The Greek's Chosen Wife. Lynne Graham

‘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 so sorry for you,’ she remembered jaggedly. ‘Nobody was that surprised when it looked like you’d got plastered at the prospect of having to sleep with me!’

      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, whatever!’ Nik ground out with raking impatience and distaste. ‘It never once occurred to me that we might not have made love at all.’

      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 façade of waspish composure with a vengeance.

      Nik held her accusing gaze with level, challenging cool while thinking about what a very luscious, sexy mouth she had. ‘She was crying and she kissed me…I pushed her away—’

      ‘Of course, I was long gone by that stage…and I really don’t care now anyway,’ Prudence delivered between compressed lips, twin spots of high colour illuminating her cheekbones. ‘All I want from you now is a divorce.’

      ‘Forget it…you’re an Angelis; you’re my wife. This entire conversation is offensive—’

      ‘No, it’s not.’ Her blue eyes were dark with growing emotion. ‘Offensive is you thinking that you have the right to tell me I can’t have a divorce.’

      Nik squared broad shoulders that were sheathed in the finest suiting available, breathed in deep and released a slow, measured hiss. ‘Don’t you think that we should give marriage a trial before we start talking about a divorce?’

      CHAPTER TWO

      A FALLING FEATHER would have sounded like a giant rock in the silence that followed that question.

      Shattered, Prudence opened her mouth and shut it again, discovering that Nik’s gaze was welded to her full lips. She flushed, wondering why he was staring. She studied him with a frown because she didn’t trust her own hearing. He could surely not have said what she thought he had just said? And if he had spoken those words, no doubt she had somehow misunderstood his meaning.