’ Nik pressed, closing a lean brown hand round hers where she had braced it on the leather seat. ‘How did you feel later after our marriage broke down?’
‘That he was my only friend, for listening and not judging. For being there when I needed a shoulder. He was very good to me—’
‘He said I was a rotten husband, that I didn’t treat you properly and that he felt sorry for you,’ Nik breathed harshly. ‘Is it true? Did I treat you badly?’
‘You just travelled a lot and you were very...detached. You never explained anything. But aside of the vasectomy you kept quiet about, I wouldn’t have termed you a rotten husband,’ Betsy said truthfully. ‘I was happy with you most of the time—’
‘But it should have been all of the time,’ Nik fielded grimly. ‘I let you down. But with the exception of your desire for a child, I really thought I was doing OK in the husband category. Unfortunately I’m not perfect, in fact I’m seriously flawed and I’ve done as much as I can to remedy that. But then you’re not quite perfect either. When I realised that you suffered from dyslexia I felt so comfortable with you. At first it was a wildfire physical attraction I felt for you, but once I got to know you and realised that you had restrictions as well, you seemed so perfect for me...’
The limousine drew up outside the hall and for a split second Betsy simply sat there, fixedly staring at Nik. You had restrictions as well was still ringing in her ears with the last two words ringing the loudest. ‘When you said you were seriously flawed, what did you mean...?’
The passenger door whipped open and crisp, cool night air flooded in. Nik retained her hand and tugged her out of the car to guide her up the steps. ‘I owe you the truth,’ he intoned with a bitterness he couldn’t hide. ‘But it’s a truth I would never have chosen to share with you.’
A chill of foreboding was sliding down Betsy’s taut spinal cord and rousing goosebumps on her exposed skin. She searched his bold bronzed profile, only to be taken aback by the harsh lines of tension underscoring his spectacularly strong bone structure. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ she whispered apologetically.
Nik thrust open the drawing room door and went to pour them both a drink. In silence he extended a pure orange to her and she grasped the moisture-beaded glass of juice tightly, unable to take her attention off him.
‘Didn’t it ever occur to you that I was a little off the wall sometimes?’ he framed with sardonic bite.
Without responding, Betsy watched him toss back a brandy and registered the strain he was striving to control.
‘Well?’ he prompted grimly.
‘You’re a little different...occasionally,’ she acknowledged reluctantly, thinking of the wedding proposal that had come out of nowhere and the reconciliation he had chosen not to discuss before moving back in. ‘But nothing I can’t handle or live with—’
‘Let’s see if you can work it out for yourself,’ Nik framed with dark, driven derision, a muscle jerking taut at the corner of his unsmiling mouth. ‘I’m no good at empathy. I find it hard to know what someone is thinking. I instinctively distrust most people. On the plus side, I don’t play games in relationships. Even so, my flaws have caused me endless problems in the field of personal relationships.’
Betsy was in a daze. Her head started to thump with the onset of a tension headache because what he was trying to tell her was so much more important than anything she could have foreseen.
‘As a child, I was brutalised by a severe level of abuse,’ Nik admitted gruffly, watching her with his beautiful green eyes as if he was suddenly expecting her to start screaming or shouting at him. ‘My mother was the perpetrator—’
‘Your...mother?’ Betsy exclaimed in horror.
‘My mother...yes—women can be violent too,’ Nik extended grittily. ‘I’ve always suspected she had some kind of personality disorder. Whatever, she was very violent. She never wanted a child in the first instance and, worst of all, I reminded her of Gaetano, whom she hated. She believed my father had made a fool of her by getting Cristo’s mother pregnant as well and she focused her hatred and resentment on me because I resembled him.’
Betsy was dizzy with shock. ‘I had no idea, Nik. Why didn’t you ever tell me about this? Those nightmares you used to suffer—?’
‘Childhood memories... I also began suffering from flashbacks of the abuse,’ Nik confessed in a raw, reluctant undertone. ‘It takes me longer to understand emotional stuff...like tonight with Cristo. I went into meltdown because I was very angry and upset. I felt betrayed. I was afraid that you might have developed feelings you shouldn’t have where he was concerned, feelings you couldn’t acknowledge because you knew you shouldn’t have them. I wondered how the hell I would ever get to the real truth and believe it in such a situation...because difficult as it would be for anyone in that position, it’s even worse for me.’
‘Oh, Nik...’ Betsy breathed painfully, her heart going out to him because so much that she had never understood about him was finally falling into place for her.
This was why he struggled when she hurled angry accusations at him, fell silent and brooded when she began to talk about feelings, and ultimately it was why he had misunderstood how she felt about him and walked out on their marriage. He had genuinely thought she didn’t love him any more, that she had told him the literal truth. He couldn’t comfortably assess such a confrontation and sometimes, regrettably, people threw wild, wounding insults and made threatening announcements purely to shock when they were hurt and angry. After all, that was exactly what she had done with him.
‘And this is what I would have done anything to avoid,’ Nik admitted angrily, throwing his proud dark head high. ‘I never wanted you to know and to think less of me—’
‘I don’t think less—’ she argued in dismay.
‘I didn’t want you to see me as being damaged and I don’t want your sympathy or your pity now,’ Nik told her curtly, pale beneath his bronzed skin as he stared back at her in challenge. ‘You thought I was perfect and I wanted so badly to be perfect for you. I wanted you to look up to me, to respect me—’
‘I still do, for goodness’ sake!’ Betsy swore in passionate rebuttal of his obvious concern. ‘You’re ten times cleverer than I am and a brilliant, highly successful businessman. Of course I respect you and I could never think less of you. In fact I probably think more of you becaus
e you’ve chosen to struggle very bravely in silence... Why is that? I appreciate the macho aspect of hiding what you deem to be a weakness, but why couldn’t you tell me years ago? I mean, for goodness’ sake, we were married!’
‘I was taught always to hide it from people, the bruises, the scars. I became an expert at redirecting people away from my pain and suffering. My own mother saw me as a freak because I would never react to the abuse she put me through. I learnt quickly that if I did react, or cry, or beg her to stop, it would only be worse for me. So I stopped crying, stopped feeling and closed off from her and everyone else completely,’ Nik volunteered in the most shockingly calm voice as though his mother’s attitude to him had been perfectly understandable. ‘She had me in behavioural conditioning sessions by the time I was four years old.’
Betsy studied him in horror but clamped her lips shut on an exclamation that would have revealed her true feelings. He didn’t want to hear that her heart was breaking on his behalf. Evidently his childhood had been an endurance test of unkindness and pain. His mother hadn’t nurtured or loved him; she had called him a freak. From an early age he had been forced into self-reliance, a fact that could only have increased his innate distrust of others and his isolation.
Emboldened by her lack of embarrassing reaction to his admission, Nik continued doggedly, determined to tell her everything now that he had started. ‘Helena despised me. It was bad enough that she had a baby she didn’t want but she was ashamed of me too.’
Tears stung Betsy’s eyes but she kept her eyes wide, determined not to let him see them. She couldn’t bear to think of what his childhood must have been like. By all accounts, his mother had been a less than loving parent and he must have felt that was his fault because he wasn’t good enough for her, wasn’t perfect. How confused and lost he must often have felt when he didn’t understand, she reflected in positive anguish at the thought of the unhappiness he must have suffered.
‘My mother was physically abusive,’ Nik admitted curtly. ‘But the nightmares only began shortly after I met you. I had suppressed all the memories of her cruelty—it was my way of coping. I hadn’t forgotten what she did to me. I just didn’t want to dwell on the memories. But when I met you I opened myself up to feeling things for the first time and then without any warning I started suffering flashbacks and nightmares about the violence.’
Betsy sucked in oxygen like a drowning swimmer and then she simply couldn’t contain her feelings any longer. She crossed the distance between them and wrapped her arms round his lean, powerful body as though she would never let him go. ‘You should never have allowed your mother to come to our wedding,’ she condemned for want of anything better to say, fearful of revealing her sympathy and damaging his pride, for she was painfully aware that such honesty, such soul-baring, had to be very tough for so reserved and secretive a male. ‘Why didn’t your grandfather protect you?’
‘We lived in an entirely separate wing of his home. He never saw or heard anything suspicious and he assumed I picked up the bruises being bullied at school because I wasn’t very good at playing with the other children,’ he explained wryly.
Betsy rested her brow against his shirtfront, the solid, reassuring thump of his heartbeat thrumming against her and his warmth sinking into her chilled bones like an addictive drug. ‘Why didn’t you tell him what your mother was doing to you?’
‘I thought I deserved it for not being the son she wanted.’
Her hands linking round his waist, Betsy swallowed so hard that she hurt her throat. He was a man of steel forged in fire and she had never truly appreciated that. He was tough because he had had to be tough to survive, hard because he knew that weakness meant vulnerability and distrustful because too many people had let him down.
‘The abuse I suffered is the reason why I chose to have a vasectomy,’ Nik spelled out in a harsh undertone. ‘I didn’t want to have a child in case I too felt the same way my mother felt about me. I couldn’t bear to put a child through the same pain as I had suffered. However, I know that I am not like my mother and I decided that the vasectomy was an overreaction on my part.’
His explanation was so simple and yet it rocked her where she stood for it had really never occurred to her that Nik might have had a very good reason to make that choice while he was still so young. She had thought only of more selfish and less presentable motivations relating to reluctance to have his freedom curtailed by the responsibility of becoming a parent. She pressed her rounded tummy to his big, powerful frame and leant against him. ‘You are a kind and caring man. I know that you will protect and cherish these babies with your life. You are nothing like your mother—don’t ever think you are,’ she breathed shakily.
Nik closed his hand to her chin and tipped up her face to look down at her. ‘I was scared that when I told you the truth you would hate me for having got you pregnant—’
‘I could never hate you,’ Betsy whispered, wide azure eyes locked to his lean, darkly beautiful features. ‘I love you too much for that and I’ll love our children the same way...’
His level black brows pleated, his stunning eyes glittering with surprise and curiosity below a fringe of luxuriant black lashes. ‘You’re saying you still love me? How is that possible?’
‘I never stopped. When I said you’d killed my love the day I threw you out, I was being a drama queen,’ Betsy confided guiltily. ‘I was angry but I didn’t mean it—’
‘Don’t say stuff like that to me,’ Nik advised, long brown fingers cradling her delicate jawbone. ‘I thought I’d lost you for ever. I went to see a therapist about the flashbacks and nightmares when they got worse,’ he admitted gruffly. ‘Being honest about my childhood lightened the load and helped me come to terms with it as an adult. I put it behind me. I just don’t look back...except where you’re concerned.’
‘And why am I different?’ Betsy prompted intently.
‘Because you’ve always inspired feelings inside me that nobody else does,’ Nik confessed. ‘But I didn’t realise what they were until it was almost too late. I know you weren’t happy when we were first married, but I was. Just having you in my life and my home was enough for me. Without you, everything went to hell and I was hopelessly unhappy.’
Betsy rested up against him with a sigh of pleasure. ‘It was the same for me. I think we belong together.’
‘And I think missing you and wanting you and needing you all the time means that I love you,’ Nik confessed in a tone of self-derision. ‘I’m sorry it took me so long to work out that you make me happy but at least I got there in the end—’
Betsy gazed up at him with wonder in her eyes. ‘You love me?’
‘Without you there’s nothing to look forward to,’ Nik admitted baldly. ‘Even the sound of your voice on the phone lifts me...’
Happiness foamed up inside Betsy, banishing the pain, the worry, the insecurity, and opening up a view of the future that was gloriously inviting. ‘I was really scared that you only came back to me to give our marriage another chance because I was pregnant.’
‘That was only my excuse. The truth is that I wanted to come back and once I got the idea in my head I couldn’t wait to do it,’ he confided, looking at her with tender appreciation. ‘I can’t face my life without you in it.’
Betsy pushed her face into his throat, breathing in the familiar scent of him with huge satisfaction, knowing he was finally home with her in every way. ‘Will Cristo ever forgive you for what happened tonight?’
‘We’ve made our peace. He knows he was in the wrong.’
Betsy studied him in dismay. ‘That’s not what—’
‘He shouldn’t have had any feelings for you at all and he knows it,’ Nik parried stubbornly.
‘I’m tired,’ she whispered, briefly resting her heavy head down on his shoulder. ‘Let’s go to bed before it gets any later.’
&nb
sp; In the hall, Nik lifted her up to carry her upstairs.
‘You don’t need to do that any more,’ she reminded him gently.
‘Carrying you gives me a kick, latria mou.’ Nik laid her down on their bed and a charismatic smile flashed across his wide, sensual mouth. ‘And when one of you becomes three and the babies are born, life will be even better because I’ll have two extra people to take care of.’
‘And we’ll all be very demanding,’ Betsy forecast in warning as he unzipped her gown and helped her to take it off.
‘I love you enough to put up with anything you care to throw at me, pethi mou,’ Nik asserted, sliding into bed beside her to reach for her slight body and ease her close. ‘I think I must have fallen for you the very first time I saw you because I couldn’t get you out of my mind.’
Her pale fingers skated lovingly through his silky black hair as she relaxed into the circle of his arms. ‘It was mutual,’ Betsy confirmed drowsily, winding her arms round his neck. ‘I need to get up and take my make-up off. Don’t let me fall asleep...’
But Nik was much too content holding his sleeping wife to wake her up. Wide awake, he luxuriated in his wonderfully new sense of peace and contentment. Betsy stirred and snuggled into him with a faint sigh of satisfaction as even in sleep he was the source of her security. In the darkness, Nik smiled. This, he was convinced, was the essence of being happy...
* * *
Baby giggles filled the air as Nik chased his twin daughters across the beach. ‘Come back here!’ he yelled, finally acknowledging defeat.
From the picnic rug, Betsy waved baby cups of juice and Dido and Ione hurried back to claim them, little toddler legs moving fast and confidently. In the sunlight the diamond-studded eternity ring that Nik had presented her with when they became parents glittered on her wedding finger. Their daughters were almost two years old now and full of spirit. They were identical twins, rejoicing in black curls, olive skin and their mother’s blue eyes.
