‘I’ve just never seen Cristo as fanciable.’ Intercepting Belle’s rather chagrined glance, Betsy smiled wryly. ‘There’s never been anyone but Nik for me.’
Her steps uncertain, Betsy approached the study door and knocked on it before opening it. From the threshold she peered in at the brothers, all three of whom were posed with varying degrees of strain and annoyance etched in their remarkably similar lean features. ‘I think we should go home now,’ she told Nik flatly.
‘Good idea.’ Nik crossed the room with a flash of his long, powerful legs.
‘And when you get there, you should explain some things to Betsy,’ Cristo urged ruefully.
‘That kind of interference is not within our remit,’ Zarif chimed in, his tone one of reproach at that offering of advice.
As he listened to his brothers a line of colour flared along Nik’s high cheekbones and then receded, leaving him curiously pale and extremely tense. Lush black lashes dipped down over his bright eyes as he dropped a protective arm round Betsy’s slim shoulders. ‘Home,’ he agreed with unconcealed relief.
‘Did you apologise to Cristo?’ Betsy prompted as the limousine drew away from the town house.
Nik flashed her a stunned glance. ‘No, I did not. Why would I apologise?’
Betsy breathed in slow and deep. ‘You attacked him—’
‘He got what he deserved,’ Nik countered with caustic bite. ‘It may be a little late in the day that he’s getting it but he did deserve it. You’re my wife and I trusted him with you—’
‘And he never once betrayed that trust,’ Betsy declared, choosing to be tactful rather than point out that during that period of their lives Nik had turned his back on their marriage and left her alone to sink or swim. ‘If it’s true that he did develop some sort of silly crush on me, I had no suspicion of it because he never said or did anything around me that even suggested that.’
‘Never?’ Nik pressed, shooting her a troubled and still-unconvinced appraisal. ‘And how did you feel about Cristo at the time? I had gone, the divorce had started and you were alone but for my brother’s supportive visits.’ He spoke the word ‘supportive’ with deeply derisive emphasis.
‘I was grateful for his support and the fact that he was willing to listen to me rambling on,’ Betsy admitted honestly. ‘I had nobody else to talk to. He was your brother. Talking about you to Cristo didn’t feel disloyal and I knew that anything I said wouldn’t go any further.’
‘I encouraged him to connect with you,’ Nik confided grittily, his jawline clenching hard at the recollection. ‘I had total trust in him. I should have known better—’
‘You encouraged him to be my friend?’ Betsy repeated in surprise. ‘But why?’
Nik shifted uneasily in his corner of the back seat. ‘I wanted to know that you were all right, that you had everything you needed—’
‘But I wasn’t all right,’ Betsy responded in a small, tight voice of commendable restraint. ‘How could I have been? You had refused to even discuss your vasectomy and why you’d had it done and then you simply walked out on our marriage.’
Nik frowned, clearly thinking that evaluation unjust. ‘Because you told me to leave. You said you could never forgive me, never look at me again and that I had killed your love. You said our marriage was over,’ he replied.
Betsy studied his lean, darkly handsome face, taken aback to have her words of many months earlier thrown back at her when she’d least expected to hear them. ‘But that’s just the sort of thing people say when they’re angry and hurt and crazily confused—’
‘Only you can’t afford to say stuff like that to me because I took it all literally and I believed that you meant every word that you said,’ Nik admitted in a raw undertone.
Her brow indented. ‘We should have talked again more calmly back then.’
‘There were issues I wasn’t prepared to discuss with you,’ Nik vented grittily. ‘I’m useless at discussing emotional stuff. If I don’t even know quite how I feel, how am I supposed to know what anyone else is feeling?’
Frustration and bitterness roughened his dark deep drawl and she turned her head away, dropping her eyes, wondering what he was talking about but reluctant to put pressure on him after the upsetting evening they had had. ‘Have you made up with Cristo?’ she asked baldly.
‘Were... Are you attracted to him?’ Nik asked abruptly, his eyes light and bright in the dimness of the car interior. ‘Most women would prefer him to me. I’m darker, rougher round the edges, a lot less smooth.’
Betsy swallowed hard, astonished that Nik could still seem so insecure and marvelling that he was still shaken up by Belle’s revelation to continue feeling suspicious. ‘All I can tell you is that I met the two of you together the same day at the bistro and I never really noticed him. I mean, I realised that there was a guy with you and I eventually worked out that you were brothers, but Cristo might as well not have been there for all the interest he inspired in me,’ she confided quietly. ‘It was you I noticed, you I couldn’t take my eyes off—’
‘And...later?’ Nik pressed, closing a lean brown hand round hers where she had braced it on the leather seat. ‘How did you feel later after our marriage broke down?’
‘That he was my only friend, for listening and not judging. For being there when I needed a shoulder. He was very good to me—’
‘He said I was a rotten husband, that I didn’t treat you properly and that he felt sorry for you,’ Nik breathed harshly. ‘Is it true? Did I treat you badly?’
‘You just travelled a lot and you were very...detached. You never explained anything. But aside of the vasectomy you kept quiet about, I wouldn’t have termed you a rotten husband,’ Betsy said truthfully. ‘I was happy with you most of the time—’
‘But it should have been all of the time,’ Nik fielded grimly. ‘I let you down. But with the exception of your desire for a child, I really thought I was doing OK in the husband category. Unfortunately I’m not perfect, in fact I’m seriously flawed and I’ve done as much as I can to remedy that. But then you’re not quite perfect either. When I realised that you suffered from dyslexia I felt so comfortable with you. At first it was a wildfire physical attraction I felt for you, but once I got to know you and realised that you had restrictions as well, you seemed so perfect for me...’