CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER TEN
‘M Y FATHER COULDN ’ T leave the London town house to Nic because it was mine according to the terms of the Diamandis trust. So, shortly before he died, he bought one directly across the street in the same square to leave to your husband.’
‘How very convenient,’ Lexy remarked, her cheeks warm, looking out of the windows at the leafy square, adorned with a well-kept garden in the centre. ‘I imagine it’s as imposing inside as everything else your father furnished.’
‘I’ve never been inside it. You’ll have to invite us over for me to offer an opinion,’ Jace quipped.
‘You’re welcome to visit any time,’ Lexy told him warmly, cheered by the knowledge that they lived only across the square, although she supposed she could hardly confide in Gigi if her marriage was in as much trouble as she believed it was. No, she needed Mel and had already texted her friend to let her know when she would be arriving and where she would be staying.
‘Nic didn’t sound too enthusiastic about you travelling without him. You’re not thinking of ditching him, are you?’ Jace asked. ‘You make him happy. He only smiles and laughs since you came into his life. I swear he’s the most serious Diamandis ever born.’
Lexy’s face flamed. ‘Of course I’m not,’ she declared with as much assurance as she could gather, when in truth she didn’t know what she was doing.
And she was no wiser after she and the kids and the nannies piled into the tall town house across the street to be greeted by an honest-to-goodness butler, who introduced himself as Dexter, and a housekeeper called Agnes. Lexy had phoned ahead of their arrival and had been assured that there was a large nursery already prepared for her children and rooms in the staff quarters to house the nanny trio.
The front hall was timeless, from the original Georgian tiles below her feet to the decorative painted panelling on the walls. The furniture was antique, but nothing was gilded or ornate or too large for its place. It was surprisingly plain and fresh, the gracious ambience almost contemporary.
Nic didn’t phone her that night and she didn’t bother phoning him, having decided that her days of running after Nic Diamandis were over. Perhaps they could separate now but keep it quiet for a few months to keep his family happy, she thought sadly, fighting against her own instincts with all her might. If they broke up, it could be done with dignity and no great drama. After all, love had never been a component of their arrangement. An arrangement, an agreement, were more apt labels than that word ‘marriage’. Just because she had chosen to share a bed with Nic and fall back in love with him didn’t magically change their arrangement into a real marriage.
It was dinner time two days later before Nic appeared and he hadn’t phoned in the interim. She looked up from settling Ezra into his cot because he had been very restless and there Nic stood in the doorway. And her first anxious thought was what had happened to him since she had last seen him? Shadows were etched under his dark eyes, a heavy cloud of stubble darkly outlining his jaw and tense mouth, his tie loose round his unbuttoned shirt collar.
‘You look tired,’ she said tautly.
‘It’s been a rough few days since I last saw you,’ he conceded heavily, walking over to join her by the cot, clasping Ezra’s tiny hand as it immediately reached up to grasp his father’s fingers.
A shout sounded from Lily’s cot and, moments later, Lily’s tousled head appeared above the cot rail. Nic lifted her, gave her a hug and laid her down gently into the cot again while she babbled her nonsense at him, only the occasional syllables sounding as if they could be part of a word. He peered down hopefully into Ethan’s cot, but their second son was dead to the world as usual. Nothing woke Ethan up after a busy day.
Lexy studied Nic, wondering what was wrong. Sheathed in a silvery grey suit that fitted his big powerful physique with the designer precision of Italian tailoring, he took her breath away as he always did. He had a smoulderingly sexy vibe even when he was travel-weary.
He raked long fingers through his cropped black hair. ‘I need a shower, a shave—’
‘Maybe some sleep?’ Lexy suggested.
‘No. I have a lot to tell you,’ he muttered heavily. ‘I’ll tell you most of it over dinner.’
Lexy winced. ‘Can’t you just spill it now?’
‘No, I owe you far too much to trot it all out like it’s trivial stuff.’
Although she didn’t intend to, Lexy found herself following him into the bedroom, a tranquil, beautifully furnished space the very opposite of the gilded grandeur of his father’s palatial home on the island. ‘Why’s this house so different from the one on Faros if it belonged to your father first?’ she asked.
He was halfway out of his shirt, his lean brown muscular torso twisting as he swung back to look at her, a wry smile briefly crossing his lips. ‘He purchased it just before he died. I renovated it. I hired an interior designer and asked her to respect the house’s history. My father didn’t appreciate any history but his own.’
Nic scrutinised his wife, a small, slender figure clad in jeans and a tee shirt. She liked plain clothes: he had learned that shopping with her. She had conservative tastes, didn’t like anything that screamed high fashion or showed too much of her body. And yet she was beautiful, show-stopping in her own way, with her soft silky golden hair, her delicate curves and glorious aquamarine eyes.
He disappeared into the bathroom and Lexy sank down at the foot of the bed. She relived the depth of pain she had seen in his stunning dark eyes as he’d looked at her and her heart sank. The backs of her eyes burned. Was it simply that he was so unhappy with her that he couldn’t hide it? It was ironic that she simply wanted him to be happy, and she had believed he was while they were in Korea and on his family’s island. Only, when her happiness depended on having him in her life, she was scarcely a disinterested observer. She didn’t know how Nic felt when she wasn’t around. She didn’t think he had missed her because he hadn’t phoned since they’d parted in Greece, and she didn’t think he was an emotional guy, unless he lost his temper out of impatience and even then he didn’t say much, certainly would never be abusive. It was possible that he was emotional deep down inside but that he kept that side of himself buried around her.
Hey, this is the guy who knows that you married him for wealth and security, she reminded herself as she tugged out a dress to change into. She didn’t need to fuss over herself when she was never ever going to be competition for Angeliki, but then he didn’t seem to find the blonde heiress attractive. She couldn’t sit down to eat with him in a stained tee shirt, not unless she was a total lazy slob. Finding the bathroom empty when she emerged, she went for a quick shower to freshen up before she dressed again.
Nic’s hair was damp, a fresh shirt hanging open as he pulled on jeans.
‘It’s funny,’ Lexy said ruefully. ‘I get dressed up for dinner, you get dressed down . It shows what a bad match we are.’
‘We’re not.’ Nic watched her perch at the foot of the bed, her hands linking together in a tight grip that told him she was very tense and anxious. He breathed in deep and strong. ‘You know, I missed you—’
‘You could’ve taken me with you,’ she reminded him.
‘It’s just as well that I didn’t. I got very, very drunk the night before last and I’m still feeling the effects. I found out a whole lot of distressing things over the past two days and I didn’t handle it well.’
Her smooth brow furrowed. ‘Distressing?’
‘Very distressing and very much a blueprint of my own flaws, so I probably wouldn’t have been good at trying to explain it all to you in the frame of mind I was in. I’m not saying that I’ll do it any better tonight but at least I’m desperate enough to try ,’ he completed grimly.
‘I’ve been wondering if maybe we should be thinking of...of a er...friendly separation...even if we’re living under the same roof,’ Lexy proposed shakily. ‘I don’t want to deprive you of the kids and it’s not like I hate you or anything...or you hate me.’
Nic lost all the colour in his bronzed complexion and stared back at her as if she had punched him. ‘I don’t want a separation—’
‘But perhaps it’s what we both need ,’ Lexy qualified. ‘You’re not happy right now and I can see that—’
‘Shelve this discussion for now but let me say first that that’s not true. I will explain why. Obviously you’re unhappy and I don’t blame you,’ Nic declared flatly. ‘But that could change if other things changed—’
‘People don’t change,’ Lexy sighed.
‘That depends on their motivation. Let’s eat and I’ll tell you about Angeliki,’ he urged, grasping her hand to tug her up and head her downstairs.
‘Angeliki?’ she questioned in bewilderment.
‘Yes, and my office manager, Leigh, and my mother. I’ve been talking to all of them in the last couple of days and it was an eye-opening, very unpleasant experience.’
A maid delivered the starter beneath Dexter, the butler’s watchful gaze. Lexy lifted her wine glass while Nic pushed his glass away and poured himself some water.
‘Angeliki...’ Lexy prompted uneasily.
‘We grew up together. Her mother, Rhea, is my mother’s best friend. It was inevitable that I saw a great deal of Angeliki. She was like a little sister to me. She’s a couple of years younger than I am. I...’ He hesitated, his lean dark features tightening. ‘I loved her as a part of my family. As a teenager, I was quiet, good-living and a disappointment to my father, who would’ve been delighted if I’d gone wild like Jace did but that was never me. Angeliki was colourful, adventurous and everything I was not, an entertaining companion for the adolescent years.’
‘But the friendship remained—’
‘Yes, until she tried to get into bed with me a couple of months before I met you and I rejected her. I was shocked by her approach, totally unprepared for that.’
Lexy almost winced because, in some ways, he was still innocent, certainly not always good when it came to reading the room. ‘Angeliki has always wanted you for herself. I saw that in her the very first time I met her. So,’ she pressed, helpless not to ask. ‘Did you sleep with her?’
Nic studied her in wonderment. ‘Of course I didn’t. It was always platonic on my side of the fence, and she reacted badly to rejection.’
‘I can imagine,’ Lexy muttered in relief that her own reading of that relationship had been correct.
‘For weeks, she wouldn’t answer my calls and I felt bad about it. Then my father died and, being Argus, he left a bombshell letter for me, which I received after the will reading. A letter telling me that Angeliki was my half-sister.’
‘Good grief!’ Lexy gasped, unprepared for that revelation.
‘I couldn’t face telling her straight after that getting-into-my-bed episode, so I thought I’d let the memory of that fade before I told her the truth.’
Lexy nodded, following that reasoning but shaken too by the sudden awareness that Angeliki, the shrew, was actually a member of Nic’s family.
‘And then I met you ,’ Nic informed her. ‘And that was like casting a stone in a very deep pond because Angeliki got in touch with me again and I told her about meeting you.’
‘You told her about me?’ Lexy repeated in surprise at that admission.
‘Yes. Total idiot about women here,’ Nic quipped with a curled lip. ‘I raved about you like a teenager, according to her, and she realised that I’d finally met what she saw as competition.’
Lexy winced. ‘I could never be competition to a woman as gorgeous as Angeliki Bouras.’
‘Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and I saw you as a beauty from the first moment I saw you,’ Nic disagreed. ‘A beauty with ten times Angeliki’s appeal.’
Lexy studied him in astonishment and recognised that he absolutely believed that, believed that she was way more attractive than his half-sister. Of course she was, now that he knew Angeliki was family. After all, Nic was laying it on a bit thick because how good could she have looked after that car accident in Yorkshire? Nose and ears red, face white with shock in the cold?
Nic lifted a folder onto the table and pushed it in her direction. ‘This is the file that my office manager gave me the day before yesterday. It lists your every phone call and includes your letters...read only by me ,’ he specified with care. ‘And that’s why I got drunk. After reading those and understanding how alone you felt coping with so much, I was devastated.’
‘I don’t understand. You’re saying that you never received my letters back when I posted them? How can that be? Your office manager? Why would she hold back confidential letters?’
‘Angeliki told her that you were a stalker.’
‘A... what ?’ Lexy gasped in disbelief.
‘She persuaded Leigh that you were a stalker by showing her your photo and told many lies that indicated that you were a woman causing me embarrassment. Leigh only smelt a rat when she saw photos of our wedding.’
‘Na?ve,’ Lexy muttered weakly, thinking of the icily polite lady she had had to speak to when she had been futilely seeking a meeting with Nic at his office. Leigh had never ever been rude or dismissive but had always remained professional and courteous even if she hadn’t given an inch.
‘No, I think the real problem was that Leigh is kind of motherly with me.’ Nic frowned. ‘She’s known me since I was a little boy coming into my father’s office. When Angeliki told her that a stalker was targeting me, Leigh would have gone into super drive to protect me because she saw that as her job.’
‘Right...’ Lexy’s voice was fading away as the main course was laid in front of her. It looked amazing but her appetite had gone. She sipped her wine instead.
‘So, after Leigh had brought me up to date on what had been happening behind my back, I sat down that night and read your unopened letters,’ Nic admitted.
Lexy blinked, said nothing, but how could she feel when those letters had been written so long ago when she was in a certain frame of mind, a desperate frame of mind? In short, she cringed, gulped more wine, sat silent.
‘I felt like a four-letter word of a guy reading those letters. I... I was heartbroken. I drank a lot that night. I tried to find solace in something but there was nothing there to comfort me. I let you down. I failed . I took the risk and got you pregnant and then I wasn’t there for you to help, to support,’ Nic recounted in a raw undertone. ‘Nothing I can do or say can make up for those months you were alone. You did all the right things. You tried to get in touch with me, but Angeliki’s ploys foiled us both. It didn’t occur to me that she had always had access to my phone and had blocked your number. I spent a fortune trying to trace you, trying to find out where you worked, and I failed there as well because I didn’t know something as simple as your surname. That says it all.’
‘That you weren’t thinking any more clearly than I was when we first met,’ Lexy chipped in helplessly, thinking back. ‘I left you to attend that christening and I lived to regret that.’
‘Why?’ he asked in surprise. ‘You had made a commitment and I respected that.’
‘My godchild’s parents had a huge fight during the christening party and split up a few weeks after that,’ Lexy revealed ruefully. ‘And in spite of my texts, I haven’t heard from my friend since then, so, yes, with hindsight I was a fool to insist on attending that event.’
‘But I respected that...your loyalty to your friend. I accepted it because it was the sort of thing I would have done,’ he confessed ruefully.
‘Even though it cost us so much?’ she almost whispered.
‘Yes, because you wouldn’t be the woman I fell in love with if you had behaved any differently.’
‘Think dinner’s over,’ Lexy muttered, her entire attention locked to Nic’s taut, darkly handsome face, because she was barely able to credit that he could speak so casually about loving her. ‘How can you just say that?’
Nic tossed his napkin on the table. ‘I fell for you the same night I met you.’
As he rose from the table, he signalled Dexter and the older man headed for the exit door. Nic searched her troubled face. ‘No pretending now, not any longer,’ he breathed. ‘You’re my ideal woman and I almost lost you. Not once but twice .’
Lexy was only emerging from her shock. ‘You’re saying that you fell for me that night?’
‘Yeah, I was as seriously uncool and excited about meeting you as Angeliki accused me of being. I was exactly like a dazzled teenager. Apparently, that’s how I was talking about you the day after I met you.’
‘Me too,’ Lexy admitted as he rounded the table. ‘I talked you up to the sky with Mel and then you didn’t phone and I cringed at all the stuff I’d said about you.’
Nic gazed down at her, dark eyes glittering and full of longing. ‘Do you think I could bring those feelings back?’
Feeling cornered, not quite sure how she should feel after that declaration of love, Lexy frowned, only to be startled when Nic dropped down to his knees beside her. ‘I’ll do just about anything. I’m so sorry I trusted Angeliki and lost you. It’s something that I can never make up for.’
Lexy’s hands rose from her lap, unclasped and framed his strong cheekbones, small fingers stretching. ‘But perhaps I can consider forgiving you,’ she said breathlessly, utterly mesmerised by the dark golden, black-lashed eyes claiming hers.
‘Truthfully?’ he exclaimed.
‘Jury’s still out,’ she warned him.
‘If you will only agree to stay with me as my wife, I promise to be the best husband ever,’ he assured her, still on his knees.
‘Oh, I’m gonna stay,’ Lexy told him with confidence, fingers delving into the luxuriant depths of his black hair. ‘I mean, you’ve got a lot going for you. Honesty, that’s a plus...especially when you mess up.’
His dark head bent as he grimaced. ‘Yes, I lost the plot. Jace warned me way back that Angeliki was toxic and I didn’t listen. That side of her never bothered me because, until recently, it wasn’t aimed at me. She won’t be a part of our lives in the future.’
‘But she’s your sister.’
‘And far from happy about the fact. After confronting her, I went to see my mother to break the bad news that her best friend had given birth to her husband’s child,’ he told her tautly. ‘And that was anything but fun.’
‘I can’t imagine,’ she murmured, thinking of Bianca’s soft, affectionate heart. ‘That must’ve hurt her.’
‘Not at all,’ Nic disconcerted her by responding. ‘She already knew the whole story, had always known, which explains why she was constantly careful to remind me that Angeliki was the little sister I had to look after when we were kids. Apparently, it wasn’t an affair between Argus and Rhea. He had information about Rhea’s husband which would have financially ruined the family...he virtually blackmailed her into bed.’
Lexy winced. ‘Oh?’
‘He threatened Rhea that he would reveal that bombshell unless she acquiesced,’ Nic revealed with strong distaste. ‘She gave in and Angeliki was the surprise result. It wrecked Rhea’s marriage and there was a divorce.’
Lexy was frowning. ‘And your mother actually knew that he did that to her best friend?’ she exclaimed in bewilderment.
Nic vaulted upright again. ‘Yes, we talked and I didn’t understand. That’s the thing about my mother. She forgave my father no matter what he did. She says he wasn’t a good man but that she loved him anyway. He beat her, he beat me and it still didn’t change anything.’
‘He got physical?’ Lexy stood up with a grimace. ‘I didn’t realise.’
‘It’s not something you talk about. I learned to stay out of reach when I was quite young. He would fly off the handle if you annoyed him. Mum tried to distract or interrupt him and if that didn’t work, she would tell me that my father was in a bad mood and that I had to understand that he was a very busy man.’ Nic shrugged in dismissal. ‘But that’s how I grew up, being bullied and beaten, and I learned fast that if I showed any emotion, he saw that as a weakness.’
Lexy stretched up on tiptoe, her small hand stroking his jawline soothingly. ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t know.’
‘When I met you, I was still living with that conditioning. I knew that I wanted you more than any woman I’d ever met straight away but I couldn’t process it. I fell for you that night—it was crazy, but I did. I liked everything about you. You were down to earth and frank and that impressed me. Then...’ Nic spread eloquent hands and a wicked grin slashed his lips. ‘The sex was incredible and all I wanted was more and more of you and that’s what we would have had, had Angeliki not intervened.’
‘But she did, and I had the triplets alone but for Mel,’ Lexy completed with regret. ‘We can’t change that but I learned to hate you for that.’
‘Could you learn to unlearn it?’ Nic prompted very seriously. ‘I’m not planning to keep anything from you any more. Perhaps I should’ve been more honest from the start. Our wedding night wasn’t planned... I genuinely was not expecting that to happen.’
‘You made it happen!’ Lexy tossed back at him as he swept her off her feet at the foot of the stairs. ‘What happened to the rest of dinner?’
‘We gave up on it. I didn’t make it happen,’ Nic protested as he carried her upstairs like a parcel. ‘I guess, I was just overexcited.’
‘Yeah, no short memory here...you and all the supermodels you entertained yourself with while we were apart. I saw you on the Internet with them.’
‘But I didn’t have sex with a single one of those dates.’
‘You expect me to believe that you didn’t sleep with any of those gorgeous ladies?’ Lexy asked incredulously as he laid her down on the big bed in their bedroom.
‘Yes. Since the night I met you, there hasn’t been anyone else.’
‘But...?’
‘At first, I was expecting to find you and I was being faithful,’ Nic contended, faint colour edging his high cheekbones. ‘And then when I couldn’t find you, I was so into you that I wasn’t attracted to anyone else. I’ve never slept around. You and I were special and I couldn’t move past that. And I was glad I hadn’t given way to lust when I finally found you again.’
‘Only because I put a solicitor on your trail,’ Lexy broke in, but she was thinking about that. About Nic Diamandis with his many options choosing not to have sex with anyone else after her. And she liked that, she liked that so much that she felt light-headed in receipt of that confession. He had been loyal to her even after he had lost hope of seeing her again. He had valued what they had found together. All of a sudden, she could think back to that passionate wedding night and forgive herself for being part of it.
‘There wasn’t anyone else for me either...although I can’t pretend I had many opportunities to stray,’ she whispered. ‘Is there a reason why you brought me straight to bed?’
A boyish grin skimmed Nic’s mobile mouth. ‘The obvious.’
‘I like that you’re not pretending.’
‘I’m done with pretending. I grew up having to pretend that I lived in a perfect family, but the truth is that it was dysfunctional...and violent,’ Nic framed tautly. ‘And at times, I despised my mother even though I always loved her too. But she took everything my father threw at her and when I talked to her yesterday and she told me that she’d always known about Angeliki being my sister, I felt out of all patience with her.’
‘I think I might have been as well,’ Lexy said uncertainly. ‘But Bianca was very young when she met your father.’
‘She told me that she still loved him until the day he died, but she also told me that she stayed with him for my benefit,’ he admitted with a sardonic twist of his wide sensual mouth. ‘She said that if she had tried to divorce him, he would have fought to keep me as his all-important son. He had the power and he would’ve won, but I didn’t like being blamed for her choices.’
‘Of course you didn’t,’ Lexy agreed, linking her fingers with his to tug him down on the bed beside her. ‘But maybe you could stop being so judgemental.’
‘I need to,’ he agreed grimly. ‘I wanted you back a month ago. I wanted you on any terms the moment I saw you again.’
‘Enough to take me on as a gold-digging wife?’
Nic laughed. ‘I wanted you any way I could get you!’
‘Me and the kids,’ she qualified.
‘You’re my family,’ he said simply. ‘My fatal error was wanting you to be perfect and holding all those months we were apart against you. I see in black and white. No shades of grey. I assumed that you were lying to me about having tried to contact me while you were pregnant and I couldn’t get past that. I should’ve given you a clean page and let it go but I wasn’t capable of that.’
‘Neither was I. I couldn’t forgive you either for not coming to my rescue,’ Lexy confided gently. ‘I thought you were lying too, unable to face up to the situation at the time and unable to admit that either. I still fell back in love with you...’
‘Seriously?’ Nic prompted in astonishment.
‘Oh, totally.’ Lexy looked up at him with wry blue-green eyes. ‘Don’t know what it is about you, but you’ve got that vibe I can’t resist—’
‘I love you so much.’
‘I’m starting to believe that,’ Lexy said, sitting up to begin unbuttoning his shirt. ‘You’re wearing too many clothes again, Mr Diamandis.’
Never slow to take a hint, Nic straightened, stepping away to remove the shirt and follow with the jeans and the boxers. Lexy wriggled her shoulders and began to try and undo the zip of her dress but Nic got there first, running it down and gently easing the dress up over her head while she kicked off her shoes, peeling down the hold-up stockings she wore.
‘Leave those on...they’re sexy,’ Nic murmured.
Lexy just laughed, watching him come down to her, bronzed and sleek and breathtaking, and her heart stopped inside her for an instant. ‘Do you think it’s possible to fall in love at first sight?’
‘I did.’
He looped her tousled hair back from her brow and leant down to claim her lips with his. ‘I fell for you like a ton of bricks. The instant I saw you and you started talking and then you cooked—’
‘Major selling point from the guy who can afford a personal chef!’ Lexy quipped.
‘Everything about you is a major selling point. Your face, your smile, your honesty, loyalty, kindness. Your ability to accept a less than perfect guy.’
‘But he’s trying !’
‘I want to deserve you and our children. I need to do a better job than our parents did,’ he admitted in a raw undertone.
‘And we’ll be all the better for it because we know we’re not perfect,’ she told him soothingly, smoothing a tender hand down over his hard jawline. ‘I will never stop loving you, flaws and all.’
‘So, you weren’t leaving me after all when you came here?’
‘Maybe I finally wanted you to sit up and take notice. I was miffed that you didn’t want me in Athens with you. But no, I didn’t want to leave you. It was more about trying to protect myself from being hurt.’
‘I will strive to never hurt you again. I love you. I will always be here for you, from now until the end.’ His dark golden eyes were molten with love and tenderness as he claimed her parted lips with his and silence fell as they luxuriated in being together again. Intimacy entwined them heart and body, passion and need zinging through them, joyful pleasure and security entangling them as Nic held her close in the drowsy aftermath. In the middle of the night, they got up to raid the kitchen and recalled that long ago night in Yorkshire.
‘No triplets this time,’ she warned him when they finally fell back into bed.
‘But maybe some day one more baby?’ he proposed.
‘It would take an act of God to persuade me to go through that again,’ she warned him ruefully. ‘And you can’t tell if it will be one baby or more than one.’
‘Let’s talk about it some other time,’ Nic murmured sensibly. ‘Did I tell you how much I love you?’
Lexy smiled happily. ‘You can tell me again. Over and over and over again.’