‘You asked me for a drink of water and I spilt it all over the bed, so I changed it.’ Prudence was frowning. ‘Are you saying you were too drunk that night to remember anything the next day?’
‘It’s still a blank. I don’t remember the evening part of the reception or anything until late the next morning. I had a complete blackout…I told you that at the time.’
Prudence looked away, tension thrumming through her. The room felt suffocatingly warm and she pulled open the patio door to let cooler air flow in from the terrace outside. ‘I assumed that was just an excuse, something you were just saying to cover up-’
‘Why would I lie?’ Nik incised curtly.
She heaved a rueful sigh. ‘Because people do when they’ve taken too much alcohol-’
‘By all accounts your mother had a problem telling the truth sober
‘You’re not being fair to her when you say that.’ But Prudence was painfully aware that Nik and her mother had mixed like oil and water. Trixie had bitterly resented her daughter’s refusal to profit from her marriage into the wealthy Angelis clan and accept an allowance from Nik. Her mother’s acid comments when Nik visited had led Prudence to suggest that she see Nik in London instead.
Nik rested grim, dark golden eyes on her. ‘I wasn’t lying to you when I said I had a blackout-’
‘That may be the case,’ Prudence conceded reluctantly. ‘But I didn’t know you well enough then to be able to tell the difference.’
His burning anger undimmed, Nikolos stepped back from her and swung away, tension emanating from him in waves. ‘The day after our wedding you shrank away from me,’ he breathed thickly. ‘You wouldn’t meet my eyes. You couldn’t even bear me to touch your hand-’
‘I just don’t want to talk about this!’ Prudence exclaimed, emotion whipping up a storm inside her because she was already recalling her anguished sense of rejection that day. She had learned to live with it but she still despised herself for the love that had cost her so dear.
Nik swung back to her, astonishingly fast and light on his feet for all his size. ‘Tough,’ he pronounced. ‘You’re going to talk about it. I’m not tiptoeing round your strait-laced notions of sexual propriety this time around.’
Utterly off-balanced by his aggressive stance and his hostility, Prudence drew in a quivering breath. ‘I would suggest that the practice of propriety is not one of your skills-’
‘You throw it up like a barrier between us.’ Nik strolled almost lazily round her, brilliant dark eyes watching the way sunshine lit up the lighter streaks of gold and amber in her hair while he wondered when he had last seen hair that natural and abundant. ‘But I won’t tolerate that again-’
Oddly uneasy with the way he was watching her, Prudence was standing as straight and stiff as a board. ‘I don’t want to discuss-’
‘What about what I want and need?’ Nik shot back at her, hard as a diamond cutting through steel. ‘You still speak as if I chose to get drunk that night. My drink was spiked-’
‘So you said at the time.’ Prudence was keen to get the discussion over with, since it seemed there was no hope of silencing him.
Nik bit out an incredulous laugh. ‘You didn’t believe that either, did you?’
‘No, I didn’t.’
‘But it was the truth. Someone spiked my drink with a drug. I can only believe it was someone’s idea of a joke but it wasn’t very funny for either of us,’ Nik pronounced harshly. ‘It ruined our wedding, humiliated me and made trouble between us.’
Even though Prudence was now prepared to accept that he had been telling the truth, she turned her head away. She was very pale. All the wedding guests had known why Nik was marrying her and he had come in a good deal of sympathy. As the outsider and the grandchild of an unpopular man, she had been despised. But had drugging Nik into a state of unconsciousness on his wedding night been intended as a joke? Or as a favour to him? Certainly, Nik had been in no condition to act the bridegroom. Some might well have assumed that that would be a welcome escape from an unpleasant task when the bride was plain and unattractive. She was convinced that the stifled sniggers of amusement that she had heard that night would live with her to her dying day.
‘I was more humiliated than you were,’ she muttered in a rush, swallowing hard, but it was no use: she just could not keep the tears from hitting the backs of her eyes and threatening to overflow.
In a movement that took Nik by surprise she spun round and walked hurriedly out into the garden. She came to a halt below the apple trees and dragged in a great gulp of fresh air, fighting for her composure.
‘How do you make that out?’
Startled, Prudence whirled round. Nik was on the terrace. Raw pain sliced through her as she focused on his lean, devastatingly handsome features. ‘When you had to marry me, your family and your friends felt
A dull edge of colour seared a faint line along the angular slant of his proud, chiselled cheekbones. He had not known she thought so little of herself and it disturbed him. ‘You can’t have thought that… How could you make such a drama out of nothing?’
‘It wasn’t nothing.’ Bitterly regretting her candour, Prudence bent her head and went back indoors. She could not stay still. Time was threatening to take her back where she didn’t want to go and she saw no advantage to reliving her agonies as a lovelorn teenager whose dream wedding had descended into pure gothic tragedy.
‘Is the humiliation you believe you suffered the reason you refused to discuss what happened that night?’
‘You’re so persistent.’
‘And you’re surprised?’ Nik dealt her a scorching appraisal from his mesmerising eyes, his beautiful mouth a bleak line. ‘I didn’t know what had happened and you wouldn’t tell me, so I assumed the worst. I wasn’t in control after I took that drink…the way you behaved and reacted the next day, I thought I must have been rough-’
‘Rough?’
‘In bed…that I’d hurt you, offended you, forced you to do something you didn’t want to do,
Prudence did not know where to look. Her face was hot and pink. ‘In the condition you were in, I wouldn’t have let you touch me-’
‘But I’m a whole lot bigger and stronger than you are,’ Nik said darkly. ‘You were a virgin and I was in no state to consider that. When you refused to look at me the following morning, I felt like a rapist!’
Freezing in consternation, Prudence gave him an aghast glance. ‘Oh, no…surely not?’
Shimmering golden eyes lanced into hers. ‘What else was I to believe? Obviously I’d messed up badly. When I tried to kiss you, you began sobbing and you took off like a bullet out of a gun and locked yourself in the bedroom next door…’
Prudence sucked in a fracturing breath. She was beginning to see how misleading her behaviour must have been from his point of view and feel guilty. Unfortunately, she did not want the dialogue he was making it impossible for her to avoid. Yet if he did not remember that night, it was only right that she should fill in the blanks.
‘Before you passed out at the reception, you went missing and I made it my mission to find you. You were with Cassia Morikis,’ she framed in a flat tone that carried not a shade of human expression.
Nik frowned, ebony brows pleating. ‘That part of the evening is not a blank. I was OK at that point because I remember it well. Cassia was upset. I took her out of the function room because I didn’t want a scene that would have embarrassed a lot of people.’
Prudence chewed the soft underside of her lower lip. She felt that she should have known that he would manage to put an entirely different spin on that episode. When it came to self-defence he moved faster than the speed of light. ‘When I saw you, you were wrapped round each other like Romeo and Juliet and it didn’t look quite so innocent.’
‘Why wouldn’t you talk about this when it happened?’ Nik suddenly demanded angrily. ‘Take it from me, it was innocent-’
‘You were kissing her!’ Prudence yelled at him, ditching her facade of waspish composure with a vengeance.
Nik held her accusing gaze with level, challenging cool while thinking about what a very luscious, sexy mouth
