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 infuriated 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.
He was even willing to concede that he had a credibility problem in the matrimonial stakes. His own lawyers had barely managed to conceal their astonishment when he informed them that he would fight the divorce that his wife was planning every step of the way. And when Theo Demakis had visited to commiserate with him about Prudence’s “stupidity”, Nik had been so disgusted by the abusive way in which the older man spoke of his granddaughter that he had finally told Theo exactly what he thought of him. As a result of that outbreak of frank speech, Nik fully expected to find himself involved in a bitter trade war with Demakis International, for Theo was not the man to take his come-uppance lying down.
When Prudence climbed into Leo’s comfortable car at noon, he was chatting on his mobile phone. She was a patient audience while Leo talked his late friend’s widow, Stella, through what to do with a leaking radiator. It was two years since Leo’s best friend had died of cancer, leaving Stella with three young children. Leo was a regular visitor at her home. Whether he would ever work up the courage to tell Stella that he was madly in love with her was not something Prudence had ever dared to ask, since Leo’s guilty secret was that he had fallen for his friend’s wife long before she became a widow.
‘I was going to call round later…oh, right,’ Leo was saying in a tone of forced joviality. ‘No, of course I don’t disapprove! I think it’s great that you’re going out and about again.’
Leo set aside the phone and ignited the engine. ‘Stella’s going out for a drink with friends.’
‘I heard.’
‘This is just the beginning…she’s a very attractive woman,’ he breathed morosely. ‘She’ll have a boyfriend in no time.’
Prudence said nothing. Leo was in a horrible situation. He could speak up and risk destroying his current relationship with Stella, who might well be horrified by the feelings he revealed. Or he could stay silent and suffer while some other man filled the empty space in her life. There was no easy answer. In the act of giving his arm a sympathetic squeeze, Prudence frowned at the sight of the two men erecting a ‘For Sale’ board at the foot of the farm lane.
‘What on earth are they doing?’ Leo exclaimed.
Prudence got out of the car and tackled the workmen. When she told them that they were putting the sign up at the wrong property she was shown a worksheet that listed her home, Craighill Farm. She used her mobile phone to ring their boss, who suggested she take the matter up with the estate agent.
Leo drove on while Prudence tried to get hold of the agent. He was unavailable. A salesman informed her that Craighill Farm was to be surveyed for the sales brochure the following day. Having pointed out that she lived there and knew nothing about any such arrangement, she requested the name of the supposed vendor and was informed that that was confidential information. Coming off the phone again in exasperation, she sighed. ‘I’ll sort it out with the agent later. Why is it that nobody will ever accept responsibility for a silly mistake?’
Nik lived in a vast London apartment complete with a roof garden and a pool. Prudence had been there lots of times but had never felt at home with its sleek designer furniture, the modern sculptures or wide, echoing swathes of marble floor. Her nerves were on edge long before she even emerged from the lift. Having resisted all urges to dress up until she lost her nerve at the eleventh hour, she was wearing a long brown skirt and a cream gypsy top that was a little too tight for her to relax in. But she
‘Prudence…’ All cool and sophistication in a light grey business suit, Nik crossed the imposing lounge to greet her. He looked shockingly handsome: lean, mean and darkly magnificent.
Attacked from within by a flashing recollection of him stripping by the side of her bed, Prudence turned scarlet
