Christakis's Rebellious Wife(24)

                ‘You are honestly pregnant?’ Nik pressed her, studying her with frowning intensity and a lingering sense of disbelief because that possibility still didn’t feel real to him. He might now have the proof that the reversal had worked but he was equally appalled by the risk he had unwittingly run and the unthinkable consequences of his evidently restored fertility. This result was his fault, solely his fault for neglecting to recall the fact that for the first time ever with Betsy he would need to take precautions.

                Diavelos, suppose he had slept with another woman? Suppose he had been having this exact same conversation with a woman who was almost a stranger? But then would he have been so careless with anyone other than Betsy? He didn’t think so. Once again familiarity had worked against him with Betsy, but then it had been so many years since he had had to guard against the risk of an unwanted pregnancy that he had behaved as imprudently as a teenager eager to have sex for the first time at any cost.

                ‘One hundred per cent pregnant,’ Betsy extended curtly, whipping her attention off his lean, darkly beautiful face when she felt it wanting to loiter, stifling her reaction to him with every fibre of her self-discipline because it was screamingly inappropriate. For the sake of the future and her unborn child she had to stick to cold, hard facts. ‘So you accept that you’re to blame for this pregnancy and that this will be your child?’

                Lush spiky black lashes narrowed over suddenly astute green eyes, bright chips of colour in his lean, strong face. ‘Have you any doubt on that score?’ he questioned drily.

                Betsy lifted her chin, azure eyes full of scornful dismissal. ‘None at all.’

                ‘Are you pleased?’ Nik asked her without warning because he literally couldn’t think of anything else to say and was wary of saying the wrong thing. A baby. Betsy was having a baby, his baby. Her announcement had plunged him deep into shock. He couldn’t compute a concept so foreign to him for he had never once actively considered becoming a father. Reversing the vasectomy had been much more of an intellectual and philosophical exercise than an actual wish to see a child of his own blood born. Indeed that was a development that even at his most optimistic he had never once dared to envisage. After all, children were so vulnerable and no matter how hard one might endeavour to protect a child bad things still happened to them. At the thought, Nik paled.

                Betsy breathed in so deep and long that she felt giddy. ‘Am I pleased?’ she repeated in charged disbelief, her small body turning rigid with the force of her feelings. ‘Are you kidding? I wanted a baby when we were married. I wanted a family. This...’ she spread her arms wide in emphasis, as if encompassing the distance now between them ‘...is not what I wanted!’

                ‘So you don’t want the baby,’ Nik assumed, wondering how he felt about that but still too shaken by her news to know. A baby. Betsy was going to have a baby, the first Christakis infant to be born since his own birth.

                ‘It’s my baby...of course I want it!’ Betsy slung back at him with an aggression she had never shown him before, no, not even on the day their marriage had tumbled down like a pack of cards and she had virtually thrown him out of their home. ‘You need to know now upfront that there’s no way I’m having a termination—’

                ‘I am not that stupid,’ Nik fielded flatly. ‘Nor would I ask you to do such a thing.’

                ‘No?’ Betsy’s voice was steadily rising in volume even though she was struggling to stay calm, well aware that a loss of temper was a handicap she didn’t need. ‘Wouldn’t you? Wouldn’t a termination suit you much better than the birth of a child you don’t want?’

                ‘Don’t put words in my mouth. I didn’t say I didn’t want the child,’ Nik countered darkly. ‘Obviously, you do—’