Greek Bachelors: In Need Of A Wife: Christakis's Rebellious Wife / Greek Tycoon, Waitress Wife / The Mediterranean's Wife by Contract

‘Of course they are.’ Nik scanned his wife in a swift all-over appraisal that missed not a single detail of her jeans-clad, relaxed appearance. She still didn’t look pregnant and he wondered when her tiny, slender proportions would show change. He glanced away, colour lining his cheekbones, marvelling at the amount of instant hunger coursing through him. Evidently she owned the key to his libido, or perhaps it was just that he was an exceptionally faithful married man with some mental kink that had prevented him from seeking release with another woman even during a legal separation. With some relief he reached for that practical explanation.

‘Nik...what is it?’ Betsy pressed worriedly, stiff as a walking stick as she stood in front of him.

‘I’m moving back in.’ Nik let the announcement hang there and watched Betsy’s mouth fall open to display two rows of small pearly-white teeth. ‘I’ve decided to come home—’

Betsy almost fell over in shock. In fact her head swam and her ears buzzed as those words rhymed back and forth inside her head and she refused to credit them. ‘I beg your pardon?’ she said limply.

‘I want to come home,’ Nik spelt out in case she had yet to get the message. ‘Make a go of our marriage again...’

He’s certifiably insane, Betsy decided dizzily. The last time he had seen her she had been screaming at him and now, all of a sudden and without the smallest warning, he was telling her he wanted to come back and live with her again. And, worst of all, he spoke as if such a far-reaching decision were entirely one-sided and his alone to make.

‘You mean...that removal van out there—?’

‘Ne...yes. It’s mine,’ Nik admitted, relieved that she had finally understood without him having to spell anything out in greater or potentially embarrassing detail. ‘Don’t worry, you won’t be put out in any way. I called Edna and warned her—’

‘You phoned our housekeeper to tell her you were moving back in and you didn’t tell me?’ Betsy demanded in a charged voice, thinking that the arrival of his possessions was a great deal less perplexing than his own arrival, only he didn’t seem to grasp that obvious little fact.

‘Only an hour ago,’ Nik confided as though that might mitigate the offence.

Betsy breathed in so deep that her head swam again and she studied him in disbelief. ‘Nik...you can’t just decide you want to try again at our marriage without discussing it first with me,’ she pointed out a little shakily, hysteria gathering somewhere deep inside her chest because she just could not believe what she was hearing.

‘I’m discussing it with you now,’ Nik countered levelly, strolling over to the blazing fire. ‘I want you to be pleased.’

It wasn’t the first time in their relationship Nik had told her how she ought to feel before she could decide on her own account, so she wasn’t surprised by that seemingly careless aside. ‘Nik...you left eight months ago. This is my house and home now—’

Nik swung back round, lean, strong face taut. ‘No, it’s not. The settlement papers have yet to be signed. The hall still belongs to me—’

‘Oh, that’s all right, then,’ Betsy told him with spirited sarcasm. ‘I’ll just pack up me and Gizmo and sleep on Belle’s couch! I’m sure she’ll squeeze us in somewhere—’

‘What on earth are you talking about?’ Nik demanded darkly. ‘Why would you leave now that I’ve moved back in again?’

‘We are getting a divorce, Nik,’ Betsy reminded him doggedly, wondering on what planet his reasoning had been formed. ‘You can’t just move back in and spring a reconciliation on me without my agreement—’

‘I don’t want a divorce. We have a son or a daughter on the way and we should be together to raise him or her,’ Nik informed her without fanfare.

‘Ideally speaking...’ Betsy commented weakly. ‘I had no idea you felt that way about the baby when you never wanted one.’

‘But the baby’s now a fact of life,’ Nik replied. ‘We’re going to be parents and I won’t allow my child to grow up without me.’

Betsy was afraid her legs would give out as support and she sidled over to a sofa and literally dropped down on it in a desperate attempt to clear her light-headedness. ‘Nik? All this is coming at me out of nowhere and I’m very confused—’

‘Why?’ Nik queried with apparent sincerity, crossing the rug to crouch down at her feet so that he could still see her face. ‘I’m home again—’

‘But that’s not a unilateral decision you can make!’ Betsy exclaimed in a raw outburst. ‘Obviously it concerns me as well. I know it’s best for a child to have two parents if possible but there’s the question of our relationship—’

His wide, sensual mouth quirked. ‘There wouldn’t be a child to worry about in the first instance if it wasn’t for our relationship.’

‘Depends on how you look at the situation.’ Betsy lifted her head, cobalt eyes sparking with annoyance. ‘I saw it as just sex and straight afterwards you did as well when you said that you believed it was quite common for divorcing couples to fall into bed together again.’

‘It was the wrong thing to say.’ Nik raked restive brown fingers through his silky black hair as he made that confession. ‘But I was...er...very confused that day. I didn’t know what I felt or what to say to you—’

Betsy found herself strangely touched by that uncharacteristically frank admission but it did not silence her. ‘No, you just ran—’

Nik’s green eyes flared with macho male defensiveness. ‘I did not run—’

‘Take it from me...you ran as if I was a one-night stand you regretted. Only a week ago you were divorcing me. How can you go from that level to suddenly saying you want to be married to me again?’ she prompted shakily.

Nik paced restively in front of the fire because he hadn’t expected so many questions or the barrier of resistance she was engaged in raising between them. But she wasn’t screaming at him, which he deemed a plus and an improvement. ‘You have to start somewhere—’

‘But all that’s changed is that I’m pregnant,’ Betsy reminded him, trying not to listen to the opening and closing of doors in the hall and the sound of voices and noise that accompanied Nik’s possessions returning to what had once been the home they shared. She was traumatised and trying not to show it. Not for the first time, Nik’s conduct had stunned her into silence. He had stopped the divorce, returned to her... But why? She didn’t understand. ‘I can’t believe that you care that much about a baby you never wanted—’

Nik tensed. ‘Believe,’ he urged. ‘I also care about you and I want to be here for both you and the baby now and in the future.’

‘It’s an amazing turnaround,’ Betsy told him numbly. ‘I don’t know how I feel about it.’

Nik hunkered down athletically again at her feet and reached for both her hands in an unusual demonstration for a male who was normally very reserved. ‘Be pleased. I want to come home, glikia mou. I suppose I’m asking you for a second chance...’

It was so humble, so unlike the proud, fiercely independent male she knew that tears stung the backs of Betsy’s clear eyes. She stared at him, her gaze locked to the sleek, dark, fallen-angel beauty of his lean, taut face and she could literally sense how keyed up he was waiting for her to agree. It meant a great deal to him; she could feel that. And she thought that only a male of Nik Christakis’s complexity could think it was normal to move back in with the wife he was divorcing without even talking the idea over with her in advance. There had always been something about his sheer lack of emotional intelligence that pierced her heart deep as an arrow. He was so clever but so out of touch with ordinary things that she took for granted and she had always recognised that eccentric quality in him, right from the night of his equally startling wedding proposal, which had also come out of nowhere at her.

‘I’m not sure I could trust you again,’ she told him honestly. ‘So much has happened...and the other women—’

‘I haven’t slept with anyone but you.’

Betsy was astonished until she recalled him falling on her like a hungry wolf and it was that recollection that convinced her that he was telling the truth. ‘Even so, you’ve been photographed out and about with a lot of other women—’

‘But I’ve only been with you,’ Nik declared afresh. ‘I only want to be with you.’

Betsy lifted uncertain fingers and traced his darkly shadowed jawline, fingertips brushing the stubble already formed there. She wondered what she was doing. But she was realising that her supposed hatred of Nik had only provided a useful bolster to her pride and her survival, and that when she went looking for its strength to stiffen her spine with resistance, it was mysteriously absent. She didn’t hate him; she wanted him back. Did that make her the biggest female fool in the Western world? Was she crazy to even consider reconciling with a guy who arrived with a removals van as if eight months of separation and all the bitter turns and twists of the divorce proceedings had never happened?

‘But you never wanted a baby,’ she heard herself remind him hoarsely.

‘A child is a big responsibility,’ Nik said seriously, evidently indifferent to the reality that he already had responsibility for a vast business empire and thousands and thousands of employees round the world. ‘And children are very vulnerable. That was why I never wanted the responsibility of protecting one.’

Betsy didn’t follow his reasoning. He seemed to be thinking of some kind of doomsday scenario in which a child could get hurt, but she could see that he was deadly serious and for that reason she nodded as if she totally understood what he was saying. ‘And that’s why you had the vasectomy?’ she prompted.

Nik nodded in silence, having given the explanation that he had already worked out beforehand. He wished he could have come up with those words eight months earlier when it might have saved them both a lot of grief. But at the time, in shock at her discovery that he had had a vasectomy, he had thought he could only tell her the truth and that was an option he could not even contemplate, would never contemplate.

Betsy searched his lean dark face, noticed the shadows below his eyes, the indented lines of extreme tension bracketing his mouth, and tried to think straight. But with no warning whatsoever, emotional overload and exhaustion were together hitting her like a freight train hurtling downhill. ‘I can’t give you an answer right now,’ she told him shakily. ‘I need to think about it and I think I need to lie down for a while...’

Rigid with dissatisfaction at that response, Nik backed away as Betsy levered herself upright and then, without a jot of warning, her eyes rolled up in her head and she just dropped where she stood without a sound. Betsy had fainted. There was something seriously wrong with her. Nik, usually ice cool in a crisis, experienced an intense wave of panic as he scooped her up and strode out to the hall again, where their housekeeper, Edna, was supervising the removal team.

‘Oh, dear, has Mrs Christakis fainted again?’ Edna prompted in a mild tone of acceptance as she moved towards him.

‘Again? You mean this has happened before?’ Nik pressed in consternation.

‘Some women are prone to it in early pregnancy,’ the older woman told him calmly. ‘We all watch out for her as best we can.’

Nik pictured Betsy fainting as she crossed a road and falling beneath the wheels of a car. He saw her tumbling downstairs and breaking her neck. Even when he envisaged her falling and simply bruising herself he felt sick, and determined that it wasn’t going to happen any more. Having a baby could kill her, he reflected in horror. He couldn’t have her fainting all over the place; it was too dangerous, too risky. He needed proper medical advice and somewhere to keep her safe.