by Lynne Graham
Freddie didn’t know how to shake him off politely and she felt she had to be polite because, whether she liked it or not, he had been a good sport and at least he was no longer trying to stuff banknotes in her direction.
‘You must have some social life,’ Zac remarked drily, walking down the small dismal street of terraced houses.
‘Not really,’ Freddie mumbled, fumbling for her key and about to unlock the door when it opened without warning and framed Claire. ‘Oh, hi, Claire!’ she began.
‘And who’s this?’
Zac extended a hand and introduced himself and Claire invited him in, completely ignoring Freddie’s frantic mute grimaces from behind him.
‘Hot, hot, hot,’ Claire whispered in surprising delight as Freddie passed by her into the cramped hall and Zac lifted in the buggy. ‘I’ll put on the kettle, shall I?’ she added with enthusiasm.
Freddie took Jack upstairs to his cot and when she went down to the lounge, Zac was drinking coffee, comfortably ensconced like a welcome guest while Claire acted as hostess. Maybe he would be attracted to Claire, she thought abruptly and then killed the suspicion, taken aback by how something visceral inside her rose in rage at that idea.
‘I’ll babysit for you so that you can go out with Zac,’ Claire announced, startling her with that unprecedented offer. ‘I keep on telling Freddie that she has to make her own life beyond the kids. You’re not working tonight, are you?’
‘Well, no, but—’
‘Thanks, Claire. I’ll pick you up at eight,’ Zac delivered, sidestepping Eloise’s offer of her dragon storybook and vaulting upright to seize the moment.
Freddie chased him into the hall but he was too quick for her, already out of the front door and down the steps before she could reach him.
‘Why did you do that?’ she returned to ask Claire. ‘I don’t want to go out with him.’
‘Of course, you do. He’s gorgeous,’ Claire parried crushingly. ‘All work and no play will make Freddie a very dull girl and if I can help you to see that I’ll be happier.’
Silenced by that assurance, reluctant to get into a disagreement with Claire, whose opinions tended to be strident, Freddie swallowed hard. She didn’t want to spend more time with Zac when she found him so attractive and was finally admitting that to herself. But pursuing that attraction in any way would be futile. She didn’t want a sleazy one-night stand with him and that was all he was after, a little recreational sex to fill a fleeting moment. That wasn’t her, would never be her. After a frightening attack in her teens, her sister had gone on to have a lot of casual sex and that was ultimately how she’d ended up with her creepy boyfriend. Freddie was still a virgin because she had had little time for a social life, but she still knew that she wouldn’t settle for a meaningless fling. She wanted feelings involved as well as mutual respect and consideration and Zac wasn’t programmed to offer any of that. She needed more before she could give her trust and if that was old-fashioned, well, she was content to be old-fashioned.
* * *
Zac was equally discomfited at the prospect of the evening ahead. He had never been on a date, had never sought that kind of relationship and hadn’t a clue how to go about it. But he had no problem in asking his other brother, Angel, for clarification when he met him out of his office for coffee that afternoon, because his Greek sibling didn’t annoy him the way Vitale did. Angel had a much more laid-back and less judgemental attitude.
‘Never?’ Angel queried in some surprise. ‘By the sound of it, your sex life is pretty basic.’
‘Very basic,’ Zac admitted without embarrassment. ‘But I really want this woman.’
‘Merry would probably be more help than me,’ Angel acknowledged wryly, referring to his new wife. ‘I screwed up very badly with her, so we never really dated as such. Take your lady for a drink or dinner, keep it casual.’
Zac’s ego was mollified by Angel’s confession, but he need not have worried because Freddie had agonised throughout the afternoon before finally texting him her suggestion that they try go-karting.
Zac was astonished by the suggestion because it seemed ridiculously boyish and competitive for a woman who struck him as ultra-feminine, but it appealed much more to his energetic nature than an evening that had to be based on conversation. It did not once occur to him that he was being managed.
* * *
Freddie was delighted by Zac’s assent. The setting would ensure she wasn’t silly and prevent him from getting too handsy. When Claire looked at her in almost comical surprise when she told her where they were going, Freddie simply laughed.
Zac arrived to pick her up on a motorbike, a big black and gold beast that disconcerted her when she had expected him to arrive in some flash sports car. He got off the bike and said very drily, as if he was offering her a huge compliment, ‘I’ve never had a girl on the back of my bike before.’
‘First time for everything,’ Freddie quipped, putting on the helmet he handed her. ‘I haven’t been on a motorbike before.’
He flipped out the foot pegs for her, climbed back astride and voiced several terse instructions. With difficulty, Freddie hopped up behind him and wrapped her arms round him, belatedly appreciating that, while a car would have marooned them in dangerous privacy, a bike offered physical intimacy of a possibly more dangerous kind. Her palms rested against rock-hard abs, her fingers brushing against his belt, and then the bike started up and vibrations travelled through her from head to foot in an unexpectedly exciting way.
She rested her face against the back of his jacket, strands of his black hair whipping against her brow, and the scent of him engulfed her like a rip tide, sent to torment. He smelled clean and male with a hint of some exotic cologne and the combination was one to savour, she acknowledged absently, marvelling that such a reality could make her skin tingle and her body heat while she felt every flex of his powerful abdominal muscles shift beneath her clinging hands. Her fingers spread against the heat of him, her own body savouring the connection in the most astonishing way.
Zac wanted to push her hands down to where he really needed her attention below the belt where she was being so very careful not to touch him. Why was she so inhibited? What did she have against pleasure? He had to work that out before sheer sexual frustration drove him crazy. It had been weeks since he had had a woman and that was a new development for him and not one he appreciated. After all, sex was one of life’s greatest free pleasures and a need he was accustomed to indulging in regularly.
Why was a single woman as attracted to him as he was to her refusing him? Something in her past? What else could it be? Had she been assaulted? Abused? His guts twisted at the suspicion because he despised men who used physical force against the weaker and more vulnerable. Meu Deus, could she be even more complicated than he had already recognised? Once again he asked himself angrily, Why her? Why was he chasing a woman for the first time in his life? Why wasn’t he simply moving on? He swore furiously to himself then that if she refused him again, he would forget about her and seek his pleasure elsewhere...
CHAPTER THREE
AS HE PEELED off the last of his protective gear, Zac glanced across at Freddie and his wide, sensual mouth quirked with concealed amusement. There she was, benched after being red-flagged for a safety violation, her face still a mask of angry mortification. Yet she had initially gone onto the track with all the risk-taking verve of a nervous elderly lady and then Zac had flashed past her, a manoeuvre that had evidently unleashed her competitive instincts, and the die had been cast as she raced into pursuit of him in flagrant disregard of her apparent lack of experience on the track.
‘Go on...laugh,’ she urged sulkily, her annoyed gaze challenging him to do his worst while even then noticing the natural animal rhythm of his fluid stride. He walked lightly for so large a man yet testosterone seeped from his very pores. Even in a crowded location, his stunning looks stood out and guaranteed female turned heads and interested stares. Her stiff cheekbones flu
shed on the sinking acknowledgement that she was woman enough to be proud of being seen with him.
‘When you suggested it, I assumed go-karting was a favourite pastime of yours.’
‘You must be kidding. I’ve only been once and that was years ago...a birthday treat with the foster family we were staying with then.’
Zac took her breath away by simply lifting her off her feet and settling her down on the back of his bike. ‘Foster family? We?’ he queried with a frown.
‘Never mind,’ Freddie parried, seeing no reason to share her past with him when he was about to take her home.
Resting her cheek against his broad back as the bike glided through the traffic, Freddie closed her eyes, the oddest sensation of regret tugging infuriatingly at her while her body reacted with heat and awareness to the physical contact with his. The date, as such, was done and dusted and he had to now recognise that she was scarcely the sexy temptress of his dreams. He had enjoyed himself though, for Zac and speed were a perfect match, so hopefully there would be no hard feelings and her job would be safe because she really could not afford to lose her job, she thought fearfully.
Lifting her off the bike, Zac unclipped her helmet. As he herded her forward, he tossed his key fob to the doorman and addressed him in a foreign language. ‘Where the heck are we?’ Freddie demanded, cursing herself for having drifted off into her thoughts and failing to pay attention.
And even by the time she bleated that foolish question she knew exactly where she was and she cringed because she had never walked through the front entrance of The Palm Tree before. Staff had a side entrance and the bar was separate as well and employees were instructed to stay in their designated zone. Ahead of her and below the magnificent crystal chandeliers stretched a blur of mirrored reception counter that was dazzling and disorientating in the bright light.
Something remarkably like panic grabbed Freddie. ‘I can’t be in here... I work here!’ she exclaimed in dismay, trying to pull away from Zac’s controlling hand at her hip.
Zac grabbed her up into his arms as though she were Eloise and strode into his private lift before setting her down.
‘Let me go, for goodness’ sake!’ Freddie launched at him furiously as he slid her down his long, lean body, ensuring that she missed out on not a single angle of his lean, muscular physique. ‘I’m not coming up to your penthouse with you!’
‘Yes, you are,’ Zac countered without hesitation. ‘I have food waiting for us.’
‘I’m not hungry!’ she protested contrarily.
‘And I’m not an abuser of women and dislike being treated as though I am,’ Zac replied very, very drily.
Colour ran in a hot tide up beneath Freddie’s pale complexion and she collided with narrowed eyes the shade of crushed ice, glittering like a dangerous glacier in sunlight below a black lush fringe of lashes. ‘That’s not how I’m treating you.’
‘It is,’ he contradicted. ‘And I don’t like it. I would never touch you without your permission.’
A maddening need to apologise assailed Freddie and she fought it off, examining her behaviour, conceding that she might have come off a little hysterical in her rigid need to protect herself around a man. ‘Look, I have to work here, and obviously I don’t want to be seen inside your penthouse.’
‘And maybe, just maybe,’ Zac incised in a lethal undertone, those eyes luminous and cold as polar stars, ‘I’m tired of doing everything your way, meu pequenino.’
Freddie compressed her lips and studied her scuffed trainers in the rushing silence. Her muscles ached with the tension in the air and her tummy performed a nauseous flip.
‘When were you in foster care?’ Zac continued smoothly as he thrust open the door of what she assumed to be the penthouse suite, because a superb wall of glass overlooked the twinkling lights of the city skyline that bounded one side of the huge room.
Freddie was busy looking around herself at a level of luxury way beyond her experience. There was a tiny elegant kitchen alcove in one corner, not one to be taken seriously, for few who could afford the rates for the penthouse would wish to cook for themselves in a hotel renowned for its cuisine. Another couple of doors led off the main area, which was furnished with a massive wall television and buttery soft leather sofas, currently strewn with car magazines.
‘Freddie?’ he prompted, amused by her frank curiosity about her surroundings.
Freddie relocated her wits, still careful not to look at him. ‘My parents were killed in a car crash when I was ten. I had a completely happy childhood up until then, not so much after that,’ she admitted stiffly, food scents tugging at her nostrils, provoking an embarrassingly loud and needy growl from her stomach.
Freddie spoke quickly, fearful that he had heard her tummy grumble. ‘What about you? Where did you grow up?’
‘A fazenda...a ranch in Brazil.’ Zac lifted the cover on the food trolley with a flourish. ‘Help yourself,’ he urged.
Grateful to have something to do with her knotted hands, Freddie reached for a plate while scolding herself for her nerves. Being alone with a man was no big deal and it was time she got over her hang-ups from the years spent living with her sister. In any case, Lauren had been the victim of the abuse, not Freddie, who had merely been a powerless shrinking presence. Zac had probably done her a favour by calling her on her attitude to him. After all, some day in the future, she might want a man of her own and she wouldn’t want to scare him off by acting weird, would she? Her spine stretching out of the stiffness she had maintained, she struggled to relax her defences.
‘I would never have picked you out as a country boy,’ Freddie confided as she ate the convenient mini finger foods she had piled on her plate, perched on the edge of a too comfortable sofa.
Zac’s beautifully shaped mouth quirked. ‘I’m not, although I’m quite interested in breeding pedigree horses,’ he admitted, startling her afresh.
Zac watched her ease back into the sofa as though it were a potentially dangerous manoeuvre. Her feet left the floor and she crossed her legs like an elf, making herself at home with him for the first time, and he got a rush out of that display of relaxation, which unsettled him. It was only that she was prickly, difficult and an unknown quantity and he loved a challenge, he told himself squarely. Maybe without really noticing he had got bored with the constant sexual come-ons and the easy conquests. And Freddie was different, so very different from the sort of women he usually bedded. She also looked ridiculously cute sitting there, he acknowledged uneasily, frowning at that aberrant thought.
‘I also wanted to ask if you’ve thought any more about joining me in that bet I mentioned this morning,’ Zac delivered, getting back down to business with a strong sense of relief.
Her vivid little face screwed up tight and she studied him in surprise. ‘You’re still on about that?’ she questioned.
Zac shrugged a broad shoulder. ‘I don’t give up on anything easily.’
No, if she could peel him apart Freddie was convinced she would find the word ‘determined’ stamped through him as though he were a stick of rock. She parted her lips to protest and then closed them again, wanting to be civil. ‘I have the children to look after,’ she said finally.
‘And I could easily hire a nanny,’ Zac traded, once again refusing to take no for an answer. ‘We could have a lot of fun at Vitale’s royal ball. I’m sure you’d enjoy getting all togged up in a fancy designer dress as much as any woman.’
‘No, sorry,’ Freddie muttered, crushing down the temptation offered by that treacherous word, ‘fun’. For a split second, she considered the offer of a nanny’s help and then suppressed the idea again because, with Claire’s current mood, she did not want to risk rocking the boat. It was out of the question. Certainly not while Claire was currently saddled with a boyfriend flying out to Spain whenever he could to help his parents set up their new business. It would be the worst possible time for Freddie to start demonstrating a desire to fly free on her own behalf.
‘But that’s crazy,’ Zac argued.
‘You don’t know when to quit, do you?’ Freddie remarked in reproach. ‘I don’t want to talk about this.’
‘But I do,’ Zac parried with irrepressible enthusiasm, light eyes shimmering like stars in the dusk light. ‘I’d like to spend more time with you and I can’t understand why you would fight that when you want it too.’
Eloise and Jack, Freddie reflected without speaking. ‘I don’t want to spend more time with you, though,’ she told him drily, running for her only possible escape hatch.
‘Why do you lie about it?’ Zac demanded with sudden lancing impatience.
Freddie breathed in deep. ‘I’m not lying,’ she told him, looking back at him steadily, literally willing him to believe what she was saying.
His big hands came up to cup her cheekbones, long controlling fingers sliding into her hair to fasten to her skull, and she couldn’t move an inch, brown eyes dilating with an enervating mixture of excitement and dismay.
‘Liar,’ he growled again.
‘Just because I won’t say what you want to hear doesn’t mean I’m lying!’ Freddie proclaimed in desperation.
The silence between them smouldered as if someone had set it on fire, brown eyes clashing with volatile light grey condemnation, and then he took her mouth with a wild, seething passion unlike anything she had ever felt before. It was like being swept away by a tidal wave, like sticking a finger in an electric socket or hitching a ride on a rocket because one minute she was grounded, the next she was flying high on a hunger that consumed her with its ferocious urgency. Sensation roared through her trembling body with every delving exploration of his tongue. He lowered a hand to crush the slight pout of her aching breast and she almost spontaneously combusted inside the prison of her flesh, her body screaming for more while she kissed him back with both hands laced tightly into the luxuriant depths of his long black hair.