‘It’s not convenient. Inform her that I will be in touch.’ With difficulty Nik swallowed his ire at the polite lie he was being forced to utter before setting his phone down and returning to his business meeting.
Evidently Betsy had shown up uninvited and was waiting outside his office to see him. What on earth had come over her? She was well aware that he hated being interrupted for any reason during working hours. His perfect white teeth gritted, anger at her lack of consideration stirring. If she had something she needed to say to him she had a lawyer to act as her spokesperson, as did he. He did not want personal contact with her; he wanted a smooth, clean and civilised divorce.
Even so, a defiant image glimmered in the back of his mind, a frankly licentious image of Betsy’s slender, perfect body splayed across that bed at Lavender Hall, and outraged by that unwelcome intrusion, he kicked the image out again, wide, sensual mouth settling into a tense line of compression. Sleeping with Betsy again had been like turning over a stone, because all sorts of things he would rather not deal with had come tumbling out in the aftermath. Given time, however, the memories would fade and disappear, he assured himself resolutely.
He had paid absolutely no heed to his therapist’s suggestion that he was deeply conflicted on the subject of his marriage. In that line the lady talked a lot of nonsense! Nik believed in keeping things simple and he fully understood why he had done what he had done. He had gone off the rails and fallen back into a better-forgotten past for a few hours...that was all. Soon his marriage would be as decently buried as the terrifying nightmares and flashbacks that had plagued him for years already were.
Betsy listened with a polite smile to the message Nik’s stalwart PA, Steve, passed on with fervent apologies that she was persuaded had not fallen from Nik’s lips. But Steve, unlike his boss, was a nice guy. Once upon a time Betsy’s very rare visits to Nik’s office building had been greeted with disconcerting attention and servility because she had been deemed a person of importance in Nik’s world. Now, however, it was clear that she had lost that polished passport to special treatment and was viewed as being about as relevant to Nik as yesterday’s newspaper.
‘Thanks, Steve,’ she said, sweeping up her sensible leather rucksack bag, ruefully conscious that her casual jeans and plain black pea coat had attracted raised brows of surprise since her arrival.
But then probably for the very first time ever, Betsy was happy to simply be herself in Nik’s sophisticated radius, not the more glossy, artificial self she had long believed he found infinitely more attractive. So, she hadn’t dressed up for his benefit and wasn’t wearing high heels, designer clothing or even very much make-up. Nik was the husband who had deceived her, hurt her and humiliated her and she was determined to seek neither his approval nor his admiration.
As the PA walked away Betsy moved purposely in the opposite direction to head straight for Nik’s office. Nik had wasted enough of her morning and she wasn’t prepared to kick her heels any longer on his behalf! Why should she? She was no longer eager to please and conform to nonsensical rules that had once made her feel more like an irrelevant nuisance than a legally wedded wife with rights and needs of her own.
Betsy thrust Nik’s office door wide, scanning the half-dozen men seated round the small conference table with flaring midnight-blue eyes of enquiry before settling her attention on Nik’s lean, hard-boned face. ‘I need to see you...now,’ she declared without hesitation.
A feverish glimmer of dark colour rose to accentuate the exotic line of Nik’s hard cheekbones, his green eyes flaring like emeralds in bright sunlight to betray more than a glint of outrage. He stood upright, lithe and fit as the predator he was, and shifted a hand in dismissal as Steve raced through the door a mere breathless step in Betsy’s wake.
‘Gentlemen, we’ll have to take a break. I’ll see you in an hour,’ Nik informed his companions flatly.
The other men filed out and the door snapped shut behind Betsy. Her attention had not once wavered from Nik. Even his business suit couldn’t hide the lean, powerful perfection of his athletic body. She remembered the appalling nightmares he used to have and how even though it was the middle of the night he would go down to the basement gym to work out afterwards, before finally falling back exhausted into bed still wet from the shower.
Immobile as a statue now, she could hear her own breath scissoring audibly through her tight throat while her heart thumped so hard with stress she would have liked to press a hand to her chest to slow it down. But that, much like apologising, would have been a dead giveaway of her inner turmoil and Betsy had no intention of making such a crucial error in Nik’s forceful and assured presence.
‘What the hell are you playing at?’ Nik demanded in a harsh undertone, appraising her unfamiliar appearance with a frown of incomprehension.
For some inexplicable reason she was dressed like a student and she looked impossibly young, blue eyes huge in her delicate heart-shaped face. She was five years younger than him, only five and yet sometimes the distance between them had seemed an unbridgeable gulf because she had a quality of innocence and a level of trust in other people that he had lost at a very early age. But then if he was honest that difference in their outlook had been a strong part of her appeal, he acknowledged reluctantly. He had known she would always need his strength to protect her while also knowing that love made her loyal and naively trusting and that she would always be there waiting for him in the background.
And even with her dressed as carelessly as she was now, Betsy’s beauty still rocked him where he stood. That awareness shook him because it seemed as though all his mental prompts that she was imperfect had only highlighted the fact that she somehow made imperfection the absolute definition of pure exquisiteness on his terms. Instinctive desire kindled in him, his temperature rising, his libido purring into gear. His keen gaze lingered on the lush curve of her mouth and the tender white of her fragile throat where it emerged from a roll-neck sweater while he remembered the taste of her mouth and the feel of it on him.
‘It’s payback time...the magic moment when all your sins come home to roost,’ Betsy told him in direct challenge, absolutely determined not to be apologetic or, indeed, understanding of the mistake he had made. ‘And you have to explain something to me. You had a vasectomy, so how the heck did you get me pregnant?’
Disconcerted by that highly provocative opening assault, Nik froze to the carpet in front of her, sleek ebony brows rising, nostrils flaring. Betsy worked really hard at not noticing his glossy gorgeousness. But memory was flashing debilitating images through her brain: her fingers sliding through the shiny black silk of his hair, her thumb smoothing the sexy line of that full, wonderfully sensual lower lip. With great difficulty she suppressed her wandering thoughts.
‘Pregnant?’ Nik repeated that word in outright disbelief. ‘What are you talking about?’
Betsy recognised that she still had the advantage because she had taken him totally by surprise. ‘I’m pregnant and I haven’t been with anyone but you,’ she informed him bluntly. ‘So explain to me how that is possible.’
For the first time in his life, Nik was speechless. Pregnant? All his natural colour drained from beneath his bronzed skin as he took a sudden step back from her, stunned eyes locked to her in unconcealed shock while a shard of bone-deep fear sliced unequivocally through his big frame. ‘You’re...pregnant?’ he breathed in a roughened undertone, his scepticism concerning her claim blatant.
‘Explain that to me,’ Betsy urged impatiently.
Nik raked long brown fingers through his blue-black hair, a dazed aspect to his usually shrewd gaze as he stared steadily back at her. ‘You’ve found out that you’re pregnant? Seriously?’
‘Do I look like I’m joking?’ Betsy shot back at him defensively.
A deep frown line pleated Nik’s brows and there was a pause before he spoke again because his brain refused to accept what she had just told him. ‘I had the vasectomy reversed,’ he admitted without any expression at all.
Betsy took a sudden step forward, moving closer to him