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, she threw herself back into the comfortable embrace of a purple velvet sofa and regarded Betsy with unconcealed expectancy in her lively eyes.
‘I’m pregnant,’ Betsy blurted out, having come to visit to make exactly that announcement.
Perceptibly disconcerted, her sister-in-law sat forward in a sudden movement. ‘How the heck did you sneak having a man in your life past my radar?’ she demanded in disbelief.
‘Because he was already there...well, sort of,’ Betsy muttered ruefully. ‘It’s Nik’s baby—’
‘Nik? How could it be Nik’s?’
‘You must not mention this to Cristo yet. It’s private...between Nik and me,’ Betsy extended awkwardly, wishing that Cristo’s wife would stop studying her as though she were waiting for the clowns to come trooping in and provide a comic act. In as few words as she could manage she revealed that Nik had had the vasectomy reversed.
Belle blinked slowly. ‘OK,’ she conceded. ‘And then he gave you the dog back and clearly you slept with him out of gratitude—’
‘It wasn’t like that,’ Betsy countered quietly.
‘I know you. You’re very soft-hearted. He took advantage—’
‘Maybe I took advantage of him...’
Belle was shaking her head in wonderment. ‘Wow...just wow. Nik’s going to be a dad. Considering that he can’t even bear to be in the same room with my siblings that scenario takes quite a stretch of the imagination—’
Betsy was fond of Cristo’s wife but had never appreciated her outspokenly critical attitude towards Nik. ‘You’re not being fair, Belle. Nik never knew his own father and has never had anything to do with children. Gaetano Ravelli walked out of his life when he was a baby and Nik never saw him again, so it’s a lot harder for him to feel that there’s a family connection with the younger brothers and sisters that you and Cristo have adopted.’
Franco, the youngest of those children, an adorable toddler with curly black hair and big brown eyes, clambered onto his half-sister Belle’s lap and hugged her with easy affection. It was clear that he regarded Belle very much as his mother, yet Franco and his four siblings were actually the progeny of Belle’s late mother’s long-running affair with Nik and Cristo’s now-deceased father.
For the first time though, Betsy was also registering an odd fact that made her brow furrow in surprise. Almost everything she knew about Nik’s family background had come from either Cristo or Belle because Nik never ever talked about his childhood. His relationship with his mother was quietly dysfunctional and something he politely refused to discuss.
Betsy had only met Helena Christakis once when the older woman had evidently surprised Nik by choosing to attend their wedding. Helena had arrived with her latest boyfriend in tow and had avoided all but the most fleeting contact with her son and his bride. Even so, Helena’s presence must’ve proved more of a punishment than a pleasure for her son because she had worn a dress more suited to a teenager, had got distinctly drunk and at one stage had chosen to recline on her toy boy’s lap and behave like a sex kitten. Nik had seemed impervious to his mother’s behaviour and had made no comment. At the time Betsy had naively assumed that he was hiding his embarrassment but she had since learned to appreciate that virtually nothing embarrassed Nik.
‘It was a challenge for Cristo as well,’ the other woman reasoned. ‘He wasn’t into kids either but I don’t think he was ever as set against the idea of them as Nik has always seemed to be. When do you plan to tell him about the baby?’
‘I’ve already told him... This morning, in fact. That’s why I came up to London.’ Betsy compressed her lips because she had no intention of sharing any further information, but then she could scarcely have hoped to conceal a pregnancy from close friends and family. And more than anything else that was what Cristo and Belle had become to Betsy—family, the family she’d never really had. They had both made time in their busy lives for her during the gloomy, heartbreaking months of her marriage breakdown, always ready to listen and support and offer soothing words.
‘And?’
‘Well, at least Nik didn’t suggest that the baby might be some other man’s—’
‘Why would he when you’ve been living like you’ve taken a vow of celibacy?’ Belle demanded with a wry roll of her eyes. ‘A child is going to make everything so much more difficult and complicated for you.’
‘I don’t see why,’ Betsy replied in a fiercely upbeat tone as she tilted her chin. ‘I have a business, a home and a devoted dog. The baby will slot right in there perfectly and life will go on.’
Soon after that, Betsy got up to leave because the emotional turbulence of her day had exhausted her and she was looking forward to getting home and relaxing in front of the fire with Gizmo as a foot warmer. Belle pulled open the drawing room door for her. ‘Oh, before I forget, you’re booked to come to my birthday party a week on Friday. I’ve even arranged a lift for you—’
‘A...lift?’ Betsy repeated in surprise.
‘Chris Morrison. He lives by you and he said he’d be happy to bring you with him, so you won’t even have to stay the night here because he’ll take you home again as well,’ Belle revealed with satisfaction. ‘I passed on your number so that he can contact you to arrange a time.’
‘Who is he?’ Betsy prompted with a frown, recognising how Belle had cleverly boxed her in and made it impossible for her to refuse to attend. Her momentary spark of resentment at being managed, however, evaporated when she pictured herself sitting home alone every night moping. Nik wasn’t moping; no, her soon-to-be ex was regularly linked to society beauties, whom he escorted to clubs, art galleries and opera performances. Indeed, Nik, who had rarely taken Betsy out anywhere after marrying her, had turned into a maddeningly visible male, whose social success was mapped by a trail of revealing photos in gossip columns and both glossy and worthy magazines.
Across the hall in the very act of emerging from Cristo’s study where a couple of brandies had chased the increasing chill from his stomach, Nik had
