Greek Bachelors: In Need Of A Wife

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.

CHAPTER FIVE

NIK 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.