Christakis's Rebellious Wife

‘What are you doing here?’ Betsy asked, striving this time around to be cool and sensible in her reaction to his arrival. ‘Couldn’t you at least have called to say that you were coming?’

A hairy mop of dog provided an interruption by hurling himself cheerfully against Nik’s legs in welcome.

‘Gizmo...’ Betsy scolded.

‘He must like having us both in the same place again,’ Nik pronounced, actually laughing and reaching down to pet a flyaway doggy ear.

‘Well, he’ll be disappointed then when you leave again,’ Betsy remarked tightly. ‘Honestly, Nik, you should’ve phoned to at least mention that you would be visiting—’

Nik frowned. ‘Could we have a word in private?’ he was careful to enquire.

Glancing behind him, her brow furrowing in bemusement when she registered that the removal men were actually opening up the back of their lumbering behemoth of a truck, Betsy murmured, ‘Of course. Has something happened?’

‘Nothing you need to worry about,’ Nik asserted, a lean brown hand settling into the indent of her slender spine as he urged her in the direction of the drawing room and, having got her there, he prudently closed the door.

‘So, something has happened,’ Betsy assumed, searching his lean, darkly beautiful features, recognising his tension and constraint in growing dismay.

Nik breathed in slow and deep. Moving back in had seemed so simple a solution when he had thought of it but, faced with Betsy’s sheer bewilderment at his appearance, it suddenly seemed rather more complicated than that. Cristo had urged him to go and talk to her first but Nik had wanted to avoid drama and the unthinkable possibility of rejection. Presenting Betsy with a fait accompli and checking out his legal position in advance had impressed him as a more workable and efficient approach. After all, he didn’t warn a company that he was about to take over what he was planning to do in advance, did he?

‘Why aren’t you saying anything? You’re scaring me... What’s wrong?’ Betsy gasped, her nervous tension reaching an unbelievable high. ‘Are Cristo and Belle all right?’

‘Of course they are.’ Nik scanned his wife in a swift all-over appraisal that missed not a single detail of her jeans-clad, relaxed appearance. She still didn’t look pregnant and he wondered when her tiny, slender proportions would show change. He glanced away, colour lining his cheekbones, marvelling at the amount of instant hunger coursing through him. Evidently she owned the key to his libido, or perhaps it was just that he was an exceptionally faithful married man with some mental kink that had prevented him from seeking release with another woman even during a legal separation. With some relief he reached for that practical explanation.

‘Nik...what is it?’ Betsy pressed worriedly, stiff as a walking stick as she stood in front of him.

‘I’m moving back in.’ Nik let the announcement hang there and watched Betsy’s mouth fall open to display two rows of small pearly-white teeth. ‘I’ve decided to come home—’

Betsy almost fell over in shock. In fact her head swam and her ears buzzed as those words rhymed back and forth inside her head and she refused to credit them. ‘I beg your pardon?’ she said limply.

‘I want to come home,’ Nik spelt out in case she had yet to get the message. ‘Make a go of our marriage again...’

He’s certifiably insane, Betsy decided dizzily. The last time he had seen her she had been screaming at him and now, all of a sudden and without the smallest warning, he was telling her he wanted to come back and live with her again. And, worst of all, he spoke as if such a far-reaching decision were entirely one-sided and his alone to make.

‘You mean...that removal van out there—?’

‘Ne...yes. It’s mine,’ Nik admitted, relieved that she had finally understood without him having to spell anything out in greater or potentially embarrassing detail. ‘Don’t worry, you won’t be put out in any way. I called Edna and warned her—’

‘You phoned our housekeeper to tell her you were moving back in and you didn’t tell me?’ Betsy demanded in a charged voice, thinking that the arrival of his possessions was a great deal less perplexing than his own arrival, only he didn’t seem to grasp that obvious little fact.

‘Only an hour ago,’ Nik confided as though that might mitigate the offence.

Betsy breathed in so deep that her head swam again and she studied him in disbelief. ‘Nik...you can’t just decide you want to try again at our marriage without discussing it first with me,’ she pointed out a little shakily, hysteria gathering somewhere deep inside her chest because she just could not believe what she was hearing.

‘I’m discussing it with you now,’ Nik countered levelly, strolling over to the blazing fire. ‘I want you to be pleased.’

It wasn’t the first time in their relationship Nik had told her how she ought to feel before she could decide on her own account, so she wasn’t surprised by that seemingly careless aside. ‘Nik...you left eight months ago. This is my house and home now—’

Nik swung back round, lean, strong face taut. ‘No, it’s not. The settlement papers have yet to be signed. The hall still belongs to me—’

‘Oh, that’s all right, then,’ Betsy told him with spirited sarcasm. ‘I’ll just pack up me and Gizmo and sleep on Belle’s couch! I’m sure she’ll squeeze us in somewhere—’

‘What on earth are you talking about?’ Nik demanded darkly. ‘Why would you leave now that I’ve moved back in again?’

‘We are getting a divorce, Nik,’ Betsy reminded him doggedly, wondering on what planet his reasoning had been formed. ‘You can’t just move back in and spring a reconciliation on me without my agreement—’

‘I don’t want a divorce. We have a son or a daughter on the way and we should be together to raise him or her,’ Nik informed her without fanfare.

‘Ideally speaking...’ Betsy comme