And unhappily for him, Ella had scruples and standards and he had stomped roughly over all of them. He didn’t deserve a second chance. He knew that, but admitting that he didn’t deserve a second chance to her would only reinforce the wrong, negative image, he reasoned painfully. The apology front didn’t look very promising either because sorry could never begin to cover the damage he had done.
Ella kicked off her shoes when she reached the shore and sank her toes into the hot sand. But her soles burned and she took off in haste for the cooler sand at the water’s edge. There the sea looked so temptingly cool that she walked out into it until the lapping water was right up to her knees. She was breathing as fast as a marathon runner and her heart was pounding like mad. Calm down, she urged herself, you’re pregnant.
But there was a giant ball of pain ready to explode inside Ella. Nikolai had taken her dreams and torn them apart. Once again she had placed her faith and her hopes in the wrong man. What was it about her? Was she more naive than other women? Fatally attracted to the wrong types? And yet there was not an iota of similarity between Paul and Nikolai, so how could she have known?
Well, of course she should have known, another, more negative voice told her. She had gone for the fairy-tale version, hadn’t she? This idea that she was so irresistible to Nikolai Drakos that he would track her down after that single meeting in the car park and settle her father’s debts simply to get her into his bed? As if! And what sort of woman fell for the kind of guy that would blackmail a woman into his bed? And how on earth had she fallen for him?
By the time, Ella reached that point in her attack of self-loathing she was sobbing and the tears of heartbreak were coursing down her cheeks. Where had the love come from? He had been so distraught, so devastated by that fire, and everything warm and caring in her had loved that in him. She had suddenly seen that the cool, detached male he pretended to be existed no place except inside his own head and the façade he wore to the world.
Only, sadly, it had not occurred to her that behind his grief for the bar manager’s death at his hotel lurked a male willing to break every rule of decency and wreck a perfectly innocent woman’s life in an effort to destroy an admittedly very nasty man. And he had wrecked it, Ella reasoned bitterly. He had allowed her to think that she was special to him, that he cared about her even if he hadn’t given her the actual words. Didn’t everyone know that most men were wary of saying the fatal words that could lead to permanent commitment?
Even so, leave it to Nikolai to find a novel slant... I want to keep you.
I owed you. Dear heaven, the pain of hearing that sentiment would haunt her to her dying day. So, his guilty conscience had made him offer her a wedding, a ring and the luxury of his wealth. And now here she was standing out in the sea like an idiot, she thought with another sob. It was her moment of truth, she dimly recognised. Once again she wasn’t going to get the fairy-tale happy ending. Had Nikolai faked absolutely everything?
Well, he hadn’t faked the sex or the insatiability factor on that front but what was that worth? He had got cuddlier too. He was actually hugging now without prompting, reaching for her hand, touching her, always touching her just like a besotted new husband could be expected to do. Was that all a lie as well? Some sort of a convincing act? She wiped her face with trembling hands, suddenly cold in the sunlight. He didn’t love her. He hadn’t moved heaven and earth to find her again or to make her his and only his. He had pursued and entrapped her only to punish Cyrus. That was always going to be her bottom line.
Nikolai saw her standing in the sea and sheer panic controlled him. Later he didn’t remember running down the hill, racing through the orange groves and taking a flying leap down onto the beach instead of following the path. He waded out into the water and snatched her up into his arms just as the sound of his splashing approach began to turn her head.
Bronze-coloured hair fell down over his arm. Slightly pink-edged green eyes gazed up at him in astonishment. ‘What are you doing?’
Nikolai couldn’t find his voice. He strode up the beach and sank down on the steep edge of the path with Ella still tightly cradled in his arms.
‘Let me go!’ she exclaimed.
‘Not until I know for sure you’re all right.’
Against her cheek she could feel his heart thumping very fast and he was breathing heavily. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’
‘You were standing out in the sea. It scared me,’ he acknowledged gruffly.
‘You think I’d do something silly to myself and my baby over what you’ve done?’ Ella pelted back at him, going from tearful acquiescence to rage in the space of seconds as she finally understood his concern. ‘Are you out of your mind? I spent years watching Paul struggle and fight to live. Life is a very precious thing!’
Nikolai breathed again but he still didn’t want to let go of her. ‘The baby...how long have you known?’
Ella stopped struggling to escape. ‘The day before the wedding I discovered that my implant was old and inactive by the time we...had sex,’ she framed with cold precision.
‘It wasn’t only sex. It was something rather more meaningful.’
‘Says the man who wouldn’t know meaningful from a slap in the face!’
‘Why didn’t you tell me you were pregnant?’ Nikolai persisted, hitting her on her weakest flank. ‘Why, in fact, did you come very close to lying in an effort to deflect my questions about why you weren’t drinking alcohol?’
‘No comment.’ Ella buttoned her lips together.
‘We can just sit here,’ Nikolai conceded in a remarkably level voice.
‘I’m all wet now—and you’re even more wet!’ she cried.
Silence fell, backed by the soft rush and retreat of the surf on the beach.
‘I can’t bear to lose you,’ Nikolai volunteered gruffly. ‘I’ll do anything it takes to keep you.’
‘My goodness, the sex must be stupendous,’ Ella told him acidly, her attention involuntarily on his lean, dark, utterly gorgeous face while she scolded herself for even noticing.
He was beautiful but deceptive like a crisp, glossy apple with a rotten core, she told herself doggedly.
‘It is,’ Nikolai agreed. ‘But we’ve got a lot more than that between us. You know we have.’
‘I don’t know anything about you any more.’
‘I believe that if you stop and really think about it you’ll realise that you know much more than you’re prepared to admit right now. Obviously you know I’m not perfect.’
‘Do you want a slow hand clap or a rousing cheer for that remarkably shrewd deduction?’
Glittering dark eyes assailed hers without warning. ‘Do you want to be dropped back into the sea from a height?’ Nikolai asked, his arms tightening suggestively round her slight body.
Ella closed her eyes tight, feeling a flush sting her tear-stung face and gritting her teeth. He had said he would do anything to keep her but he wasn’t prepared to lie down and be kicked, which was all she wanted to do to him at that moment. She wasn’t feeling forgiving or constructive or even like talking, she was simply feeling hurt. ‘I want to go back up to the house if you won’t leave me alone down here.’
Nikolai expelled his breath and slowly set her down on her own feet, almost as if he was afraid that without his support she might fall over. As he swept up the sandals she had abandoned earlier and painstakingly put them on for her an embittered laugh bubbled in Ella’s throat. She held it in though, thinking she had to support herself, go forward, face the future as it was, not as she had wished and dreamt it might be. As she walked silently back to the house, she was conscious of her exhaustion and knew she needed to lie down. All that emotional turmoil had extracted a high cost in terms of her energy levels.
Nikolai followed Ella upstairs.
‘Going to bed for a while,’ she muttered limply, trying to slam the door in his face.
‘Let me help you...’
Ella swallowed back the bitter comment that nothing he could do or say would help her state of mind. Some pain went too deep to be soothed by even the kindest gesture. He felt guilty and she knew that, recognised that, but she didn’t want to have to deal with his guilt. That was his problem and she had enough to cope with. She pulled off her dress, letting it lie where it fell, shimmied out of her underwear and clambered into the bed naked.
‘Do you want some tea?’ Nikolai suggested, rearranging the duvet over her quite unnecessarily. ‘I can make tea.’
Ella shut her eyes, fatigue dragging her down like a strong current in the sea. She wanted to sleep, she wanted to forget and she couldn’t forget while he was around. ‘No, thanks.’
Nikolai sank down silently on a chair in the corner of the bedroom. She was as white as a sheet and her eyes looked haunted, bruised, hurt. It was what he had most feared and it felt even worse than he had expected because he felt helpless and he wasn’t used to being helpless. But he had had to tell her, he reminded himself heavily; she had deserved the truth rather than some fanciful fiction. It occurred to him that she hadn’t yet heard the whole truth, but then she probably wouldn’t believe him, would she?