with you it was going to turn into something I wasn’t ready for.’
‘You have some imagination, Nikolai. Telling me that you ran like hell isn’t exactly a compliment,’ Ella pointed out.
‘But it’s the truth.’
‘The truth is that you only looked me up again because Cyrus took a strange fancy to me,’ Ella reminded him as she walked out of the bathroom back into the bedroom.
‘I was obsessed by my need for revenge. I took no account of anything else. For five years I lived, breathed and slept revenge. I was very angry and bitter about Sofia and I think it was like poison in my brain.’
‘And together we’re toxic,’ Ella slotted in, refusing to be persuaded.
‘Max has lunch ready for us downstairs.’ Nikolai pulled open the bedroom door.
The table on the veranda was beautifully set. The honeymoon couple’s dream lunch served on exquisite china amid flowers and crystal. She breathed in deep, the dogs nudging a welcome against her ankles, and she paused for a moment to give them some attention.
Nikolai saw that having three or four legs, a shaggy coat and a tail bought advantages he couldn’t dream of acquiring. He breathed in deep and slow, reminding himself of the positives. She hadn’t gone for the suitcases yet, hadn’t mentioned flying anywhere. He was terrified that she would want to leave Crete and him behind.
‘We’re not toxic,’ he declared, pouring some water for her. ‘And I wouldn’t have got “upset” about the baby. Like you, I’m very practical. That’s something we have in common. It is what it is and we can both adapt to suit a new situation.’
‘I loved you!’ Ella slung at him without the smallest warning.
Nikolai shrank from the past tense. ‘The dynamic changed between us very fast. I had no plans beyond taking you to that charity function and moving you into the town house. Somewhere about there I lost control of everything...’
‘Are you trying to excuse yourself for having sex with me?’ Ella enquired in a glacial voice.
His dark deep-set eyes flashed gold. ‘No. I’d be a complete liar if I said I had regrets about that. In fact you pretty much owned me from that day on.’
‘Owned you?’ Ella repeated emphatically. ‘Because of the sex?’
Nikolai sank an entire glass of wine. It was so difficult. He had never done anything so difficult as trying to talk to Ella in the mood she was currently in. ‘Hardly,’ he deflected. ‘I suspect that’s when I fell in love with you. You snuggled up to me in bed and, although I didn’t admit it to myself, I liked it. I still really like it when you do that and it’s so peculiar for me to like something like that...’
Ella almost dropped the glass in her hand. She stared at him, colour rising in her cheeks. ‘You’re lying, of course you’re lying. You’re still in guilty-conscience mode and you know I love you, so you’re telling me what you think I want to hear.’
‘But you don’t want to hear it,’ Nikolai pointed out helplessly. ‘You only want to sit there judging me and deciding that I am a total bastard in every way. And I was a bastard before I met you.’
‘And when you first met me and when you met me a second time,’ Ella reminded him.
‘But I changed. You changed me. Don’t ask me how. It happened and here I am and I’m as obsessed with you now as I once was with Cyrus,’ Nikolai completed fiercely. ‘I don’t do or plan anything without thinking about you. You’re always inside my head.’
Ella was finally starting to listen. Even the dogs were listening because Nikolai had a piece of baguette in his hand and he was waving his hands around as he spoke and the dogs were very hopeful that that piece of bread would fall in their direction. ‘Really?’
‘Yes, really,’ Nikolai derided. ‘I’m crazy about you.’
‘You have a funny way of showing it.’
‘I couldn’t love you and not tell you the truth. That wouldn’t have been fair.’
Ella studied him, slowly, almost painfully registering his sincerity, his certainty. He really believed that he loved her now. He really, truly believed that. ‘When I told you that I loved you, you said nothing,’ she reminded him.
‘I had to tell you the truth first but I was... I was...’
‘What?’ she broke in impatiently.
‘Scared... OK? Satisfied now?’ Nikolai raked back at her angrily. ‘I was scared I would lose you but I couldn’t live with keeping a secret like that from you.’
Ella went pink and dropped her head. ‘Oh,’ she almost whispered, wondering why she was being so hard on him.
Yes, he had hurt her but she appreciated his respect for the truth, his inability to stay quiet and pretend that everything was all right when it wasn’t. She breathed in slow and deep. Nikolai Drakos loved her... Nikolai loved her. A tiny ping of happiness cut through her grey cloud of heartbroken misery and regret. She was scared to feel happy, scared to trust him. But Nikolai had pretty much felt the same way, she reasoned wryly. Love didn’t come with guarantees any more than people did. And yes, he was far from perfect, but then she wasn’t perfect either and she loved him so very much it hurt to have a table separating them. Slowly she rose to her feet.
Sensing a change in the atmosphere, Nikolai surveyed her warily. ‘I can make this up to you. I do know I messed up really badly—’
‘Shut up,’ Ella told him, tipping herself down into his lap. ‘It’s done and dusted and when I told you that I loved you I meant it. I love you even when you mess things up. I may get angry and shout and throw my rings at you...but at the end of it all I will still love you very, very much. As long as the mess up doesn’t involve another woman,’ she qualified hastily, lest he think he could be forgiven for any sin.
Nikolai wrapped both arms round her very tightly and dropped a kiss on the top of her head. ‘No other women,’ he said gruffly, because he could hardly get breath into his deflated lungs. ‘I need all my energy for you.’
Ella gazed up at him with a smile that was like the sun breaking through the clouds. ‘So... I own you?’
His eyes were melted caramel. ‘That’s what it feels like sometimes.’
‘No, that’s being part of a couple,’ she argued, hugging him back with all her strength, tears prickling in her eyes because she was experiencing the most enormous sense of relief. He had given her the fairy tale by falling in love with her and he didn’t understand how it had happened any better than she did, but that didn’t matter, did it?
‘Are we hoping for a boy or a girl?’ Nikolai asked, long fingers splaying across her defiantly flat stomach.
‘We don’t get to choose. I don’t mind either way,’ she muttered abstractedly as she brushed her lips back and forth very gently across his.
‘Neither do I...’ Nikolai growled, rising from the chair with her still gripped in his arms. ‘You can have a dozen kids if I get to keep you.’
‘Not
