CHAPTER FOUR.
"DON"T BE STUPID!" Prudence heard herself say before she got wise and simply turned on her heels and ran for her life.
She did not stop until she had outrun the pack of journalists following her down the street. Gulping in fresh air, she took a careful look around her and slowed her pace; the paparazzi had gone. It had been an enervating episode for a woman who was not accustomed to media interest. Her face had only made it into the newspapers twice since her marriage-and only then at private events held to bring in funds for the sanctuary. It shook her to acknowledge that Nik lived with that kind of attention every day.
For the first time she allowed herself to mull over the astonishing fact that Nik had been willing to run the risk of getting her pregnant to keep her. At heart Nik could be very basic. Naive as well, she thought ruefully. According to what she had read, it was quite common for couples to have to spend a year trying for a baby. The same gloomy book had informed her that even though she was only in her late twenties, her most fertile years already lay behind her. On that basis she thought there was virtually no chance that conception could have taken place on the strength of a single occasion.
When she met up with Leo again, he looked as grim as she felt.
"What"s up?" she asked.
"I ran into a friend of Stella"s at the lecture. She let drop that Stella"s actually going out on a date tonight with some guy...she just didn"t know how to tell me and thought I would disapprove."
Prudence winced and tucked her hand into the crook of his elbow. "Oh, dear. Mind you, she has been on her own for two years now."
"I know that." Leo settled frustrated brown eyes on her. "Give me the female viewpoint. Advise me on my next move..."
"I can"t...I can"t! You have to make that decision."
"I"ve got too much to lose," Leo sighed. "Look, let"s have dinner before we drive back. It"s not like I"ve got anything better to do."
"How did you get on with Nik this afternoon?" he finally enquired while they were studying their menus in the restaurant.
Prudence tried to hoist her usual bright smile onto her mouth and failed. She thought of the fact that her relationship with Nik now lay in broken pieces. She thought of the fact that he was cruelly forcing her to continually reject the marriage that had once been her naive and foolish dream. And to her horror and without the slightest warning, tears sprouted into her eyes and poured in a flood down her cheeks.
"Prudence..." Leo was horrified and palpably embarra.s.sed and he gripped the hand she had rested on the table. "Shall we leave?"
"No, I"ll be all right in a minute...sorry," she told him ruefully, fumbling for a tissue and smiling apologetically at him through her tears.
Somewhere very close a camera flashed. Leo blinked and released his hold on her to shoot upright. "That bloke just took a photo of us! What"s going on?"
"I must have been followed from Nik"s apartment. I thought I"d shaken the reporters off, but obviously I was wrong," Prudence sighed, mopping her face dry.
Leo stayed upright, making it clear that he would still prefer to leave. "You should have warned me...I had no idea you attracted this kind of attention when you were in London."
"I don"t as a rule, but word seems to have leaked out about the divorce and evidently anything to do with Nik"s private life is news. The paparazzi adore him." It crossed Prudence"s mind that, put in the same position as Leo, Nik would have shrugged and stayed to eat. But then Nik had a magnificent disregard for incidents that embarra.s.sed other people. She felt guilty for comparing him to Leo, who was more sensitive and not at all arrogant.
On the drive back home, Leo told her that he had applied for a teaching position in London. A pang of dismay a.s.sailed her, for if he was successful he would be selling up and moving to the city and she would miss his company. Yet she also appreciated that such a move would make sense for him now that his father was no longer alive.
Only when Leo had finished telling Prudence about his plans was she free to ponder her own predicament. It seemed to her that she was in a no-win situation. If she continued with the divorce proceedings in the teeth of Nik"s opposition she would be wasting money she didn"t have on legal bills. She would have to find another way of changing Nik"s mind. Of course, a really bold woman would not allow Nik to come between her and her future plans, Prudence reflected ruefully. A really bold woman would head off to the sperm bank regardless, reflecting that she had asked for a divorce and that if her subsequent fertility caused her husband embarra.s.sment and some denials, it would be entirely his own fault. But even though she was angry with both Nik and her grandfather, she did not wish to affront either man to that extent.
A strange car was parked in the yard at her home. Annoyed that the "For Sale" board was still there at the foot of the lane, Prudence was hoping that the car belonged to the estate agent so that she could give him a piece of her mind. A small, pugnacious man in a suit got out of the car and approached her. "Mrs Prudence Angelis...?"
Prudence nodded confirmation. "Yes?"
He handed her a doc.u.ment and got straight back into his car to drive off again. She opened it up. It was an eviction notice drawn up by her grandfather"s legal firm in London.
Her solicitor, Mr Bullen, was able to see her first thing the next morning. He studied the notice she had been served with and sighed. "Yes, I"m afraid it"s in order. Your mother was warned that this could happen some day."
"My mother, Trixie...knew that there was a risk of this? She never mentioned it to me. I don"t understand," Prudence protested, her eyes shadowed by the horrible sleepless night of worry she had endured.
"As you know, my colleague, who handled your late mother"s estate, retired last year. He may well have a.s.sumed that your mother had already explained the intricacies of your position and that you understood the problems."
"I thought I did, but I obviously didn"t. I knew that I would never own Craighill Farm. But I believed that it was mine to use for my lifetime."
"The farm belongs to your grandfather and he has always had the right to ask you to vacate the property so that it can be sold. The agreement by which your mother acquired the right to live at Craighill was extremely complex. In it, however, your grandfather, Theo Demakis, clearly reserved the right to put an end to the agreement at any time and he has now chosen to exercise that option." The solicitor surveyed his client with a curiosity he could not conceal. "Of course you could purchase Craighill Farm for your own use and that would soon settle the problem."
Prudence stretched her mouth into as good a semblance of an unconcerned smile as she could manage. She was fully conscious that while she carried the name Angelis a plea of poverty was unlikely to receive a sympathetic hearing. She walked slowly back out to her battered four-wheel-drive. She felt traumatised. She was to move out of the farm within the month. It was a bad moment to appreciate that, whenever trouble loomed on her horizon, she was accustomed to phoning Nik. He had always been her first port of call in a tight corner and his advice and guidance had proved invaluable a dozen times in the past. But she couldn"t phone Nik for support this time, could she?
There was certainly no point contacting her Greek grandfather, who had made his animosity clear with a speed and a ferocity that appalled her. Evidently, her decision to divorce Nik had been the last straw. In her ignorance she had believed that her father, Apollo, had funded the purchase of the farm and that it would be her home until the end of her days. The truth had come as a severe shock. Why should her grandfather let her continue to live in his property when as far as he was concerned she was a rubbish granddaughter? Theo Demakis owed her nothing, she conceded wretchedly.
In less than a month, every animal in the sanctuary would be homeless. It was as if a bomb had exploded under her tidy little world. With it went all her dreams. To think she had believed that she was financially secure enough to contemplate single-parenthood! Only now did she see that her freedom from having to pay either rent or a mortgage had been the foundation of her security and that without that advantage all her plans came apart at the seams.
But she was being horribly selfish when all she could think about were her own problems, she acknowledged guiltily. Dottie and Sam Trent lived at Craighill as well. Where would they move to? She had let the cottage to them and cheerfully a.s.sured them that they could live there for as long as they liked. She felt sick at that recollection.
Skilled at handling difficult patients, Dottie had come to nurse Trixie at a time when Prudence was struggling to cope. Within weeks, Dottie and her husband had become keen volunteers at the sanctuary. But soon after Trixie"s death, Sam had had a stroke and Dottie had been unable to work. The kindly couple had got into financial difficulty through no fault of their own and that was when Prudence had extended a helping hand. Her generosity had been repaid a hundred times over and Sam"s health had improved steadily but the older man would never recover full mobility. The Trents would be utterly devastated if they lost their home for a second time.
Prudence got back to the farm just in time for the estate agent"s visit. When he told her what he believed the property would fetch on the open market, she was appalled: it was an amount as far out of her reach as the stars. Even so, she made an appointment with her bank for the following day so that she could find out if there was any way she could borrow the money. She was informed that she had no a.s.sets to offer as security and that she did not earn enough to meet the payments. The loan officer at the building society she approached was equally deflating.
Her heart sank and her pride cringed as it slowly and painfully dawned on her that the only person she could turn to for help was Nik. Before she could lose her nerve, she rang him.
"I need to see you...urgently!" she confided in a rush.
His lean, strong face etched in forbidding lines, Nik surveyed the newspaper spread out on his desk and the grainy photo of his wife holding hands with her very good friend, Leo. "In relation to what?"
Prudence worried at her lower lip. "I"ve had a bit of a shock. I"m in a serious fix. Would you consider giving me a loan? You"d probably have to stretch the payments over about a hundred years," she warned him apprehensively.
"Explain..." Interest had sparked like a hot flame in his brooding dark gaze.
"If I can"t buy Craighill, the sanctuary will have to close and I don"t know where the animals will go...You see, I don"t have the right to live there that I thought I had. Grandfather is selling the farm over my head," she told him unevenly.
Nik sprang upright and his smile was colder than ice. Thank you, Theo. Homeless animals-just what he needed as a lever; he was back on track again. He absorbed the remainder of her explanation without interruption. "OK. I can fly down tomorrow morning but it"ll be very early."
Nik"s helicopter landed at seven.
Her heart thumping fast behind her breastbone, Prudence watched him stride towards her. Two sleepless nights in succession had lowered her resistance level to his sensational dark good looks. Lean, bronzed features serious, he didn"t smile, however, and that spooked her. Even had she not been painfully aware of just how much was riding on his response to her request, his demeanour would have warned her that success was by no means a foregone conclusion. A little frisson of apprehension slivered through her tense frame.
"Would you like coffee?"
"No, thanks. I can only stay half an hour. I have to be in Athens by early afternoon," Nik drawled smoothly, looking at the way her pink top defined the luscious swell of her b.r.e.a.s.t.s, remembering, then hastily shutting down on that imagery as his body reacted with extraordinary enthusiasm. He didn"t look back at her until he felt colder than ice.
"Right...well...you might as well see this..." Prudence handed the eviction notice to him and started talking very fast about what the solicitor had told her the day before.
"You explained the situation yesterday."
"I don"t understand how my own grandfather can do this to me," she confessed unhappily.
"Theo"s a bad loser...as I fall into the same category, it would be unwise for me to pa.s.s comment.
" Prudence collided unwarily with a look from Nik that was as dark and cool as the sky at midnight. "But you wouldn"t be callous and cruel like that!"
"Let"s treat this as a business transaction," Nik suggested.
Prudence went pink and accepted the return of the papers she had pressed on him. "The bank won"t give me a loan."
"Of course they won"t. The very fact that you had to approach them, rather than me, would look bad."
Prudence heaved a sigh. "Yes, I did get that message. My solicitor seemed to a.s.sume I would just be able to buy the farm-"
"Which, of course, you would have been able to do...had you ever accepted the allowance I tried to give you-"
"But I don"t want you to give me money," Prudence pointed out hastily. "That would be wrong. I want to borrow it from you-"
"You said that the property is on the market for seven hundred thousand pounds. n.o.body in their right mind would saddle you with a debt you have no current prospect of repaying-"
"If you gave me a long enough time-"
"No," Nik incised without hesitation. "I won"t do it."
Bemused, for he had so frequently made generous offers of financial a.s.sistance over the years, Prudence frowned. "Then...what will you do?" "This is painful," Nik told her drily. "Let me be frank. Unless you agree to stay as my wife, I won"t do anything."
In shock, Prudence stared across the room at him. "You don"t mean that..."
"This is why I refuse to criticise Theo...we are both strong men who like our own way and we don"t do failure well."
"Nik...you"re not like my grandfather."
"I"m willing to employ pressure and coercion to make you do what I want," Nik pointed out drily.
Prudence shook her head slowly, surely. "No, you wouldn"t..."
Chilling dark eyes met hers with unflinching challenge. "What would you know? You"ve never crossed me before. I told you that I didn"t want a divorce." "I"ve always been able to depend on you," Prudence reminded him doggedly.
"Not this time. Our interests are in conflict-"
"What about Dottie and Sam?"
Nik executed a tiny fluid shrug and surveyed her steadily.
"All the animals?" Prudence asked with shattered incredulity. "Many of them are too old or difficult to be rehomed."
"I know."
"You would sacrifice the animals?"
"No, you will. There will be no sacrifices if you decide to remain my wife."
Prudence lifted her hand and raked her fingers through the heavy fall of her chestnut-brown hair. Her hand was not quite steady. She was starting to recall the reality that she had never managed to match Nik"s public image with the male she knew privately. Or the male that she believed that she had known and understood. He was quite correct: she had never crossed him-well, not until she had asked for a divorce that he did not want. His ruthless reputation in business was legendary. He was not exactly a p.u.s.s.ycat with the other women in his life either. He might have treated her and the women in his family with indulgence, but beyond that select circle Nik was most famous for being cold and unfeeling.
She clenched her hands tight. "I owe Dottie and Sam a lot. I promised them a secure home, and Sam"s health will suffer if he"s subjected to more stress. And although the animals here might not be human beings...if anything was to happen to them I think I would die of guilt and a broken heart..."
"So stop fighting me and every little problem will vanish," Nik advised softly. "As long as you are my wife, I will take care of you and your enemies will be mine."
Gooseflesh p.r.i.c.kled at the nape of her neck. His eyes were as dark as windows at night, his dark, rich drawl strikingly detached. She fought off the hollow sensation of fear in her belly. "I could put off the divorce-"
"No, all or nothing-"
"Well, it wouldn"t matter now whether I divorced you or not, would it?" Prudence threw back with a bitterness that was new to her experience. "I"m certainly not going to be having a child without some degree of financial stability. I hope I have more sense. If I drop the divorce, will you be satisfied? Will you loan me the money then?"
"All or nothing," Nik reminded her lazily. "I want my wife in my bed, where she belongs..."
Her cheeks fired pink. Her hands screwed up into fists. She regarded him with furious disbelief. " Rot in h.e.l.l!"
His lush black lashes were low over his stunning dark golden eyes. "I"m an old-fashioned guy," he murmured with insolent cool. "I"d have had you there a lot sooner, had I known that the wedding night was a non-event."
"It was too late even then-"
"I don"t think so. I"m told I have remarkable powers of persuasion. Had I not been haunted by the fear that I had put myself beyond the pale, you wouldn"t have been calling the independent shots all these years," Nik delivered, lean, powerful features stamped with forbidding strength. "You"re my wife and I have never thought of you as anything else-"
"A poor thing...but my own?" she misquoted hotly.
"Mine...that"s the one part you got right. What is mine stays mine-"
"I will not be your wife...ever!"
"Your decision." Nik strolled out of the room and it was a split-second before Prudence unfroze and chased after him.
"You can"t leave me like this!" she wailed.
Nik tilted his arrogant dark head back, brilliant eyes gleaming. "I can do whatever I want to do."
"If you don"t take back what you"ve suggested, I"ll never forgive you for it..."
"That"s a risk I"m prepared to take."
"I could take you to court and claim alimony from you, and you would be forced to give me some financial help," she protested.
"But the legal process would move very, very slowly and you don"t have the time to wait," Nik countered with cool clarity.
Her shoulders slumped. "So you think it"s OK to kick me when I"m already down?"
Ice in his hard gaze, Nik studied her, his beautifully sculpted mouth grim. "You"re the only woman I"ve ever asked to marry me. To listen to you speak of our marriage as though it is some form of abuse is intolerable. I treated you with honour-"