Nik let long brown fingers slide through the tumbling mass of chestnut hair spilling across his chest. ‘You’re very quiet.’
A sparkling smile fixed like glue to her reddened lips, Prudence lifted her tousled head. ‘I was just thinking how good you are at all this stuff…now I finally know what all the fuss is about-’
Dazzling golden eyes zeroed in on her, bright as hot sunlight in his lean, darkly handsome face. He frowned, wondering if she was trying to make him laugh to cover her awkwardness. ‘I’m not quite sure those are the sentiments I want to hear from my wife…’
Anger tensed Prudence, for that label always hit her like a cruel taunt, a reminder of what their relationship had not been. She had never felt married and sleeping with Nik didn’t change that. Suddenly she was feeling very much like a woman who had made a major mistake. In a sudden movement she scrambled free of him.
‘What is the matter with you?’ Nik demanded, hoisting himself up against the tumbled pillows, bronzed skin startlingly dark against the delicate white and pink bedlinen.
Snatching up her wrap, Prudence dug her arms into it, desperate to cover up her voluptuous curves. ‘Sharing a bed with me doesn’t make me your wife. It just makes me one more in a long line of women!’ she heard herself toss in furious rebuttal. ‘And you’re not exactly exclusive, are you?’
Nik was poleaxed by that response. He vaulted out of bed but she had already stalked out of the room. In the act of following her, he registered that it was still daylight and that there were no curtains drawn. Quietly cursing up a storm, he began to hurriedly pull on his clothes again.
Her face tight with suppressed emotion, Prudence sidled back into the doorway. ‘I’m sorry I was rude like that. There’s never any excuse for bad manners,’ she said stiffly, refusing to meet his lancing dark golden gaze. ‘But I do still want a divorce-’
Nik was insulted beyond belief by that announcement. ‘Why the hell did you let me take you to bed?’
Prudence almost cringed. ‘I’d really rather not discuss that-’
‘No flannel…you owe me the truth!’ Nik raked back at her rawly.
Wild horses could not have forced Prudence to look at him. Her cheeks scarlet, she compressed her ripe mouth and breathed in very deep. ‘I just wanted to know what it would be like with you. I didn’t think it would be any big deal on your terms.’
In such a rage that he could hardly vocalise, Nik studied her. There she was, all five feet two of her and she was confessing to using him like some stud on trial. ‘I don’t believe you. I don’t believe you still want a divorce either. You still care about me. I think that’s why you gave me your virginity.’
That bold, challenging statement sliced like a sharp knife through every layer of her tender skin. That Nik should confront her with her feelings for him was her worst nightmare come true and she knew she would never forgive him for it. Pride brought up her head, blue eyes defiant and bright. ‘Maybe I was just tired of being a virgin. I don’t still care about you in that way, Nik,’ she asserted. ‘I was infatuated with you when we married but it didn’t last the course. I got over you a very long time ago.’
‘Those scrapbooks sing a different song,’ Nik delivered with a cruel edge he had never used around her before.
Shock at that immediate, unhesitating retaliation made Prudence turn white as snow, nausea stirring in her stomach. ‘I want you to leave. You’re not welcome here any more!’ she told him jerkily. ‘I’m going for a divorce and I don’t need your permission for it!’
‘I forgot to give you your birthday present.’ Nik extended a slim jewellery case as if she hadn’t spoken.
Prudence sucked in a sustaining breath. Curiosity warred with the need to keep him at a distance. Curiosity won. She stared down at the incredibly pretty diamond-studded pendant in the shape of a…? He had the neck to give her a heart when he had smashed her own into a thousand pieces? Eyes burning with boiling tears, she snapped the case shut again and forced it back into his hand. ‘Thanks, but I don’t want it or you…Now go away!’
Slamming the door shut on his exit, she leant back against it and listened to the helicopter taking off again. Anger and pain and despair coalesced inside her. She would probably never see him again. She had insulted him. Everything she had valued about their relationship had been destroyed by a reckless bout of sex. The trust, the respect, the affection were gone. How could she even blame Nik for coming on to her? In her opinion he knew no other way to relate to a woman. But what madness had possessed her? The dull, intimate ache between her thighs made her shamed face burn. The besotted teenager whom she believed she had outgrown had had her swansong after all. But the aftermath of regret was hurting her much more than she could have believed.
It was, she sensed painfully, the end of an era. Eight years ago she had flown out to Greece and her life had been driven off course. Taking back the initiative meant moving on from that past. Swallowing back the dark thickness of tears clogging her throat, she reminded herself why she wanted her freedom back. In a couple of years she might have a child of her own to love and care for but she had to start divorce proceedings first and inform her grandfather of her intentions…
CHAPTER THREE
PRUDENCE UNFURLED THE letter from her solicitor, Mr Bullen, and her expressive eyes widened as she read. ‘I don’t believe it!’
‘What don’t you believe?’ A mug of tea clasped in one hand, Leo paused in the act of shunting Prudence’s two slumbering dogs off the kitchen sofa.
‘Nik!’ Prudence, renowned for her lack of temper and easy, tolerant nature, was pacing the cluttered kitchen in a fever of emotion. ‘My solicitor hasn’t even drawn up my divorce petition yet, but Nik’s fancy legal team have already been in touch with him.’
‘To say what?’ Leo prompted.
‘That Nik has no intention of giving his consent to a divorce…How can he even consider doing that to me? Without his consent, I’ll have to wait five years to get my freedom!’
‘He told you he didn’t want a divorce,’ the blond man reminded her wryly.
Prudence stared fixedly at the old jug on the table. It was stuffed to over-capacity with gorgeous pink and white roses. In fact, there was not a room in the house that was not full of glorious blooms, for Nik had sent her flowers every day of the two weeks that had passed since her birthday. No doubt his PA had organised the extravagant floral schedule, she thought waspishly. On a more personal level, however, Nik had phoned and she had left him talking to the answering machine until frustration drove him into flying down to see her again. The instant she had heard the helicopter hovering overhead she had jumped into her car and driven off. After all, what did she have left to say to him? she had asked herself. Or he to her? Only now was she recognising the flaw in her reasoning and the innate stupidity of practising avoidance tactics on a male as confrontational as Nik.
But Prudence still had no idea why he was behaving as he was. Why was he blocking her desire for a divorce? They had lived separate lives almost from the day of their marriage. She had dismissed the objections he had voiced a fortnight earlier: she had assumed that he was just going through the motions, acting out a conventional concern when he didn’t really care either way. Now she was being forced to accept that Nik meant business. She had gone to bed with him as well. Heated memories of that event made her anxious face colour. Had her weakness, her very willingness hardened his attitude? Had she, in fact, acted as her own worst enemy?
‘Are you still going up to London to attend that lecture later?’ she asked Leo.
He nodded. ‘Why?’
‘If Nik’s free, I might ask you to give me a lift.’
In her bedroom, she dialled Nik direct. ‘Nik? It’s Prudence…’
Nik dismissed the staff surrounding him with a peremptory gesture. A brooding smile forming on his lean, dark face, for he had been expecting her call, he lounged back against his polished granite desk in an attitude of relaxation that would have inf
uriated her had she seen it. ‘How are you?’
‘Not very good actually,’ Prudence confided truthfully. ‘I’ll be in London this afternoon. Could we talk then?’
‘Four o’clock, at my apartment,’ Nik suggested in a tone of the utmost pleasantness. ‘I look forward to seeing you.’
Prudence had had a couple of weeks to calm down and think matters over, Nik reflected. She now knew that there was no question of her gaining a divorce in the short term. So why would she still want to throw away the terrific understanding that they had always shared? Surely she would be more ready to appreciate that he could be a great husband if he chose to be? And that if she had wanted that demonstration eight years ago, she should have behaved like a wife and stayed with him, not run as fast and as far as she could go!
Nik had found it an ordeal to play a waiting game with Prudence for two long weeks. When he met opposition, he liked to act fast and hit back hard. He did not want a divorce. He had said so and she hadn’t listened. But he was reining back his natural aggression in an effort to gently and patiently persuade Prudence round to his viewpoint. He could not credit that she would withstand such a campaign.