Читать книгу Modern Romance Collection: June 2018 Books 1 - 4 - Линн Грэхем, Miranda Lee - Страница 17
ОглавлениеFEELING ALMOST REJUVENATED by a night of unbroken rest, Freddie bounced out of bed and then looked at the time and almost laid an egg. What about the children? She should have been up two hours earlier to look after them! And then she remembered the nannies and the guilt ebbed, but only very slowly because feeding Eloise and Jack still felt like her job.
After another shower, she applied the lightest possible make-up from the new stash that had been part of her makeover and selected a cool cotton sundress from the new wardrobe of summer clothing Zac had ordered on her behalf. Only then did she feel ready to greet the sunshine blazing through the tall windows.
Zac was always giving her stuff. He was very generous, she acknowledged ruefully, but it didn’t cancel out his stubborn go-it-alone attitude. She headed to the children’s bedrooms first but both were empty. Jennifer was coming upstairs as Freddie went down and informed her that Eloise and Jack were with Zac out on the terrace. She was disconcerted by that news, for she had uncharitably assumed that the hiring of two nannies indicated that Zac wanted the kids kept out of his hair as much as possible. Mariette showed her out to the wide stone terrace that ran along the rear of the house to take advantage of the truly spectacular panoramic view across the rural valley behind it.
Freddie came to a sudden halt to appreciate the landscape. Olive trees with silvery foliage crowded terraces ringed by ancient stone walls and lavender fields stretched over the furthest hill, the brilliant purple furrows of blooms seeming to perfume the fresh air. The terrace was shaded by an ornate ironwork pergola lushly wrapped in grape vines and wisteria.
‘Auntie Freddie... Auntie Freddie!’ Eloise came running down the terrace to show her a picture of a dragon, or was it two dragons? ‘See...they getting married.’
‘Very nice,’ Freddie assured her niece, trying not to notice that the larger dragon shape was adorned with what looked very like a tattoo. Eloise was already demonstrating a natural artistic ability that far outstripped her age group.
Tension laced Freddie’s slight frame when she saw Zac rising from the table at the far end while Jack literally tried to run to her.
As she hastily scooped up Jack before he fell, for while he could walk he could not yet run, she noticed that Zac had forsaken his business suits in favour of close-fitting jeans and a white linen shirt against which his skin glowed. He looked, Freddie thought resentfully, like a health advert, not at all like a man who should’ve been nursing a monster hangover. She moved towards him stiffly, face tight, eyes evasive as she set Jack down to play with the toys scattered across the terrace.
‘Mariette is bringing your breakfast,’ Zac murmured casually.
‘I didn’t ask for any.’
‘I ordered for you.’
‘But you don’t know what I wanted,’ Freddie pointed out thinly.
‘I ordered a selection,’ Zac assured her with a steely glint in his brilliant eyes as he surveyed her. ‘You suit blue. You look lovely.’
‘I seriously doubt that,’ Freddie countered with an angry flush, thinking of how her perfectly groomed self the day before had failed to attract such interest.
‘Let’s not argue in front of the kids,’ Zac urged warningly.
Resenting that reproof, Freddie breathed in so deep that she was vaguely surprised she didn’t explode like a bag of hot air, because suddenly she was so angry with him that she could barely breathe and hold the furious words in.
‘These are for you...’ Zac announced, lifting an elaborate and very large bouquet of flowers in a vase up onto the table. ‘And this...’
‘This’ was a jewellery box, and she didn’t want to open it. Flowers, and presumably diamonds. He had utilised a whole host of brain cells to come up with those as an apology, she thought nastily, but neither gift hit the right spot. She glanced at him, reading the wary light in his glorious crystalline eyes, the wariness of a man dealing with an unknown quantity and wondering how she would react.
Mariette arrived with an entire trolley of food and a maid to serve. Freddie felt embarrassed accepting only fruit, a croissant and a cup of tea. But even the melting tenderness of the pastry fought to make it past her tight throat. Did she give Zac the benefit of the doubt and move on past the debacle of their wedding day? Even if she didn’t feel the smallest bit forgiving? As a rule she didn’t sulk or hold spite, but he had to explain himself at the very least, she decided. She lifted the jewellery box so that he couldn’t call her bad mannered and flipped up the lid on a diamond-studded gold watch.
‘Wow...thank you so much,’ she said generously, determined to be gracious, glancing across at him. Momentarily those lean, darkly handsome features surrounded by his blue-black luxuriant hair and accentuated by those bright pale blue eyes literally blew her concentration to smithereens.
‘How can you drink tea instead of coffee in the morning?’ Zac asked inconsequentially, watching her with an intensity that made her skin tighten over her bones and set up a disturbing throb between her thighs.
‘It’s what I’m used to,’ she muttered, recognising that he planned to gloss over the whole wedding day thing without even making an actual apology aside of the flowers and the watch, and recognising too that she could never look herself in the face again if she allowed him to use his electrifying sexuality to derail her.
Jennifer and Isabel arrived to collect the children to take them out into the garden. An unearthly silence fell across the terrace after their departure and Freddie swallowed hard, still picking nervously at shreds of her croissant.
Entranced, Zac watched her pluck another shred of pastry and place it between her moist pink lips and his jeans tightened. He thought about sex. She clasped the watch round her slender wrist. He thought about more sex. He discounted her tension, reckoning that what they both needed was a good rousing tumble in bed to find each other again.
‘Are you planning to say sorry?’ Freddie asked, shattering both his expectations and his mood. ‘Even thinking about it? Or is it just a case of not being able to get the words out?’
‘You know that I regret my attitude yesterday,’ Zac told her tautly. ‘It’s obvious, isn’t it?’
Freddie nodded. ‘But you can’t expect flowers and a designer watch to do the job for you.’
‘They always have in the past.’
‘Then you’ve been mixing with the wrong kind of woman,’ Freddie responded acidly. ‘And to be frank, sorry wouldn’t even begin to cover it.’
Zac sprang out of his chair, the legs of it scraping harshly across the stone tiles beneath. ‘I got drunk. I didn’t kill anyone!’ he flashed back at her with sudden anger.
‘You pretty much opted out of our entire wedding day,’ Freddie declared, shaken by that anger but persisting. ‘You weren’t there to start the dancing with me. You weren’t there even to cut the cake. It was humiliating and hurtful and, obviously, people noticed your absence. All I need you to do now is explain why...’
‘I’m no good at those kinds of explanations.’
‘But you could, at least, try,’ Freddie said gently.
‘Meu Deus...what do you want from me?’ Zac demanded rawly. ‘An apology? You already have it.’
‘I need to know why—’
‘No, you don’t!’ Zac fired back at her, his broad chest heaving as he dragged in a deep sustaining breath. ‘You don’t. I don’t have that kind of conversation with women.’
‘I’ll forgive and forget if you just tell me why,’ Freddie exclaimed in appeal. ‘I need to understand.’
Rage glittering in his glorious eyes and the sense of being trapped intensifying, Zac compressed his lips hard. ‘I won’t argue with you. I’m going out for a while,’ he told her, turning on his heel and striding down the terrace at speed.
For a startled moment, Freddie simply stared after him and then she chased after him, only to be greeted by the slam of the front door and a look of curious enquiry from Mariette. Her face colouring, she returned to the terrace, now blind to the wonderful view. He had walked out sooner than talk—not a very productive approach to a new marriage. But was she expecting too much from him too soon? Their marriage was not supposed to be a meeting of hearts and minds.
Practicality not sentiment.
The words rang like a falling tombstone of foreboding at the back of her mind.
Zac backed away from conflict, reluctant to get that involved with anyone. She couldn’t live like that, she thought fearfully, never really knowing where she stood with him. But he had told her where she stood before they married, hadn’t he? Practicality covered everything and emotions didn’t have to be considered. But what if she already felt more than she should for him? Freddie grimaced at that suspicion but there it was, feelings she couldn’t avoid, feelings he wouldn’t want her to feel. It hurt when he walked away, refusing to answer her questions, refusing to shed a glimmer of light on what went on in that complex head of his, because hopefully if she understood better she could forgive more easily. Tears prickled her eyes as she sat there and listened to the roar of a powerful motorbike firing up and then the quieter sound of his security team following in a car.
Was she so unreasonable? Had she driven him away? And when would he return?
* * *
Zac travelled quite a distance before he cooled off. Angel had asked him, if he had the time, to check out the work he was having done on his yacht and report back to him. He drove down to the Saint Laurent du Var Marina and paused at a waterside café to order an espresso, avoiding the glances of a group of youthful tourists giving him inviting looks from nearby. Angel and Vitale seemed to have taken to marriage like ducks to water, Zac reflected resentfully, so why was it all going wrong for him? He had asked Freddie to marry him, had wanted her to marry him. He had chosen her and would still have chosen her even when she was almost shouting at him, he acknowledged grudgingly. But she wanted more from him than any other woman ever had. The flowers and the watch hadn’t cut the ice.
What had come over him at the wedding? He was accustomed to responsibility but not to being responsible for other people, with the exception of employees with whom he had no personal ties. From childhood he had learned to hold people at bay to ensure they couldn’t hurt him. If he didn’t let anyone get close he was safe. But Freddie and the children weren’t going to hurt or betray him. He was more likely to hurt them by failing to live up to their expectations, he reasoned impatiently. What if she fell in love with him? He would have to warn her off on that score. The very last thing he wanted to do was hurt Freddie, he acknowledged without hesitation. Or Eloise, or Jack. He was getting attached to the three of them even if he wasn’t supposed to do so.
Practicality not sentiment, he reminded himself with a groan of frustration. But practicality didn’t take any account of emotions or emotional women. And Freddie was emotional, all wide, accusing, hurt eyes and quivering lips. Eloise looked at him in much the same way when he refused to read the dragon story twice over at the same sitting. Jack? Jack was simple in his demands, content solely with attention.
Freddie’s emotional outlook, however, was infinitely preferable to the kind of brassy, avaricious females who littered his past, Zac conceded wryly. She stood up for herself too. She wasn’t a doormat eager to agree with everything he did and said. Freddie hadn’t wanted the watch, she had wanted words, only what was he to do when the words wouldn’t be the ones she wanted to hear? Honesty at any cost? What woman really wanted that?
* * *
The day went past very slowly for Freddie because Zac was such an unknown quantity. For all she knew he could have flown back to London or Brazil or even gone off with another, less demanding woman. ‘Unpredictable’, Angel Valtinos had labelled his half-brother, and now for the first time she was seeing that in Zac and it unnerved her that a simple request for an explanation could infuriate him to such an extent. She bathed the children and saw them into bed, promising that Zac would be back soon and praying that she was right.
She was shocked when she walked out onto the terrace and saw him simply standing there looking out over the valley.
‘Zac...’ she breathed with irrefutable relief. ‘Where have you been?’
‘I went to Nice, checked out the work being done on Angel’s yacht...he asked me to,’ he told her with a fluid shrug as he slowly turned round to face her. ‘How are you?’
‘I wasn’t sure you’d come back,’ she whispered tightly.
‘I may storm off but I’ll always come back,’ Zac murmured with wry amusement. ‘I don’t like losing my temper with people.’
‘I’m not people, I’m your wife,’ she protested as the sun went down behind him in a crimson and golden blaze of colour, the light picking up the straight angle of his dark brows above his deep-set eyes and the wide sensual line of his mouth and sending a shiver of awareness travelling through her. ‘But I’m not sure you were really ready to take on a wife.’
Zac raked long brown fingers through his black hair and breathed in deep. ‘For a split second when I saw you and the children in the church, I felt trapped. I had no excuse to feel like that because I asked you to marry me. Even so, the sudden awareness that I was going to be a husband and a father to two, possibly three kids, knocked me sideways. Being free—the ability to get up and go where I like when I like and do as I like—has always been very important to me. The idea of being tied down filled me with—’
‘Yes, I get it,’ Freddie broke in tightly, ramming down her pain at that honest admission, ironically not wanting him to expand on it. ‘It’s a massive change for you and maybe you hadn’t quite thought it through when you asked me to marry you. But if you want out now, it’s not too late.’
Zac frowned in bewilderment at that statement. ‘It’s way too late. What about the adoption?’
Freddie’s spine stiffened. ‘I would rather give up the children than force you to go through with a marriage you don’t want,’ she told him starkly, because if they were both unhappy it would only make the children unhappy as well and she owed them a better future than that.
Zac went rigid, every muscle in his lean, powerful body pulling taut. ‘That’s a crazy offer to make, meu pequenino. I wouldn’t do that to you.’
‘Strictly speaking, we’re not fully and legally married yet because we haven’t shared a bed. Right now, we could still get an annulment.’
Without warning, Zac was being plunged into a much bigger crisis than he had expected and he wished he had lied about feeling trapped and had skipped the very self-indulgent drinking episode that had followed. ‘I don’t want an annulment. I don’t want to lose you or the children,’ he admitted in a driven undertone. ‘I behaved badly. You suffered for it. Now I’m thinking more clearly and there is no one else I want to marry, no one else I want to be married to... I can only face sharing those kinds of ties with you,’ he completed doggedly.
Freddie finally managed to breathe again. She had believed she had to make the offer because she didn’t see how she could keep him if he didn’t want to be with them. That would be a recipe for disaster. Now, fear and insecurity still pulling at her, she stared up at him anxiously. ‘I don’t want to make you unhappy.’
‘Freddie...in my whole life, nobody ever cared whether or not I was happy!’ Zac exclaimed in wonderment. ‘Can we go indoors now? Standing right at this spot brings back unfortunate memories of the accident I had here as a child.’
‘You came here as a child? And got hurt?’
‘Antonella bought this place almost thirty years ago. My mother and stepfather liked to entertain friends here in the summer,’ he told her flatly as they traversed the marble foyer. ‘I was three and very adventurous. I clambered down the slope and fell and cut my leg badly. Luckily...or unluckily as it later proved...there was a doctor among the friends staying and he saved my life because I had lost a lot of blood.’
Zac had turned pale, his voice roughening as he walked up the imposing staircase. ‘They rushed me to hospital, where it transpired that I have a very rare blood group. Charles’s blood group. Apparently it had been mentioned at my birth but Afonso didn’t pick up on the significance. Afonso believed I was his son and he couldn’t understand why he or Antonella couldn’t give me blood. His best friend, the doctor, explained that I couldn’t possibly be Afonso’s child and that’s the day my life fell apart as far as family goes.’
Freddie had stopped dead on the stairs to work through what he was telling her. ‘Oh, my goodness...’ she framed sickly.
‘I only remember two things about the whole experience. One was my mother having hysterics for days, the other was Afonso, the man whom I believed to be my father and whom I loved, pushing me away in disgust and calling me a “filthy half-breed”,’ he concluded heavily. ‘Of course, he was upset and furious that he had accepted me as his son.’
Freddie winced and placed a soothing hand on his arm. ‘Still no excuse for saying that to you. It wasn’t your fault.’
‘It wasn’t anyone’s fault. My mother had never admitted to my stepfather that she had had an affair with another man after he broke off their engagement. That was her little secret and she preferred to assume that I was Afonso’s child. She went to pieces when the truth came out.’
Freddie’s heart was breaking for him. She was imagining how lost and hurt he must have been at only Eloise’s age, confronted with such a massive rejection and, indeed, hatred. ‘And then what happened?’
‘My mother took me back to Brazil and put me on the horse-breeding ranch with servants to look after me. It was over a year before I saw her again. I didn’t see Afonso again until last year when he approached me with a business opportunity. I said no.’
‘And their marriage survived all that? They stayed together?’
‘Afonso enjoyed the da Rocha lifestyle but he was enraged that, as his wife’s firstborn, I would inherit rather than any child he had with her,’ he completed grimly. ‘But Antonella refused to accept that reality and she kept on trying to give him a child even after the doctors warned her that she was risking her life. She only finally told me who my father was on the day she died. She was ashamed of it...and of me being illegitimate like she was.’
Freddie struggled to accept that Zac had been punished for his paternity by exclusion and virtual abandonment by his own mother. Simultaneously he had lost the man he’d believed to be his father. In one dreadful day, he had lost his whole family. She remembered how utterly lost she had felt after her parents died and how much she had clung to Lauren for comfort and security. Zac, however, hadn’t had the consolation of a sibling.
‘I’m surprised you still own this house,’ she remarked as he paused in the ajar doorway of Eloise’s bedroom to glance in. Illuminated by the night light she couldn’t sleep without, Eloise was a small bump in a sea of cuddly toys. Zac’s taut dark features perceptibly softened.
‘My mother rented it out for years. I don’t think she ever came back here and, as social services didn’t want us to take the children out of Europe, it made sense for us to use the villa as a base. I was planning to put it on the market when we left. I didn’t even realise that I still had memories of this place until I walked through the door,’ Zac confessed, strolling on to Jack’s room and walking in slowly when he saw a little leg dangling out between the cot bars.
Jack was fast asleep in the corner. Freddie leant down to gently rearrange his warm little body into a more comfortable position.
‘He feels like he’s mine even though I know he’s not,’ Zac said softly. ‘And it doesn’t matter that he’s not.’
Freddie’s tender smile swept the tension from her triangular face. ‘Even people who don’t like kids very much warm to Jack’s sunny nature.’
‘It was very generous of you to offer me an out but I freely choose to stay married to you,’ Zac breathed gruffly outside the door. ‘Can we start again as if yesterday didn’t happen?’
Freddie nodded vigorously, caramel eyes welded to his lean bronzed face, her breathing feathering in her dry throat. His hand closed over hers and the buzz of awareness awakened by that contact sent her every nerve ending into overdrive. A slight quiver ran through her taut frame as they entered the master bedroom she had slept in alone the night before.
‘I need a shower.’ Zac peeled off his shirt and stripped with the careless ease of a man without a single self-conscious bone in his body.
Freddie watched him walk naked and bronzed into the shower while she removed her make-up and washed her face. He caught her up into his arms while her face was still buried in a towel and she yelped in surprise when he lifted her and carried her back into the bedroom.
‘En quero voce... I want you,’ Zac growled, standing her up to extract her from her dress and smiling appreciatively when he discovered that she wore only knickers beneath.
His hands swept up to capture her breasts, his thumbs grazing over her sensitive nipples before he took her mouth with passionate force. Every rational thought she had evaporated at the same moment. Her fingers tightened convulsively on his muscular shoulders as his aroused body pressed against hers and excitement sizzled through her as the anxiety of the day finally melted away.
Zac tumbled her down on the bed and pinned her beneath him, luminous eyes glinting with amusement below black velvet lashes. ‘I wanted to do this this morning. How would that have gone down?’
‘Like a lead balloon,’ Freddie framed with difficulty, insanely conscious of the hard pressure of his arousal against her stomach and even more insanely conscious of the heat and moisture gathering between her legs.
‘Now I want you a hundred times more,’ Zac husked. ‘Because you stood up to me.’
‘That’s weird,’ she told him, quivering as the tip of his tongue traced her delicate collarbone, setting up unexpected reactions in other places.
‘No, it’s not. I don’t want a yes-woman.’
‘You did this morning,’ she countered with a grin.
‘That’s sex, that’s different,’ he dismissed lazily, skilled fingers outlining the entrance concealed between her damp folds, making her tremble and jerk. ‘Every guy wants a yes-woman when it comes to sex.’
His honesty made her laugh and he ran teasing fingertips up over her ribcage, discovering where she was ticklish. Freddie made her own exploration over his warm, hard abdominal muscles, fingers straying playfully closer to his bold, hard shaft until frustration forced him to grab her hand and close it round him.
Surprise darted through her at the smooth, hard length of him and she stroked and cupped and shaped and then dropped her head down in an experimental mood, only to be dragged up again.
‘I can’t take that right now! I need to be inside you,’ Zac bit out raggedly as he rearranged her to his satisfaction and plunged into her without ceremony, a guttural sound of satisfaction wrenched from him. ‘Voce me excita...you excite me so much.’
This time there was no discomfort, only the compelling sensation of her body stretching to capacity to accept his. Her hips lifted instinctively in welcome and then he moved and a wave of pulsing excitement was unleashed, her body thrumming like a new engine raring to go. She gasped as his hands cupped her hips to lift her and deepen his penetration.
‘You feel like hot satin,’ Zac groaned, provocatively withdrawing and then slamming back into her again while her hips squirmed and the heat in her pelvis rose with the tightening, building surge of pressure. ‘I thought about this at least once every ten seconds today.’
‘Tell me something that surprises me,’ Freddie urged, her breath catching in her throat as the hard, virile thrust of his body made her writhe beneath him.
‘You do...every time,’ Zac groaned, claiming her reddened mouth in a hot, driving kiss.
His heart was thundering against her and she rose up against him one last time, her internal muscles clenching hard as an explosive climax gripped her. Her head fell back against the pillows, her hair in a wild tangle as ripples of melting bliss engulfed her sated length.
Zac reached his own completion with her but bliss seemed to be the last thing on his mind as he reared back from her and swore in Portuguese. ‘Inferno... I forgot to use a condom!’ he bit out in exasperation.
‘Why would you want to do that?’ Freddie asked in dreamy bemusement.
Zac stared down at her, crystalline eyes deadly serious. ‘I thought maybe we needed a breathing space to get this marriage up and running and that you might prefer a delay in the baby department.’
‘No,’ Freddie said decisively. ‘Because it could take months and months for me to conceive, so it’s easier just to go on as we began. If it happens, it happens.’
Zac released her from his weight and Freddie moved onto her side and draped an arm and a leg across him as he began to move off the bed. ‘Where are you going?’
‘My room’s next door.’
‘I thought this was our room.’
‘I’m used to sleeping alone.’
‘Time for a rethink,’ Freddie whispered sleepily, fingers toying with his gold necklace of St Jude. ‘Why do you wear this?’
‘It belonged to my mother. She gave it to me before she died.’
‘I want you with me at night,’ she admitted.
‘Why?’ Zac demanded baldly.
‘Cosier that way,’ his wife mumbled, her arm clamping round him like a chain. ‘And if you can shag Miss World chalet girls in Klosters and break their hearts without a blush, you can manage to share a bed with your wife...’
Zac froze and gazed down at her in complete consternation.
‘Wasn’t going to mention that...it just slipped out.’ Freddie sighed regretfully as she snuggled up against him, impervious to all loaded hints.
‘I don’t want to break your heart,’ Zac told her levelly, rather than demanding to know her source.
Freddie opened her eyes and looked languorously up at him. ‘I don’t fall for players, so you’re safe. Anyway, my heart’s fully wrapped up in the children.’
‘Que bom...that’s good,’ Zac assured her, wondering why he should almost feel affronted by that comforting assurance. ‘Love’s a complication we definitely don’t need when we’re not staying together.’
Not staying together.
That reminder rocked through Freddie like an earthquake and sliced into her heart. Too proud to show any reaction, she fell still, instructing herself firmly to go to sleep. She had got too comfortable with him for a moment and had forgotten about the limits of their relationship. Perhaps she shouldn’t have asked him to share the bed with her. Now she had plunged them into an intimacy that he had plainly told her was inappropriate. Of course, it was, she told herself uncomfortably. Their marriage was a sham because it was temporary and she had agreed to that condition, hadn’t she?
Zac let most of his tension bleed out of him again. The innate urge to push her away had receded. She wasn’t doing him any harm. She was just overly affectionate, which was a good trait for a mother of three to have, he conceded reflectively. He could share the bed, of course he could, but he still believed it would have been wiser to keep some constraint between them. After all, what they had wasn’t permanent and the less they shared now, the easier it would be to part.
On the other hand, he could wake her up slowly in a few hours and revel in the benefits of sharing space, he thought with reluctant amusement. In a week or so, she might be happy to throw him into a room of his own.
