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‘You’re leaving?’ she whispered as she switched on the bedside lamp.
Nik swung round, eyes light and glittering in the shadows, reticence etched in every angle of his lean, strong face. ‘I should’ve gone hours ago—’
‘Were you planning to walk out without speaking to me first?’ Betsy pressed tightly because her throat was closing over. She edged the sheet as high as she could, so tense that her muscles ached from the strain.
‘That might have been easier for both of us,’ Nik quipped, striding to the foot of the bed to gaze down at her from his considerable height.
‘How so?’
‘I’ve heard that this...’ he shifted a fluid brown hand in a gesture that encompassed both her and the bed ‘...is quite common for couples going through a divorce.’
Betsy felt as if he had punched her in the stomach and she lost colour, her skin pulling taut across her fragile bone structure. ‘Really?’ she queried with no expression at all.
‘Yes, really,’ Nik fielded drily. ‘It happens but it doesn’t mean anything, doesn’t change anything.’
For the very first time in her life, Betsy wanted another human being lying stone dead at her feet. But even then she wouldn’t forgive Nik, she reckoned wildly, plunged as she was into an abyss of mortification and pain and, worst of all, the dreadful conviction that it was her mistake that had unleashed such a humiliation on her.
‘Obviously, we’re still getting a divorce,’ Nik assured her, underlining the point quite unnecessarily as though he feared that she might be too stupid to get that message.
‘Yes,’ she agreed, knowing that even the sight of him falling down dead at her feet wouldn’t satisfy her sufficiently. Hatred now leapt through her as fierily as the passion that had betrayed her. In spite of everything he had done to her, she had missed him, missed sex, and she was paying the price for her wretchedly poor judgement now.
‘We both need to move on,’ Nik breathed curtly.
‘Until now I never appreciated what a taste you have for platitudes,’ Betsy responded grittily. ‘You have patronised me, insulted me and used me. Now I know what it feels like to be a booty call.’
Nik ground his teeth together. He had said what he had to say. He was exceptionally intelligent and he knew the score, even if calling it was insensitive. They had both made a mistake and it was his place to spell that out. He wasn’t built to closely connect with another human being. After the abusive childhood he had endured, how could he possibly be? There was a lack in him, not in her, and he could never give her what she wanted and deserved.
‘I’ll let you keep the house as well,’ he told her flatly.
‘It’s good to know I profited from prostituting myself,’ Betsy hurled back at him shakily, tears burning the backs of her eyes like acid. ‘For goodness’ sake, go!’
And without fanfare that was exactly what Nik did. The door snapped shut in his wake but not before Gizmo had inserted himself through the gap and hurtled towards his only recently rediscovered mistress.
‘Oh, Gizmo...’ she gasped, her voice catching on a sob as she hugged the shaggy little dog to her chest.
Nik had just walked out on her again. His driver would have sat outside waiting for him all these hours. That wouldn’t bother Nik and he wouldn’t apologise for his thoughtlessness either. The only child of a fabulously wealthy Greek heiress, Nik was accustomed to staff who never questioned or complained and he paid highly for a very high standard of service. A wife with a similar attitude would have suited him so much better than Betsy ever had. She had wanted too much from him and had fought her own corner too hard while demanding an independence of thought and action that had frequently infuriated him. But then bearing in mind his behaviour on their first catastrophic date, she really couldn’t say that she hadn’t been warned that nothing would be plain sailing with Nik Christakis at the helm...
And because the far distant past was less threatening than the turmoil of the present, she let her mind drift back to that evening and a wry smile formed on her lips. Nik had taken her to a glitzy party, where her little black dress unembellished by jewellery or a designer bag or shoes had failed to cut the mustard. Ten minutes after their arrival, Nik had excused himself and abandoned her, leaving her alone in a sea of strangers to be hit on by strange men and visually crucified by much-better-dressed women. After an hour and a half during which she had failed to find him she had angrily embarked on the long journey home by bus and train. He had turned up on her doorstep after midnight to furiously demand to know why she had walked out on him. And they had had their first row, a flaming no-holds-barred argument where he insisted he had only left her alone for about fifteen minutes.
‘You were away well over an hour... You treated me like dirt. I should’ve known what kind of treatment I was in for when you picked me up and then spent the entire drive to the party talking to someone on your phone!’
He had forgotten the time; she knew that. It was also possible that he had even forgotten he had brought Betsy to the party in the first place because an old friend had offered him a deal and business always took precedence with Nik. He had sent her flowers every day for a week afterwards and had then visited the bistro for coffee every day the following week.
‘You’re acting like a stalker,’ she had warned him.
‘Give me one more chance. I’ll treat you like a queen,’ Nik had promised.
‘You know, Mr Christakis doesn’t usually go to so much trouble with women,’ one of his bodyguards had told her chattily. ‘You must be special.’
And when she had returned with Nik’s coffee and those brilliant green eyes clung to her, she had realised that he did make her feel special. Everyone made mistakes, she had thought forgivingly; she would give him the chance to prove that he could act differently. And for a very long time afterwards she had not regretted that decision because Nik, she now recognised, had been on his very best behaviour. She even remembered the day he had asked her how she felt about having children. She couldn’t remember how the dialogue had progressed in that direction but with hindsight suspected that he had guided it there.
‘I don’t want children!’ she had proclaimed, wincing at the very idea. ‘I spent my teenage years in foster homes and I spent a lot of time helping to look after the younger ones and the babies. Kids are so much work and such a tie. I don’t think I’ll ever want any.’
But Betsy had discovered the hard way that Mother Nature had amazing ways of working her wiles to persuade a woman that what she wanted most in the world was a little baby. When she’d first married Nik she had been Cinderella and he had been Prince Charming. He had given her so much in terms of material things that she had somehow never dared to complain that he was rarely at home and was invariably preoccupied with business even when he was. He had missed her birthday and their first anniversary and slowly but surely she had become incredibly lonely and had begun to crave what she had never dreamt she would crave—a baby to love and keep her company.
In the grip of that desire she had made stupid optimistic assumptions, believing that Nik would spend more time at home if they had a child, that a child to share would bring them closer, hopefully breaking through his reserve as she had already discovered she could not.
She had made so many mistakes with Nik, Betsy acknowledged wretchedly, dabbing her damp cheeks dry on the sheet, soothing Gizmo when he whined and pushed his muzzle under her hand. But Nik had made just as many mistakes with her. Getting back into bed with him again, however, had to qualify as her crowning act of stupidity. Her face burned hot while her body ached in silent evidence of her weakness. Afterwards, Nik had been so cold, so sure that their renewed intimacy meant nothing. Why? Because it had meant nothing to him and he had been appalled by the idea that she might think otherwise.
