by Lynne Graham
Nik let long brown fingers slide through the tumbling mass of chestnut hair spilling across his chest. ‘You’re very quiet.’
A sparkling smile fixed like glue to her reddened lips, Prudence lifted her tousled head. ‘I was just thinking how good you are at all this stuff…now I finally know what all the fuss is about-’
Dazzling golden eyes zeroed in on her, bright as hot sunlight in his lean, darkly handsome face. He frowned, wondering if she was trying to make him laugh to cover her awkwardness. ‘I’m not quite sure those are the sentiments I want to hear from my wife…’
Anger tensed Prudence, for that label always hit her like a cruel taunt, a reminder of what their relationship had not been. She had never felt married and sleeping with Nik didn’t change that. Suddenly she was feeling very much like a woman who had made a major mistake. In a sudden movement she scrambled free of him.
‘What is the matter with you?’ Nik demanded, hoisting himself up against the tumbled pillows, bronzed skin startlingly dark against the delicate white and pink bedlinen.
Snatching up her wrap, Prudence dug her arms into it, desperate to cover up her voluptuous curves. ‘Sharing a bed with me doesn’t make me your wife. It just makes me one more in a long line of women!’ she heard herself toss in furious rebuttal. ‘And you’re not exactly exclusive, are you?’
Nik was poleaxed by that response. He vaulted out of bed but she had already stalked out of the room. In the act of following her, he registered that it was still daylight and that there were no curtains drawn. Quietly cursing up a storm, he began to hurriedly pull on his clothes again.
Her face tight with suppressed emotion, Prudence sidled back into the doorway. ‘I’m sorry I was rude like that. There’s never any excuse for bad manners,’ she said stiffly, refusing to meet his lancing dark golden gaze. ‘But I do still want a divorce-’
Nik was insulted beyond belief by that announcement. ‘Why the hell did you let me take you to bed?’
Prudence almost cringed. ‘I’d really rather not discuss that-’
‘No flannel…you owe me the truth!’ Nik raked back at her rawly.
Wild horses could not have forced Prudence to look at him. Her cheeks scarlet, she compressed her ripe mouth and breathed in very deep. ‘I just wanted to know what it would be like with you. I didn’t think it would be any big deal on your terms.’
In such a rage that he could hardly vocalise, Nik studied her. There she was, all five feet two of her and she was confessing to using him like some stud on trial. ‘I don’t believe you. I don’t believe you still want a divorce either. You still care about me. I think that’s why you gave me your virginity.’
That bold, challenging statement sliced like a sharp knife through every layer of her tender skin. That Nik should confront her with her feelings for him was her worst nightmare come true and she knew she would never forgive him for it. Pride brought up her head, blue eyes defiant and bright. ‘Maybe I was just tired of being a virgin. I don’t still care about you in that way, Nik,’ she asserted. ‘I was infatuated with you when we married but it didn’t last the course. I got over you a very long time ago.’
‘Those scrapbooks sing a different song,’ Nik delivered with a cruel edge he had never used around her before.
Shock at that immediate, unhesitating retaliation made Prudence turn white as snow, nausea stirring in her stomach. ‘I want you to leave. You’re not welcome here any more!’ she told him jerkily. ‘I’m going for a divorce and I don’t need your permission for it!’
‘I forgot to give you your birthday present.’ Nik extended a slim jewellery case as if she hadn’t spoken.
Prudence sucked in a sustaining breath. Curiosity warred with the need to keep him at a distance. Curiosity won. She stared down at the incredibly pretty diamond-studded pendant in the shape of a…? He had the neck to give her a heart when he had smashed her own into a thousand pieces? Eyes burning with boiling tears, she snapped the case shut again and forced it back into his hand. ‘Thanks, but I don’t want it or you…Now go away!’
Slamming the door shut on his exit, she leant back against it and listened to the helicopter taking off again. Anger and pain and despair coalesced inside her. She would probably never see him again. She had insulted him. Everything she had valued about their relationship had been destroyed by a reckless bout of sex. The trust, the respect, the affection were gone. How could she even blame Nik for coming on to her? In her opinion he knew no other way to relate to a woman. But what madness had possessed her? The dull, intimate ache between her thighs made her shamed face burn. The besotted teenager whom she believed she had outgrown had had her swansong after all. But the aftermath of regret was hurting her much more than she could have believed.
It was, she sensed painfully, the end of an era. Eight years ago she had flown out to Greece and her life had been driven off course. Taking back the initiative meant moving on from that past. Swallowing back the dark thickness of tears clogging her throat, she reminded herself why she wanted her freedom back. In a couple of years she might have a child of her own to love and care for but she had to start divorce proceedings first and inform her grandfather of her intentions…
CHAPTER THREE
PRUDENCE UNFURLED THE letter from her solicitor, Mr Bullen, and her expressive eyes widened as she read. ‘I don’t believe it!’
‘What don’t you believe?’ A mug of tea clasped in one hand, Leo paused in the act of shunting Prudence’s two slumbering dogs off the kitchen sofa.
‘Nik!’ Prudence, renowned for her lack of temper and easy, tolerant nature, was pacing the cluttered kitchen in a fever of emotion. ‘My solicitor hasn’t even drawn up my divorce petition yet, but Nik’s fancy legal team have already been in touch with him.’
‘To say what?’ Leo prompted.
‘That Nik has no intention of giving his consent to a divorce…How can he even consider doing that to me? Without his consent, I’ll have to wait five years to get my freedom!’
‘He told you he didn’t want a divorce,’ the blond man reminded her wryly.
Prudence stared fixedly at the old jug on the table. It was stuffed to over-capacity with gorgeous pink and white roses. In fact, there was not a room in the house that was not full of glorious blooms, for Nik had sent her flowers every day of the two weeks that had passed since her birthday. No doubt his PA had organised the extravagant floral schedule, she thought waspishly. On a more personal level, however, Nik had phoned and she had left him talking to the answering machine until frustration drove him into flying down to see her again. The instant she had heard the helicopter hovering overhead she had jumped into her car and driven off. After all, what did she have left to say to him? she had asked herself. Or he to her? Only now was she recognising the flaw in her reasoning and the innate stupidity of practising avoidance tactics on a male as confrontational as Nik.
But Prudence still had no idea why he was behaving as he was. Why was he blocking her desire for a divorce? They had lived separate lives almost from the day of their marriage. She had dismissed the objections he had voiced a fortnight earlier: she had assumed that he was just going through the motions, acting out a conventional concern when he didn’t really care either way. Now she was being forced to accept that Nik meant business. She had gone to bed with him as well. Heated memories of that event made her anxious face colour. Had her weakness, her very willingness hardened his attitude? Had she, in fact, acted as her own worst enemy?
‘Are you still going up to London to attend that lecture later?’ she asked Leo.
He nodded. ‘Why?’
‘If Nik’s free, I might ask you to give me a lift.’
In her bedroom, she dialled Nik direct. ‘Nik? It’s Prudence…’
Nik dismissed the staff surrounding him with a peremptory gesture. A brooding smile forming on his lean, dark face, for he had been expecting her call, he lounged back against his polished granite desk in an attitude of relaxation that would have inf
uriated her had she seen it. ‘How are you?’
‘Not very good actually,’ Prudence confided truthfully. ‘I’ll be in London this afternoon. Could we talk then?’
‘Four o’clock, at my apartment,’ Nik suggested in a tone of the utmost pleasantness. ‘I look forward to seeing you.’
Prudence had had a couple of weeks to calm down and think matters over, Nik reflected. She now knew that there was no question of her gaining a divorce in the short term. So why would she still want to throw away the terrific understanding that they had always shared? Surely she would be more ready to appreciate that he could be a great husband if he chose to be? And that if she had wanted that demonstration eight years ago, she should have behaved like a wife and stayed with him, not run as fast and as far as she could go!
Nik had found it an ordeal to play a waiting game with Prudence for two long weeks. When he met opposition, he liked to act fast and hit back hard. He did not want a divorce. He had said so and she hadn’t listened. But he was reining back his natural aggression in an effort to gently and patiently persuade Prudence round to his viewpoint. He could not credit that she would withstand such a campaign.
He was even willing to concede that he had a credibility problem in the matrimonial stakes. His own lawyers had barely managed to conceal their astonishment when he informed them that he would fight the divorce that his wife was planning every step of the way. And when Theo Demakis had visited to commiserate with him about Prudence’s “stupidity”, Nik had been so disgusted by the abusive way in which the older man spoke of his granddaughter that he had finally told Theo exactly what he thought of him. As a result of that outbreak of frank speech, Nik fully expected to find himself involved in a bitter trade war with Demakis International, for Theo was not the man to take his come-uppance lying down.
When Prudence climbed into Leo’s comfortable car at noon, he was chatting on his mobile phone. She was a patient audience while Leo talked his late friend’s widow, Stella, through what to do with a leaking radiator. It was two years since Leo’s best friend had died of cancer, leaving Stella with three young children. Leo was a regular visitor at her home. Whether he would ever work up the courage to tell Stella that he was madly in love with her was not something Prudence had ever dared to ask, since Leo’s guilty secret was that he had fallen for his friend’s wife long before she became a widow.
‘I was going to call round later…oh, right,’ Leo was saying in a tone of forced joviality. ‘No, of course I don’t disapprove! I think it’s great that you’re going out and about again.’
Leo set aside the phone and ignited the engine. ‘Stella’s going out for a drink with friends.’
‘I heard.’
‘This is just the beginning…she’s a very attractive woman,’ he breathed morosely. ‘She’ll have a boyfriend in no time.’
Prudence said nothing. Leo was in a horrible situation. He could speak up and risk destroying his current relationship with Stella, who might well be horrified by the feelings he revealed. Or he could stay silent and suffer while some other man filled the empty space in her life. There was no easy answer. In the act of giving his arm a sympathetic squeeze, Prudence frowned at the sight of the two men erecting a ‘For Sale’ board at the foot of the farm lane.
‘What on earth are they doing?’ Leo exclaimed.
Prudence got out of the car and tackled the workmen. When she told them that they were putting the sign up at the wrong property she was shown a worksheet that listed her home, Craighill Farm. She used her mobile phone to ring their boss, who suggested she take the matter up with the estate agent.
Leo drove on while Prudence tried to get hold of the agent. He was unavailable. A salesman informed her that Craighill Farm was to be surveyed for the sales brochure the following day. Having pointed out that she lived there and knew nothing about any such arrangement, she requested the name of the supposed vendor and was informed that that was confidential information. Coming off the phone again in exasperation, she sighed. ‘I’ll sort it out with the agent later. Why is it that nobody will ever accept responsibility for a silly mistake?’
Nik lived in a vast London apartment complete with a roof garden and a pool. Prudence had been there lots of times but had never felt at home with its sleek designer furniture, the modern sculptures or wide, echoing swathes of marble floor. Her nerves were on edge long before she even emerged from the lift. Having resisted all urges to dress up until she lost her nerve at the eleventh hour, she was wearing a long brown skirt and a cream gypsy top that was a little too tight for her to relax in. But she would relax, she assured herself staunchly. As long as she suppressed all memory of that unfortunate episode in the bedroom and kept her temper, there was every chance that she could recapture her former easy-going relationship with Nik.
‘Prudence…’ All cool and sophistication in a light grey business suit, Nik crossed the imposing lounge to greet her. He looked shockingly handsome: lean, mean and darkly magnificent.
Attacked from within by a flashing recollection of him stripping by the side of her bed, Prudence turned scarlet and froze to the spot.
Nik closed a lean hand over hers and walked her back across the room with breathtaking assurance. ‘You look sexy in that top-’
‘Don’t say stuff like that!’ Prudence told him in consternation.
Nik came to a slow halt and gazed down at her, the dense black fringe of his lashes accentuating the flaring gold of his eyes. ‘Everything’s different. You can’t pretend it didn’t happen-’
‘Yes we can if we want to!’
His golden eyes smouldered. ‘But I don’t want to forget the longest, hottest climax I’ve ever had,’ he spelt out succinctly. ‘In fact, I would much prefer to-’
Aghast at his candour, Prudence planted a harried forefinger in a silencing gesture against his full lower lip. ‘Please…’
Nik ran the tip of his tongue down her finger into the palm of her hand while she stood there transfixed and trembling. Her breasts rose and fell with the rapid, shallow breaths she was taking and she was unbearably conscious of the tingling tightening of her nipples inside her bra. She could not credit what he was doing to her. She was both appalled and fascinated. He curled her fingers into his, lifted his arrogant dark head and breathed huskily, ‘So I want to go to bed and you want to talk-’
In a heroic effort to fight her own helpless craving, Prudence stepped away from him. ‘I’m only here because you told your lawyers you won’t consent to a divorce.’
‘So which part of that did you misunderstand?’ Nik enquired with insolent assurance. ‘I have no intention of changing my mind.’
‘But why?’ Prudence demanded helplessly. ‘I can’t understand why.’
‘When I married you, I married you for life. You’re my wife. I will not willingly let you divorce me. Of course, I will have no choice in five years-’
‘But you can’t ask me to put my life on hold for five years!’
A slow-burning smile curved Nik’s lean, strong face. ‘I’m not. I believe I’m an improvement on a sperm bank…’
Angered by that crack, she threw back her head, glossy brown hair tumbling back from her flushed face. ‘You may like to think so-’
‘I know so. Of course, it’s a moot point if there’s another man involved in your wish for a divorce,’ Nik purred very softly, his entire attention welded to her.
‘Is that what this is all about? You think that you might be in some sort of macho competition? Why can’t you accept that I simply do not want to be married to you any longer?’ Prudence slung at him with fierce sincerity.
‘But you’ve never been married to me in the normal sense of the word,’ Nik contended in a tone of cold implacability that was new to her.
Prudence could feel emotion swelling inside her like a dangerous riptide. Keeping her back straight, she walked over to the window, striving with all her might to appear controlled and composed. ‘And I don’t want to be. We were friends.
I liked that. But that’s it; that’s as much as I can handle!’
Tears were prickling the backs of her eyes but she had complete faith in what she was telling him. Nik needed a wife who would be content with a superficial show of marital togetherness and turn a blind eye to his mistresses. A wife who would accept money and status in place of his heart or his attention. Prudence knew that she was not capable of taking on that role. He was a bred-in-the-bone womaniser with a taste for gorgeous supermodels whom no average woman could ever hope to rival. He would be unfaithful and she would not be able to bear it. It would destroy her…he would destroy her if she was not strong enough to resist him. That was why she would not allow herself to be tempted by the illusion of the real marriage that he was offering her.
‘You slept with me. That changed the rules of the game,’ Nik delivered with razor-edged cool.
An odd little shiver ran down her spine. She stole a glance at him, clashed with scorching golden eyes and felt a tiny twist of heat low in her pelvis. ‘It’s not a game-’
‘The way you’re behaving makes it feel like one. Have you any idea yet whether or not you’re pregnant?’ Nik asked levelly. ‘Or is it too soon to tell?’
That casual question threw Prudence into a startled loop. ‘Pregnant?’ she parroted in shock. ‘You mean you didn’t-?’
‘When you let me take you to bed, I naturally assumed that an ongoing marriage was a done deal.’ Nik studied her with steady golden eyes and she squirmed and lowered her lashes in guilty self-defence. ‘You told me how much you wanted a baby, so I saw no point in using contraception.’