She frowned. “What do you mean ‘used them’ against your family?”
“She sold a tell-all story to the press about our relationship. In it she revealed intimate details about my family.”
“What details?”
“About my father’s indiscretions.”
Her heart sank. Oh, Lord. No wonder Nik held such a severe mistrust toward women. No wonder he’d accused her of doing anything she could to hang on to their relationship when a woman had done that to him.
She shook her head. “She is one woman, Nik. One woman out of the greater majority who would never be so vengeful, so spiteful as to do something like that to you. Surely you understand most people are more trustworthy than that?”
“Are they?” A dark brow winged its way upward. “I have never been with a woman who didn’t want me for something, Sofía. Some are simply power hungry. To walk into a room on the arm of a prince holds great appeal. To enjoy my personal fortune in a city like New York does as well. Their intentions might not all have been as vengeful as Charlotte’s, but they all wanted something from me. That’s the way women work.”
Her shoulders stiffened, her gaze raking over his face. “I didn’t.”
He said nothing.
Blood pounded her head. He was never going to believe her. He was always going to paint her with that brush.
She slid off the bed before her anger consumed her. “I’m going to shower.”
“Sofía—”
She waved a hand at him, continuing her headlong flight toward the bathroom. She was almost there when he caught up with her, his fingers digging into her biceps to spin her around. “Thee mou, but you are a recalcitrant creature.”
“Recalcitrant? Are all women children to you, too, Nik?”
He cupped the back of her head, his eyes blazing. “What do you want me to say?”
“I want you to say you know I am different. That you know I could not have planned that pregnancy. That that isn’t me.” She lifted her chin. “Did I ever at any point in our relationship lead you to believe I wanted to hang on to you past our due date? That I wasn’t playing by the rules?”
“That last night,” he said in a clipped tone. “You were different. I think you were getting emotionally attached. You were ending it because you were afraid you were going to get hurt.”
She stared at him. Caught red-handed because it was true.
“You know what, Nik, you’re right,” she agreed, knowing one of them had to end this game of chicken they were playing. “I was ending it that night because I was falling for you. Even though I told myself it was unwise, that I knew the rules, I thought somewhere in us, in that complexity you threw around the other night, we had something special. That it was beyond sex. That we were different. There was no planning. No scheming to make a baby. And that is the truth.”
He said nothing for a long moment, clearly caught off guard. She studied the emotion darkening his eyes. “What’s the matter?” she taunted. “Does it unnerve you that I care? That I think we have the potential to be more?”
“No,” he said, after a long moment. “I think we need more to have a good relationship.”
“Then what?”
He rubbed his palms against his temples. “I think maybe I’ve been wrong.”
“About what?”
“About you. About you engineering this pregnancy. I made that accusation based on experiences, situations I’ve faced which have taught me that people can’t be trusted, Sofía. That I can’t afford to trust people. When I found out you were pregnant, it was a natural assumption for me to think it had been planned, considering how careful we had been never to let that happen. Perhaps not a right one, but the one way I’ve become conditioned to think.”
She crossed her arms over her chest and gave him a mutinous look. “Contraception is not foolproof, Nik. I had no idea the medication I was on would have interfered with it or I would certainly never have suggested what I did.”
“It was my responsibility, too,” he admitted. “I could have used a condom. I didn’t.”
She bit her lip. “Why this sudden change of face? Why now?”
He shook his head. “Because it isn’t you, Sofía. My head’s been a mess from my brother’s death. From everything that’s been thrown at me. I wasn’t thinking straight. When I did start thinking clearly again, it just didn’t seem like you. You are so fiercely independent and honest. It seemed like you were fighting it too hard to have wanted it. But I didn’t have the head space to process those thoughts. I didn’t want to be wrong again and trust someone when I shouldn’t.”