‘You brought him here to visit me?’ Betsy questioned, glancing up enquiringly, utterly confused by the dog’s sudden appearance.
‘No, he’s here to stay,’ Nik informed her wryly. ‘He’s not happy away from you.’
‘But he’s your dog,’ she framed uncertainly, gathering Gizmo into her arms and stroking him to calm him down.
‘He was only mine until he met you,’ Nik retorted, compressing his mouth into a sardonic line while he noted as she bent over the dog the slight definitive bounce of her small breasts below her sweater, which told him that she was wearing nothing underneath. He became so hard in that split second that he was in literal pain.
Giving Gizmo back to her was an extraordinarily generous gesture and an astonishing move from a male as cold-blooded and unforgiving as Nik, Betsy reflected in bewilderment while she struggled to understand his reasoning. Unfortunately, Nik might be gorgeous but he was also complicated, impossibly so. She had never had much idea what went on inside his handsome head and once again he had taken her very much by surprise.
Gizmo was a stray, who had been knocked over by Nik’s limousine months before Betsy even met Nik. He had taken the dog to a veterinary surgery for treatment and when nobody came forward to claim him he had asked the vet to try and find him a home. When that had failed, Nik had baulked at the prospect of putting the little dog into a council home for strays where he would ultimately be put down if he still failed to attract a new owner. Against all the odds, Nik had taken in Gizmo himself, introducing the little animal to a roof garden and a life of luxury food, dog walkers and groomers.
While Betsy reflected on Gizmo’s humble beginnings as a stray, Nik was wishing he had stayed safe at the office. Watching Betsy shower affection on his dog filled him with conflicting feelings. He wanted to look at her but he didn’t want to be with her or note the way the sunlight flooding through the windows gleamed over her impossibly pale blonde hair, accentuating her porcelain-perfect skin and haunting blue eyes. He especially didn’t want the intensely sexual arousal currently coursing through his big, powerful body like a runaway train.
‘Thank you from the bottom of my heart,’ Betsy told him with tears in her eyes. ‘I’ve missed him so much.’
Restored to his proper home, Gizmo trotted off cheerfully to explore his old haunts.
Nik studied Betsy with smouldering green eyes and her heart gave a sudden jarring thud.
Betsy knew that look of hunger on Nik’s hard, handsome face and it burned through her like a lightning strike, riveting her to the spot. That light in his stunning gaze told her that he wanted her and she couldn’t stop her body reacting to that lure. An unbearable ache stirred at the apex of her slender thighs and she pressed them tightly together as if she could lock it in and deny it. Her breasts swelled beneath her sweater, making her all too aware of their bareness as her nipples were grazed by the wool.
‘Come into the sitting room,’ she urged, scrambling upright to lead the way as if he were a genuine guest visiting an unfamiliar place. ‘Why didn’t Edna tell me it was you?’
‘I asked her not to. I wanted to surprise you.’
‘Well, you’ve certainly done that,’ Betsy admitted truthfully, struggling to credit that he was actually with her in what had once been the home they shared, even if it did cross her mind that Nik had spent more time in hotel rooms round the globe than he had ever spent with her. But that look he had given her—her thoughts raced back to that, worrying at it like a dog at a bone. Why had he looked at her like that? Surely he could not still find her attractive? Nik had been a less than enthusiastic lover in the last months of their marriage, although, now knowing about the vasectomy as she did, she could finally comprehend his loss of interest. Back then she had only thought of sex in terms of getting pregnant and she had no doubt that he had found her attitude a turn-off. No, don’t think about sex, don’t think about sex, she urged herself feverishly.