Greek Bachelors: In Need Of A Wife: Christakis's Rebellious Wife / Greek Tycoon, Waitress Wife / The Mediterranean's Wife by Contract. Kathryn Ross
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СКАЧАТЬ 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into the fresh air, Betsy glanced across the street to where the bistro in which she had once worked had long since been replaced by an upmarket estate agency.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, СКАЧАТЬ