Christakis's Rebellious Wife(28)

                But what was done was done and Nik had always been a pragmatist. He had no doubt that if he failed to step up to the plate some other man would replace him as both husband to Betsy and father figure in their child’s life. And that development would be totally unacceptable to Nik. There could be no halfway measures, he conceded broodingly. Either he became fully involved in his child’s life or he would find himself excluded because a young and rich divorcee with Betsy’s looks would not remain single for long. Yet how could he embrace everything that he had always avoided and feared? Fatherhood, with all the concerns and dangers that came with the responsibility. He breathed in slow and deep, eyes bleak, wide, sensual mouth clenching hard with constraint. He would do it the same way he had survived his brutal childhood: by never looking back to relive a better-forgotten past and taking only one step forward at a time.

                * * *

                ‘So, spill,’ Belle urged. A tall, vibrant redhead, she threw herself back into the comfortable embrace of a purple velvet sofa and regarded Betsy with unconcealed expectancy in her lively eyes.

                ‘I’m pregnant,’ Betsy blurted out, having come to visit to make exactly that announcement.

                Perceptibly disconcerted, her sister-in-law sat forward in a sudden movement. ‘How the heck did you sneak having a man in your life past my radar?’ she demanded in disbelief.

                ‘Because he was already there...well, sort of,’ Betsy muttered ruefully. ‘It’s Nik’s baby—’

                ‘Nik? How could it be Nik’s?’

                ‘You must not mention this to Cristo yet. It’s private...between Nik and me,’ Betsy extended awkwardly, wishing that Cristo’s wife would stop studying her as though she were waiting for the clowns to come trooping in and provide a comic act. In as few words as she could manage she revealed that Nik had had the vasectomy reversed.

                Belle blinked slowly. ‘OK,’ she conceded. ‘And then he gave you the dog back and clearly you slept with him out of gratitude—’

                ‘It wasn’t like that,’ Betsy countered quietly.

                ‘I know you. You’re very soft-hearted. He took advantage—’

                ‘Maybe I took advantage of him...’

                Belle was shaking her head in wonderment. ‘Wow...just wow. Nik’s going to be a dad. Considering that he can’t even bear to be in the same room with my siblings that scenario takes quite a stretch of the imagination—’

                Betsy was fond of Cristo’s wife but had never appreciated her outspokenly critical attitude towards Nik. ‘You’re not being fair, Belle. Nik never knew his own father and has never had anything to do with children. Gaetano Ravelli walked out of his life when he was a baby and Nik never saw him again, so it’s a lot harder for him to feel that there’s a family connection with the younger brothers and sisters that you and Cristo have adopted.’

                Franco, the youngest of those children, an adorable toddler with curly black hair and big brown eyes, clambered onto his half-sister Belle’s lap and hugged her with easy affection. It was clear that he regarded Belle very much as his mother, yet Franco and his four siblings were actually the progeny of Belle’s late mother’s long-running affair with Nik and Cristo’s now-deceased father.

                For the first time though, Betsy was also registering an odd fact that made her brow furrow in surprise. Almost everything she knew about Nik’s family background had come from either Cristo or Belle because Nik never ever talked about his childhood. His relationship with his mother was quietly dysfunctional and something he politely refused to discuss.