by Lynne Graham
‘Max put you at risk. I can’t close my eyes to that and whether I hire or fire anyone I employ is not your business,’ he completed in a tone of cold finality.
Ella was undaunted, her eyes gleaming like polished emeralds. ‘Oh, I would think that the hiring or firing of staff in the marital home would be very much my business as your wife.’
‘But at present it is not our marital home and you are not my wife as yet,’ Nikolai pointed out in stubborn challenge. ‘The responsibility remains mine.’
‘If you want it to be our marital home and you want me to be your wife you will listen to me,’ Ella told him in raw frustration. ‘You’re being unfair to Max. I hadn’t the faintest idea that Cyrus was liable to turn violent like that, so how was Max supposed to know? How were any of us supposed to know that?’
And that was the crux of the matter, Nikolai reflected with bitter acceptance. Everything that had happened was his fault. Only he had known that Cyrus could be dangerous. He had never dreamt, though, that Cyrus would dare to approach Ella when she was staying with Nikolai. But then very probably Cyrus had heard about the hotel fire and had assumed that that particular morning Nikolai would be otherwise engaged. Nikolai knew that he should have warned Max never to let Cyrus Makris into his home but that possibility hadn’t even crossed his mind. When he had realised that Cyrus was there, when he had found Cyrus attacking Ella, the world had turned blood red for Nikolai. He knew that if Ella had not intervened, he would have kept on hitting Cyrus and in the aftermath he had been looking for someone to blame for an untenable situation. Someone, anyone other than his own self, he acknowledged with a fierce regret that he could never have expressed.
In the smouldering silence, Ella studied Nikolai. She knew he was thinking hard and fast and deep but typically he was not sharing a single thought. ‘You said you wanted to make me happy. I like Max. You were exhausted that day after the fire. That ghastly episode with Cyrus upset you more. Don’t make Max carry the can for something that wasn’t his fault.’
‘If I’m in the wrong I will change my decision,’ Nikolai declared in a driven undertone.
‘And why have I suddenly got a driver and a bodyguard the size of a mountain?’
Nikolai breathed in slow and deep and wondered if this was what marriage promised to be like. Would Ella challenge his every decision? He made his own choices and he always stood by them but suddenly he was being faced with the need to compromise, the need to defend or reconsider his black-and-white thinking processes. It would be a steep challenge to become less rigid and more flexible for her sake.
Making Ella happy and keeping her happy would be no cake walk.
‘I won’t apologise for hiring a bodyguard for your benefit. It is my responsibility to keep you safe and I take it very seriously,’ Nikolai assured her confidently. ‘I will not take the risk of Cyrus approaching you again.’
‘Do you really think that is likely?’ Ella pressed in astonishment.
‘He was off his head with rage that day. I don’t think that we can afford to assume that he will keep his distance. I prefer to ensure that you are protected when I’m not around.’
Ella searched his lean, hard features and the lack of compromise etched in his strong bone structure. She suppressed a sigh.
‘I will consider retaining Max but I will not reconsider my decision to hire a driver and a bodyguard,’ Nikolai admitted with flat emphasis. ‘Quit while you’re ahead, Ella.’
‘We still have so much to learn about each other,’ Ella whispered ruefully. ‘Am I stressing you out?’
His dark golden eyes glittered. ‘I have strong shoulders.’
Nikolai was all male as he stood there straight and tall and tough. He wasn’t about to admit that he had made a mistake with Max but she knew she had won because Nikolai had a strong streak of fairness. But in pushing that issue, she had crossed a line with Nikolai and she recognised that as well. She had forced him to acknowledge her as an equal, not as a weak or lesser person, and he wouldn’t forget that.
Nikolai surveyed her, his wide sensual lips set in a hard line. He would take no risks with her safety and he didn’t care if that infringed her freedom. If anything happened to her he would never forgive himself. She was his to look after. Only a couple of weeks back he hadn’t recognised the level of responsibility he was taking on by bringing her into his life but he did now.
Ella first, second and third...by the time she met a nice young man in welly boots he would probably be relieved to graciously step back and hand her over. At least that was supposed to be his real goal, Nikolai conceded with brooding ferocity. Familiarity was supposed to lead to contempt. Responsibility was supposed to make a man long for freedom. If she met another man, would he then return to normal?
He was grimly conscious that in some peculiar way he had changed from the moment he saw Ella again. His legendary cool control was under attack. His mind was no longer his own. Ella sneaked into his thoughts far more often than was reasonable and he was already regretting having loftily declared that they would live apart until the wedding.
Indeed, so disturbing were the changes that he recognised in himself that he felt almost at the mercy of reactions and thoughts and anxieties that he had suppressed for years. That slight hint of instability totally unnerved him and made him feel like a man on the edge of a precipice. Even worse, the threat of seeing Ella with another man clenched every muscle in his body with aggression. Right at this very moment he knew he couldn’t face that possibility, but surely with time those responses would fade?
It would be so simple. He would get used to having her around. He would get bored; she would get bored. She would want her freedom back and he would let her go...wouldn’t he?
CHAPTER EIGHT
‘SO, ARE YOU putting in a replacement now?’ Ella prompted the nurse who was engaged in removing the old contraceptive implant from her arm.
‘Dr Jenks only asked me to remove this one,’ the older woman responded cagily.
Perhaps her doctor thought she was suffering side effects from the implant, Ella reasoned wryly. That would mean looking at other contraceptive methods. Hopefully one without side effects, she thought ruefully, because she had only come to see the doctor in the first place because she wasn’t feeling herself. Not ill exactly, just not right. Her appetite had changed, her taste buds had gone awry and she was suddenly so blasted tired all the time! He had sent her for a battery of tests the day before and made a second appointment for her.
Ella was grateful she had come home, which had enabled her to see her usual doctor rather than having to find a new one in London. She had persuaded Nikolai that she wanted to be married from home, so that family and friends could easily attend, and tomorrow was the big day. She still couldn’t quite believe it but there was something that felt very right about the reality that she literally couldn’t wait to get down the aisle to become Nikolai’s wife.
‘It’s called love,’ Gramma had told her cheerfully. ‘I’d have been worried if you weren’t excited about getting married to him.’
Resisting the urge to rub her slightly sore arm with its neat little plaster, Ella returned to the doctor’s surgery. She was thinking about her wedding dress, which she adored, when one of the doctor’s measured words finally penetrated her wandering concentration. Conceived...conceived? Her mind went blank as though the word were foreign because the very unexpectedness of it threw rationality out of the window.
‘But I had the implant!’ she bleated, hands abruptly closing very tightly together on her lap.
‘As I pointed out, the implant is only effective for three years and you missed your follow-up appointment and failed to respond to the letter that was sent out.’
‘But it is only three years since—’ she began heatedly.
Dr Jenks went through the dates with her. In fact,
it turned out to be over four years since she had got the implant and she had the vaguest recollection of the reminder letter he mentioned. After Paul had passed away, contraception had been very low on the list of her priorities. But Ella was still stunned to appreciate that when she had lost her virginity with Nikolai she had not been protected as she had naively assumed. Her main mistake had been the assumption that the implant lasted for four years when in fact it only worked for three. And she had conceived. Nikolai was going to be shattered...but Ella was equally convinced that she would never recover from the shock either.
Until that moment Ella had believed that total honesty between partners was the only way to go. And then without the smallest warning, she found herself changing her mind. Floating down the aisle to Nikolai and announcing almost simultaneously that she was pregnant would absolutely ruin the day. He would be taken aback, unprepared, stressed out by the news because Nikolai was a planner, who liked everything in its place, everything clean and tidy. And there was nothing clean or tidy about an unplanned pregnancy when they would be only newly married and looking forward to the unfettered joys of coupledom. In addition he had been quite blunt about only wanting to become a parent in a few years’ time.
They were flying to Crete after the wedding to stay at the house Nikolai owned there. She would tell him on the island, when he was relaxed and better able to handle an unforeseen development. Pregnant! Ella drove back home and reflected that her own mother must have suffered a similar shock when she realised that she was pregnant. Ella, after all, had not been a planned baby either and her arrival had threatened to derail her mother’s career plans. Soon after her birth, however, her mother had flown off to take up her top job, leaving her infant daughter behind with her father and grandmother. To walk away had been her choice. What if Nikolai felt so strongly about not starting a family that he chose to walk away too? No, that was the absolute worst-case scenario, Ella told herself firmly. He had said that he was willing to have a family eventually and there was nothing wrong with holding back on telling him her news. It wasn’t as though she would be telling him any lies, she was simply delaying telling him, she reasoned defensively.
Ella knew that once again her own plans would be forced back on hold because it would be incredibly difficult for her to adequately complete her training while she was pregnant. But she knew too that sometimes it was necessary to make the best one could of a life change that came as a surprise. It would only be a bad development if she allowed herself to think that it was. All right, she conceded, the timing wasn’t what she would have chosen but she had always wanted children. She thought of all the worse things that could have happened, imagining how she would have felt had she had trouble conceiving, and before very long her dismay subsided entirely. As for Nikolai? She would wrap up her news like the gift she believed it to be and present it to him at the best possible moment.
* * *
‘You look so beautiful,’ Gramma enthused warmly as Ella twirled at the foot of the stairs.
Her father was misty-eyed at the picture his daughter made in her lace wedding gown. The gorgeous lace was her only adornment because Ella, conscious of her diminutive height, had opted for a plain design that bared only her back while encasing her arms and slender body in sleek lace. On her feet she rocked a considerably less conservative set of strappy, very high-heeled lace ankle boots, teamed with stockings and a garter. Nikolai liked boots and Ella was in the mood to give her bridegroom boots.
She hadn’t breathed a word about her pregnancy since she left the surgery. She felt that announcement should first be heard by her baby’s father. They travelled to the little local church in the limo Nikolai had sent, her bodyguard bringing up the rear in his own vehicle. The church was full and she walked down the aisle slowly on her father’s arm, noting all the unfamiliar faces on Nikolai’s side of the church and thinking it sad that he had not a single relative to grace those pews. She had, however, from the letters and cards she had found in the town house, discovered that Nikolai’s grandfather had twin sisters still living on the island of Crete, where the Drakos family had originated, and she wondered if Nikolai would make use of that information.
Nikolai watched his bride approach with bated breath. His brain told him there was no such thing as perfection but he saw only perfection, from the sleek coil of Ella’s bronze hair to the fine-tuned delicacy of her figure encased in exquisite lace. It had been less than a week since he had seen her but it felt like a lot longer. Thee mou, he couldn’t sleep for wanting her and, as he had so frequently told himself, getting married meant an end to cold showers and wondering where she was, who she might be with and what she was doing. He watched her drift towards him with keenly appreciative eyes of possession and pride.
Ella smiled at the altar, looking up into those melted-caramel eyes, admiring the smooth angle of his strong jawline, the jut of his nose and the high cheekbones that lent his lean, darkly handsome features such electrifying magnetism. The ring went onto her finger and she thought about the baby with a deep inner sense of happiness. Since she had found out so early it would be ages until she started showing and she had plenty of time before she needed to worry about telling Nikolai that he was going to be a father.
They travelled to the hotel where the reception was being staged. ‘You have a lot of friends,’ she remarked.
‘Mostly business acquaintances,’ he corrected. ‘While you seem to have hundreds of cousins.’
‘Dad has five sisters,’ she reminded him.
‘My very best wishes. I’m Marika Makris, Cyrus’s sister.’ A middle-aged brunette wearing a superb diamond necklace introduced herself to Ella while the bridal couple circulated amongst their guests before the wedding breakfast was served. Nikolai had mentioned in passing that Marika would be attending and she knew that the older woman had been estranged from her brother for years, so there should be nothing uncomfortable about the meeting.
‘Ella... Drakos,’ Ella framed and laughed. ‘It’s so hard to say a different name but Nikolai very much wanted me to take his name.’
‘Naturally, you are Nikolai’s crowning triumph,’ Marika informed her with a smug little smile.
‘Well...thank you,’ Ella responded after a blank pause in which no inspiration came to mind.
‘Nikolai and Cyrus have been enemies for so long that my brother forgot to watch his back,’ the brunette remarked sagely before drifting on at a regal pace.
Ella blinked in bewilderment. Enemies? Since when had Nikolai and Cyrus been enemies? She knew they didn’t get on, but thought they were just business rivals. But enemies spoke of something much deeper between them. Both men were Greek, which she supposed was the connection. Resolving to ask Nikolai about that comment later, she took her seat for the meal.
After eating, she went to the cloakroom to repair her make-up. As she paused at a crowded corner to allow people to pass her by she heard a woman say loudly, ‘What I want to know is what does she have that the rest of us don’t? Nikolai is the original ice man and he ditched all of us in record time!’
Ella’s brows rose. ‘Ditched all of us?’ Who was she eavesdropping on? The ex-girlfriends’ club?
‘She is beautiful,’ another female voice opined regretfully.
‘She’s the size of a shrimp!’ someone else objected. ‘But she must have some very special quality for him to be marrying her.’
‘Maybe she’s a wildcat in bed,’ the first voice suggested.
‘Maybe he’s finally fallen in love,’ the kinder voice that had described Ella as beautiful remarked.
There was an outbreak of female voices at that point. ‘If pigs could fly!’ was one of the few repeatable opinions expressed.
Lifting her chin and gathering her pride, Ella rounded the corner and passed the small group of fashionably dressed women all waving glasses around and talking loudly. Even a cursory gla
nce in their direction was sufficient to warn her that Nikolai had very good taste and while Nikolai had apparently dumped those women they were all attending the wedding with partners. How naive she had been not to be prepared for the reality that Nikolai was almost certain to have former lovers attending, she thought wryly.
She studied herself in the mirror. A shrimp? Well, compared to those tall, shapely ladies outside she was indeed a shrimp in size, she conceded ruefully. Seemingly Nikolai had once had a particular type he went for because all those women were blonde. So where did she fit in? And why had he married her? She could not help recalling Cyrus’s claim that Nikolai was notoriously badly behaved with women. Possibly that had been true, Ella reasoned, but people could change...couldn’t they?
‘You’re as stiff as a fence post,’ Nikolai groaned as they opened the dancing, something Ella was not very confident about doing in front of an audience. ‘And you’re very quiet. Naturally I’m worried.’
‘How many ex-girlfriends of yours are here today?’
His wide shoulders tensed. ‘A couple, and only because they’re now married to friends of mine. Why? Has someone said something they shouldn’t?’
‘Don’t talk down to me like I’m a child!’ Ella snapped into his chest, feeling distinctly shrimp-like in spite of her heels.
‘If you won’t tell me what’s wrong there’s nothing I can do about it.’
‘There’s nothing wrong,’ Ella declared loftily, drinking in the scent of his cologne and the husky, intrinsic smell that was purely him and which warmed her somewhere down deep inside. There was no way on earth she was about to allow insecurity to drive her into arguing with him on their wedding day. ‘But be warned. I’m the jealous type. And I may be small but I’m lethal.’
‘I knew that already,’ Nikolai confessed, long fingers splaying caressingly across her bare spine as he shifted his lithe hips against her. ‘Lethally appealing and lethally sexy.’