Читать книгу Modern Romance Collection: June 2018 Books 1 - 4 - Линн Грэхем, Miranda Lee - Страница 13
ОглавлениеONLY TWO DAYS LATER, Freddie’s whole world imploded.
‘I did warn you last year that I wouldn’t do this for ever,’ Claire reminded the younger woman briskly, having announced her imminent plans to move to Spain with her boyfriend. ‘I’ve already given social services a month’s notice, so they’ll be looking for a new foster home for Eloise and Jack...although I got the impression they’re actually hoping to put them up for adoption now. Cruz finally acknowledged paternity and signed off any interest in them. Oh, Freddie, for heaven’s sake, don’t look at me like I’m a monster!’
Freddie was trembling and biting her lip hard, determined not to vent any of the very emotional feelings flying through her head and brimming on her lips. ‘I’m not. I’m shocked, that’s all, but you did warn me before we got the kids,’ she conceded, striving to be fair. ‘It’s just I thought our arrangement would last a bit longer—’
‘And maybe it would’ve done if I hadn’t met Richard,’ Claire cut in with a grimace. ‘I was in a bad place when I agreed to take on the kids with you but now my life’s opening up again. Richard will be the chef in his parents’ restaurant and I’ll work front of house. We’re getting the little apartment above the restaurant to live in...it’s nothing fancy but it’ll do us fine and it will be a fresh start for me.’
Freddie tried very hard not to be selfish and not to surrender to a heart that felt as if it were being torn apart inside her. When she had begun living with Claire, Claire had been getting over a broken engagement and she had been unemployed. Fostering the children had suited the brunette back then, giving her the breathing space she had needed to rethink her future, and then Richard had entered her life.
‘Yes,’ Freddie agreed, struggling to block out the upsetting images of Eloise’s and Jack’s distress at being parted from her, because they had never lived without her in their lives. It would be her job to try and prepare the children for the changes ahead, she warned herself sternly, her role to ensure that any move went as smoothly as possible.
Claire planted her hand firmly on the back of her niece’s tautly spread fingers. ‘They’re not our kids, Freddie.’
‘But they feel like it.’ Tears were openly swimming in Freddie’s eyes.
‘To you, not to me, I’m afraid.’ Claire sighed. ‘They’re Lauren’s kids. She chose to have them.’
‘I don’t think she chose anything,’ Freddie protested.
‘She was an addict. She made her mistakes and I don’t feel the need to make sacrifices in her memory and neither should you,’ Claire emphasised stridently. ‘Haven’t you already given up enough for those kids? OK...grieve, but let them go and live your own life now.’
‘That’s the problem. I don’t want to let them go!’ Freddie sobbed helplessly. ‘I love them like they’re my own!’
‘But they’re not yours or mine,’ Claire reminded her single-mindedly. ‘I don’t even know yet if I want to have children! Why aren’t you thinking about how Lauren’s lifestyle destroyed yours? You should’ve gone to university, should’ve let her go but instead you hung in there trying to save someone who refused to be saved.’
‘I know... I know,’ Freddie gasped in grudging acknowledgement and sniffed into the tissue she had grabbed, struggling to master her turbulent emotions, for Claire’s reminder had roused deep sadness for the once loving sister she had lost. ‘But I couldn’t turn my back on Eloise.’
‘You’ll have to learn how to step back now,’ the brunette pointed out with the coolness of her pragmatic temperament. ‘Let them go, Freddie, and move on with your own life like I’m doing.’
* * *
The day he got back from Lerovia, Zac wasn’t looking for Freddie but he inevitably noticed her the instant she came on shift, walking strangely slowly, seemingly drained of her usual energy. He lounged back fluidly in his chair on the terrace, reminding himself that he no longer had an interest there. He watched while she took an order from a table of drunken men, city types, sharply suited, arrogantly convinced of their right to torment the cute little waitress with catcalls and comments. She kept her head down, doing her job by rote, her delicate profile set.
But when she returned with the tray, the guy on the outside seat ran his hand up the back of her slender thigh, fingers sidling up under the hem of her shorts. Zac stiffened, long, powerful thighs bracing. She stepped back, saying something, and the hand fell back; however, as she served the rest of the drinks the guy simply grabbed her, dragging her down onto his lap by force. Zac exploded out of his seat like a volcano. He was well aware that uninvited physical contact plunged Freddie into panic mode.
Freddie froze, trying to stay calm, recognising that the guy who had grabbed her was simply showing off, potentially not meaning any actual harm. And then suddenly she was plucked off the guy and set aside and her assailant was airborne, being shaken by someone much larger as a terrier shook a rat. And the customer was not a small man, yet he was being held off his feet and controlled like a dangling puppet and there were fear and consternation in his red sweaty face, his brash smart comments dying an immediate death.
‘Let him down,’ Freddie told Zac in shock once she realised who had stepped in to rescue her.
But sheer outrage had flushed Zac’s perfect features, his light eyes bright as a silver sword blade in the dimness of the bar, his rage at the man’s behaviour unconcealed.
‘The waitress is here to bring you drinks, nothing else,’ Zac informed the offending customer in a raw controlled undertone. ‘You don’t get to touch. She’s not for sale like the drinks.’
‘Put him down,’ Freddie urged again, shaken by Zac’s wrathful intervention and embarrassed by all the attention now coming their way, not to mention the bar manager and the burly bouncer now approaching them, eager to avoid an incident.
‘If that’s what you want,’ Zac drawled grudgingly, slowly lowering the guy to the ground again.
‘It is. Thanks,’ Freddie proffered uneasily, keen to dial the tone down because Zac had looked as if he wanted to do a lot more than hold the guy in the air. Zac had looked as though he wanted to punch him and was barely restraining the urge to do so.
Zac stared down at her, noticing that her eyes were swollen and red rimmed. ‘Bring me an espresso,’ he told her casually, ‘and whatever you want for yourself, and then you’ll join me for a break.’
‘It’s not time for me to have a break.’
‘It is now,’ Zac told her without skipping a beat, pulling out the I’m-the-boss card without an ounce of self-consciousness, his assurance absolute.
Freddie duly collected two coffees from the bar and walked out onto the terrace into the bright sunlight to carry her tray to Zac’s corner table. He ranged back in his seat like a panther forced into a reluctant retreat, luxuriant black hair feathering round his breathtakingly handsome bronzed features, only accentuating silvery pale blue eyes laced with lancing enquiry.
‘What’s wrong with you?’ he demanded of her, because she looked as though a light had gone off inside her.
‘There’s nothing wrong,’ she told him evasively.
Zac widened his stunning ebony-lashed eyes in scornful disagreement. ‘Do I look that stupid?’ he traded drily. ‘Sit down and tell me what’s happened.’
Freddie settled down into the seat opposite, her limbs heavy and clumsy to do her bidding because sleepless nights extracted a cost. ‘I’m losing the kids,’ she admitted with gruff abruptness. ‘It’s...painful...’
‘Eloise and Jack? How can you lose them?’ Zac questioned with a frown.
And she explained in as few words as possible about Claire and Richard’s plans and shared the insights gained from her own general enquiries with the social services earlier that same day. ‘I haven’t got enough to offer...to foster or adopt them,’ she admitted in pained conclusion. ‘I’m only twenty-two, without a reliable income or a settled home. I can’t offer them a mother and a father, so I wouldn’t be a serious contender if they’re putting my niece and nephew up for adoption.’
Zac breathed in deep, fascinated by her sudden rush of candour. ‘How long have you been with them?’
Freddie’s triangular face tightened, soft mouth tightening. ‘Since they were born. My sister, Lauren, was a heroin addict. She wasn’t capable of looking after Eloise and I stayed with her because someone had to do it.’
Zac gazed into her melted caramel eyes and dropped his scrutiny, unhappily encountering the soft pert swell of her unconfined breasts stirring as she shifted back into her seat opposite him, the light fabric of her top outlining the delectable contours of her delicate curves. He wondered how much of a bastard he was to notice her sexual allure in the middle of such a conversation but the heavy readiness at his groin was inescapable. Desire thrummed hungrily through his big powerful frame and with a very male sense of relief he celebrated the return of his libido, which had proved unsettlingly absent and inactive while he was in Lerovia. He wanted Freddie and substitutes, he had discovered, wouldn’t do, no matter how beautiful and alluring they were.
‘The children are very attached to you,’ he remarked uncomfortably, wondering why he had even encouraged such a conversation in the circumstances. ‘But perhaps two parents would be better for them than one.’
In dismay and hurt at that statement, Freddie gazed back at Zac’s lean, hard-boned face, involuntarily mesmerised by the glow of those glittering light eyes below lush black lashes, her body suddenly turned taut and growing uncomfortably hot in places she didn’t want to acknowledge. Even without trying, Zac contrived to emanate a powerful wave of electrifying sexual magnetism.
‘I had only one parent and she was mostly absent during my childhood,’ Zac divulged unexpectedly. ‘I loved her but she wasn’t up to the challenge.’
‘Oh...’ Freddie muttered awkwardly.
‘She had good intentions but she put my stepfather first and he didn’t want her to have anything to do with me because I wasn’t his child,’ Zac admitted curtly, already questioning why he was making such a personal admission. ‘Having another parent around would have been a big improvement for me while I was growing up.’
Well, that was telling her, Freddie conceded unhappily, wishing the dialogue had gone another way so that she wouldn’t have to feel that her powerful need to hang onto her sister’s children was an entirely selfish urge. Zac quite clearly did believe that, if there was a choice, two parents would invariably be preferable to one.
‘When do you have to give them up?’ Zac prompted quietly.
Freddie lost colour and gave him a speaking look of reproach, her eyes burning with tears. ‘The end of the month, before Claire leaves the UK. They’ll go into foster care initially, unless the authorities identify a potential adoptive couple beforehand,’ she told him painfully. ‘And perhaps they will because they’re attractive children, young enough to become part of a new family. It’s probably horribly selfish of me to want to keep them with me when I don’t have much to offer in terms of material things.’
Zac studied her swimming eyes and grimaced, feeling guilty without reason. ‘You love them.’
‘But, unfortunately, my love doesn’t have a value in the same way because Eloise and Jack are still young enough to forget me and learn to love other people.’ Freddie sighed in grudging acknowledgement of that reality. ‘I would have to be contributing a lot more...and I don’t have more yet there’s nothing I wouldn’t do to keep them!’
Zac watched tears trickle down her taut cheeks, tears she wasn’t even aware that she was shedding because she was resolutely swigging the coffee she had got herself and keeping on talking earnestly, struggling to politely hide her anguish. He wished his mother had been capable of feeling even half as much after she had left him as a little boy marooned on the fazenda month after month, year after year, living in hope of visits or phone calls that had rarely happened. But, sadly for him, Antonella had craved her husband’s child and no other and in all the years that had followed fate had only given her Zac and an endless stream of miscarriages and other disappointments.
There’s nothing I wouldn’t do to keep them.
The words echoed afresh in Zac’s mind. And a subtle illuminating shift took place in his attitude at that point as a recollection of his father’s advice surfaced simultaneously: choose a woman who at least wants a child. His lean, strong face tensed and shadowed. How was he to view a woman willing to make any sacrifice to keep children that were not even hers?
‘You must love children,’ Zac commented with forced casualness.
‘I don’t know about that,’ Freddie demurred uncertainly. ‘But I loved Eloise from the minute she was born...and Jack. He had to be weaned off drugs before he was allowed to leave hospital and I was so worried about his development at first but he’s done so very well.’
‘Jack’s full of life,’ Zac agreed lazily, deep in thought and struggling against so unfamiliar an exercise. He had skimmed along the shallow surface of life for a very long time, having learned far too young that caring too much about anything, wanting anything too much and setting hopes too high invariably hurt like hell. An intelligent man, therefore, should avoid optimistic goals, emotional entanglements and complications.
He needed a child. Freddie, however, needed a husband, willing to take on two children. The prospect of being a parent to three children shattered Zac and drew him up short in his ruminations. To adopt Eloise and Jack, he would definitely have to marry Freddie and meet all conventional expectations to satisfy the authorities involved and it would scarcely be an easy process. In all likelihood that process would also be hedged with regulations likely to curtail his every move. Was he prepared to go to such punitive lengths to solve his inheritance problem?
After all, he could choose virtually any woman to have his child. Zac had few illusions about his own worth on the matrimonial front. He was filthy rich and ambitious women targeted men who could provide a fantasy lifestyle. But in spite of being poor, Freddie didn’t seem mercenary. In fact, she had infuriating principles set in stone that had held Zac to ransom and actually forced him into retreat. He didn’t do caring and commitment, but he also knew that any child would require caring and commitment from him to thrive. He could try to meet those obligations though, couldn’t he? He was not so divorced from humanity that change was impossible, he told himself stubbornly.
Zac focussed on Freddie, tousled dark blonde hair skimming her taut cheekbones, dark chocolate eyes surrounded by wet clogged eyelashes, which signally failed to diminish her appeal. Raw hunger rippled through him, hot as a river of lava, pushing and pulling at him even though he was far too shaken by the concept of becoming a father of three to really want to continue.
‘When you finish work tonight, come up to the penthouse and we’ll talk,’ Zac murmured almost hoarsely through clenched teeth. ‘There’s a possibility that I could be able to help you retain custody of Eloise and Jack.’
Dumbfounded by that claim, which had come at her out of nowhere, Freddie stared in bewilderment back at him, her full pink lips parting in surprise to show pearly teeth. ‘How?’ she asked baldly.
‘We’ll discuss that later.’ Zac dealt her a brooding appraisal. ‘But I can tell you now that it’ll come down to how much you’re willing to give up to hang onto those kids.’
Freddie’s gaze had widened. ‘Anything.’
‘People often say stuff like that but they don’t really mean it,’ Zac dismissed with a sceptical glance. ‘We’ll talk about it and see if we can help each other.’
‘Help each other?’ she queried in wonderment.
Zac compressed his wide sensual mouth and finished his black coffee, refusing to expand on the topic.
In a complete daze, Freddie went back to work and watched Zac stride out of the bar twenty minutes later without even looking her way. How could he possibly help her? And how could she possibly help him? Her mind whirled with fantastical supposition, none of which made sense or seemed remotely likely. Meanwhile she was conscious of the stares of her co-workers and a new disturbing wariness in their attitude towards her.
‘Obviously he’s nailing her and you can’t blame her, can you? I’d have him in a heartbeat!’ one of the bar staff was opining when Freddie entered the locker room after work to change.
A horrible silence fell when her presence was noted and the other two women got very busy with their lockers before leaving in haste. Freddie’s face was burning but such speculation was only to be expected. Of course, the staff was gossiping about Zac’s apparent interest in her, and his intervention earlier on her behalf had only encouraged conjecture. Naturally everyone would assume that she was having sex with him. And if Zac had had anything to do with it, she thought ruefully, she would have been. No, it would have happened only once, she reasoned, unable to imagine that any more enduring relationship would have developed between them. Zac bore all the hallmarks of a man who got easily bored.
She slid through the door that communicated with the hotel foyer, her cheeks warm with discomfiture. She was shabbily dressed, a hoodie pulled on over her top and skinny jeans and sneakers in place of the shorts and high heels. She had put some concealer over her swollen eyes and she was depressingly conscious that she looked tired and washed out. She entered the lift Zac had used and a burly man in a suit stepped in straight after her and stuck a card in a slot.
‘The penthouse?’ he queried, looking her over doubtfully. ‘Miss Lassiter?’
‘Yes.’
‘Mr da Rocha is expecting you,’ he informed her as the doors closed. ‘I’m Marco, one of his security team, and I work for him.’
Freddie realised that the private lift would not have worked for her without that all important card. When the lift stopped Marco led the way, opening the door to the penthouse and standing back for her to enter before closing the door on her heels. A door inside the suite opened and Zac strolled out, half naked, a pair of jeans hanging loose and unbuttoned on his lean hips.
‘Oh, it’s you. Make yourself at home,’ he urged casually. ‘Pour yourself a drink.’
And with that careless suggestion he stalked back barefoot into the bedroom, leaving her breathless because Zac half naked was an unforgettable sight: an expanse of ripped, incredibly muscled torso liberally inked with intricate designs leading down to a V of muscle that emphasised his flat, hard stomach and his narrow waist. Flustered and more nervous than ever, she tugged off her hoodie because she was too warm, and finger-combed her hair before approaching the well-stocked bar and choosing a juice. She was very grateful that he hadn’t hung around long enough to notice that she had been welded to the floor and staring at him like an awestricken schoolgirl.
Annoyance that she was so easily overwhelmed by Zac’s sheer impact licked at her. Yes, he was utterly, absolutely gorgeous but surely she was capable of acting normally around him? Had she ever acted normally around him? She didn’t think she had. From that very first glimpse, he had unsettled her, then he had outraged her and from that point on she had become nervous, judgemental and oversensitive in his radius.
Zac reappeared fully dressed in a black shirt and jeans. His attention went straight to the glass in her hand. ‘Tomato juice...really?’
‘Alcohol would send me to sleep at this time of night,’ she said defensively.
‘I was teasing,’ Zac assured her while he studied her and asked himself if access to her was worth what he would be sacrificing. Of course, it wouldn’t be, his intelligence told him. No woman would ever be worth his freedom. But he had to be practical and work with the system, and if he married her and she didn’t conceive his lawyers would be able to move to break the trust. One way or another marriage would be a step forward and he would move closer to his goal of complete independence and control of the diamond mines that were his family heritage.
‘Why did you say that we might be able to help each other?’ Freddie pressed tautly.
Zac settled down carelessly opposite her on the arm of a sofa and leant back, wide shoulders squared, long, powerful thighs spread and braced. ‘I’m the heir to the Quintal da Rocha diamond mines. I receive the profits but I won’t be able to control the business until I have produced an heir of my own. That iniquitous arrangement was laid down in a legal trust by my great-great-grandfather a long time ago and I deeply resent it.’
‘You have to have a child?’ Freddie whispered with disconcerted emphasis.
‘Yes, and if you are willing to try and give me that child I am willing to marry you and attempt to adopt Eloise and Jack with you,’ Zac completed smoothly.
The mention of marriage shocked Freddie so much that she took a great desperate gulp of her tomato juice and almost choked on it, coughing and then clearing her throat with a painful swallow while Zac continued to steadily watch her. ‘You’d be willing to adopt Eloise and Jack?’ she prompted shakily, careening wildly from one thought to the next, all her thoughts disjointed and incomplete.
‘If you also agree to meet my condition by giving me a child,’ Zac responded with measured cool.
‘Do you have a criminal record?’ Freddie demanded, disconcerting him with the staggering abruptness of that question.
Ebony brows drew together in perplexity. ‘Of course not.’
Freddie went pink. ‘Just asking. You probably couldn’t be considered as an adoptive parent with a record.’
Zac was entertained by that tactless leap-frogging question that revealed that she was already considering his proposition. ‘Have you ever been pregnant?’ he traded in return.
Freddie stiffened and shook her head. ‘Er...no, I’m afraid, no proven fertility record here.’
Zac lifted and dropped a fatalistic shoulder. ‘Either of us could be infertile. At this point, it doesn’t really matter because I have to go through the motions...marry and try to have a child, and if it doesn’t happen for us I can then go to court and ask for the trust to be set aside.’
‘You would truly be prepared to adopt Eloise and Jack with me?’ Freddie prompted, sudden tears burning the backs of her eyes at the idea that there could possibly be a solution that would enable her to keep her sister’s children.
‘Yes, if you agree. You said you’d do anything to keep them and I will also pretty much do anything it takes to gain control of the da Rocha business empire,’ Zac admitted grimly.
As if she had been winded by a feverish sprint, Freddie coiled back almost bonelessly into the sofa and snatched in a deep shuddering breath, striving to calm down and think with clarity. She had to set down her glass because her hand was shaking so badly. ‘Do you think we’d have a chance of adopting the kids together?’ she asked anxiously, refusing to plunge herself into the turmoil of considering what it would be like to marry Zac and have a child with him and instead concentrating on what was most important to her at that moment.
‘I don’t see why not if we present ourselves as a loving couple. I’m wealthy enough to buy us a home. I’m also mixed race, like the children.’
‘Are you?’ Freddie studied him in surprise.
‘My grandmother on my mother’s side is black. My grandfather was white,’ Zac explained. ‘Brazil is a huge melting pot of ethnic diversity and if you’re like me you can’t choose your genes when you reproduce. I’m telling you that now because any child we have could take after either side of my family.’
Freddie nodded understanding.
‘Not every woman could comfortably accept that possibility,’ Zac admitted, involuntarily amused by Freddie’s complete lack of reaction to his frankness.
His mother had been haunted by the spectre of her husband’s racism and her fear of having a child of a darker complexion than her own while Zac had been relentlessly bullied at an almost exclusively white school for being the only child that was different. He had learned to fight to protect himself at an early age, but he had also had to learn how to back down when there were too many ranged against him. The trouble that had erupted around Zac then had led to him being labelled an agitator, a tag he had fiercely resented.
Silence fell while Zac surveyed Freddie, coiling tendrils of lust curling up hotly through him. He remembered the rounded little curve of her bottom in the shorts, the shapely length of her legs, and pictured her spread across his bed in various different positions, anticipation and hunger leaping through his veins. He could not remember ever wanting a woman with such fierce immediacy. Had her reluctance sustained his desire? Was he truly so basic that he needed the challenge she had represented? And why did the idea of getting her pregnant turn him on as hard and fast as a bullet? Wasn’t that a little kinky? A hard line of colour suffused his exotic, high cheekbones and, sliding upright, he strode over to the bar to pour himself a drink.
‘Not for me, thanks,’ Freddie framed when he glanced at her enquiringly.
‘You’re very quiet,’ he murmured warily.
‘Shocked,’ Freddie contradicted. ‘Marriage...seriously, you and me?’
‘Not a for-ever kind of marriage,’ Zac qualified softly. ‘But I would still continue to be involved in the children’s lives, regardless of what happens between us.’
The marriage would not be permanent, Freddie interpreted, but he was still promising that he would go on being a father to the children. Obviously he was planning on an eventual divorce to regain his freedom, leaving her a single parent with three children. A child with Zac, having a child with Zac, she grasped suddenly, her face and body gripped by heat at the notion. She stared down at her feet, shutting out that silly flush of sexual awareness and exasperated by it, because just then it struck her as a trivial issue when compared to the awful threat of losing her sister’s children, whom she loved and who had learned to love her. Sex was no big deal, she told herself urgently. Sex would have to be no big deal if they were forced to try and conceive a child because that could take months and months to achieve. The alternative would be to lose Eloise and Jack, whom she could not bear to imagine her life without. That recollection steadied her nerves and cooled her down. She had to keep on reminding herself of what the end result of such an arrangement would be.
‘Is divorce a stumbling block for you?’ Zac prompted with a frown.
‘No. But this idea of yours...well, it’s a lot to get my head around,’ she confided ruefully, cheeks colouring as she encountered his pale glittering gaze, finally recognising how very intense he could be because she could feel the raw force of his volatile temperament in that assessing appraisal.
‘You said you’d do anything,’ he reminded her sibilantly.
‘Marriage and a baby?’ Freddie quipped. ‘Not something I’d even got around to thinking about yet.’
‘If we married, you would also be financially secure for life. You would never have to work again if you didn’t want to,’ Zac continued.
And even though she knew he was trying to tempt her, she was filled with anticipation of what her life could be like were she free to live it and have sufficient money to afford childcare. She had missed out on her place at college, where she had planned to train as a teacher, because after finding Eloise cold, wet and hungry in her cot, forgotten by Lauren, she had known that there was no way she could leave a baby alone with her sister. Not when Eloise needed her, not when Freddie loved Eloise as much as if she had given birth to her herself. Those were the truths that had reshaped Freddie’s future and forced tough, unselfish choices on her.
‘All I want is what’s best for the children. That has to be my main aim,’ Freddie declared. ‘You’d have to start taking the time to get to know them properly.’
‘I’ll do whatever it takes. I want you—’
‘For a while,’ Freddie interposed ironically, brown velvet eyes flickering over his lean, darkly handsome features, her mouth running dry. ‘And I come as a package with two children. I don’t want them damaged in any way by our choices.’
‘We’re only human. We can’t see the future but my motivation is good. I don’t want anyone harmed by this arrangement.’
‘But why did you pick me?’ she asked baldly.
‘I can be businesslike about this with you because you have as much to gain from the marriage as I do,’ Zac stated. ‘I like that because it gives us a better chance of making it work. Com certeza...of course, if I wasn’t attracted to you, it wouldn’t work on any level.’
Freddie reddened, lashes cloaking her gaze as she tore her attention from his lean, powerful figure, her body slowly heating. Her nipples prickled and tightened, her thighs pressing tightly together to ease the sudden compulsive ache between them. Wanting without any hope of satisfaction hurt, she finally acknowledged, but she still tensed at the prospect of giving way to that need.
But Zac was offering her what she wanted in return for what he wanted and she deemed it a fair bargain if he was willing to take on parenting her niece and nephew and any child they had of their own. She concentrated on the positives. Zac would give them security. Zac would be another parent to support her. After a while he would not be around on a daily basis as a father, but in a world where nothing was certain and marriages often broke down that was not unusual and at least he was being honest about his intentions from the outset.
She didn’t have an alternative choice. Nobody else was coming to rescue her. And even Zac wasn’t rescuing her, she reflected wryly. He was offering her a lifebelt on one hand and demanding his pound of flesh with the other. They would be equal partners in the marriage because both of them would be bringing something important to the table. Would she be able to conceive? How long would it take to accomplish that feat? And what would it feel like to have Zac as a husband and lover and then lose him again? But all those scary questions were for the future and not relevant to the present.
‘Yes. I am attracted to you,’ she said stiffly, reckoning that there was no longer any need to pretend otherwise.
A wide appreciative grin slashed Zac’s mouth. ‘No more lies, then.’
‘No more lies,’ she agreed ruefully. ‘I’m saying yes to your proposition because you’re the only hope I have of keeping Eloise and Jack and I’ll do whatever I have to do to facilitate that.’
‘Venha aqui...come here,’ Zac urged.
Stiff as a plank of wood, Freddie rose from her seat and approached him. He swept her up like a doll and held her high with the kind of controlled physical strength that shook her. ‘You won’t regret this decision,’ he told her and then he kissed her.
Hotly, extravagantly, passionately and with all the energy that drove him, he crushed her soft lips beneath his, both arms banded so tightly round her narrow ribcage that she could barely breathe. But she didn’t want to breathe, she just wanted to fall deeper into that kiss. His tongue ravaged the tender interior of her mouth and a shower of sparks flew up inside her, tingling along every nerve ending in her slender body. His tongue teased and flicked and darted and with a gasp she closed her arms dizzily round his neck.
‘We could get this project off to a flying start right now,’ Zac suggested thickly.
And Freddie froze and let go of him, pushing him away until he had to let her down to stand on her own feet again.
‘Problem?’ Zac quipped very drily, his eyes luminous and coolly enquiring in the dim lights.
‘I’m not getting into bed with you until we’re legally married,’ Freddie spelt out in a defiant rush as she fought for what little security she could retain, which to her meant staying safe and uncommitted to the last possible moment. ‘You could still be shooting me a crazy seduction line. After all, you are the guy who bets sports cars away! I won’t take the risk of getting pregnant until you’ve proved your commitment to our agreement.’
Zac stared at her in astonishment. ‘You think this could be a scam?’ he breathed incredulously, astonished by the level of her distrust. ‘I’ve never had to seduce a woman in my life!’
Freddie backed away another few steps, embarrassed now that she had voiced her reservations. ‘I’m naturally suspicious—’
‘Of men,’ Zac slotted in boldly. ‘You don’t trust my sex.’
‘My past experiences have not been good,’ Freddie conceded reluctantly.
‘Then tomorrow we’ll get this party started with a visit to my London lawyers. They’ll make a start on the adoption application and advise us on how soon we can get married here. Bring your birth certificate and your passport and the children’s,’ Zac advised, his lean, hard-boned face set with purpose.
Freddie groaned out loud. ‘Zac... I don’t have a passport and neither do the children. In any case the authorities wouldn’t allow us to take the children out of the UK without their permission.’
‘You’ve never been abroad?’ Zac asked in astonishment.
‘Never,’ Freddie confirmed.
‘My lawyers will deal with all the details,’ Zac pronounced with innate arrogance.
‘And I’ll have the children in tow,’ Freddie warned. ‘And they can’t go on a motorbike.’
‘Obviously not,’ Zac fielded drily. ‘Stop putting obstacles in my path, meu pequenino. When I want something, I allow nothing to get in my way...and I want you.’
Freddie went pink, disconcerted by that unequivocal statement of intent. And yet in the strangest way she found his determination to have her ridiculously flattering, because no man had ever wanted her with such stubborn, resolute intensity. Of course that wouldn’t last, she told herself ruefully, not once he realised how inexperienced and ordinary she was. No doubt he was expecting fireworks in the bedroom. How would he feel when he instead wakened to find Eloise and Jack in bed with them at some ungodly hour of the morning? Family life, she thought heavily, was likely to be a big culture shock for Zac.
