sentiment wasn’t returned.’
Her throat thickened. She turned her head away again and squeezed her eyes tight shut on the tears threatening to well up and overflow. He was trying to comfort her by demonstrating his sympathy and understanding of her feelings. He was really, really good at that, she acknowledged inwardly. He always knew exactly what to say. But she did not want him telling her lies out of pity or out of guilt. Why should he feel guilty because he had said he didn’t want a baby? Lots of guys of Nik’s age and lifestyle would feel exactly the same.
‘I think I want to sleep,’ she murmured flatly.
‘Go ahead…I won’t disturb you.’
The silence stretched.
‘I’d like to be on my own,’ she muttered tightly.
‘But I don’t think you should be,
‘Just go home,’ she told him stonily. ‘Don’t you have any work to do?’
The silence thundered. The door closed. She flipped over and focused on the chair he had vacated. She had wanted him to go but, just as swiftly and unreasonably, she wanted him back. The thickness in her throat became great gulping sobs and she rolled back and buried her face in the pillow.
Three days later, Nik picked her up and took her back to Oakmere. She changed the subject whenever he tried to talk about the miscarriage…
It was six weeks since Prudence had returned from hospital. She could hear a phone ringing in the abbey’s cavernous entrance hall. The housekeeper answered it before she could reach it and brought the phone to her.
‘Am I speaking to Prudence Angelis?’ an accented male voice enquired heavily. ‘The granddaughter of Theo Demakis?’
She frowned. ‘Yes…why?’
It was her grandfather’s lawyer, Gregoly Lelas. He was calling to inform her that the older man had died very suddenly that morning from a massive heart attack. Shock engulfed Prudence in a sickening tide. She had always cherished the secret hope that Theo Demakis would come to regret his treatment of her and wish to get to know her as a member of his family. But now it was too late, forever too late because he was gone.
As her pale profile pinched tight, Nik strode into the room. ‘What has happened?’
‘My grandfather’s dead,’ she mumbled sickly.
CHAPTER NINE
‘HOW DO YOU feel?’ Nik settled Prudence into a seat on his private jet with as much care as he would have utilised had she been an invalid.
‘I’m perfectly fine.’ Her even white teeth clenched on that declaration. She was convinced that if he asked her one more time how she was, she would scream! Such prolonged, exaggerated solicitude struck her as quite unnecessary. She was not suffering any physical discomfort or weakness now. Ironically she felt healthy as a horse.
When they were airborne, Prudence studied a wildlife magazine and struggled to seem unconscious of Nik’s steady regard.
‘You’re not speaking to me…’ Nik murmured.
‘Of course I’m speaking to you. I’m not a child, for goodness’ sake!’
‘I don’t know you like this. It’s like you’re surrounded by barbed wire.’
‘We are on our way to a funeral. Excuse me for not feeling chatty,’ Prudence whipped back at him stiffly from behind her magazine.
Nik left his seat and sank down in the one beside her. ‘We can get through all this…but we have to talk.’
Prudence threw aside the magazine in a temperamental display that she could not suppress. Her emotions all felt as though they were perched on a knife edge. Nik starred at the heart of a welter of conflicting responses. She wanted him to be close, and yet, on another level, she could not resist the urge to push him away and snipe at him. With an unsteady hand she smoothed down the skirt of the elegant black suit she wore. ‘Not now, please…’
‘I lost a child, too…’ Nik breathed in a raw undertone. ‘Don’t shut me out,
As she sprang up to take refuge in the sleeping compartment, Nik caught her hand in his. ‘What?’ she gasped, eyes over-bright and stinging and avoiding the golden challenge of his.
‘We can share more than a bed,’ Nik told her with disconcerting candour.
Her face flaming, she pulled her fingers free and fled. He had held her through the nights since she’d lost the baby without touching her, while her shameless body tingled and heated to the hard, muscular embrace of his. Had he known how much she longed for him? Here she was, barely speaking to him, and yet that craving for him refused to cease! Her hands curled into tight fists. He was right. There was a barrier between them but it was a much more basic barrier than he appreciated.
Of course, she was not still blaming him for his candour on the score of parenthood a few days before she lost the baby, she thought unhappily. She was not so stupid or short-sighted that she would hold spite on such a score. No, in the aftermath of her miscarriage, she had come to appreciate that she was hurting so badly because she had set herself up for that hurt. Unrequited love was a recipe for disappointment. Worst of all, she was obsessively in love with Nik and she always had been. But when they were just friends she’d had enough distance to keep her pride and her common sense and independence. In short she had learned to get by without Nik very nicely. After their marriage blessing, however, everything had changed and, with it, her aspirations.
Even so, it wasn’t fair to blame him for not loving her. He had never offered love. He still did romance as if he had been born to it and had the right move and word for every occasion. Three weeks of being treated like a goddess in their Tuscan hideaway had left her floating on air, so the return to solid earth again had been understandably tough. Nik was never going to love her and she had to learn to live with that. They could be really close in other ways, she reasoned fiercely. Pride was making her push him away but she did not want to destroy their marriage; she did not want to lose him. Half a loaf still felt better than no bread at all.
‘I had a nap…I’m feeling better,’ she hastened to assure Nik with a determined smile as they moved through Athens Airport. ‘I’m sorry I’ve been so out of sorts.’
‘The experience you’ve had, you’ve been a saint,’ Nik pronounced, his charismatic smile making her heart bounce like a tennis ball.
She was very much surprised when an older man with a familiar face stepped forward to greet her with solemn formality and ask if he might take her luggage for her. She recognised him as her grandfather’s chauffeur.
‘My goodness…I’m afraid I wasn’t expecting to be met off my flight.’
Nik explained that they had made their own arrangements to travel to the funeral.
‘Do you think the driver did that off his own bat?’ Prudence asked when they reached their own limo. ‘Grandfather’s staff were very nice to me when I stayed with him.’
In Nik’s experience staff, no matter how kind or well-intentioned, rarely took such initiatives. Were Theo’s legal executors keen to cast a polite public veil of concealment over the late tycoon’s brutal treatment of his grandchild? A limo ride to the funeral would have been cheap at the price. His handsome mouth took on a sardonic curl. He considered that the more likely explanation.
From the airport they went to Nik’s family home, where they had been invited to lunch with his parents. Prudence had received several sympathetic phone calls from her mother-in-law and Nik’s sisters and had been warmed by their friendly acceptance. Nik’s father also accompanied them to the church.
During the church service, Prudence became conscious that quite a few people seemed to be craning their heads to look in her direction. At the cemetery, the surge of her regret for the fact that she’d never got to know the older man sent tears rolling down her face. Theo Demakis had been her last living relative and to the last he had been a stubborn, bitter, unforgiving man who had rejected her every attempt to treat him like a family member. Of course, that had been his choice, she reminded herself ruefully. While Nik was engaged in dialogue with his father, Gregoly Lelas approached her to check that she was coming back to the Demakis villa outside Athens.
Prudence was surprised by the question. ‘I wasn’t planning to,’ she told her grandfather’s lawyer.
‘But you are the only possible hostess. Everyone here will be your guests,’ the older man pointed out, as if
