Lynne Graham - The Greek’s Chosen Wife

‘What’s up? What’s happened?’ she questioned.

In answer, Nik tossed the packet of pills at her feet.

Prudence gulped and folded her lips, her guilt and dismay unconcealed. ‘Oh, dear…’

‘Is that all you’ve got to say to me?’ Nik countered grittily.

Prudence floundered and sidestepped that direct question. ‘The packet was in my handbag…how did you get hold of it?’

‘I tripped over your bag in the limo and it fell out.’

Her colour high, Prudence stopped trying to evade the confrontation. She drew in a steadying breath. ‘I had already decided to stop taking them-’

‘And when did you take that momentous decision?’

Prudence reddened because she knew that her answer would not impress him. ‘Last night…’

His thunderous aspect remained undiminished. ‘When did you organise contraception?’

She told him.

‘So, you’ve been lying to me from the minute that we began living together as husband and wife.’

Prudence squirmed but sought to defend herself. ‘That’s a very emotive way of putting it-’

His dark gaze flashed gold and his dark, deep voice was dangerously quiet. ‘And how would you suggest I put it?’

‘As it was …rather than how it is now-’

‘That’s not relevant-’

‘It is. I made that decision in the past-’

‘What’s at stake here is trust,’ Nik delineated.

‘Yes, but the circumstances-’

‘Don’t count.’ His lean, bronzed face was unyielding. ‘You should have told me you were using birth control. That was a matter for us both to discuss. But then that isn’t what this is about, is it? You preferred to go behind my back and deceive me.’

Prudence could feel the outrage he was containing. It was there in the rigidity with which he was holding his lithe, powerful body, in the burnished gold in his eyes and the prominence of his hard, classic cheekbones. She wanted to scream with frustration and regret. Everything had been so wonderful, so perfect, and the future so promising. He need never have known that she was taking those wretched pills. Why on earth hadn’t she immediately disposed of the evidence?

In the midst of that train of thought, she was shocked by other, sneaky ideas travelling through her head. Hadn’t she always believed in complete honesty? What had happened to that? Nik had come back into her life and Nik was more important to her than anything else. That was why she had fallen off the straight and narrow path so fast her head was still spinning. She had wanted to preserve their relationship, not tear it apart.

‘In spite of all the time we were together in Italy, you said not a word about the fact that you were using contraception,’ Nik ground out in the rushing silence.

‘I didn’t think about it, not properly,’ Prudence said defensively. ‘I’ve just been so busy being happy with you-’

‘Really…happy?’ Nik framed in his slick, dark drawl that could be so incredibly sardonic in tone. ‘It was a great act. You wanted a baby, but there was no damned way you were about to risk that baby being mine!’

‘That’s not true and I wasn’t acting-’

‘A couple of months ago, you were willing to go to a sperm bank and choose a stranger to father your child…but I wasn’t good enough-’

‘That’s ridiculous,’ she gasped. ‘I just wasn’t ready to talk about this with you-’

‘You weren’t going to tell me at all. Do you think I don’t realise that?’

Prudence was so tense that her spine was hurting. ‘You’re not being fair, Nik-’

‘How fair were you?’ Nik countered in a wrathful undertone, his impassive façade starting to crack to reveal his cold, seething anger. ‘How fair were you being when you let me believe that we were trying to start a family? I wanted that child for your sake. I could have waited. I didn’t want a child until I realised that that was your biggest dream. Is this how you repay me for trying to give you what I thought you wanted? With lies and deception?’

And that was the precise moment that Prudence truly grasped how much damage she had done to their marriage and she was horrified. The halter she had had on her own emotions snapped beneath that pressure. ‘What choice did you give me at the beginning? I had no idea what to expect from you,’ she protested. ‘You forced me to make our marriage real and I had to protect myself as best I could. I had to think ahead-’

‘ Theos mou …was everything we shared a complete con?’ Nik launched at her rawly. ‘Were you just pretending to be happy as well?’

Her sense of panic increased, for she felt as though she was being boxed into an ever tighter corner. ‘No, of course not. But I didn’t know how things were going to turn out between us before we went to Italy and that’s why I started taking birth-control pills. I couldn’t take the risk of falling pregnant. If I’d had a baby with you, it would have given you even more of a hold over me.’

‘You could have told me that upfront-’

‘I didn’t think about it at the beginning and, by the time I did, it seemed too awkward and controversial-’

His lean, powerful face had hardened. ‘Maybe it gave you a kick to put one over on me.’

Prudence was too worked up to pick and choose her words. ‘Yes, once or twice it did…’

Beneath his bronzed skin, Nik lost colour at that unexpected admission. He rested raw dark eyes on her, aggression leaping from every taut inch of his magnificent body. ‘You are not the woman I thought you were-’

Prudence felt her tummy flip as if she was teetering on the edge of a dangerous chasm. ‘Perhaps I shouldn’t have admitted that and I’m certainly not proud of it but I have feelings, too. I was very angry with you at the start, but I was scared as well-’

‘Scared?’ Nik interrupted wrathfully. ‘You have never in your entire life had cause to be scared of me!’

‘How about when you told me my animals could go hang if I didn’t agree to give our marriage a trial?’

Nik shrugged an elegant shoulder and spread expressive lean brown hands in denial of that reminder. ‘It was just an empty threat, part of the negotiations. I knew right from the start that you would give in. Believe me, I would never have allowed any harm whatsoever to come to your animals.’

‘I’d like to say that I believe you, but I can’t. You’re not the world’s most compassionate person, Nik. Once I wouldn’t accept that side of you. I idealised you and it was very foolish of me,’ Prudence confided unhappily. ‘After all, your reputation always said you were a bastard…and when I crossed you, I discovered that you were much more callous than I had ever wanted to appreciate.’

In receipt of that ringing indictment of his character, Nik had gone very still. He was shocked; he had enjoyed her romantic view of him as almost perfect. A very faint darkening of colour demarcated the slashing line of his fabulous cheekbones and then it faded, leaving him unusually pale. ‘That’s not how I am-’

‘It’s the only way you know how to be. You’re tough and incredibly domineering, Nik. You just lay down the law, you demand, you expect-’

Nik rested brilliant dark eyes of reproach on her. ‘That is not how I behaved in Italy. That is not how I treat you, thespinis mou .’

The hostility in the air and the taste of her own fear for the future scared Prudence but she refused to back down. ‘I agree…but that still doesn’t change how this marriage started out last month. Why are you trying to ignore the facts? You coerced me into doing what I didn’t want to do…just as my grandfather once did…and there was no way I was going to sit back and take that again!’