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“Who was she, Nikandros?”
CHAPTER TEN
NIK’S HAND STILLED on her hair. “Who are you talking about?”
She pushed herself up on her forearms to look at him. “The woman who’s made you so gun-shy. So mistrustful. Stella told me about her, but she wouldn’t give me details.”
A flat, self-contained expression moved across his face. “She was nothing.”
“If she was nothing, then you can tell me.”
“Why?” Antagonism invaded that cool composure. “Why dredge up old history?”
“Because it goes to the heart of your mistrust of women. And I need to know.”
He lifted her off him and set her on the bed. Sitting up, he raked a hand through his hair. “There isn’t much to say. I dated a woman in my early twenties. I was less guarded back then. I shared things with her I shouldn’t have. Near the end, when our relationship was coming to its natural conclusion, she could sense it and used some of the things I’d told her against me and my family.”
She frowned. “What do you mean ‘used them’ against your family?”
“She sold a tell-all story to the press about our relationship. In it she revealed intimate details about my family.”
“What details?”
“About my father’s indiscretions.”
Her heart sank. Oh, Lord. No wonder Nik held such a severe mistrust toward women. No wonder he’d accused her of doing anything she could to hang on to their relationship when a woman had done that to him.
She shook her head. “She is one woman, Nik. One woman out of the greater majority who would never be so vengeful, so spiteful as to do something like that to you. Surely you understand most people are more trustworthy than that?”
“Are they?” A dark brow winged its way upward. “I have never been with a woman who didn’t want me for something, Sofi´a. Some are simply power hungry. To walk into a room on the arm of a prince holds great appeal. To enjoy my personal fortune in a city like New York does as well. Their intentions might not all have been as vengeful as Charlotte’s, but they all wanted something from me. That’s the way women work.”
Her shoulders stiffened, her gaze raking over his face. “I didn’t.”
He said nothing.
Blood pounded her head. He was never going to believe her. He was always going to paint her with that brush.
She slid off the bed before her anger consumed her. “I’m going to shower.”
“Sofi´a—”
She waved a hand at him, continuing her headlong flight toward the bathroom. She was almost there when he caught up with her, his fingers digging into her biceps to spin her around. “Thee mou, but you are a recalcitrant creature.”
“Recalcitrant? Are all women children to you, too, Nik?”
He cupped the back of her head, his eyes blazing. “What do you want me to say?”
“I want you to say you know I am different. That you know I could not have planned that pregnancy. That that isn’t me.” She lifted her chin. “Did I ever at any point in our relationship lead you to believe I wanted to hang on to you past our due date? That I wasn’t playing by the rules?”
“That last night,” he said in a clipped tone. “You were different. I think you were getting emotionally attached. You were ending it because you were afraid you were going to get hurt.”
She stared at him. Caught red-handed because it was true.
“You know what, Nik, you’re right,” she agreed, knowing one of them had to end this game of chicken they were playing. “I was ending it that night because I was falling for you. Even though I told myself it was unwise, that I knew the rules, I thought somewhere in us, in that complexity you threw around the other night, we had something special. That it was beyond sex. That we were different. There was no planning. No scheming to make a baby. And that is the truth.”
He said nothing for a long moment, clearly caught off guard. She studied the emotion darkening his eyes. “What’s the matter?” she taunted. “Does it unnerve you that I care? That I think we have the potential to be more?”
“No,” he said, after a long moment. “I think we need more to have a good relationship.”
“Then what?”
He rubbed his palms against his temples. “I think maybe I’ve been wrong.”
