Christakis's Rebellious Wife(20)

                Once again, Nik had taught her a hard lesson. A woman worthy of being treated like a queen had to maintain standards to exercise that power over a man. When she abandoned those standards, she was infinitely more likely to be treated like a booty call.





                                      CHAPTER FOUR

                ‘BETSY?’ CRISTO’S WIFE, Belle, questioned eagerly. ‘Why haven’t you been answering your phone? Where have you been? What have you been up to?’

                It was a bad moment for her friend to have phoned because Betsy couldn’t concentrate. Betsy sank weakly down on an armchair and contemplated the results of her insane shopping trip to the nearest pharmacy: no less than five separate pregnancy-testing kits. And each and every one of the kits had given her the same answer. Ironically she was deeply familiar with such testing procedures. When she and Nik had still been together, whenever her menstrual cycle had shown the slightest deviation, she had rushed out to buy a test, inwardly praying for a positive result and each and every time she had been disappointed it had broken her heart afresh.

                This time around, however, everything was very different. Betsy had been feeling out of sorts for weeks before she finally went to visit her GP and she had gone there without the smallest suspicion of the truth now facing her. Indeed she didn’t know how she would ever walk through the door of the doctor’s surgery again without feeling embarrassed. A simple test had disclosed the fact that she had inexplicably conceived and her response to the news had been more than a little hysterical while she told first the doctor and then the nurse that there had been a mistake, that they must have mixed up her results with someone else’s and that in any case, a pregnancy was a complete impossibility.

                ‘Betsy?’ Belle exclaimed. ‘Are you still there?’

                ‘Yes, sorry, I’m just a little preoccupied right now.’

                ‘It’s the divorce, isn’t it?’ her friend said grimly. ‘You’ve been upset. That’s why you haven’t been in touch. What has that wretched man done to you now?’

                Betsy compressed her lips, because astonishingly it seemed that Nik had contrived the impossible. In spite of the fact that he’d had a vasectomy and he was sterile, or whatever people chose to label it, and she had endured many months of striving to get pregnant by him and failing, a miracle or a catastrophe—depending on one’s viewpoint—had occurred and she was now carrying Nik’s baby. How on earth could that be possible? Betsy breathed in deep and slow because even sitting down she felt giddy and more than a little nauseous.

                ‘It’s not something I can share,’ Betsy said, inwardly wincing at that severe understatement.

                ‘Something happened when Nik brought Gizmo back to you...didn’t it?’ Belle prompted worriedly. ‘You haven’t been yourself since then—’

                ‘Yes, something happened,’ Betsy confirmed reluctantly. ‘But not something I can talk about right now—’

                The pregnancy that she had once craved had actually materialised but she no longer had the support system of either a marriage or a father for her unborn child. That awareness put a very different complexion on the situation.

                ‘I just knew it was too good to be true when he gave you the dog back!’ Belle exclaimed heatedly. ‘And then the house, for goodness’ sake! Nik Christakis suddenly starts playing Santa Claus! There’s something wrong with that image—’

                ‘I promise I’ll phone you in a few days when I’ve sorted stuff out,’ Betsy cut in ruefully. ‘I’m sorry but I just can’t talk about this yet.’