Читать книгу Modern Romance Collection: June 2018 Books 1 - 4 - Линн Грэхем, Miranda Lee - Страница 18

CHAPTER NINE

‘NO, JACK!’ ZAC thundered as the toddler’s fingers wandered too close to an electric socket.

Startled, Jack fell back on his bottom and burst into floods of tears. Zac scooped him up to comfort him while Freddie traced a piece of carving on the wooden panelling with awe-inspired admiration.

‘That was dangerous,’ Zac told Jack ruefully as the little boy gazed at him with hurt dark eyes and a trembling lower lip. ‘And drop the pathetic look, you little chancer!’

‘So, what do you think of this house?’ Freddie asked with fake casualness.

Zac had been with Freddie long enough to recognise a trick question. Indeed, house-hunting with Freddie was an education. For such a practical woman, Freddie was very impractical when it came to houses. Only belatedly had he worked out that Freddie’s dream house was ancient, in need of a great deal of tender loving care and somewhere buried in the country. He had the penthouse suite for convenience and business meetings in the City but it was anything but a comfortable base for raising two young children.

He had given Freddie brochures for houses that were immediately available for occupation but not a single ‘wow’ had escaped her lips until she had gone browsing on her own and discovered Mouldy Manor in Surrey. It was actually Molderstone Manor, he conceded grudgingly, but he preferred his own label for a property built on a shoestring in the Middle Ages and having since benefitted from a long line of penniless owners, who had been unable to afford restoration or modernisation.

‘This house...it’s different,’ Zac selected tactfully. ‘But it would be months before we could move into it.’

‘But the north wing is liveable because it was rented out,’ Freddie pointed out cheerfully. ‘And we’d have plenty of bedroom space there. Jen and Izzy need their own space too.’

Their nannies had become Jen and Izzy, very much part of the family. Zac gritted his teeth at the reminder. He had forgotten about them. They needed more bedrooms than he had initially calculated and he didn’t want to share their living space with staff round the clock. He watched Freddie caress the carved newel post of the staircase and almost groaned. ‘We’ll take another look at the north wing and see if it could be made habitable.’

‘You realise that eventually you’ll be living here alone?’ Zac remarked, trudging round the two-storey north wing a second time, seeing every flaw in the tired décor and the paucity of bathrooms while Freddie waxed poetical about how quickly new bathrooms could be installed and how truly wonderful it was that the splendid plasterwork in the ceilings and walls had been preserved.

A sharp little silence fell and Freddie paled at that careless comment, that unwelcome reminder of the future that lay ahead in which Zac would walk away from her and the children. When he came back it would only be to maintain contact with the children. She wouldn’t be his wife any more. She would only be the ex-wife in charge of the children and everything would be so very different. The reflection sobered her.

Only when he entered the extensive rear courtyard did Zac appreciate that Mouldy Manor could have unexpected possibilities. The stable block was enormous and the outbuildings were very good condition. ‘I could ship over horses from the ranch and set up a breeding operation here,’ he said then with surprising enthusiasm. ‘We sell most of our most prized stallions to the Middle East.’

It was a gloriously sunny day and, determined not to spoil the day with anxious thoughts, Freddie unveiled the picnic she had brought in the overgrown garden, spreading a rug below a gnarled oak tree. At that point, Zac recognised that a brutal opinion of Mouldy Manor would be deeply unwelcome. The children were running wild in the garden with Izzy following patiently in their wake, and Freddie was beaming as she cast long languishing looks back in the direction of the house every chance she got.

‘It just says family to me,’ she told him with enthusiasm. ‘Even though it’s big, it’s got cosy spaces and I could do so much with those rooms. And look at Eloise and Jack enjoying the freedom to run wild outdoors...’

Zac duly looked, to discover that unsurprisingly the kids were doing their best to resemble storybook-perfect kids passing through a flower-strewn meadow in aid of Freddie’s arguments. ‘And we won’t be tripping over staff here,’ she pointed out, having already accepted that Zac would not live without, at the very least, a housekeeper and a cook.

Raised with domestic staff, Zac could imagine no other way of living. He didn’t want his wife preoccupied with the necessities of life when he or the children wanted her attention. But Freddie found live-in staff intrusive and was only slowly adapting to her new luxury lifestyle.

‘You could breed horses here,’ she reminded him, relieved that he had found something to be positive about on the property.

They had been married for exactly eight weeks, having flown back from France on three separate occasions to attend adoption assessment sessions with the children. After the initial ructions, those seven weeks at the Villa Antonella had been blissfully happy. Zac had settled down and he hadn’t shown any disappointment when her period had arrived within days of their wedding, confirming that she hadn’t yet conceived.

That he wasn’t impatient on that score was a plus, she reflected fondly. Yes, she was fond of him, she conceded, but fondness and love were two different things. She was fond of vanilla ice cream and even fonder of being wakened in the early hours by an insanely sexy masculine presence in her bed, but love she kept strictly focussed on the children. Zac was gorgeous and great company and many, many things she admired in a man.

He was amazingly patient with Eloise and Jack and, when Freddie had come down with a two-day virus, he had been kind in a way she had not expected him to be because those who rarely got ill usually weren’t very sympathetic towards those who did. She had definitely made the right decision when she married him, she told herself happily. Of course, it would be a wrench when the time came for Zac to walk away, particularly if she didn’t manage to give him a child and uphold her side of their bargain, but, knowing what lay ahead, she could prepare herself for that development. Practicality, not sentiment, she reminded herself resolutely, and there was no reason why she shouldn’t enjoy their time together as a family, although sometimes she felt guilty at just how much she was enjoying being married to him.

‘If you want this house, I’ll buy it,’ Zac breathed reluctantly.

‘It’s not your style, though.’

‘I like the stables and I’m prepared to be persuaded,’ Zac informed her, snaking out a strong arm as she knelt beside him and tipping her down onto his lap.

Freddie, demonstrating how much she had changed after two months of marriage, kissed him passionately and his arms tightened around her as he rocked her over the prominent bulge at his groin. A faint groan of frustration was wrenched from her as his arousal connected with the most intimate part of her.

‘We could go back into the house and—’

‘Yes!’ she gasped with an eagerness she couldn’t hide, and her cheeks reddened because just recently she couldn’t seem to keep her hands off Zac and she was starting to wonder if that was quite normal or a sign that she was a little oversexed.

Zac laughed with rich appreciation. ‘You really, really want this house.’

She gazed into his pale glittering black-lashed eyes, feeling her heart race at speed and her entire body heat to an embarrassing degree. ‘I want you,’ she contradicted without hesitation.

Being married wasn’t so bad, Zac conceded, tugging his wife across the overgrown lawn to the house with one powerful hand. True, he had had to make explanations to Eloise about why he regularly forgot to wear pyjamas, and Jack, since he had learned how to climb out of his cot, allowed no such niceties to hold him back from a full-scale assault on the marital bed. Meal times had got messy but bath time was fun and bed time from an adult point of view was even more fun-filled, Zac acknowledged as he pinned Freddie to a wall and kissed her breathless, feeling as sexually voracious as a man who hadn’t indulged in months, which would have been very untrue. But then Freddie acted on his libido like an aphrodisiac. Once was never enough and, now she was no longer as shy or nervous, she had become his dream lover, as enthusiastic and seemingly as sexually obsessed with him as he was with her. What was there not to like in that magical combination?

The skirt of her dress was up round her waist and there was a ripping sound as Zac impatiently dispensed with her skimpy silk knickers. She reckoned he preferred silk because it tore easily. Excitement sent her heart racing and her body pulsing as he unzipped, braced her back against the wall and suddenly he was there where she most needed him. She gasped and gasped again as he locked her legs round his waist to sink deeper into her slick, tender flesh. As he ground against her, possessing her with potent strength, carnal sensation pounded through her body in wave after wave until the pleasure rose to an unbearable crescendo and sent her flying high.

‘You’ll have to carry me back to the car,’ she muttered after she had regained her voice, her head drooping down onto a broad shoulder for support. ‘I’m done.’

‘You can’t be. You had an early night last night and you slept late this morning. I had to wake you for breakfast,’ Zac reminded her, settling her down onto her own feet and bending down to retrieve her underwear and stuff it in his pocket.

Freddie swallowed back a yawn. ‘You exhaust me...but in the nicest possible way,’ she completed with a cheeky grin.

Zac made her pause before he opened the front door, long fingers combing through her tumbled hair to tidy it. But it made no perceptible difference. Her face was still pink from her climax and her eyes shone like stars. ‘You still look like you’ve been thoroughly—’

‘Pleasured is the word,’ Freddie slotted in hastily, because Zac was trying to clean up his speech since Eloise had picked up a bad word after listening to him and if she had repeated that word once, she had repeated it a thousand times, making every adult in her radius cringe.

Zac looked down at Freddie and wished there were a bed within reach. ‘Were you?’

‘Thoroughly,’ she told him, revelling in his spontaneous smile.

‘By the way, there was something I’ve been meaning to discuss with you,’ Zac told her in the back of the limo, Jen and Izzy and the children travelling in the car behind them. ‘Who told you about the chalet girl in Klosters?’

Freddie grimaced. ‘Her mother on our wedding day. I saw her with your father’s party. He must have brought her, obviously not knowing how she felt about you.’

‘I did first meet her in Dad’s office with her mother and then she miraculously took a job at his ski retreat the week I was staying there with Vitale and Angel. She was a desperately pushy girl and I hate being hassled. I didn’t sleep with her because if I had she would have clung like a limpet.’

‘OK, so she lied to her mother and made you out to be the bad guy.’

‘What did her mother say to you?’ Zac demanded angrily.

‘Pretty much that once you slept with a woman you lost interest.’

Zac’s bright eyes gleamed with amusement. ‘Well, you know that’s not true where you’re concerned.’

But it would be true in the future, Freddie thought unhappily, wondering why half the gloss had seemed to fall from her image of the house once she tried to imagine living there alone with the children. When it happened, it would be the end of their marriage and change was always scary, which was probably why her mind was so stubbornly refusing to stop thinking it. She wasn’t even pregnant yet, she reminded herself, and who knew how long that would take? Or how long Zac would be willing to be patient? He never forgot what they shared was temporary but she forgot it over and over again.

Her face drenched with colour as she thought about the way they had made love in the house. Zac had few inhibitions but she had encouraged him. Should she really be demonstrating that much enthusiasm with a man who was planning to leave her? Shouldn’t pride make her a little cooler? But how was she supposed to act cooler in that department when their main objective was for her to conceive? Torn apart by those conflicting thoughts, Freddie buried them. When their marriage was over, she told herself firmly, she would have to make her peace with reality.

The following day, Zac announced that Molderstone Manor was theirs with immediate possession and that he was throwing in a local construction firm to upgrade the north wing to his standards, which would allow the main house to be renovated at a more leisurely pace.

Freddie was thrilled and she hugged him and persuaded him that a second trip had to be made down to the manor. By the time surveys came back on the property, revealing that the manor was in much better order than Zac had anticipated, he was resigned to his future home and planning a helipad in the grounds for faster access. Freddie, however, immersed herself blissfully in paint colours and upholstery fabrics, leaving Zac to choose bathroom fittings and loudly veto some of her décor choices.

Another two weeks rattled past in that manner, by which time Zac was thoroughly bored with floral fabrics that sent Freddie into paroxysms of delight and convinced him that beige was the only way to go.

‘Bland...bland...bland,’ Freddie contradicted. ‘It’s not your fault. You’re too used to living in hotels.’

She was sitting on the bed with a giant pile of fabric swatches. She had dug herself into the project of turning the big house into a home to lift her mood. As summer wore into autumn, the anniversary of her sister’s tragic death loomed and she was keen to visit the cemetery where Lauren had been laid to rest, even though she knew it would reanimate sad memories. Tomorrow definitely, she decided ruefully, feeling guilty that she hadn’t been back there since the funeral.

Zac swept the fabric swatches off the bed and pounced on her. ‘You’re not allowed to bring those to bed with you.’

‘It’s only eight o’clock in the evening. I’m not technically in bed,’ Freddie pointed out, gazing up into black fringed stunning eyes that were the colour of grey ice in that light.

Zac wound his fingers slowly through the silky thickness of her hair. ‘But I can put you there, meu pequenino,’ he traded, in a dark deep drawl that sent tiny shivers of awareness down her spine. ‘And keep you there.’

‘Arrogant much?’ Freddie mocked with dancing eyes.

And his mouth crushed hers in answer. He tasted of coffee and hunger and he smelt divine. It was one of those truly perfect moments that she cherished. The bedroom was an oasis of peace for her once the children were in bed but it was also a wildly exciting but safe place to be with Zac. Her arms closed round him as his tongue tangled with hers. She decided he deserved one beige room. She could live with beige in very small quantities.

The next morning, Freddie slept in yet again and got out of bed in a rush, wondering why on earth she should be so tired when she was doing so little. Throwing on clothes in haste and only a smidgeon of make-up, she brushed her hair and went to join Zac for breakfast. The minute she entered the big reception room the smell of fried food assailed her nostrils and her stomach performed a virtual somersault, which left her cramming her hand against her mouth and racing back to the bathroom, grateful that Zac was out on the balcony and shielded from the sight. There she was very sick and, sobered by the experience, she leant on the vanity counter studying her perspiring face with wide, troubled eyes. Now that she thought about it, and she really hadn’t been thinking about it, she began counting days very carefully back to her last period. She was almost two weeks overdue! Could she be pregnant?

Of course you could be pregnant, you idiot, she scolded herself in exasperation. After all, they had been doing everything possible to get her pregnant since the day after they had married. A faint wave of warning dizziness engulfed her when she walked briskly back into the bedroom and she sat down with a still-swimming head on the end of the bed. Pregnant? Pregnant! She had thought it would take months to get pregnant, she had assumed it would take months but, possibly, not always. She headed back into the bathroom to clean her teeth and freshen up. She could be carrying Zac’s baby right now.

How long would he stay with her once she told him? That single question sliced through every other thought in her head. Of course, she would have to check that she was pregnant first because she didn’t want to sound a false alarm. And if she mentioned her suspicion to Zac, Zac would take over and she would be rushed off to see some fancy doctor when she could easily buy a pregnancy test and find out for herself. Would he stay with her at least until the baby was born? Freddie’s lips quivered and her eyes prickled like mad. She didn’t know what was wrong with her. Maybe it was her hormones. Would he even stay with her until the baby was a few months old? She sucked in a deep breath like a drowning swimmer, struggling to compose herself.

What Zac chose to do was not her business, she warned herself fiercely. They had an agreement. He had agreed to adopt Eloise and Jack with her and she had agreed to try and give him a child to enable him to take control of the da Rocha business empire. Obviously he couldn’t leave her until the adoption was finalised, she acknowledged on a tide of sudden overpowering relief that even she couldn’t ignore. And there was a couple of months yet to run on the adoption process.

Why did the prospect of Zac leaving fill her with horror and a deep and terrifying sense of abandonment? Practicality not sentiment, she rhymed to herself. Oh, to hell with that cop-out, she decided without hesitation. He was planning to desert her with two kids and another on the way and escape all the work and hassle of a newborn! How was that fair? Freddie hurtled at insane speed from misery to rage at the injustice of his plans.

This was the man she slept wrapped around every night. This was the man who enjoyed her body several times a day. This was the man planning to maroon her in the country with a house that needed a heck of a lot of work and someone with Zac’s drive and energy to ensure it got done! That Molderstone Manor happened to be her dream house should carry no weight in the argument, she told herself, determined to be a martyr in every way.

‘What’s up?’ Zac enquired lazily as Freddie tilted her nose in the air and walked to the far end of the balcony, turning her slender back to him.

‘Nothing’s up,’ she responded, taking in a great gulp of fresh air to close out the faint aroma of fried food still on the table.

‘Aren’t you joining me for breakfast?’

‘I’m not hungry. Where are the children?’

‘Izzy took them to the park.’ Zac appraised her as she turned. She looked very pale and the tip of her nose was pink as if she had been crying. ‘Have you been crying?’

‘Why would I have been crying?’ Freddie asked stiffly. ‘I’ve got some shopping to do.’

‘I’m meeting Dad for lunch but I can do shopping as long as neither paint nor fabric choices are involved.’ Zac sprang upright, every long, lean line of his powerful body defined by the beautifully tailored navy suit he wore teamed with a forest-green shirt and a silk tie. ‘You’re like a headless chicken when you shop. You can never make your mind up about anything.’

‘I’d rather go alone,’ Freddie muttered, biting at her lip. ‘Because afterwards I’m planning to visit the cemetery where my sister is buried. It’s the anniversary of her death.’

‘Why am I only hearing about that now?’ Zac queried, relieved to have grasped what had probably caused the tears he suspected. ‘You know, you hardly ever mention her.’

‘Doesn’t mean I don’t miss her. She was so good to me when I was a kid. But everything went wrong for her,’ Freddie responded tightly, suddenly dangerously on the edge of tears again.

‘She’d be proud of what you’re doing for her children.’

Freddie said nothing because sadly her last memories of her sister only reminded her that Lauren would have sacrificed anything and anybody for her next fix. Lauren had been too lost in drugs to care about her children.

‘I’m definitely coming with you to the cemetery,’ Zac decreed. ‘Give me a time and we’ll meet up.’

Freddie gave way on that point and headed straight out to buy a pregnancy test at the pharmacy only down the road. She then retreated back to the hotel cloakroom to get the test done. Well, actually, the three tests done because she didn’t want to get all worked up about a possible mistake, did she? And, one after another, each test put up an unmistakeable positive and tears rolled down her cheeks. And she hated herself but she hated Zac even more for getting her pregnant so quickly. She should be happy that she had conceived and somehow that aspect had been stolen from her by their situation.

Why was that? she asked herself. Shouldn’t she be rushing back up to the penthouse in the lift and sharing her good news? Zac would want to celebrate. He would be surprised it had happened so quickly for them. As he had said weeks back when she had realised that she hadn’t conceived. ‘We’re not in a hurry.’ Of course, he had had to say that, hadn’t he? He didn’t want her to feel stressed out about the conception plan, having already mentioned that stress wouldn’t aid that goal. How had he known that? Had he been reading up about pregnant women?

She looked down at her flat tummy and tried to imagine a little jumping bean like Jack nestling inside her and warm acceptance spread through her at last. A little Zac or a little girl, she didn’t care, only that it would be his child. And that was the point when it finally dawned on her that she was head over heels in love with her husband. She had broken the rules! She had gone and fallen for him in spite of all his warnings and against all common sense. The tears bubbled up again and she blinked them angrily away.

She was happy about the baby but terrified of losing Zac, and her pregnancy had to mean the beginning of the end for their marriage. There, now she knew what was wrong with her. It was fear of the massive changes ahead of her, of rebuilding a life that would seem empty without him. No more Zac. No more smiles or jokes or kisses. No more unexpected gifts. No more envious looks from other women. No more stories about Brazil. She would never visit Brazil now. Zac had been planning to take her there once the adoption was finalised but it wouldn’t happen now. She had missed that boat.

She would never see the horse ranch where he had spent his early years. She would never meet his grandmother on the Amazonian rubber plantation where the old lady still lived in her retirement. She would never attend the carnival in Rio with him or see the beautiful women strolling along Copacabana beach in scanty swimwear, whom Zac had admitted fantasising about as a teenager. He had shared so much with her about his background and homeland but now he would never take her to Brazil because she was pregnant and what would be the point? From now on he would see everything through the prism of the reality that he would soon be splitting up with her.

Dear heaven, would he expect her to be all jolly and friendly about the divorce? Well, she would look like an idiot if she got upset and he realised she had become extremely attached to him. She remembered the young woman in Klosters whom he had shunned for fear that, given encouragement, she would cling to him like a limpet. Freddie had no desire to be Zac’s limpet in life. She would be strong and sensible. She wouldn’t let him guess how she felt.

Zac was waiting at the cemetery gates for her with his bodyguards. He told her off for not using the limo or taking her bodyguard out with her.

‘I felt like a walk alone,’ she mumbled, walking through the gates with only the hum of a mower and the traffic beyond the walls infiltrating the emptiness.

‘It was such a waste. She was so young,’ she told him as she laid down her flowers and backed away to sit on a bench nearby.

Zac didn’t voice any of the empty clichés that were often utilised in such moments. He settled down beside her and closed a soothing arm round her taut shoulders.

‘I still feel so guilty,’ Freddie admitted convulsively. ‘I kind of used to blame her for falling into drugs but, the last year of her life, she told me something that has haunted me ever since. I wish she had told me a lot sooner and then I would’ve understood better, but she thought I was too young and she didn’t want to upset me.’

‘What did she tell you?’ Zac prompted when the silence dragged on.

‘We were put in a care home the first few weeks after our parents died.’ Freddie struggled to control her turbulent emotions. ‘When Lauren was pregnant with Jack, she told me that she was raped there but she didn’t report it because she was threatened and she was scared something would happen to me. It’s so ugly.’

‘But not your fault. You were a child,’ Zac soothed.

‘You see, she changed but I didn’t know why. Wherever we were she looked after me like a mother hen and then, when she got old enough to leave foster care, she fell in with a bad set of people and everything went downhill after that. She couldn’t cope with life on her own.’

‘You did everything you could to help her,’ Zac interposed. ‘Freddie... I’ve lost friends to drugs and not everyone is capable of what it takes to get clean. I think you need to believe that she’s gone to a better place and forgive yourself for not being able to save her.’

‘Yes,’ she mumbled tearfully, loving him so much at that instant that she almost sobbed all over him.

‘And perhaps we could get her a nicer headstone,’ Zac suggested lightly.

‘It was the best we could afford at the time. Claire paid for everything. Gosh, I still owe her the money for that.’ Freddie sighed.

‘I’ll take care of it. Shall I wait at the gates for you?’ Zac asked. ‘Maybe you’d like to spend a few minutes here on your own.’

Nodding jerkily, Freddie watched the love of her life stride away, tall and straight and full of innate power and confidence. Lauren had said that Cruz was ‘the one’ for her and Freddie, who had never been in love, hadn’t really understood the strength of such emotions, had not grasped that her sister simply didn’t have the power to break away from her toxic boyfriend. But she understood now.

And for the first time she saw a clear path in front of her. One of the elements she most valued in her relationship with Zac was the level of honesty with which they dealt with each other. She had to tell him that she was pregnant immediately, she decided heavily. She couldn’t keep secrets from him. But she could act on her own behalf like a strong, independent woman and walk away first.

It would hurt like hell, she knew it would, but at least it would cut out any ‘will he, won’t he?’ scenarios in which she hoped for more from him than he wanted to give. If she made the first move, there would be no humiliating emotional scenes between them and their relationship would remain stable in the future, which was very important from the children’s point of view.

Zac, after all, hadn’t shifted an inch in his attitude towards their marriage. It wasn’t even fair for her to expect more from him. He was good to her, really good, but he didn’t love her, nor did he want to keep her for ever. Sadly, she wasn’t ‘the one’ for Zac da Rocha, because if she had been he would surely have said something after two months of marriage. Instead he was still reminding her that what they had was a temporary marriage.

Her mind made up, Freddie rose from the bench to leave the cemetery.