Nine months to save their marriage!

Nik Christakis had once been her Prince Charming, the indecently rich and devilishly handsome tycoon who took Betsy away from her life as a waitress and did the unimaginable—made her his wife! But married life wasn’t the fantasy she’d envisioned.

Now, as her hand hovers over the divorce papers, Betsy sees something in her husband’s eyes…a glimmer of the man she first fell in love with. But when this encounter ends in reckless passion, Betsy is left with two very unexpected consequences that will forever tie her to the man she was determined to forget!

‘I gather you want to talk.’

Nik spun back to her with the liquid grace of movement that had always caught her eye and frowned at her, black brows drawn down, wide, sensual mouth twisting in dismissal.

‘No. I don’t want to talk,’ he told Betsy abruptly, before he tossed back the finger of Scotch whisky he had poured neat and set down the empty glass again.

‘Then why—?’ she began in confusion.

‘Se thelo…I want you,’ he heard himself admit, before he was even aware that the words were on his tongue.

So Nik—so explosively unpredictable, Betsy reasoned abstractedly, colour rushing into her cheeks as a hot wave of awareness engulfed her. Jewel-bright eyes assailed hers in an almost physical collision, and something low and intimate in her body clenched hard. Her legs turned so weak she wasn’t convinced they were still there to hold her up, but she was held in stasis by the intensity of his narrowed green gaze.

‘And you want me,’ he told her thickly.

THE LEGACIES OF POWERFUL MEN

Three tenets to live by: money, power and the ruthless pursuit of passion!

Cristo Ravelli, Nik Christakis and Zarif al-Rastani know better than most the double-edged sword of their inheritance. Watching their father move from one wife to another, leaving their mothers devastated in his wake, has hardened each of these men against the lure of love.

But, despite their best efforts to live by the principles of money, power and passion, they find themselves entangled with three women who challenge the one thing they’ve protected all these years…

Their hearts!

Read Cristo’s story in:

RAVELLI’S DEFIANT BRIDE

June 2014

Read Nik’s story in:

CHRISTAKIS’S REBELLIOUS WIFE

July 2014

And read Zarif’s story in:

ZARIF’S CONVENIENT QUEEN

August 2014!

Christakis’s Rebellious Wife

Lynne Graham

www.millsandboon.co.uk

LYNNE GRAHAM was born in Northern Ireland and has been a keen Mills & Boon® reader since her teens. She is very happily married, with an understanding husband who has learned to cook since she started to write! Her five children keep her on her toes. She has a very large dog, which knocks everything over, a very small terrier, which barks a lot, and two cats. When time allows, Lynne is a keen gardener.

Recent titles by the same author:

RAVELLI'S DEFIANT BRIDE

(The Legacies of Powerful Men) THE DIMITRAKOS PROPOSITION CHALLENGING DANTE (A Bride for a Billionaire) THE BILLIONAIRE'S TROPHY (A Bride for a Billionaire)

Did you know these are also available as eBooks? Visit www.millsandboon.co.uk

To my daughter Rachel with warm appreciation for all her support.

Contents

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

Extract

CHAPTER ONE

‘A DIVORCE CAN be civilised,’ Cristo Ravelli pronounced in a tone of studious tact.

Nik Christakis almost vented a derisive laugh at such a statement from the brother barely two months his senior. In reality only genuine respect for his sibling kept his cutting tongue silent. After all, what could Cristo possibly know about the blood and mayhem of a bitter divorce? Cristo was a newly and very happily married man without that experience...or that of many other unpleasant life events, in Nik’s considered opinion. As a result, Cristo was as solid and straight as a ruler; he had no corners, no twists, no hidden places. He had no more concept of Nik’s infinitely more complex and darker life experience than a dinosaur catapulted into a fairy story full of fluffy wings and magic.

‘I know you’re probably wondering where I get the nerve to offer advice,’ Cristo remarked shrewdly. ‘But you and Betsy did once have a good relationship and ratcheting down the current tension and cooling the aggro would be healthier for both of you—’

‘Then you should be delighted to hear that Betsy and I are having a face-to-face meeting tomorrow in the presence of our lawyers in an effort to iron out a settlement,’ Nik growled, his lean, darkly handsome features grim and hard.

‘It’s only money, Nik, and... Dio mio...’ Cristo sighed, thinking wryly of the vast business empire that his workaholic tycoon brother had built from the ground up ‘...you have plenty of it—’

Nik ground his perfect white teeth together, his unusually light green eyes flashing bright with barely restrained fury. ‘That’s not the point!’ he cut in harshly. ‘Betsy’s trying to take me to the cleaners and steal half of everything I have—’

‘I can’t explain why she’s making such excessive demands. I would’ve sworn she didn’t have a mercenary bone in her body,’ Cristo fielded uncomfortably. ‘Have you tried to talk to her, Nik?’

Nik frowned darkly. ‘Why would I try to talk to her?’ he asked in astonishment at a suggestion that clearly struck him as insane. ‘She threw me out of our home, started a divorce and is currently trying to rip me off to the tune of billions!’

‘She did have some excuse for throwing you out,’ Cristo reminded his sibling in a rueful undertone.

In answer, Nik compressed his lips. He had his own very firm ideas about exactly why his marriage had imploded. He had married a woman who said she didn’t want children and then she had changed her mind. It was true that he had chosen to withhold certain very private information from her in the aftermath of that revelation but he had understandably assumed that her change of heart was a whim or at best hormonal, an urge that might hopefully fade as quickly as it had first arrived.

‘It was my house,’ Nik responded flatly.

‘So now you’re planning to take Lavender Hall off her as well as the dog,’ Cristo breathed heavily.

‘Gizmo was also mine.’ Nik glanced at the disputed dog, returned to his care two months earlier and still a study of deep doggy depression. Gizmo slumped by the window, an array of squeaky toys lying around him untouched, his short muzzle resting mournfully on shaggy paws. The animal had the best of everything that money could buy but, in spite of Nik’s every effort to the contrary, the wretched mutt continued to pine for Betsy.

‘Have you any idea how devastated she was when you took the dog off her?’ Cristo enquired.

‘The three pages of tear-stained care instructions that came with him did provide a hint,’ Nik breathed sardonically. ‘She was more worried about the dog than she ever was about me—’

‘Less than a year ago, Betsy adored you!’ Cristo shot back at his brother in condemnation of that unfeeling response.

And he had liked being adored, Nik acknowledged; he had liked it very much indeed. When adoration had turned to violent hatred and questions he couldn’t answer he had had no appetite whatsoever for the new regime. Questions he could have answered had he been forced to do so, he qualified inwardly, but he could not have stood to see the look of pity or horror on her face should he have told her the truth. Some truths a man was entitled to keep private; some were simply too appalling to share.

‘I mean...’ Cristo hesitated. ‘When you encouraged me to talk to Betsy, to become her friend after you split, I thought it was because you loved her and wanted her back and hoped to use me as an intermediary—’

Nik’s devastatingly handsome face clenched hard. ‘I didn’t love her. I’ve never loved anyone,’ he admitted coldly. ‘I liked her, trusted her. She was a good homemaker—’

‘A...homemaker?’ Cristo was staggered by that description because it was such an old-fashioned term and there was nothing even remotely old-fashioned about Nik and his brand of contemporary cool.

‘A good homemaker,’ Nik repeated steadily, guessing that Cristo, who had always had a decent home, could not comprehend the draw of such a talent in a woman. ‘But my trust in her was misplaced and obviously I don’t want her back.’

‘Are you absolutely certain of that?’ Cristo pressed.

‘Ne...yes,’ Nik confirmed in Greek, his response instantaneous. He might not be divorced as yet but he had already moved on. After all, Betsy had always been an eccentric choice of bride for a Greek billionaire but she had appeared during a troubled period in his life and she belonged to that phase, most assuredly not to the new start and more promising future he now envisaged. In the space of the six months that had passed since their marriage broke down, Nik had changed and he was very proud of that change. He had shed his dysfunctional past, travelled from being a male with more excess baggage than a jumbo jet to a faster-moving, far more efficient version of himself. The very last thing he intended to do now was repeat past mistakes. And Betsy had been a serious mistake.

* * *

No matter how hard Betsy tried to hide it, she was so much on edge in the company of her polished legal team while they waited in the elegant conference room that a sudden noise would have seen her plastered to the ceiling.

Her nervous tension was understandable. After all, it had been six months since she had last seen Nik, six months during which her already broken heart had been repeatedly stamped on and then what little remained torn to pieces. He had refused to see her or make any explanation for his extraordinary behaviour. In the space of a moment she had travelled from being a happily married woman trying for her first baby to a betrayed, bitterly hurt and confused wife.

She had thrown Nik out but he had essentially abandoned her. After his heartless deception, the force of his counter-attack had almost destroyed her and he had walked away without a backward glance. He had reacted as if three years of marriage, and what she had honestly assumed was happiness, meant absolutely nothing to him. Too late had it occurred to her that she had married a man who had never said he loved her, who had said in fact that he didn’t believe in love and who at all times and on all occasions had made his business affairs, rather than her, the top priority in his life.

So, after that shattering betrayal of trust and his very final rejection, it was hardly a surprise that she was finally hitting back. And she knew this course of action would take his feelings towards her from apparent indifference to actively hating her. And she didn’t care; no, she definitely didn’t care what Nikolos Christakis thought of her any more. Love had died when she was finally forced to acknowledge the degradingly low value he had set on her and their marriage, and she supposed that what she was now engaged in was a rather pathetic attempt at hitting back to punish him for the heartbreak he had callously inflicted.

Revenge. It was not a pretty or feminine word but it was also the very last thing a manipulative and cunning business shark like Nik Christakis would expect from his once submissive and soon-to-be ex-wife. He hadn’t cared about her but he did care about his precious money. There was no greater goal in Nik’s life than the ruthless pursuit of profit and the clever conservation of that vast store of personal wealth. Betsy knew that if she could significantly dent Nik in the wallet department, if in no other way, she would finally draw blood. After all, it had taken her outrageous claim of half of everything he possessed to persuade Nik into an actual face-to-face meeting with her again. Self-evidently money mattered to Nik more than she or their marriage had ever mattered.

Footsteps sounded in the corridor outside and Betsy stiffened. The door handle made a slight noise but the door stayed shut and she froze, her heart leaping into her mouth.

‘Let us do the talking,’ her legal representative, Stewart Annersley, reminded her afresh.

He might as easily have said that Betsy was out of her league in such company but she already knew that, could barely credit that she had spent three entire years in Nik’s world of rarefied wealth and yet contrived to remain easily shocked and gullible. What did that say about her? Was she stupid? A poor reader of people and their motivations? She had been distraught when Nik had taken Gizmo from her. The little dog had been her only comfort and even though Nik was by no means a doggy-orientated male, he had still insisted on taking the animal back. Why?

Betsy believed it was because Nik was the ultimate control freak. Evidently, what was his stayed his, unless it was a discarded wife. His most recent attack had been to go after the house that he had never liked but that she loved. Why? Certainly he owned it and he had paid for the restoration, yet he had only bought the property to please her. Or had he? Had he simply seen Lavender Hall as a promising investment? More and more Betsy doubted the assumptions she had once made about what motivated Nik.

Without warning, the door sprang open and framed Nik’s very tall, well-built body. Her heart hammered madly for a split second and then felt as though it had stopped beating altogether because for a long timeless moment she couldn’t move, couldn’t breathe, couldn’t speak, couldn’t even blink. He radiated raw sexual charisma.

His extraordinarily light eyes glittered like gleaming emeralds in his lean, darkly beautiful face, startlingly noticeable eyes and shockingly astute. A thousand memories threatened to consume her—from the recollection of their disastrous first date to their idyllic honeymoon and the lonely challenge of her life once reality had set in—and she fought them off fiercely. He wasn’t going to do this to her again, she swore with inner vehemence. He wasn’t going to break her nerve again.

She lifted her chin, squared her stiff shoulders and stared back at him while carefully blanking him out because she could not face direct eye contact. Yet in the back of her mind she was still plunged into sudden agony by his presence, wondering how this had happened to them, how the man she had once adored could have become her worst enemy. Where had she gone wrong? What had she done to make him treat her with such hostility and unkindness?

And even while paranoia and self-pity threatened to overwhelm Betsy for a dangerous instant, it was Nik’s voice she heard inside her head. ‘Stop with the persecution complex and the blame game,’ he had once told her. ‘Not everything’s your fault. You’re not being punished for some sin in this world or the next. The bad stuff is simply what life throws at you...’

Nik scanned Betsy with compulsive intensity. Had she shrunk? She had never been very big in either height or size—indeed she barely weighed a hundred pounds soaking wet. Surrounded by her legal posse she was utterly overshadowed. She had definitely lost weight. He wondered if she was eating properly, an old protective instinct kicking in, instantly stamped down on hard and consigned to the back of his mind as inappropriate. It was none of his business any more, equally none of his business that her lawyer, Annersley, was leaning far too close to her, appreciative eyes pinned to Betsy’s delicate profile as if she were a prize up for grabs. And of course, endowed with even a tithe of what Nik was worth, Betsy would be very much a trophy for some scheming male to snatch up in the future.

That idea didn’t bother Nik, no, it didn’t bother him at all, he told himself fiercely, sliding with a degree of unnecessary force into the chair spun out for him by his own team. Naturally there would be other men in Betsy’s future; she was a beauty. His attention skimmed over her pale profile. She had always reminded him of a spun-glass figurine, fragile in every proportion, the sort of woman a man wanted to protect and cherish. And where had that chivalrous attitude, shown only to her, taken him? he asked himself cynically. On the road to the divorce court and a poorer future like a thousand other foolish men. ‘I want a baby,’ she had said, all tearful blue eyes and trembling lips, breaking their premarital agreement, trying to selfishly, wilfully rewrite history... And she hadn’t even noticed that the bottom had fallen out of his world the moment she spoke.

Obviously, Betsy would have that much-desired baby with another man now. Without warning, Nik’s stomach lurched. He gulped down the cup of hot black coffee offered to him and burnt his mouth. Betsy was trying to rob him blind just as his gigolo father, Gaetano, had once tried to rob Nik’s mother, Helena. Helena Christakis, however, had been too clever to be conned by Gaetano Ravelli, and Nik’s IQ left his mother’s at the starting stakes.

More to the point, he didn’t give a damn about Betsy now. Like an alcoholic he was taking the cure and the cure was seeing her again and feeling nothing. And there she was: tiny, exquisitely provocative in every detail from her cloak of silky pale blonde hair and porcelain skin to the luscious pout of her naturally pink lips. Hard jawline squaring, he searched out her flaws and underlined them in his head: the bump in her nose, the faint scattering of freckles, the ridiculous lack of height and the very modest curves. On a physical level she was very far from being perfect... What the hell had he ever seen in her?

Without warning Betsy glanced up, soft feathery lashes lifting to reveal eyes the colour of the deepest ocean, and instantaneous lust gripped Nik in an iron fist, punching through him so fast that his big, powerful body tensed, his muscles pulling defensively taut while the hungry swelling at his groin tightened the sleek fit of his tailored trousers. His response shocked him and it took a great deal to shock Nik. Indeed, the consternation that followed made sweat break out on his upper lip before he turned colder than snow, utilising every fibre of his single-minded character to crush his unwelcome response to her. Obviously, he reasoned grimly, his momentary arousal was nothing more complex than the knee-jerk reaction of an old habit around a sexually familiar woman.

Betsy stared fixedly at the table while the legal formalities got under way. Nik was at the far end, distant enough to be visually ignored, but every strand of her being was working against her will to turn her neck in that direction to snatch a glance at him. It had been so long, so agonisingly long since she had had the simple luxury of looking at him. Some instinct she could not suppress lifted her head up and for one explosive split second of time she collided with Nik’s stunning green eyes, eyes that were positively startling in that lean, dark, devastatingly handsome face of his.

Suddenly she couldn’t breathe or move again and the most primitive responses controlled her. Molten heat surged at the core of her and she literally felt her breasts stir inside her bra, her nipples prickling and straining into swollen buds. A welter of erotic images assailed her and burning colour drove off her pallor. Later it would hurt that Nik had the power to look away first but in the instant that disconnection occurred she was merely grateful to be set free of that terrible awareness and craving again. How could he still do that to her? How could she still feel the power of his scorching sexual attraction?

After all, Nik had put her through hell. He had stayed silent when he should have spoken up. He had even allowed her to go through the horrendous humiliation of discovering the truth that had made a mockery of their marriage from the lips of one of his brothers.

‘You will regret this...’ Nik had warned her forbiddingly the day she had thrown him out, but her sole regret then had been that she had not found out what he had been hiding from her sooner.

In retrospect she knew she had behaved like a madwoman that day. Temporary insanity had gripped her from the minute her whole world came crashing down around her. She had screamed, she had shouted, she had cursed and he had stood there like a granite rock battered by stormy seas—essentially untouched by her anger, her tears and her pleas for an explanation. In fact he had said nothing beyond the quiet, unemotional admission that what she had learned about him from his younger brother Zarif was indeed the truth: Nik had had a vasectomy at the age of twenty-two and there was absolutely no possibility of him ever having a child with her. But Nik had excluded Betsy from that secret and, unforgivably, he had allowed her to break her heart trying and failing to get pregnant for months on end. Why hadn’t he just told her the truth? ‘Why?’ she had demanded again and again, and he had stared back at her in resolute brooding silence, refusing to explain his behaviour.

Marisa Glover, the celebrated divorce lawyer by Nik’s side, studied Betsy with cool blue eyes and quite casually asked her why she believed that a woman who had been a penniless, dyslexic waitress before her marriage and had not worked since should have a legal claim on half her husband’s estate.

‘Let’s face it...you have no children to support,’ the icy blonde beauty reminded the table at large.

All of a sudden, Betsy was bone-white and reeling from the stream of virtual body blows landing on her with the devastating efficiency of bombs, her skin squeezing tight over her bones in horror. Nik had told them; he had told them she was dyslexic and mortification drenched her like icy water thrown in her face. As for the reminder that she had no children, that was an even more cruel strike considering that Nik had comprehensively and deviously denied her what she had so desperately wanted.

Her lawyer stepped in to steer the topic in a more practical direction.

Nik scrutinised Betsy’s pale, taut profile, the anxious flicker of her lashes, the tightness of her lips, and knew she was hurt, humiliated and still recoiling from Marisa’s opening salvo. Marisa was the best divorce lawyer in London and an unashamed barracuda and Nik always employed the best. But now his perfect white teeth were gritted, brown fingers clenching into a fist against a long, powerful thigh. Had Betsy expected him to play nice? Had she thought anything could still be sacred, that anything could remain a secret in their divorce? Could she still be that innocent?

He was still waiting for her legal team to attack, for they certainly had the ammunition. It went without saying that he did not want the curious facts of his hush-hush vasectomy aired in an open court. That was private, considerably more so in his opinion than the dyslexia she was so ashamed of suffering from. Even so the shaken look of pain and betrayal etched in her tightly controlled but oh, so expressive face got to him whether he liked it or not and distaste and impatience rose in Nik for degrading Betsy in front of witnesses.

Annersley was currently engaged in reminding Marisa that Nik had refused to allow Betsy to work during their marriage, implying that Nik was a dinosaur and a bully of no mean order but doing so in the politest of terms. Marisa was pointing out that Betsy lacked the education required to gain anything other than the most menial of jobs and that a man of Nik’s social status could hardly be expected to tolerate a wife taking an unskilled, humble position.

Something suddenly snapped Nik’s hold on his volatile temper. Without even thinking about what he was doing, he ground his hands down on the edge of the conference table and sprang upright with an abruptness that startled everybody present. Lean, strong face hawklike, he growled, ‘Diavelos...enough! This ends here. Marisa, you are well aware that Betsy single-handedly runs her own business at Lavender Hall—’

‘Well, yes, but—’

‘We are finished here for now,’ he ground out with harsh finality. ‘I will discuss this no further—’

‘But nothing’s been agreed,’ Annersley complained.

Betsy stole a grudging glance at Nik, scarcely able to credit that he had brought the humiliating session to so swift a halt. Surely he could not have done that for her benefit? She refused to believe that; he had to have some clever ulterior motive. She felt wounded and degraded after having her dyslexia thrown in her face, not to mention the reminder that she had never completed her education to an acceptable level. It infuriated her that she could blame Nik for that last reality, for Nik had complained so bitterly when she was attending evening classes to study for her A levels that she had eventually given them up. Nik might have travelled the globe constantly during their marriage, but when he was at home he had made it very, very clear to her that he always expected her to be there. And she had finally given way to his selfish protests, naively believing that he was admitting to needing her and secretly gratified that the male who did not tell her he loved her could not bear to find her missing or unavailable.

‘There will be another meeting,’ Nik decreed, striding to the door without another glance in Betsy’s direction.

* * *

Betsy got off the train and walked to her car.

She was angry with herself, as angry as she was ashamed that she had reacted to Nik on so basic a level, responding to his lethal sexual attraction like a silly young girl without self-knowledge or defences. She wanted to feel nothing, absolutely nothing around Nik. After all, nothing was what he deserved. Cristo’s wife, Belle, had told Betsy that she should be dating again and that she would not get past her experience with Nik until she did. Unfortunately the last thing Betsy needed after the heart-rending grief of her marriage breakdown was another man to worry about. Men were very high maintenance; Nik had taught her that.

Her troubled thoughts were already whisking her back in time. When she had first met Nik Christakis she had been working as a waitress at a little bistro across the road from his office.

She had enjoyed her job. ‘If a job’s worth doing, it’s worth doing well,’ her late grandmother had told her when she was a child, and the truth of that homely maxim had never let Betsy down. She refused to let the fact that a job was humble or low paid colour her attitude, but she had always known that had her grandmother survived she would have been very disappointed by Betsy’s lack of educational achievement. Her loving gran had taught her that with extra time and specialised tutoring she could overcome her dyslexia and that it was not an excuse for low expectations in life. That awareness in mind, she had chosen her job to fit the fact that she was studying several nights a week at evening class to get her A levels. Oh, she’d had big plans back then for a more promising future.

In those days it had never occurred to her that a man could come between her and her wits. She was twenty-one and boys had come and gone, but nobody special, nobody capable of engaging her heart or tempting her body. When she had first seen Nik, he had been sitting at one of her tables in the spring sunshine: a stunningly beautiful male sheathed in a black cashmere overcoat, light green eyes framed by impossibly long, lush black lashes, zapping her with instant tingling awareness as he ordered coffee. She hadn’t noticed that Cristo was with him that first time, hadn’t even registered the presence of plain-suited men by the wall, hovering with the protectiveness of bodyguards. As always Nik had commanded full centre stage. Her heart had beat so fast it had felt as if it were in her throat and she had feared its crazy acceleration would choke her.

When he had ordered a second coffee, she had left a complimentary biscuit on the table but he had handed it back to her. ‘I don’t touch sugar...ever,’ he had told her softly, his foreign accent purring along the syllables with disturbing sexiness.

‘Wish I could say the same,’ Betsy had breezed back, popping the biscuit in her pocket for later. She had always been hungry, free meals or snacks not having been part of her employment terms. ‘But I still have to bring you the biscuit with your coffee. It’s management policy.’

‘Wasteful,’ he had pronounced with a sardonic curve to his handsome mouth. ‘But you look like you could use the calories.’

‘I’m just skinny. I’ve always been skinny,’ Betsy had parried, dimly conscious of his companion’s frowning, silent scrutiny.

‘Cute skinny,’ Nik had countered, whipping his keen gaze over her slender proportions, sending colour flying like a banner into her cheeks. ‘Very, very cute.’

And she had rushed away to get that second coffee, wondering what on earth was wrong with her. He hadn’t been the first customer to try to flirt with her and she had usually taken it in her stride as simple banter, infinitely preferring that approach to that of the occasional creeps who had let their hands stray if she’d got too close. It hadn’t occurred to her that he might have actually meant anything by his remarks. After all, she had noticed his fancy coat and the sleek dark suit he had worn beneath it and already categorised him as some high-flying city-executive type and, as such, completely out of her league.

The next time she had served him he had offered her the biscuit first and she had flushed and said hurriedly, ‘No, thanks. My boss told me we’re not allowed to eat the biscuits because it looks bad.’

‘Really?’ Nik had quirked a black brow. ‘Maybe I should have a word with him—’

‘No, please don’t say anything,’ Betsy had urged in harried retreat with her tray.

‘If it worries you that much I won’t. My name’s Nik, by the way,’ he had responded casually.

A tin of incredibly expensive fancy biscuits had been delivered to her at work that afternoon, the gift card signed with a slashed ‘Nik’. Betsy had been more embarrassed than pleased, particularly when her boss, Mark, had noted the delivery, asked her if the gift was from a customer and frowned in disapproval when she had confirmed it. When she had thanked Nik for the gift he had shrugged it off as if it was too unimportant to mention.

Nik had come in every Tuesday after that, settling down to chat in a foreign language to Cristo while constantly fielding calls on his mobile phone. Just seeing him had thrilled her and meeting his eyes had electrified her all over, sending heat laced with weird chills racing through her body in an uncontrollable surge. It had not escaped her notice that he watched her as well and that he left her ridiculously large tips that swelled the staff collection box as never before.

‘Be careful around that guy,’ Mark had warned her one morning. ‘I’ve only just realised who he is. He’s Nik Christakis and he owns the office block opposite—NCI, Nik Christakis Industries. And guess what? In his no-doubt vast portfolio of businesses he already has a large chain of coffee shops and I wouldn’t like to get on the wrong side of him.’

‘He owns the building over there?’ Betsy had gasped.

‘Haven’t you ever noticed his bodyguards?’ Mark had rolled his eyes at her lack of observation. ‘He has to be an extraordinarily wealthy man to need security and you do have to wonder why he’s slumming here with us.’

Betsy had felt foolish for not appreciating that Nik was as much a fish out of water in the bistro as snow in July. She had looked him up online and learned that he was Greek and that Cristo was his half-brother. She’d also discovered that Nik had grown up in a very different world from her own. Embarrassed by the adolescent daydreams she had been weaving round him until that point, she had become more circumspect in her behaviour when he was around.

‘No smile for me?’ Nik had queried on his next visit, catching her fingers in his to halt her and sharply disconcerting her with that move. ‘Is something wrong?’

Azure eyes wide, she had reddened. ‘No, nothing’s wrong. We’re just very busy and I’m a bit distracted.’

‘Have dinner with me tomorrow night,’ Nik had drawled without warning.

Jolted by the invitation, and scarcely believing that he was serious, Betsy had jerkily retrieved her fingers and clutched at her tray. ‘Sorry, I can’t. I’ve got a class—’

‘The next night you’re free,’ Nik had interposed smoothly.

‘We’ve got nothing in common,’ she had protested.

‘But I want you because you’re different,’ Nik had informed her huskily, making her drop her eyes in shock at that blunt admission and shiver as though her insides were being subjected to a force-ten gale.

‘It wouldn’t work,’ she had argued in a low voice.

‘If I say it will work, it will work. When?’ Nik had pressed mercilessly.

‘Er...Friday,’ she had admitted in the suffocating silence, horrendously aware of his brother’s incredulous scrutiny. ‘I’m free Friday night.’

‘I’ll pick you up at half eight,’ Nik had responded calmly and asked for her address.

As she had moved away to serve another customer she had heard Cristo arguing with his brother and she had just known it was about her and that Nik’s sibling could not credit that his brother had invited a waitress out on a date.

Nik had steamrollered over her objections and she should have seen the writing on the wall then. Nik didn’t quit until he got what he wanted. He was relentless, unstoppable and stubborn as a mule.

CHAPTER TWO

NIK WAS ENSCONCED in his limo with a very beautiful blonde. Jenna had seemed the perfect antidote to his difficult morning. She was light-hearted and fun and she wasn’t looking for anything serious. She had invited him back to her apartment and neither of them had any illusion about what was to happen there. Now she snuggled up against him, her hand fastening possessively to a long, powerful thigh. He stiffened, resisting a strong urge to shake her off. He was getting a divorce, he reminded himself obstinately. He was a free man. It was past time he acted on that change of status.

Jenna shifted almost onto his lap to kiss him. In a defensive move, he threw his head back and her lips caught his jawline instead. The scent of her washed over him and she smelled wrong to him. Not bad, just somehow and inexplicably...wrong. He lifted a hand to her shoulder, long fingers accidentally brushing her hair. It felt coarse instead of silky and he didn’t want to touch it. In a fury he willed himself to stop making crazy comparisons. Maybe that was why the normal, healthy male response to an approach from a willing, attractive woman wasn’t happening for him.

Thee mou...his body was demonstrating all the reaction of a solid block of wood, he acknowledged in mounting frustration. Something was messing with his head and his libido and he didn’t know what but neither was he prepared to discuss the problem with his therapist. He had been forced to explore quite enough unpleasant issues with the good doctor and, while he had every respect for the lady’s common sense and discretion, there were still some things he refused to share. He might have unburdened himself of the dark weight of his dysfunctional past and felt stronger for it, but the freedom to return to his former taciturn habits was equally a relief. Sharing anything did not come naturally to a male with his reserved nature. And such acknowledgements were only one more unnecessary reminder that being involved in any way with Betsy was still ruining his life, cutting off his choices and reminding him of his boundaries while stifling the raw energy, the voracious sex drive and the sheer ruthlessness that had always healthily compelled Nik forward in life.

His mobile phone buzzed and he dug it out with an apology, but he already knew he wasn’t going back to Jenna’s apartment. Clearly she didn’t attract him enough, he reflected grimly. When he added in the unthinkable, that for the first time in his life he might fail between the sheets, it was sufficient to crush his need to test himself and prove that he had left his marriage behind him.

No, to achieve that goal he required a rather more civilised approach, he conceded broodingly, momentarily forgetting his companion. Taking some of the aggro out of the situation between him and Betsy would be a good strategic move. That didn’t mean he was going to give her a cartload of money or grant any of her ridiculous requests or, worse still, talk to her as Cristo had so ludicrously suggested. He didn’t want to talk to Betsy. He wouldn’t keep his temper if he talked to her and any gain from his breaking of the ice between them would be swiftly destroyed by a fresh flood of hostility and mutual resentment. No, talking of any kind was off the table. Diavelos, the lawyers could do the talking.

* * *

The day after the legal meeting, Betsy set out the items for sale on the new shelves in the shop and stepped back to assess the display.

She might have gone through hell since her marriage had broken down but, when it came to work, her overwhelming need to keep busy and mentally challenged had ironically ensured that the same months were astonishingly productive and creative in business terms. The little farm shop selling fresh veg, fruit and eggs, which Nik had grudgingly allowed her to open in one of the redundant farm buildings behind the hall, had tripled in size to house the baked goods and home-cooked ready meals she had sourced. Since then she had added the card and gift section, where she stocked everything from potpourri to local crafts. Across the yard, work was noisily progressing as a former ruined cottage was transformed into a small coffee shop.

Behind the counter, her manager, Alice, was chatting cheerfully to a regular customer stocking up for her weekly shop. Betsy had initially hired Alice to ensure that she was always available when Nik was at home, but even though she was now able to work much longer hours the arrangement still worked well. After all, the business had expanded and Alice was good at dealing with the financial side of things, while Betsy was happiest handling suppliers and sourcing new goods.

Furthermore, Alice had the wisdom to understand when not to ask awkward questions. Divorced from a cheating ex and raising three children, she knew all about sleepless nights and heartache. Alice had not said a word when she came into work some mornings and found all their produce rearranged, the fruit so shiny it looked polished and the tiled floor so clean you could see your face in it. Time after time Betsy had taken refuge in work when she couldn’t sleep. But there was a far more practical reason behind her industry and the long hours she put in.

Betsy’s ultimate goal was to make Lavender Hall self-sufficient because she was mortified by the prospect of hanging on Nik’s sleeve for the rest of her days. If she built up the business enough it could support her and cover the wages bill for the staff required not only to run the business but also to maintain the house and garden. In truth, claiming a very large slice of Nik’s fortune had not solely been an act of aggression or revenge but more of a counter-attack to his unreasonable demand that Lavender Hall be sold. The house offered Betsy an unparalleled resource as a business base from which she could earn her own living and she had lots of even more ambitious ideas on the back burner for the future.

The phone on the counter buzzed and Alice answered it. ‘It’s for you,’ she told Betsy.

Edna, the hall housekeeper, was on the line. ‘You have a visitor, Mrs Christakis. Is it still all right for me to take the afternoon off?’ the older woman asked anxiously.

Edna and her husband, Stan, who kept the garden, had provided sterling ongoing support on the home front after Betsy had had to cut back on staff after Nik’s departure. With Nik and his high expectations of instant service removed from the equation, there had been no need for a fancy private chef, a driver or a flock of maids.

‘Of course it is,’ Betsy assured her while abstractedly wondering why she had not named the visitor. Obviously someone familiar, possibly Cristo or even his wife, Belle, she thought hopefully, because she was in the mood for some uplifting company.

Betsy liked Belle, a leggy Irish redhead with boundless vitality and a great sense of fun. Belle had slowly become a trusted friend in spite of the fact that what Belle had to say about Nik was pretty much unrepeatable. Betsy, in turn, admired the way Belle and Cristo had taken on responsibility for the five kids Belle’s mother had had during her long-running affair with Cristo and Nik’s late father, Gaetano. Nik would never have sacrificed his personal freedom on such a score, she conceded painfully, wondering how she had contrived to be so blind to the reality that the man she wanted to father her child didn’t even like children.

Smoothing her stretchy black skirt down over her hips and twitching down the pushed-up sleeves of her pink honeycomb-knit sweater, Betsy left the shop and cut through the walled garden to the door in the ten-foot wall that led straight into the hall’s vast rear courtyard. When Nik had protested her desire for a commercial outlet at their home, she had reminded him of the size of that wall and had added that the opening up of the former farm lane would preserve their privacy from both customers and traffic. He had remained stalwartly unimpressed, giving way solely because he had known she needed something to occupy her while he travelled abroad so much.

And yet now here she was, running not the hobby shop he had envisaged but her own thriving business, she reflected ruefully, striving to raise her flagging spirits with that comforting reminder. Who would ever have thought she had that capability? Certainly not her parents, who had never expected much from her. It had been her grandmother, a retired teacher, who had ensured that Betsy got the help she needed with her dyslexia. In truth, Betsy’s parents had never really had much time for Betsy and had been ashamed of her reading and writing difficulties. In fact she was convinced that she had been an accidental conception because even as a child she had been aware that her parents resented the incessant demands of parenthood, no matter how much her grandmother tried to help them out. Her parents had died in a train crash when Betsy was eleven. By then her grandmother had already passed away and Betsy had had to go into foster care, the first seed of her conviction that she would never ever want children already sown by her own distinctly chilly upbringing.

Cutting through the spacious empty kitchen, Betsy hurried through to the big hall and came to a startled halt when she saw the tall, broad-shouldered male with blacker than black hair, standing poised with his back turned to her by the still-open front door.

Nik had already surveyed his surroundings with keen interest, instantly noting the changes since his exit six months earlier. The furniture was a little dusty. There were no fresh flowers adorning the central table, not even a welcoming fire burning in the massive grate. But superimposed over that picture was a misty image of Betsy twirling round the same hall before restoration had made the building habitable.

‘Isn’t it just amazing?’ she had exclaimed in excited appeal on their very first visit to Lavender Hall, her face lit up like a Christmas tree.

‘It needs to be demolished,’ Nik had countered, unimpressed.

‘It’s not past saving,’ Betsy had argued. ‘Can’t you feel the atmosphere? The character of the place? Can’t you imagine what it would look like with a little work?’

A little work with a wrecking ball, Nik had thought grimly, uninspired by the chipped and broken bricks and the floor puddled by drips from gaping windows and a leaking roof. She had dragged him off on a tour, chattering with bubbling enthusiasm about how the Elizabethan property was a treasure chest of history and on the endangered historic buildings list. Right from the start he had thought it was a horrible house and about as far removed from his idea of a comfortable and suitable country home as it was possible to imagine. But he had recognised that Betsy had fallen madly in love with the dump and, even though it wasn’t what he wanted, he had agreed to buy it for her, a generous act that had rebounded on him many times in the following months when the costs of restoration had risen to outrageous levels.

Ne...yes, he had been a decent, caring husband, Nik reflected with brooding hostility. He had tried to make his wife happy, had given her everything she had ever wanted with the single exception of that last impossible demand of hers, and he still could barely credit that their marriage had been destroyed by her desire for, of all things, a baby. Her careless dismissal of the idea of having a child had been so convincing before their marriage.

Lean, strong face tensed by the forbidding tenor of his thoughts, Nik swung round with a frown just as Betsy surged through the kitchen door. She looked harassed, her pale blonde hair tumbling round her delicate, flushed features, making her eyes look more mauve in hue than ever and emphasising the pink, pillowy, luscious shape of her unpainted lips.

Instantaneous desire lit Nik up inside in a firework burst of startling heat that took his breath away. Without the smallest warning everything he had failed to feel in the limo with Jenna the day before surged through him, tightening every muscle in his body and setting off a fast-beating pulse at his groin that made him want to smash something in sheer frustration.

‘Betsy,’ he breathed in growling acknowledgement.

One glimpse of her visitor and Betsy had frozen in place like someone who had run head first into a solid brick wall. Why on earth hadn’t Edna warned her? His sexy-as-sin voice washed over her like rich vanilla ice cream coated in melted dark chocolate, vibrating down her taut spinal cord... Nik’s voice, the first weapon in his considerable arsenal of attraction. Nik here at the hall where she had never expected to see him again! His sudden appearance was a huge shock and she blinked rapidly and snatched in a stark breath, striving to brace herself for what could only be bad news of some kind.

‘What are you doing here?’ she gasped strickenly before she could think better of openly revealing her dismay.

‘I needed to see you.’

Unconvinced, Betsy simply stared back at him. His dark grey pinstripe designer suit was faultlessly fitted to every muscular angle of his lean, powerful body. Big and strong, he was a brutal force of nature beneath that sleek, sophisticated façade he wore to the world. In all the months they had lived apart he had made not one single attempt to see her, so why now? Her brain, however, was stuttering to a halt when confronted with Nik in the flesh. Those lean, darkly beautiful features of his drew her in like a fire on a freezing day. She didn’t want to look but she couldn’t help herself. He had the gorgeous face and classic body of a mythical god, eyes shimmering bright as emeralds, awakening a primal attraction that was rooted so deep inside her she didn’t know where it began or how she would ever be free of its sway. Her skin prickled, tiny hairs rising at the nape of her neck as she subdued a responsive shiver. Her heart was racing.

And then mercifully a voice from outside broke into the smouldering silence. ‘Come back here!’ a man was shouting.

The pitter-patter of rushing paws and an unforgettably familiar bark made Betsy’s eyes fly wide in recognition and she hurtled to the door to peer out. An ecstatic bundle of wriggling, whining terrier dog leapt up into her arms and covered every part of her he could reach with delighted doggy kisses.

‘I’m very sorry, sir. He leapt through the window of the car,’ Nik’s driver confided in breathless pursuit.

Nik was tempted to remark that that had to be the most life Gizmo had shown in the two months since he had retrieved the dog from Betsy. With a nod of dismissal to his driver, he thrust the front door closed with an impatient hand and studied the tableau before him. Betsy was down on her knees on the tiled floor smiling and laughing and the terrier was bouncing and leaping around her, the pair of them enacting a mutually jubilant reconciliation scene that even Nik could not remain untouched by. He knew he had made the right decision.

‘You brought him here to visit me?’ Betsy questioned, glancing up enquiringly, utterly confused by the dog’s sudden appearance.

‘No, he’s here to stay,’ Nik informed her wryly. ‘He’s not happy away from you.’

‘But he’s your dog,’ she framed uncertainly, gathering Gizmo into her arms and stroking him to calm him down.

‘He was only mine until he met you,’ Nik retorted, compressing his mouth into a sardonic line while he noted as she bent over the dog the slight definitive bounce of her small breasts below her sweater, which told him that she was wearing nothing underneath. He became so hard in that split second that he was in literal pain.

Giving Gizmo back to her was an extraordinarily generous gesture and an astonishing move from a male as cold-blooded and unforgiving as Nik, Betsy reflected in bewilderment while she struggled to understand his reasoning. Unfortunately, Nik might be gorgeous but he was also complicated, impossibly so. She had never had much idea what went on inside his handsome head and once again he had taken her very much by surprise.

Gizmo was a stray, who had been knocked over by Nik’s limousine months before Betsy even met Nik. He had taken the dog to a veterinary surgery for treatment and when nobody came forward to claim him he had asked the vet to try and find him a home. When that had failed, Nik had baulked at the prospect of putting the little dog into a council home for strays where he would ultimately be put down if he still failed to attract a new owner. Against all the odds, Nik had taken in Gizmo himself, introducing the little animal to a roof garden and a life of luxury food, dog walkers and groomers.

While Betsy reflected on Gizmo’s humble beginnings as a stray, Nik was wishing he had stayed safe at the office. Watching Betsy shower affection on his dog filled him with conflicting feelings. He wanted to look at her but he didn’t want to be with her or note the way the sunlight flooding through the windows gleamed over her impossibly pale blonde hair, accentuating her porcelain-perfect skin and haunting blue eyes. He especially didn’t want the intensely sexual arousal currently coursing through his big, powerful body like a runaway train.

‘Thank you from the bottom of my heart,’ Betsy told him with tears in her eyes. ‘I’ve missed him so much.’

Restored to his proper home, Gizmo trotted off cheerfully to explore his old haunts.

Nik studied Betsy with smouldering green eyes and her heart gave a sudden jarring thud.

Betsy knew that look of hunger on Nik’s hard, handsome face and it burned through her like a lightning strike, riveting her to the spot. That light in his stunning gaze told her that he wanted her and she couldn’t stop her body reacting to that lure. An unbearable ache stirred at the apex of her slender thighs and she pressed them tightly together as if she could lock it in and deny it. Her breasts swelled beneath her sweater, making her all too aware of their bareness as her nipples were grazed by the wool.

‘Come into the sitting room,’ she urged, scrambling upright to lead the way as if he were a genuine guest visiting an unfamiliar place. ‘Why didn’t Edna tell me it was you?’

‘I asked her not to. I wanted to surprise you.’

‘Well, you’ve certainly done that,’ Betsy admitted truthfully, struggling to credit that he was actually with her in what had once been the home they shared, even if it did cross her mind that Nik had spent more time in hotel rooms round the globe than he had ever spent with her. But that look he had given her—her thoughts raced back to that, worrying at it like a dog at a bone. Why had he looked at her like that? Surely he could not still find her attractive? Nik had been a less than enthusiastic lover in the last months of their marriage, although, now knowing about the vasectomy as she did, she could finally comprehend his loss of interest. Back then she had only thought of sex in terms of getting pregnant and she had no doubt that he had found her attitude a turn-off. No, don’t think about sex, don’t think about sex, she urged herself feverishly.

Betsy hovered awkwardly. ‘Would you like a coffee?’ she asked, because she was eager for the chance to escape to the kitchen for a few minutes and pull herself back together again.

‘No, thanks, but I’ll take a drink,’ Nik declared, long, powerful legs carrying him across the room to the drinks cabinet, where he proceeded to help himself.

Unnerved by the fact that he could still confidently make himself at home while remaining utterly impervious to the discomfiture some men might have felt in the same situation, Betsy breathed in slow and deep to ground herself. ‘I gather you want to talk—’

Nik spun back to her with the liquid grace of movement that always caught her eye and frowned at her, black brows drawing down, wide, sensual mouth twisting in dismissal. ‘No. I don’t want to talk,’ he told her abruptly before he tossed back the finger of Scotch whisky he had poured neat and set down the empty glass again.

‘Then...er...why?’ she began in confusion.

His spectacular green eyes zeroed in on her with penetrating force and a flock of butterflies was unleashed in her tummy while her heartbeat kicked up pace again. ‘I’m only here to return Gizmo.’

‘Oh...’ Betsy framed for want of anything better to say. A few months ago she would have shot accusations at him, demanded answers and would have thoroughly upset herself and him by resurrecting the past, which consumed her. But that time was gone, she acknowledged painfully, well aware that any reference to more personal issues would only send him out of the door faster. Nik had always avoided the personal, the private, the deeper, messier stuff that other people got swamped by. From the minute things went wrong in their marriage she had been on her own.

Nik scrutinised her lovely face, willing himself to find fault, urging himself to discover some imperfection that would switch his body back to safe neutral mode again. And yet on another level he was relieved, even satisfied by his arousal, grateful for the discovery that there was nothing at all amiss with his sex drive. Nor could he think of anything that could quench the swelling fullness of desire holding him rigid, unquestionably not the tantalising awareness that Betsy, all five feet nothing of her and regardless of her lack of experience before their marriage, was absolutely incredible in bed.

‘Se thelo...I want you,’ he heard himself admit before he was even aware that the words were on his tongue.

So Nik, so explosively unpredictable, Betsy reasoned abstractedly, colour rushing into her cheeks as a hot wave of awareness engulfed her. Jewel-bright eyes assailed hers in an almost physical collision and something low and intimate in her body clenched hard. Her legs turned so weak she wasn’t convinced they were still there to hold her up but she was held in stasis by the intensity of his narrowed green gaze.

‘And you want me,’ he told her thickly. It was classic, pure textbook Nik to tell her what she was feeling before she even knew it herself.

And Betsy knew she ought to argue and defend herself while telling him all the many reasons why that could not possibly be true, not least the fact that his deception and his willingness to turn his back on their marriage had made her hate him with the same passion that she had once loved him.

But, inexplicably, in that rushing silence filled only with the accelerated thump of her heart in her own ears, she said nothing, couldn’t find the words, indeed was plunged into so much confusion her mind was a mess of barely formed thoughts and reactions.

CHAPTER THREE

NIK STALKED FORWARD with slow predatory grace, yet for all that there was barely a coherent thought in his handsome dark head. There was no reason, only reaction, no motive other than a desire that gripped him tighter than any vice, in fact a desire so powerful it made him throb and ache.

He reached for Betsy, tugging her arms round his neck, clamping her slim body close, sealing those soft curves to his with a raw exhalation of relief he could not suppress. Backing her to a wall, he raised her high to seize her mouth and claim it, opening his mouth over hers, using pressure to force an entrance and then delving deep with a hungry, devouring passion that stole the breath from her lungs. He tasted of whisky and spice and Betsy drank him in like an addictive drug, head spinning on an intoxicated high. He kissed her as if his life and hers depended on it and his raw urgency fired her up even more, her head falling back to allow him greater access.

Betsy whimpered beneath his lips, holding herself stiff while she fought a rearguard action in the back of her mind in which a voice was screaming that she didn’t want to do what she was doing. Unfortunately, she very much did want to do it at that moment when only passion ruled and reason couldn’t get a look-in. She was no victim either. Her tongue tangled with his and teased back, her small hands kneading his strong arms, rejoicing in the strength of him but frustrated by the barrier of his clothing.

Nik curved his hands to her bottom below her skirt, discovering to his satisfaction that her love of skimpy underthings still reigned supreme, and with one violent wrench the lacy knickers were torn away. Betsy gasped in shock.

‘You want me,’ Nik husked in hoarse excuse against her swollen mouth, his warm breath fanning her skin.

Oh, how she had wanted, night after night, day after day, craving what she had lost, missing the passion and the closeness and the intimacy that had once been so much a part of her life while wondering if she would ever trust anyone enough to let them touch her again. Every screaming skin cell was conscious of the proximity of Nik’s hand to the hottest, neediest place in her body and she couldn’t vocalise, couldn’t think of anything but the deep-down, all-encompassing hunger for his touch.

Bracing her to the wall, he thrust her sweater out of his path with an impatient hand to enable him to close his mouth hungrily round a plump pink nipple while his palm cupped the firm pouting curve. Betsy moaned, eyes tight shut, sensation darting down to the hot, liquid heart of her. A wild pulse of need was mounting there while he teased that tender swollen tip with the edges of his teeth and his tongue. Clinging to his shoulders, she spread her thighs and clamped them to his waist. Finally she could feel him even through his clothing, learn the hard, urgent thrust of his erection as he ground his hips into the apex of her slender thighs, provoking an impatient cry from her lips. Arching her pelvis into him, she shuddered and moaned.

They were acting like horny teenagers, she registered suddenly, in a short-lived burst of mental clarity and embarrassment. This is not me, this is not me. And it was her last chance to shout stop and her lips actually parted and then he found her with his hand, a long, knowing finger sliding into the hot, wet sheath of her body. In reaction, an explosion of fiery heat shot through her and she jerked against him, overwhelmingly eager for his touch, for anything that would assuage the intolerable scream of need building up so fast inside her that she could not contain it.

Nik struggled to support her at the same time as he unfastened his trousers. Betsy emitted a breathy moan when she felt him push against her. She was on a high of uncontrollable excitement, her hands biting into his shoulders, urging him on. He aligned their bodies, spreading her open before bringing her down on him. He sank into her slowly, stretching the sensitive tissue with his length and girth to the burning edge of pain. But it was so much a pleasurable pain that she almost wept at the thrill of his invasion because for the first time in many months she felt like a living, breathing woman again.

‘Nik...?’ she whispered shakily.

‘No talk, hara mou,’ he gritted, tilting her back at an angle, using the wall to partially support her as he slammed back into her again with sensual, dominant force. ‘Thee mou, what you do to me! Don’t tell me to stop!’

At that moment Betsy wasn’t capable of such a feat. She was already at fever pitch. An agony of desire and helpless need controlled her. Gripping her slender thighs, ebony-lashed green eyes blazing with emerald fire, Nik surged and retreated, keeping up the erotic pace with perfect timing. Her excitement rose with every driving thrust, pushing her higher and higher until finally she reached the crest and it shattered her, making her writhe and sob and cry out.

‘That was spectacular...’ Nik breathed raggedly as he lowered Betsy’s legs slowly back to the floor. She was weak, dizzy, unsteady on her feet, and even he was trembling. What had he done? Diavelos, what had he done? Yet in spite of that rational voice inside his head, Nik shed his jacket, yanked free his tie, contriving both instinctive actions without once letting go of Betsy. He tugged her by the wrist across the floor to the rug by the dying fire and drew her down on it to face him on her knees. He laced both hands into her tumbled hair, palms framing her cheekbones, and kissed her again, sliding his tongue between her lips, skating it over the sensitive roof of her mouth until she quivered and her hands curved over his arms again to support herself.

She couldn’t think, could barely breathe and could hardly believe that that single kiss had sent the heat surging again like a gushing river of liquid fire in her belly. Satiation was washed away by a renewed tingling and prickling of potent awareness that covered her entire skin surface with heat. He pulled her down, rearranging her legs to cradle him, pinning her beneath the weight and bulk of his lean, muscular body.

‘I’m not done yet, hara mou,’ he confessed thickly, luxuriant black lashes low over scorching emerald eyes, lean, strong face taut, cheekbones flushed.

Her hand rose of its own volition and she ran her fingertips along the mobile line of his often hard-set mouth. It had a softer, more flexible cast now. She thought of him bringing Gizmo home and she gazed up at him, curiously at peace with what had happened, her heart full to overflowing. After all, she never had been able to second-guess Nik’s next move and she guessed she never would have that power because he was very much a law unto himself.

He shifted against her, lithe and dynamic as a jungle cat, and she felt him hard and ready again against her stomach. ‘Don’t ask me to stop,’ he groaned.

‘Take off your shirt,’ she whispered, amazingly relaxed in his arms, marvelling at how right it felt to be there again although even in that instant, in a part of her brain, she wouldn’t acknowledge she knew she would never be able to justify what she had done.

He levered back from her and hauled roughly at the garment. A couple of buttons went flying and a long, brown, mouth-watering wedge of a six-pack male torso appeared between the parted edges. Her mouth ran dry, tiny little slivers of excitement sparking again. She arched up against him, revelling in the skin-to-skin contact she had never thought she would feel again with him. With a hungry sound in the back of his throat he kissed her again, sliding between her slender thighs, hitching her skirt with impatient hands.

‘This time...slow,’ he framed in raw promise.

‘Am I the hare or the tortoise?’ she teased.

‘Something about you turns me into the hare every time.’

Betsy laughed. ‘Is this us again?’ she mumbled wonderingly.

‘This is now, only now,’ Nik contradicted with innate precision, covering her mouth again with his to silence her and stop the questions and then lingering to savour her.

He sank into her again as slowly as he had promised. The taste of him was still on her lips and she was achingly sensitive to his every movement. A long, breathy sigh was extracted from her.

‘Too much?’ he prompted, staring down at her.

‘Not enough,’ she said daringly. ‘I’m not made of glass... I won’t break!’

Her heart and her body jumped in concert when he twisted his lithe hips and added a more dominant flavour to his possession, sensation winging through her in slow, delicious waves. She closed her eyes to contain her feelings, the excitement catching at her again and flaring bright as a falling star, making every nerve ending strain in longing for the ultimate peak. He quickened his pace and delicious friction intensified the electrifying pleasure. She moaned and her voice rose against her volition into a cry of shocked release, her whole body shaking with the soul-deep force of it as he emitted a raw groan of pleasure.

Nik eased back from her, righting his clothing, reaching down to scoop her up into his arms.

‘What are you doing?’ she framed limply, eyes flying open.

‘Taking you to bed, where we should have gone in the first place,’ Nik informed her, striding across the hall towards the heavily carved staircase.

‘What we did was more exciting,’ Betsy mumbled, thinking of how very long it had been since they had done anything this instantaneous or uninhibited. For the first time she recognised how much her campaign to fall pregnant had cost them in terms of intimacy. Nothing had been the same once that process had started.

Nik carried her into the room they had once shared and froze by the side of the bed, scanning the unfamiliar surroundings. The décor had changed and even the furniture was new. His mouth quirked. The reality jolted him, pushing him in the direction of thoughts he was determined not to think just then. He settled her down on the wide, low bed and undressed her with cool efficiency, tugging off the sweater, unzipping her skirt and slipping off her shoes before pulling the duvet over her.

‘I need a shower,’ he admitted. ‘Is there still one in the bathroom? Or have you got rid of that as well?’

Betsy almost laughed. ‘Of course the shower’s still in there.’

She lay watching him strip, a sight she had never thought to see again, and the experience felt utterly unreal. He strode naked into the bathroom, yet she had recognised his unease with his surroundings. He didn’t like change; he never had. The new colour scheme and furniture had made him tense and uncomfortable. Well, what had he expected? That she would continue to live with the bed they had once shared, allowing her home to inflict constant wounding with memories of what they had once shared together and lost? No, at least Belle had helped Betsy to make that much of a fresh start.

Nik emerged from the bathroom still towelling dry his black hair. She was startled to notice that he was still fully aroused. Nik had assumed that Betsy would fall asleep, but she was awake, wide, evocative azure eyes pinned to him. She was snuggled down under the duvet, hair as pale as a young child’s trailing across the pillow in tousled disarray. Would he simply have got dressed and left had she been conveniently asleep? He honestly didn’t know the answer to that question. What he did know as he looked at her was that he wasn’t yet ready to leave, and without hesitation he tossed back the duvet and climbed in beside her.

‘It’s the middle of the day,’ she reminded him, colour heating her face.

‘Are you only remembering that now?’ Nik traded sardonically, and she might have snapped back had he not closed his arms round her and tugged her reassuringly close. ‘What does it matter what time it is?’

‘It doesn’t,’ she conceded and then said in a different tone altogether, ‘Nik?’

‘Shush,’ he breathed, fearful of what she might say, curving her up against his still taut and aroused length with an exhilarating sense of extraordinarily intense satisfaction.

‘You’re still—’ she began.

‘I am,’ Nik agreed, draping her tiny body over top of him with care. ‘Do you think you could do anything about that?’

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