enough, that acknowledgement banished all the razor-edged regrets attacking him.
Cristo’s wife, Belle, phoned when they were walking back through the airport.
‘Where the heck have you been?’
‘Greece. Nik flew me to Athens to see an obstetrician.’
‘As you do,’ Belle mocked after a disconcerted pause. ‘When will you be home?’
Betsy asked Nik. He veiled his gaze. ‘I don’t plan for us to return immediately,’ he admitted. ‘After what the doctor said I thought a week of rest and relaxation here would be a wiser idea... What do you think?’
The addition of the ‘what do you think?’ question was a groundbreaking improvement from Nik’s domineering corner.
‘I’ll phone you later,’ Betsy told her sister-in-law, and in the VIP travel lounge she sat down beside her husband. ‘Where are you planning on taking me?’
‘The island of Vesos, where I spent my first years in my grandfather’s home.’
Betsy hadn’t known even that small fact about his childhood and even had she been furious with him, which for once she was not, she would not have missed the chance to see the island. In any case she knew Nik well enough to recognise that he was seriously worried about her physical condition and the doctor’s sober pronouncements had filled her with dismay and guilt as well. Obviously she had not been looking after herself and her pregnancy as well as she had dimly imagined.
She felt humbled by that knowledge. After all, she had longed to have a child for so long and here she was gifted with the prospect of two babies and her body wasn’t doing the job it should be doing because she had stressed and fretted, skipped meals and lain awake too many nights. Now she felt duly punished and arguing with Nik was the last thing on her mind. Indeed she was willing to do virtually anything to get her blood pressure back to normal and her condition improved to the level where she could carry a twin pregnancy safely to term.
‘How on earth will Alice cope without me?’ Betsy groaned. ‘There’s deliveries arriving every day—’
‘I’ve already instructed her to hire temporary help to provide cover during your absence.’
‘You think of everything—’
‘No, I don’t. If I did, we wouldn’t be in this situation now. Xenophon was right. We’re both stressed out of our minds. The divorce, the unexpected pregnancy, the constant conflict,’ Nik bit out in a tone of harsh regret. ‘How could we be anything else but stressed?’
‘I’m going to be a lot more sensible,’ Betsy swore.
‘And instead of playing points, I will do what I can to support you, glikia mou.’
* * *
Nik lifted Betsy out of the helicopter as though she were fashioned of spun glass and Betsy suppressed a groan of frustration. Nik in rare conscience-stricken mode was entertaining for a while but she was convinced that the lion’s share of the problems she was suffering were down to her own obstinate refusal to make adjustments to her schedule. She hadn’t felt well but she had kept on pushing herself, determined to maintain the same workload and hours, refusing to consider that her condition might force changes on her usual routine. After all, she knew that most women worked through their pregnancies and had assumed she would be no different, but perhaps she ought to have sought medical advice when the fainting had started and she had realised that she was feeling consistently under par.
Nik set her down below the pine trees, where she breathed in the salt-laden air with a helpless sigh of pleasure and stood gazing down the grassed slope to the pale glistening stretch of beach washed by the surf. ‘It’s beautiful. Where do we stay?’
‘I built a house here.’
‘Did you? I assumed you had inherited your grandfather’s home,’ she said in surprise.
When she glanced at him enquiringly, his lean dark features were clenched hard, his eyes shuttered. ‘I signed it over to my mother, although island life is too quiet for her tastes and I have been told that she only makes occasional use of the property. We flew over it coming in. It’s that sprawling marble monstrosity on the cliffs. Did you notice it?’
‘Yes...the villa with the massive pool area?’
Tight-mouthed, he nodded confirmation with a jerk of his stubborn chin and splayed a hand to the base of her slender spine to lead her through the trees. ‘Lunch should be waiting for us. I want you to eat and go straight to bed—’
‘I’m not an invalid. You know, you never even mentioned that you owned a house here in Greece,’ Betsy reminded him as the trees slowly thinned out and an ultra-modern and graceful white villa surrounded by gloriously colourful gardens appeared in front of them. ‘Especially one so beautiful. Why didn’t you suggest we come here for our honeymoon?’
Nik gritted his even white teeth together, reluctant to admit that his memories of his time on the island had haunted him for years. ‘I originally built the house solely as an investment I intended to sell but I never got around to it. To be frank, I left the island to go to boarding school and, after my grandfather died, I had no good reason to return here—’
‘So not much in the way of sentimental attachment to this place, then?’ Betsy guessed, recognising the taut flex of long fingers against her spine, aware that he was very uneasy beneath the barrage of her questions and wondering why.
But then that was Nik, a fascinatingly complex male, layered with mystery with nothing as you expected and no information granted for free. It had always been that way and she had learned to live with that wall of reserve. When they were first married she had walked in awe of him and his achievements, unable to understand why such a magnificently handsome, clever and wealthy male should choose to marry a lowly waitress when he might have married some rich socialite or successful businesswoman instead. She had never stopped being grateful that he had picked her, which was why she had never felt she had the right to complain when he left her alone so much.
Every paradise has thorns, she had thought, striving to be practical, knowing that many women would have been content simply to have a beautiful home and a string of credit cards at their disposal. Loving him to distraction, however, had made Betsy much greedier for his time and attention. Unfortunately she didn’t think any human being would ever engage his interest to the extent that his business empire did, and wishing for more from him was like wishing for the moon.
Even so, it was unfortunate that Nik’s former inability to grant her much of his personal time should have reminded Betsy of her years in foster care, when she had never been anyone’s priority and her needs had been more often a second thought rather than a first. Nik had left her isolated at Lavender Hall, much as she had been isolated in a series of foster homes without close connections to the other inhabitants or loving carers. In those days, she had wondered if she was inherently unlovable.
They walked into a cool white hall, decorated with lush plants, to be greeted by a pleasant middle-aged housekeeper called Stephania. At the foot of the winding elegant staircase, Nik bent and lifted Betsy into his arms, ignoring her protests.
‘No stairs for you,’ he pronounced drily. ‘If a dizzy spell hit you at the wrong moment you could have a nasty accident.’
‘You always think in worst-case
