Читать книгу Greek Bachelors: In Need Of A Wife - Линн Грэхем, Julia James - Страница 14
ОглавлениеNIK WAS HAVING a very bad day. It had crashed and burned the minute Betsy had given him her news and he had found it impossible to concentrate after her departure. Having cancelled his meetings and told his PA to hold his calls, Nik walked out onto the roof garden of his apartment. He was home in the middle of the day and not working and it felt seriously strange. It was quiet and there was not even a breath of a breeze and only the dulled roar of the traffic far below. He would never have admitted it but he missed Gizmo, who had at least been company of a sort.
In the past, Nik had been a serious loner until he’d met Cristo and somehow contrived to bond with his brother in spite of the fact that they were very different men. Now he stared out unseeingly at the skyline and the rooftops. He led an immensely privileged existence and nobody needed to remind him of that fact. In almost every corner of his life his great wealth had smoothed his progress and thrust him onward and upward. But in one department his billions had always failed him and that was in the sphere of personal happiness.
It was possible though, he conceded broodingly, that he just didn’t have what it took to experience joy. A lifetime of repressing his emotions and keeping secrets had damaged him, not to mention his ability to trust and sustain relationships. He had fought that truth for a long time and only recently come to accept that it was an inescapable fact.
Just as his dark and dreadful background was inescapable, he acknowledged grimly, Betsy’s announcement along with her condemnation had unleashed some seriously unwelcome memories. Just at that moment he was recalling his first day at school, or, more accurately, the nightmare journey there in a chauffeur-driven car with a mother who had an uncontrollable temper.
‘Having you has totally wrecked my life!’ Helena had screamed at him resentfully, her clenched fist flying out to catch him a stinging blow across the cheek because she was enraged that his grandfather had insisted she get out of bed to accompany her four-year-old son. ‘You ruined my body, you ruined my social life, you’re preventing me from travelling or doing anything I enjoy... What else are you going to ruin, you little freak?’
Helena Christakis had never wanted to be a mother but when her deeply conservative father threatened to disinherit her after she conceived a child with her latest lover, Gaetano Ravelli, Helena had been forced for the first time in her self-indulgent life to deal with penalties. Faking a marriage to Gaetano to satisfy her father had been the first consequence and one that had ultimately paid off in terms of conserving her fortune. Unfortunately the ongoing responsibility of a child and the curtailment of Helena’s freedom to do exactly as she liked had been a much more onerous punishment.
Not for one moment did Nik credit that Betsy could ever be as cruel, selfish or violent as his own mother had been throughout his childhood. He couldn’t believe she would ever hate her child as his mother had often hated him while blaming him for every disappointment in her life. Even so, Nik could certainly accept that Betsy had conceived their child in far less rosy circumstances than those that she had originally foreseen. Their child? Even inside his head that label felt unnatural, unreal because he could not even begin to imagine the reality of such a development, for he had never had the smallest thing to do with pregnant women or children.
But what was done was done and Nik had always been a pragmatist. He had no doubt that if he failed to step up to the plate some other man would replace him as both husband to Betsy and father figure in their child’s life. And that development would be totally unacceptable to Nik. There could be no halfway measures, he conceded broodingly. Either he became fully involved in his child’s life or he would find himself excluded because a young and rich divorcee with Betsy’s looks would not remain single for long. Yet how could he embrace everything that he had always avoided and feared? Fatherhood, with all the concerns and dangers that came with the responsibility. He breathed in slow and deep, eyes bleak, wide, sensual mouth clenching hard with constraint. He would do it the same way he had survived his brutal childhood: by never looking back to relive a better-forgotten past and taking only one step forward at a time.
* * *
‘So, spill,’ Belle urged. A tall, vibrant redhead, she threw herself back into the comfortable embrace of a purple velvet sofa and regarded Betsy with unconcealed expectancy in her lively eyes.
‘I’m pregnant,’ Betsy blurted out, having come to visit to make exactly that announcement.
Perceptibly disconcerted, her sister-in-law sat forward in a sudden movement. ‘How the heck did you sneak having a man in your life past my radar?’ she demanded in disbelief.
‘Because he was already there...well, sort of,’ Betsy muttered ruefully. ‘It’s Nik’s baby—’
‘Nik? How could it be Nik’s?’
‘You must not mention this to Cristo yet. It’s private...between Nik and me,’ Betsy extended awkwardly, wishing that Cristo’s wife would stop studying her as though she were waiting for the clowns to come trooping in and provide a comic act. In as few words as she could manage she revealed that Nik had had the vasectomy reversed.
Belle blinked slowly. ‘OK,’ she conceded. ‘And then he gave you the dog back and clearly you slept with him out of gratitude—’
‘It wasn’t like that,’ Betsy countered quietly.
‘I know you. You’re very soft-hearted. He took advantage—’
‘Maybe I took advantage of him...’
Belle was shaking her head in wonderment. ‘Wow...just wow. Nik’s going to be a dad. Considering that he can’t even bear to be in the same room with my siblings that scenario takes quite a stretch of the imagination—’
Betsy was fond of Cristo’s wife but had never appreciated her outspokenly critical attitude towards Nik. ‘You’re not being fair, Belle. Nik never knew his own father and has never had anything to do with children. Gaetano Ravelli walked out of his life when he was a baby and Nik never saw him again, so it’s a lot harder for him to feel that there’s a family connection with the younger brothers and sisters that you and Cristo have adopted.’
Franco, the youngest of those children, an adorable toddler with curly black hair and big brown eyes, clambered onto his half-sister Belle’s lap and hugged her with easy affection. It was clear that he regarded Belle very much as his mother, yet Franco and his four siblings were actually the progeny of Belle’s late mother’s long-running affair with Nik and Cristo’s now-deceased father.
For the first time though, Betsy was also registering an odd fact that made her brow furrow in surprise. Almost everything she knew about Nik’s family background had come from either Cristo or Belle because Nik never ever talked about his childhood. His relationship with his mother was quietly dysfunctional and something he politely refused to discuss.
Betsy had only met Helena Christakis once when the older woman had evidently surprised Nik by choosing to attend their wedding. Helena had arrived with her latest boyfriend in tow and had avoided all but the most fleeting contact with her son and his bride. Even so, Helena’s presence must’ve proved more of a punishment than a pleasure for her son because she had worn a dress more suited to a teenager, had got distinctly drunk and at one stage had chosen to recline on her toy boy’s lap and behave like a sex kitten. Nik had seemed impervious to his mother’s behaviour and had made no comment. At the time Betsy had naively assumed that he was hiding his embarrassment but she had since learned to appreciate that virtually nothing embarrassed Nik.
‘It was a challenge for Cristo as well,’ the other woman reasoned. ‘He wasn’t into kids either but I don’t think he was ever as set against the idea of them as Nik has always seemed to be. When do you plan to tell him about the baby?’
‘I’ve already told him... This morning, in fact. That’s why I came up to London.’ Betsy compressed her lips because she had no intention of sharing any further information, but then she could scarcely have hoped to conceal a pregnancy from close friends and family. And more than anything else that was what Cristo and Belle had become to Betsy—family, the family she’d never really had. They had both made time in their busy lives for her during the gloomy, heartbreaking months of her marriage breakdown, always ready to listen and support and offer soothing words.
‘And?’
‘Well, at least Nik didn’t suggest that the baby might be some other man’s—’
‘Why would he when you’ve been living like you’ve taken a vow of celibacy?’ Belle demanded with a wry roll of her eyes. ‘A child is going to make everything so much more difficult and complicated for you.’
‘I don’t see why,’ Betsy replied in a fiercely upbeat tone as she tilted her chin. ‘I have a business, a home and a devoted dog. The baby will slot right in there perfectly and life will go on.’
Soon after that, Betsy got up to leave because the emotional turbulence of her day had exhausted her and she was looking forward to getting home and relaxing in front of the fire with Gizmo as a foot warmer. Belle pulled open the drawing room door for her. ‘Oh, before I forget, you’re booked to come to my birthday party a week on Friday. I’ve even arranged a lift for you—’
‘A...lift?’ Betsy repeated in surprise.
‘Chris Morrison. He lives by you and he said he’d be happy to bring you with him, so you won’t even have to stay the night here because he’ll take you home again as well,’ Belle revealed with satisfaction. ‘I passed on your number so that he can contact you to arrange a time.’
‘Who is he?’ Betsy prompted with a frown, recognising how Belle had cleverly boxed her in and made it impossible for her to refuse to attend. Her momentary spark of resentment at being managed, however, evaporated when she pictured herself sitting home alone every night moping. Nik wasn’t moping; no, her soon-to-be ex was regularly linked to society beauties, whom he escorted to clubs, art galleries and opera performances. Indeed, Nik, who had rarely taken Betsy out anywhere after marrying her, had turned into a maddeningly visible male, whose social success was mapped by a trail of revealing photos in gossip columns and both glossy and worthy magazines.
Across the hall in the very act of emerging from Cristo’s study where a couple of brandies had chased the increasing chill from his stomach, Nik had frozen into immobility at the unexpected sound of Betsy’s voice. A glance at his brother revealed that even tolerant, laid-back Cristo had tensed at the obvious fact that the feisty Belle was already making dates for Nik’s still legally wed wife. And with a womaniser like Chris Morrison, of all people! Only Betsy would have to ask who the man was! Only one of the richest bankers in the City! Diavelos! Nik’s eyes flashed pure emerald brilliance as he fought down a tide of pure toxic rage because no matter how he felt he couldn’t strangle his brother’s provocative wife.
‘Ah, boys together too...’ Belle trilled teasingly, not one whit perturbed by the awkward meeting. ‘Isn’t this cosy?’
‘Betsy...’ Cristo gave Betsy an uneasy smile that warned her that Nik had confided in him. She wondered if Nik’s brother even appreciated how extreme an honour that was, because Nik was one of the most secretive men she had ever met. She finally dared to shift her attention to Nik. His sheer physical impact as he stood there poised with his arrogant black head held high and his broad shoulders thrown back hit her like a thunderclap. The amount of stress she had been fighting at his office had shielded her from the full effects of his compelling sexual magnetism. Now suddenly she was bare to the elements, reliving X-rated moments of their passionate encounter weeks earlier. She remembered the hard, jolting thrust of his demanding body into hers, the wild, screaming sensitivity of every nerve ending and the mad excitement that had engulfed her. A flush of heat travelled from her pelvis up through her already tender breasts and burned her face.
But behind that unwelcome response smouldered an anger and a resentment that Betsy had always repressed because as a child she had been taught to regard such emotions as destructive, rude and undesirable.
‘Betsy won’t need a lift from Morrison,’ Nik announced, tight-mouthed. ‘As I’m coming to the party as well, I’ll organise her transport.’
Betsy could not credit her hearing because Nik had spoken as though she were a crate requiring shipping. Or a personal possession that he still had the right to move about at will. This, from a male who had deceived her, deserted her and who was racing to divorce her! Without warning a volcanic fury beyond anything Betsy had ever felt before funnelled up through her diminutive figure like hot, scorching lava and she stalked forward, blue eyes ablaze.
‘Where do you get the nerve?’ Betsy spat out, her small face a mask of raging indignation as she confronted Nik and jabbed a small forefinger hard into his shirtfront. ‘Where the hell do you get the nerve to think you have the right to organise anything for me?’
As taken aback as if a chair had suddenly lifted up and attacked him, Nik gazed down in disbelief at Betsy, the most conciliatory person he had ever known and without an ounce of aggression, facing up to him like a miniature warrior on the battlefield.
‘I—’
‘Shut up...I don’t want to hear your voice!’ Betsy seethed up at him, head tipping back because she refused to focus on his chest, but it was a challenge to seek eye-to-eye contact when he was so much taller than she was. ‘You’ve got nothing to say that I could possibly want to hear! You don’t own me and you don’t have any say in what I do or where I go or who I do it with! Only last week you were wrapped round an Amazonian blonde at some New York party. I didn’t interfere. I didn’t offer you an opinion. Why not? Because it was none of my business! And my life now is none of your business either!’ she completed with a final stab of her forefinger on his broad chest. ‘Do you get that, Nik? Or do I need to write it down for you, put it in business language so that you might actually grasp it?’
‘That is enough,’ Nik warned her, hard cheekbones rigid beneath his flushed golden skin. ‘What has got into you?’ he demanded, incredulous at her daring in attacking him.
‘You’ve got into me, Nik...literally and figuratively. You were a rotten, selfish husband and you went out of my life on an even worse note—’
Cristo swung wide the door of his study in an almost comically inviting gesture. ‘You and Nik can talk in there—’
‘But I wouldn’t miss a minute of the mouse finally roaring,’ Belle confided without shame. ‘You go, girl!’
Even white teeth gritting together, Nik breathed curtly, ‘You’re pregnant—obviously you don’t want to be forced into the company of another man—’
‘Why should being pregnant stop me? And who said I was being forced?’ Betsy queried, still as furious as she had started out because Nik’s many, many sins and omissions were piled up like coffin dust in the back of her mind. She wrenched her arm free the instant he closed long brown fingers round it in an effort to hustle her into the study. ‘Lay one hand on me, Nik, and I’ll charge you with assault—’
‘You will not stage a public argument with me in my brother’s house!’ Nik thundered down at her, green eyes so startlingly light with rage they shimmered like polished gems in his lean dark features.
‘That’s fine. I wasn’t planning to stay and waste my breath on a lost cause.’ Azure eyes like jewels assailed his irate stare with a boldness that stunned him. ‘Just don’t you ever dare to tell me what to do again! Subject someone else to the control-freak stuff... You’re not my husband any more. I spent three years trying to be the very best wife I could be, submitting to your every demand and expectation and fitting myself into your world, and thank heaven I don’t have to do it any more!’ she slung at him with a sudden sense of freedom as she walked with determination towards the front door.
‘We’re still married,’ Nik reminded her stubbornly, his attention locked to her like a powerful force beam that could not be evaded.
And Betsy spun round, rigid with so much annoyance at that provocative claim that she was instantly ready to storm into round two of the battle. ‘Really? Where have you been for the past eight months? Oh, yes, divorcing me, repossessing the dog you always ignored, trying to take the roof from over my head while running round with other women. If I did choose to sleep around, consort with lots of men and generally act like a very embarrassing ex-wife, well, I might as well, because playing nice with you all those years certainly didn’t do me any favours! You lied to me—’
‘I didn’t... I have never ever lied to you,’ Nik breathed grittily, big, strong hands clenched into fists by his sides, pale as death below his year-round tan. A claustrophobic silence fell while she waited to see if he would say anything else but, predictably, Nik sealed his firm masculine lips together.
‘You lied by omission,’ Betsy conceded and a belated flush of mortification that they were fighting in Cristo and Belle’s home engulfed her and she cringed inwardly at the lengths her loss of temper had taken her to. ‘And trust you to make that distinction. You’re too clever for your own good, Nik, and I was never h-half clever enough... You broke my heart, Nik, and I’ll never forgive you for it.’ Something very like the start of a sob clogged in her throat and her eyes burned and in more haste than ever she wrenched the front door open, starting down the steps, only halting when a heavy hand settled on her shoulder.
‘Let me take you home—’
‘That would be ridiculous,’ she said tightly, staring fixedly out at the quiet residential street, refusing to turn her head. ‘In any case my car’s parked at the train station at home.’
Nik said something in Greek and a man sidestepped Betsy to yank open the passenger door of the limo parked by the kerb. One of Nik’s security team, Betsy registered, her head swimming a little with the mental and physical exhaustion threatening to overwhelm her. Yet even in that condition, she couldn’t help wondering and beating herself up about whether or not Nik’s security men had also been witnesses to her diatribe. She had harangued Nik like a shrew, had gone up like a firework, experiencing a rage entirely new to her, and it had totally overcome her every inhibition. Sadly, in the aftermath of it, she only felt drained, ashamed and achingly weary.
Nik watched her narrow shoulders droop, her head bow, concern clawing at him even while he remained astonished by her behaviour. She had given him a glimpse into her outlook and he was reeling from it.
You broke my heart, Nik, and I’ll never forgive you for it.
He turned her round, slowly, carefully. She looked up at him, eyes bright with unshed tears in the street light. His mouth came crashing down on hers without warning and suddenly he was lifting her up to him to part her soft lips and drink deep of the sweet, tender interior of her mouth. She felt as if her head were swimming as her body ran from cold to very hot and she wanted to climb him like a tree and cling. Molten desire laced with helpless self-betrayal powered her treacherous response, a wild but necessary release from the unbearable tension. He tasted so good. He tasted hotter than the flaming heart of a fire. Nothing had ever been as primitive as that devouring kiss and yet nothing could have drawn her down so efficiently from her distressed emotional high and grounded her again. He steadied her with both hands as he set her down on her own feet again because she was tottering, dizzy, in another place altogether from the mood she had been in before he reached for her.
‘My car will drop you at the station... I’ll stay on here,’ Nik murmured in a hoarse undertone, but it was the only outward sign he gave that what had just transpired had had any kind of effect on him.
It was a huge challenge but Betsy contrived to relocate her brain and, shaken though she was, she made it down the steps, across the pavement and into the upholstered comfort of the limousine, breathing again only when the car drew away from the kerb. That kiss... No, she wasn’t even going to think about that. It was just part of the craziness that happened when people lost their temper and fought and she wasn’t used to fighting with Nik. Even the day she had told him to get out of Lavender Hall there had been no real fight. While she had ranted about the vasectomy he had kept secret he had stood in brooding silence without explaining, excusing or even attempting to justify his behaviour.
As the limo departed, it finally occurred to Nik that he had set himself much more of a challenge than he could ever have imagined. Telling Betsy that he was coming home to look after her and their unborn child would go down like a brick thrown through a glass window because she didn’t want him back.
Returning indoors, Nik turned in a blind, uncoordinated half circle in the hall of his brother’s elegant town house and he wasn’t aware of anything, of where he was or even of who might be watching for such a moment of weakness. Why had he just assumed that she would want him back? Women had always wanted Nik and it was simply a reality he took for granted. But then he had made that mistake with Betsy before when she’d ditched him on their first date, he recalled abstractedly, an iron bar pounding painfully behind his temples. Of course, Betsy had never been like other women, which was why he had married her in the first place.
When he had brought her flowers she had admitted she would simply prefer an apology for his long absences and more frequent phone calls and texts while he was away.
When he had brought her gifts she had scolded him for wasting his money as if he were an extravagant child. ‘You can’t impress me with that stuff,’ she had once told him gently. ‘That’s not why I’m with you. I’m here because I love you and you can’t put a price on that.’
Perspiration dampening his brow, Nik asked himself for the first time why Betsy had tried to claim half his wealth, because that claim from her had never made sense with what he knew of her character. He wondered what love really felt like, never having experienced it except when it came to her loving him. That love had given him the strangest sense of security... Ridiculous! As if he were insecure. He almost laughed out loud at that idea but somehow couldn’t crank up even a shadowy atom of his sense of humour.
He wondered if it would be possible to kidnap Betsy and take her abroad where she would have to listen to him. Would she really call the police? Ultimately, she had to listen to him. Catching himself up on that peculiar kidnapping fantasy, he raised his brows and wondered if he had taken a sudden nosedive into insanity.
Like Betsy, acting so oddly, attacking him like that. What was the matter with her? Was it possible that it had only happened because she was pregnant? How had he forgotten that for even as long as five minutes? Pregnant ladies had to be very hormonal, he thought vaguely. Betsy had definitely not been herself; in fact she had behaved like someone possessed, displaying a change of character he was happy to lay at argumentative Belle’s door. After all, he knew that Belle didn’t like him and was likely to use his worst mistakes and flaws against him. Although, Nik reasoned with a frown, it was more probable that the only demon possessing Betsy was the result of unstable pregnancy hormones. He was more than a little relieved to have worked out that obvious explanation. That raving virago of a woman had borne no resemblance whatsoever to the soft and gentle Betsy he had once lived with. And would be living with again soon, Nik reminded himself with satisfaction.
Betsy would be surprised but pleased, ultimately very pleased, he told himself with charged conviction. Since the day Betsy had told him to get out of Lavender Hall, Nik had been pursued and propositioned by other women on a daily basis. He had met with seductive looks and bold advances everywhere he went and after three years of marriage such bold invites had proved disconcerting and a passion killer, but, even so, if other women who didn’t even know him could want him so much that they dropped all finesse and dignity, Betsy must want him back more, mustn’t she?
She had let him take her up against the wall that day. Just thinking about it, Nik got hard as steel. She couldn’t honestly hate him if she had had sex with him again, could she? Why the hell was he thinking about all this stupid relationship stuff? For a split second of seething frustration Nik wanted to bang his head on the wall to clear it of the chaotic madness of his thoughts and then he finally registered his brother’s presence several feet away.
‘Are you OK?’ Cristo was watching him worriedly.
Nik flexed his stiff shoulders and straightened to his full height. ‘Why wouldn’t I be?’
Cristo was not subtle but he knew that telling Nik he was acting weird would be more of a hindrance than a help. In any case Cristo was operating in full sympathy mode. Nik had married a mouse who had started roaring like a lion and naturally he couldn’t cope with that unnerving switch of personality on top of the prospect of a baby as well.
Nik was very much a man’s man, short on the imagination and empathy stakes, Cristo thought understandingly. Cristo had long since noticed that in complete contrast to his brother’s brilliant intellect and polished business negotiation skills, Nik was downright backward and all at sea when anything emotional got involved in a situation. But Nik was trying to understand; Cristo could see quite clearly that Nik was trying and struggling, and he just hoped that, sooner rather than later, Betsy would see it too.
