Christakis's Rebellious Wife(22)

                He had paid absolutely no heed to his therapist’s suggestion that he was deeply conflicted on the subject of his marriage. In that line the lady talked a lot of nonsense! Nik believed in keeping things simple and he fully understood why he had done what he had done. He had gone off the rails and fallen back into a better-forgotten past for a few hours...that was all. Soon his marriage would be as decently buried as the terrifying nightmares and flashbacks that had plagued him for years already were.

                Betsy listened with a polite smile to the message Nik’s stalwart PA, Steve, passed on with fervent apologies that she was persuaded had not fallen from Nik’s lips. But Steve, unlike his boss, was a nice guy. Once upon a time Betsy’s very rare visits to Nik’s office building had been greeted with disconcerting attention and servility because she had been deemed a person of importance in Nik’s world. Now, however, it was clear that she had lost that polished passport to special treatment and was viewed as being about as relevant to Nik as yesterday’s newspaper.

                ‘Thanks, Steve,’ she said, sweeping up her sensible leather rucksack bag, ruefully conscious that her casual jeans and plain black pea coat had attracted raised brows of surprise since her arrival.

                But then probably for the very first time ever, Betsy was happy to simply be herself in Nik’s sophisticated radius, not the more glossy, artificial self she had long believed he found infinitely more attractive. So, she hadn’t dressed up for his benefit and wasn’t wearing high heels, designer clothing or even very much make-up. Nik was the husband who had deceived her, hurt her and humiliated her and she was determined to seek neither his approval nor his admiration.

                As the PA walked away Betsy moved purposely in the opposite direction to head straight for Nik’s office. Nik had wasted enough of her morning and she wasn’t prepared to kick her heels any longer on his behalf! Why should she? She was no longer eager to please and conform to nonsensical rules that had once made her feel more like an irrelevant nuisance than a legally wedded wife with rights and needs of her own.

                Betsy thrust Nik’s office door wide, scanning the half-dozen men seated round the small conference table with flaring midnight-blue eyes of enquiry before settling her attention on Nik’s lean, hard-boned face. ‘I need to see you...now,’ she declared without hesitation.

                A feverish glimmer of dark colour rose to accentuate the exotic line of Nik’s hard cheekbones, his green eyes flaring like emeralds in bright sunlight to betray more than a glint of outrage. He stood upright, lithe and fit as the predator he was, and shifted a hand in dismissal as Steve raced through the door a mere breathless step in Betsy’s wake.

                ‘Gentlemen, we’ll have to take a break. I’ll see you in an hour,’ Nik informed his companions flatly.

                The other men filed out and the door snapped shut behind Betsy. Her attention had not once wavered from Nik. Even his business suit couldn’t hide the lean, powerful perfection of his athletic body. She remembered the appalling nightmares he used to have and how even though it was the middle of the night he would go down to the basement gym to work out afterwards, before finally falling back exhausted into bed still wet from the shower.

                Immobile as a statue now, she could hear her own breath scissoring audibly through her tight throat while her heart thumped so hard with stress she would have liked to press a hand to her chest to slow it down. But that, much like apologising, would have been a dead giveaway of her inner turmoil and Betsy had no intention of making such a crucial error in Nik’s forceful and assured presence.

                ‘What the hell are you playing at?’ Nik demanded in a harsh undertone, appraising her unfamiliar appearance with a frown of incomprehension.

                For some inexplicable reason she was dressed like a student and she looked impossibly young, blue eyes huge in her delicate heart-shaped face. She was five years younger than him, only five and yet sometimes the distance between them had seemed an unbridgeable gulf because she had a quality of innocence and a level of trust in other people that he had lost at a very early age. But then if he was honest that difference in their outlook had been a strong part of her appeal, he acknowledged reluctantly. He had known she would always need his strength to protect her while also knowing that love made her loyal and naively trusting and that she would always be there waiting for him in the background.