Читать книгу Modern Romance Collection: June 2018 Books 1 - 4 - Линн Грэхем, Miranda Lee - Страница 16

CHAPTER SEVEN

IT WAS A breathtaking dress, Freddie reflected, dizzily studying her appearance in the mirror in Claire’s bedroom. Getting ready in her own room had proved impossible because there simply wasn’t enough space.

The sleek handmade lace bodice with a low back clung from shoulder to hip, playing up her small curves and making her look taller. The skirt fell in intricate cobweb-fine lace folds shimmering with beadwork. At her throat glittered a diamond pendant, a wedding gift from Zac. Her hair was up in an elaborate coronet to support the diamond-studded tiara that Zac had told her had belonged to his late mother, along with the diamond earrings and bracelet she wore.

‘Do I look like a Christmas tree?’ she asked her aunt worriedly.

‘Like I should have that problem!’ Claire quipped enviously. ‘But diamonds are the family business, so I suppose you have to put the finest on display. Your life will be so different, Freddie. It’ll be champagne and caviar all the way now.’

Freddie swallowed hard at the thought because she still couldn’t imagine it. A hair stylist and a beautician might have come to the house to prepare her for the wedding, but that had seemed more of a necessity than a luxury when she was marrying Zac and she needed to look like the sort of woman that he would marry. Heaven forbid that he would ever look at her and feel embarrassed by her and, thanks to that family dinner, she already knew that even those closest to him could be both critical and judgemental.

Zac, waiting at the church, forced a polite smile when Vitale came to join his two brothers. ‘Your majesty,’ he said, acknowledging that his half-brother had become the King of Lerovia since his mother’s abdication even though the formal coronation would not be held for several months. ‘I should be bowing, right?’

‘No...not within the family,’ King Vitale declared. ‘And I intend to have a modern court, so there’ll be a lot less bowing and scraping in Lerovia as well. By the way, our wedding present, which is car-shaped, is on its way back to you.’

Zac frowned at that reference to the prized sports car he had lost in that ill-judged bet with his half-brother. ‘Back to me?’

Vitale shrugged. ‘Nobody won that bet. You may not have brought Freddie to the royal ball but now you’re marrying her—’

‘You won fair and square,’ Zac began inflexibly.

Angel frowned with the air of a man who would have liked to knock both his stiff-necked brothers’ heads together. ‘He’ll be delighted to accept his car back.’

With a stark exhalation of breath, Zac accepted that loaded hint and murmured through gritted teeth, ‘That’s very generous of you, Vitale...thanks.’

‘And within the family circle there will be neither bows nor any more bets,’ Angel suggested with quiet emphasis.

Zac sank back into brooding silence, disturbed that he was so tense. People got married every day, he reminded himself. He didn’t, though, and the surroundings and the stifling traditions made him feel constrained. The whole event was much more formal than he had expected.

The bride made quite a picture walking down the aisle with Jack, loveable with his hair in corn rows and clad in a miniature suit toddling along beside her and Claire. Eloise was walking very carefully behind her aunts clutching a basket of flowers and clad in the pink flouncy princess dress that was the summit of her little-girl dreams. Zac discovered that he couldn’t take his eyes off that little tableau. His family, his new family, he realised suddenly as Jack beamed trustingly at him and Eloise waved from behind her aunts as if afraid that he might not notice her.

Without the smallest warning, the enormity of the responsibility he had taken on engulfed Zac. He tried to concentrate his attention on Freddie, who looked stunning, sexy and cute as hell, but all the while his brain was running at a mile a minute, telling him that freedom of any kind would be an unattainable luxury with one woman and two...eventually three...children depending on him to be a good husband and a good father. He lost colour, his spectacular bone structure tautly delineated below his bronzed skin as the ramifications of such a marriage finally sank in on him: he would never be totally free again because parenting was for ever, with no get-out clause. It was a sobering moment, most particularly when he was willing to admit that he didn’t know the first thing about how to take care of anyone but himself.

Freddie’s hands almost crushed her bouquet of white and pink roses when she glimpsed the cool bleak light forming in Zac’s gorgeous eyes and the absence of his trademark grin. Her heart sank like a stone. He was disappointed in her. Did she not look the way he had imagined she would? Had he believed a designer dress and all the trimmings, not to mention the family diamonds, would transform an ordinary waitress into something rather more special? Or did he have cold feet about getting married? Whatever it was, he did not look happy, which he should have been, considering that their marriage was supposed to provide what he most wanted as well.

A child. Their first child to add to the mix of Eloise and Jack, whom Zac had insisted must share their day with them because he wanted them to have that first memory of the four of them becoming a family. Zac had never had that family experience, although Freddie had happily enjoyed it for the first ten years of her life. Zac, however, had known only rejection from those who should have given him love and support. By the time he got to know his real father, who was a caring man, it had been a case of too little too late. Of course, Zac was damaged by such a loveless childhood but wasn’t it her role to ensure that he realised that together they could make things different for their own children? Or was that too tall an order for a new bride, who wasn’t loved, to take on? She was rather afraid that it might be...

Her anxiety about Zac shielded her from the pressure of the church packed with rich, smartly dressed guests. Zac had many business acquaintances and his father, still keen to show off his newly discovered son, had invited his friends to share their day as well. His brothers were attending with small parties, further pushing up the numbers. Freddie, however, had only had a few friends to invite because her social life had been very much curtailed by the children.

The priest welcomed them to the altar and gave a serious opening speech about the responsibilities of marriage. When she reached for Zac’s hand, it was ice cool in hers. She had a sudden disturbing and panic-inducing vision of him walking out on her at the last possible minute and, instinctively, she held on tight. The ceremony began and Jack escaped Claire to cling to Zac’s knees like a limpet and loudly wail in disappointment when someone lifted him away. Zac raised Freddie’s hand and slid the twisted platinum ring onto her wedding finger.

They had picked it together but there hadn’t been much choice because her extravagant engagement ring took up so much space that there was little left to spare for the wedding ring she would wear. Zac had laughed heartily at the time, teasing her about her little hands and short fingers, and without warning tears stung her eyes at that memory. He had been so laid-back and light-hearted that day only a week earlier and his current change of mood unnerved her. He had wanted to marry her, he had asked her to marry him, she reminded herself to bolster her spirits.

They signed the register with his brother and Claire as witnesses and by the time they walked down the aisle at speed it was obvious that Zac could not wait to get out of the church.

On the steps, as the guests held up phones to photograph them, he expelled his breath in a hiss. ‘Meu Deus...glad that’s over!’

Eloise clung to the foot of his jacket and Jack held out his arms, almost toppling out of Claire’s hold.

‘Tough, isn’t it, Jack?’ Zac derided, reaching out to take the over-eager baby into his arms, recognising that his shenanigans had taxed Claire’s low patience threshold.

It was a challenge for Freddie to hold onto her bridal beam in Zac’s radius, particularly after she saw Angel and Vitale exchanging meaningful looks across the disenchanted bridegroom. Getting into the limousine even with the children clambering over them was a relief because at least there were no watching eyes and listening ears there.

‘What’s wrong, Zac?’ Freddie asked levelly.

‘Nothing’s wrong,’ Zac intoned. ‘I’m just not cut out for this kind of stuff.’

‘You insisted on this being what you called a normal wedding,’ she reminded him.

His strong jaw line clenched and his wide sensual mouth compressed, his crystalline eyes sombre below his semi-lowered lashes. ‘We all make mistakes,’ he said very drily, thinking that he should have opted to avoid the traditional hoopla and travel a simpler route.

Freddie froze. ‘Am I a mistake?’ she suddenly demanded loudly.

Zac groaned long and low. ‘You know I didn’t mean it like that...inferno, I don’t know what I meant! But that priest lecturing us on our marital duties reminded me of being at school,’ he bit out impatiently.

Freddie embraced silence all the way to The Palm Tree, where the reception was being staged. Zac had dispensed with a greeting line as being too official and instead the guests mingled over drinks when they arrived. The hotel nanny was at their disposal and the children were borne off for lunch and a nap. Zac vanished into the bar before they sat down to their meal, reappearing just in time to make a very short speech in the wake of his father’s. He ate little and drank a lot, responding to Freddie when she spoke but initiating no other conversation. He seemed bleakly set on just going through the motions and getting through what he clearly saw as an ordeal.

Somehow it infuriated Freddie that, even in a mood, Zac should still look utterly gorgeous, dark stubble beginning to shade in the angles and hollows of his beautiful bone structure, black lashes low over his brooding glittering gaze as he lounged back with careless elegance in his seat.

Exasperated by her susceptibility to him, Freddie tore her attention from him and went into the cloakroom to freshen up. She was grimacing at her downcast expression when a woman appeared in the mirror beside her.

‘I hope Zac treats you better than he treated my daughter,’ she remarked curtly.

Blinking, Freddie turned her head to look at the ageing blonde, studying her with pursed lips. ‘Sorry?’ she said blankly.

‘Two years ago my daughter was working as a chalet girl in Klosters. Zac told her that she was the most beautiful girl in the world...well, actually she was a runner-up in the Miss World competition the year before,’ the woman digressed with pride. ‘Anyway. She was with him a week and then she never heard from him again. He broke her heart.’

Freddie straightened her slight shoulders and lifted her chin. ‘And you’re telling me this because...?’

‘He loses interest once the chase is over. I thought I should warn you.’

‘Thank you,’ Freddie replied with equal insincerity, laced with a tight determined smile as she walked away.

Merry greeted her when she returned to their table to find Zac’s chair empty.

‘He’s doing shots in the bar with Angel,’ Angel’s wife confided with a visible wince of embarrassment.

The guests were waiting for the bride and groom to open the dancing. Freddie persuaded the new King and Queen of Lerovia to do the honours instead and cut the cake with her new father-in-law’s help because she was resolutely set on not chasing after Zac to nag at him to do anything he didn’t want to do. Feeling suitably martyred, she sat with Merry and Jazz and got to know the two other women better while little Elyssa, Merry’s daughter, played at their feet and Jazz shared the news that she was expecting twins, although her willowy frame showed little evidence of that reality.

Freddie and Zac were scheduled to leave the hotel at five and as soon as the kids had had an early supper Freddie went up to the penthouse to get changed. She put on silky wide-legged trousers and a floaty top for their flight to the South of France and only then went off to locate her new husband.

‘Zac’s waiting in the limo. His bodyguards took him out the back entrance,’ Angel told her warily. ‘He’s drunk. Blame me.’

‘Oh, I’m not blaming anyone!’ Freddie said a tinge shrilly, her face as hot as hellfire.

‘I think...’ Charles Russell interposed anxiously, ‘Zac was celebrating too hard.’

Freddie raised both brows, feeling like the original toxic bride with everyone trying to placate her. ‘I don’t think he was celebrating getting married. I think he was drowning his sorrows.’

‘Zac can be a little unpredictable,’ Angel volunteered, contriving to look both guilty and sympathetic. ‘And he doesn’t normally drink this much.’

Freddie shone a bright smile at their anxious faces, her pride badly stung by his family’s concern on her behalf. And just behind that lurked her depressing recollection of the woman who had accosted her in the cloakroom to tell her that Zac lost interest in a woman once the chase was over. Since his dogged pursuit of her had ended in his penthouse bedroom the day before, she reckoned that there could be some truth in that disturbing allegation. Now that he had discovered that she was just like every other woman he had slept with, he evidently didn’t even have enough interest left to stay sober for their wedding night, she thought with a mixture of anger, hurt and exasperation.

After all, as one of the former bar staff, she knew rather more than Zac’s family did about his drinking habits, she reflected ruefully. Zac usually drank more coffee than alcohol, so if he had drunk a lot it could only be because something had upset him. And considering this was their wedding day, what else was she to blame for his mood than their new marriage?

Freddie didn’t speak a word on the drive to the airport but Zac was too preoccupied to notice. He followed his bodyguards out of the car while she hung back with the children and they were rushed through VIP channels out to the da Rocha private jet. Zac boarded, sent her a careless glance and murmured, ‘I’m going to lie down for a while.’ And off he went, leaving Freddie to deal with Isabel, the young smiling nanny, waiting to help her with the children, the nanny Zac hadn’t even thought to mention he had engaged.

Mercifully it was a large jet and there was a second sleeping compartment already prepared for the children’s occupancy. Jack was already asleep but Eloise was very reluctant to go to bed at the same time as her little brother, and the nanny entertained her at the rear of the main cabin while Freddie took the time to eat a light evening meal and flip through the glossy magazines provided for her. She was absolutely enraged with Zac and holding it in was like trying to contain a screeching storm.

Zac emerged shortly before they landed and lifted Eloise, who, like Jack, was fast asleep. They would have been wiser to stay in London the first night and travel by day, Freddie acknowledged ruefully, but Zac had not consulted her. Having landed, they transferred to a helicopter, which took off with a lurch that sent Freddie’s stomach plummeting. The racket of the rotors woke Jack up and he burst into frightened sobs. Finding himself with a stranger, he was inconsolable and Freddie reclaimed him with relief as soon as the helicopter landed again.

A weathered stone building loomed ahead of them, every tall window brilliantly lit up in welcome. Zac removed Jack from Freddie’s arms. ‘I’ll take him. You look exhausted.’

Zac had returned to planet earth again, she registered irritably, feeling that she could have done without being told that she looked so tired. She wasn’t vain but she had lived through a disastrous wedding day polished up to her very best and had received not a single compliment from her uninterested bridegroom. She said nothing as they trudged up the path towards the brightly lit frontage of the massive house.

The house reminded her of a postcard of a fantasy Provencal retreat, replete as it was with regimented lines of painted smoky blue shutters and flowers and terracotta vases ornamenting every window and door. But even with the light fading fast she could see the bulk of the house stretching back, recognising that it far outstripped in size any normal house. The number of staff waiting to greet them in the marble-floored hall was another reminder that she had married a man who was unaccustomed to looking after himself in any way. He handed Jack straight over to a young woman. ‘This is Jennifer, Freddie. She will be helping Isabel with the kids.’

Jack screeched at physical contact with yet another stranger and almost threw himself out of the unfortunate Jennifer’s arms. Freddie grabbed him back. ‘It’s all right. I’ll see to settling the children down tonight. They’re overtired and nervous of strangers,’ she said apologetically.

Jennifer showed the way upstairs to the rooms readied for the children and Freddie heaved a sigh of relief at the freedom to do something familiar even if it was in an unfamiliar place. Two nannies? Was he crazy? Was he expecting Eloise and Jack to be kept out of sight by staff as children had been for centuries in well-off families? Who did he think he was to make such arrangements without involving her?

She wanted to strangle Zac and scream at him and it was an effort to smile gratefully at the nannies as she sat down to rock Jack back to sleep in what was undoubtedly the nursery of a little boy’s dreams, with a cot shaped like a race car. By the time she got Jack ensconced in his cot and went into the bedroom next door, Eloise was already sleeping peacefully in a miniature four-poster bed draped in pink. All the luxury surrounding her, all the fancy toys piled up waiting to be played with, felt surreal and foreign and alienating to Freddie, and for a moment she wanted desperately to be back in the safe confines of the tiny bedroom she had shared with her niece and nephew.

Instead she had a housekeeper introducing herself as Mariette in broken English and offering to show her to the master bedroom suite. Once again, Zac was nowhere to be seen and at that moment, feeling totally isolated, Freddie didn’t care. She wanted normal and for her that meant a shower and a bed and the renewed strength that would come from a good night’s sleep. She had barely slept at all the previous night, lying awake dreamily thinking about Zac, her first sexual experience and their future together. Now the chances of them achieving some rosy perfect state of coupledom struck her as both pathetic and unlikely.

Zac walked into the master suite at one in the morning, the need to make amends having finally overcome his fierce pride, but he was too late. Freddie was already dead to the world, curled up in a tight little ball hugging a pillow on the far side of the bed. He studied her, the flush of sleep on her delicate features, the tousled dark blonde hair playing across the pillow, the relaxed line of her lush pink mouth. So lovely and so fragile, he acknowledged reluctantly, and he had hurt her. Getting married was fast proving to be a learning experience and the first lesson was that his behaviour affected her as well. Pretty basic one that, he acknowledged grimly, but then Zac had never had another person’s needs and wishes to consider before.

In the morning, he would make everything right, he assured himself. Quite how to go about achieving that objective escaped him, but he was fairly sure that some serious thought would give him the answer. But why the hell had he brought her to the Villa Antonella, a place haunted by his earliest bad memories? The place where his short-lived but once normal family life had disintegrated into messy broken shards overnight?

He couldn’t answer that question either.