‘I realised it was time that I trusted myself to be in charge of my own fertility. I didn’t even know the vasectomy could be reversed when we broke up. I always assumed it was final,’ he admitted curtly, speaking with a candour she was unaccustomed to him using. ‘When I found out that a reversal may well be successful if done within ten years of the original op, I decided to go for it. I was supposed to return for tests after the procedure to see if it had worked but I’m afraid I was so busy I never got around to it...’
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