In retrospect she knew she had behaved like a madwoman that day. Temporary insanity had gripped her from the minute her whole world came crashing down around her. She had screamed, she had shouted, she had cursed and he had stood there like a granite rock battered by stormy seas—essentially untouched by her anger, her tears and her pleas for an explanation. In fact he had said nothing beyond the quiet, unemotional admission that what she had learned about him from his younger brother Zarif was indeed the truth: Nik had had a vasectomy at the age of twenty-two and there was absolutely no possibility of him ever having a child with her. But Nik had excluded Betsy from that secret and, unforgivably, he had allowed her to break her heart trying and failing to get pregnant for months on end. Why hadn’t he just told her the truth? ‘Why?’ she had demanded again and again, and he had stared back at her in resolute brooding silence, refusing to explain his behaviour.
Marisa Glover, the celebrated divorce lawyer by Nik’s side, studied Betsy with cool blue eyes and quite casually asked her why she believed that a woman who had been a penniless, dyslexic waitress before her marriage and had not worked since should have a legal claim on half her husband’s estate.
‘Let’s face it...you have no children to support,’ the icy blonde beauty reminded the table at large.
All of a sudden, Betsy was bone-white and reeling from the stream of virtual body blows landing on her with the devastating efficiency of bombs, her skin squeezing tight over her bones in horror. Nik had told them; he had told them she was dyslexic and mortification drenched her like icy water thrown in her face. As for the reminder that she had no children, that was an even more cruel strike considering that Nik had comprehensively and deviously denied her what she had so desperately wanted.
Her lawyer stepped in to steer the topic in a more practical direction.
Nik scrutinised Betsy’s pale, taut profile, the anxious flicker of her lashes, the tightness of her lips, and knew she was hurt, humiliated and still recoiling from Marisa’s opening salvo. Marisa was the best divorce lawyer in London and an unashamed barracuda and Nik always employed the best. But now his perfect white teeth were gritted, brown fingers clenching into a fist against a long, powerful thigh. Had Betsy expected him to play nice? Had she thought anything could still be sacred, that anything could remain a secret in their divorce? Could she still be that innocent?
He was still waiting for her legal team to attack, for they certainly had the ammunition. It went without saying that he did not want the curious facts of his hush-hush vasectomy aired in an open court. That was private, considerably more so in his opinion than the dyslexia she was so ashamed of suffering from. Even so the shaken look of pain and betrayal etched in her tightly controlled but oh, so expressive face got to him whether he liked it or not and distaste and impatience rose in Nik for degrading Betsy in front of witnesses.
Annersley was currently engaged in reminding Marisa that Nik had refused to allow Betsy to work during their marriage, implying that Nik was a dinosaur and a bully of no mean order but doing so in the politest of terms. Marisa was pointing out that Betsy lacked the education required to gain anything other than the most menial of jobs and that a man of Nik’s social status could hardly be expected to tolerate a wife taking an unskilled, humble position.
Something suddenly snapped Nik’s hold on his volatile temper. Without even thinking about what he was doing, he ground his hands down on the edge of the conference table and sprang upright with an abruptness that startled everybody present. Lean, strong face hawklike, he growled, ‘Diavelos...enough! This ends here. Marisa, you are well aware that Betsy single-handedly runs her own business at Lavender Hall—’
‘Well, yes, but—’
‘We are finished here for now,’ he ground out with harsh finality. ‘I will discuss this no further—’