Читать книгу Greek Bachelors: In Need Of A Wife - Линн Грэхем, Julia James - Страница 13

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 concentrate. 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 yesterday’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.

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.