the light in which he saw her even worse?
Had he guessed even before she married him how she felt about him? Had he worked out that his weapon of choice was so stupid that she had fallen in love with the blackmailing, ruthless, seven-letter-word of a man who had used her to strike a blow against his enemy?
Ella cleared her dry throat with difficulty. ‘So, you had second thoughts about what you had done.’
‘I felt bloody guilty!’ Nikolai fired back at her in a forceful rush. ‘Of course, I did. It may have taken me a while but I did eventually come to my senses and appreciate that what I had done to you was absolutely wrong on every level.’
Ella was unimpressed by those strong words.
‘And is that why you made the biggest sacrifice you could think of and married me?’ she prompted, her distress threatening to break through the false composure of shock. ‘Because you were way too smart for your own good! Presumably you never planned for this marriage to last either. Well, you shot yourself in the foot bedding a virgin, Nikolai!’
‘What are you talking about?’ It was Nikolai’s turn to look bewildered.
‘A virgin has to be more likely to make a mistake concerning the efficiency of her birth control,’ Ella contended, her chin tilted at an aggressive angle because she definitely didn’t want to him to get the impression that she was ashamed or embarrassed or even slightly apologetic. ‘I made a mistake and I’m pregnant...so sorry that doesn’t fit in with your cruel, nasty, callous plans!’
His luxuriant black lashes dipped and then slowly rose again, revealing the sudden glitter in his dark eyes. ‘Pregnant?’ Nikolai breathed in a driven undertone, a sudden inner tide of relief making him feel almost dizzy.
If she was pregnant, he had a whole new line of reasons to argue why she should stay with him. Pregnant, he thought again, only dimly recognising the level of his own astonishment. A baby. His baby. After all the hints his great-aunts had dropped and he had studiously ignored, Dido and Dorkas would be ecstatic at that information.
‘And the good news is,’ Ella suddenly spat at him without warning, while his brain was still wandering all over the place in a most unfamiliar way, ‘you don’t owe me anything! The way I see it, you married me under false pretences, so we’re not married!’
Ella wrenched at the rings on her wedding finger and flung them at his feet with bitter satisfaction. Turning on her heel, she sped off. She could feel herself coming apart like wet shredded paper inside herself and she had no intention of coming apart in front of him. She wasn’t a victim; she refused to be a victim; she was strong. There was nothing Nikolai Drakos could throw at her that she couldn’t handle, she told herself staunchly as she walked fast down the hill towards the beach.
Nikolai crouched down and lifted up her wedding and engagement rings. He was taken aback to register that his hand was shaking. He dug the rings into the pocket of his tight faded jeans. His baby. His baby needed her the same way he needed her. But would she be better off without him? That was a deeply wounding thought for him and he shook it off. He could be what she wanted him to be; he could deliver what she wanted him to deliver for both her and the baby. He would fight to keep her but he just didn’t know what to say to her. He genuinely didn’t know how to persuade her to stay. Ironically Nikolai had much more experience at ditching women. After all, he had never wanted to keep one for ever before.
And unhappily for him, Ella had scruples and standards and he had stomped roughly over all of them. He didn’t deserve a second chance. He knew that, but admitting that he didn’t deserve a second chance to her would only reinforce the wrong, negative image, he reasoned painfully. The apology front didn’t look very promising either because sorry could never begin to cover the damage he had done.
Ella kicked off her shoes when she reached the shore and sank her toes into the hot sand. But her soles burned and she took off in haste for the cooler sand at the water’s edge. There the sea looked so temptingly cool that she walked out into it until the lapping water was right up to her knees. She was breathing as fast as a marathon runner and her heart was pounding like mad. Calm down, she urged herself, you’re pregnant.
But there was a giant ball of pain ready to explode inside Ella. Nikolai had taken her dreams and torn them apart. Once again she had placed her faith and her hopes in the wrong man. What was it about her? Was she more naive than other women? Fatally attracted to the wrong types? And yet there was not an iota of similarity between Paul and Nikolai, so how could she have known?
Well, of course she should have known, another, more negative voice told her. She had gone for the fairy-tale version, hadn’t she? This idea that she was so irresistible to Nikolai Drakos that he would track her down after that single meeting in the car park and settle her father’s debts simply to get her into his bed? As if! And what sort of woman fell for the kind of guy that would blackmail a woman into his bed? And how on earth had she fallen for him?
By the time, Ella reached that point in her attack of self-loathing she was sobbing and the tears of heartbreak were coursing down her cheeks. Where had the love come from? He had been so distraught, so devastated by that fire, and everything warm and caring in her had loved that in him. She had suddenly seen that the cool, detached male he pretended to be existed no place except inside his own head and the façade he wore to the world.
Only, sadly, it had not occurred to her that behind his grief for the bar manager’s death at his hotel lurked a male willing to break every rule of decency and wreck a perfectly innocent woman’s life in an effort to destroy an admittedly very nasty man. And he had wrecked it, Ella reasoned bitterly. He had allowed her to think that she was special to him, that he cared about her even if he hadn’t given her the actual words. Didn’t everyone know that most men were wary of saying the fatal words that could lead to permanent commitment?
Even so, leave it to Nikolai to find a novel slant... I want to keep you.
I owed you. Dear heaven, the pain of hearing that sentiment would haunt her to her dying day. So, his guilty conscience had made him offer her a wedding, a ring and the luxury of his wealth. And now here she was standing out in the sea like an idiot, she thought with another sob. It was her moment of truth, she dimly recognised. Once again she wasn’t going to get the fairy-tale happy ending. Had Nikolai faked absolutely everything?
Well, he hadn’t faked the sex or the insatiability factor on that front but what was that worth? He had got cuddlier too. He was actually hugging now without prompting, reaching for her hand, touching her, always touching her just like a besotted new husband could be expected to do. Was that all a lie as well? Some sort of a convincing act? She wiped her face with trembling hands, suddenly cold in the sunlight. He didn’t love her. He hadn’t moved heaven and earth to find her again or to make her his and only his. He had pursued and entrapped her only to punish Cyrus. That was always going to be her bottom line.
Nikolai saw her standing in the sea and sheer panic controlled him. Later he didn’t remember running down the hill, racing through the orange groves and taking a flying leap down onto the beach instead of following the path. He waded out into the water and snatched her up into his arms just as the sound of his splashing approach began to turn her head.
Bronze-coloured hair fell down over his arm. Slightly pink-edged green eyes gazed up at him in astonishment. ‘What are you doing?’
Nikolai couldn’t find his voice. He strode up the beach and sank down on the steep edge of the path with Ella still tightly cradled in his arms.
‘Let me go!’ she exclaimed.
‘Not
