by Lynne Graham
Zac watched tears trickle down her taut cheeks, tears she wasn’t even aware that she was shedding because she was resolutely swigging the coffee she had got herself and keeping on talking earnestly, struggling to politely hide her anguish. He wished his mother had been capable of feeling even half as much after she had left him as a little boy marooned on the fazenda month after month, year after year, living in hope of visits or phone calls that had rarely happened. But, sadly for him, Antonella had craved her husband’s child and no other and in all the years that had followed fate had only given her Zac and an endless stream of miscarriages and other disappointments.
There’s nothing I wouldn’t do to keep them.
The words echoed afresh in Zac’s mind. And a subtle illuminating shift took place in his attitude at that point as a recollection of his father’s advice surfaced simultaneously: choose a woman who at least wants a child. His lean, strong face tensed and shadowed. How was he to view a woman willing to make any sacrifice to keep children that were not even hers?
‘You must love children,’ Zac commented with forced casualness.
‘I don’t know about that,’ Freddie demurred uncertainly. ‘But I loved Eloise from the minute she was born...and Jack. He had to be weaned off drugs before he was allowed to leave hospital and I was so worried about his development at first but he’s done so very well.’
‘Jack’s full of life,’ Zac agreed lazily, deep in thought and struggling against so unfamiliar an exercise. He had skimmed along the shallow surface of life for a very long time, having learned far too young that caring too much about anything, wanting anything too much and setting hopes too high invariably hurt like hell. An intelligent man, therefore, should avoid optimistic goals, emotional entanglements and complications.
He needed a child. Freddie, however, needed a husband, willing to take on two children. The prospect of being a parent to three children shattered Zac and drew him up short in his ruminations. To adopt Eloise and Jack, he would definitely have to marry Freddie and meet all conventional expectations to satisfy the authorities involved and it would scarcely be an easy process. In all likelihood that process would also be hedged with regulations likely to curtail his every move. Was he prepared to go to such punitive lengths to solve his inheritance problem?
After all, he could choose virtually any woman to have his child. Zac had few illusions about his own worth on the matrimonial front. He was filthy rich and ambitious women targeted men who could provide a fantasy lifestyle. But in spite of being poor, Freddie didn’t seem mercenary. In fact, she had infuriating principles set in stone that had held Zac to ransom and actually forced him into retreat. He didn’t do caring and commitment, but he also knew that any child would require caring and commitment from him to thrive. He could try to meet those obligations though, couldn’t he? He was not so divorced from humanity that change was impossible, he told himself stubbornly.
Zac focussed on Freddie, tousled dark blonde hair skimming her taut cheekbones, dark chocolate eyes surrounded by wet clogged eyelashes, which signally failed to diminish her appeal. Raw hunger rippled through him, hot as a river of lava, pushing and pulling at him even though he was far too shaken by the concept of becoming a father of three to really want to continue.
‘When you finish work tonight, come up to the penthouse and we’ll talk,’ Zac murmured almost hoarsely through clenched teeth. ‘There’s a possibility that I could be able to help you retain custody of Eloise and Jack.’
Dumbfounded by that claim, which had come at her out of nowhere, Freddie stared in bewilderment back at him, her full pink lips parting in surprise to show pearly teeth. ‘How?’ she asked baldly.
‘We’ll discuss that later.’ Zac dealt her a brooding appraisal. ‘But I can tell you now that it’ll come down to how much you’re willing to give up to hang onto those kids.’
Freddie’s gaze had widened. ‘Anything.’
‘People often say stuff like that but they don’t really mean it,’ Zac dismissed with a sceptical glance. ‘We’ll talk about it and see if we can help each other.’
‘Help each other?’ she queried in wonderment.
Zac compressed his wide sensual mouth and finished his black coffee, refusing to expand on the topic.
In a complete daze, Freddie went back to work and watched Zac stride out of the bar twenty minutes later without even looking her way. How could he possibly help her? And how could she possibly help him? Her mind whirled with fantastical supposition, none of which made sense or seemed remotely likely. Meanwhile she was conscious of the stares of her co-workers and a new disturbing wariness in their attitude towards her.
‘Obviously he’s nailing her and you can’t blame her, can you? I’d have him in a heartbeat!’ one of the bar staff was opining when Freddie entered the locker room after work to change.
A horrible silence fell when her presence was noted and the other two women got very busy with their lockers before leaving in haste. Freddie’s face was burning but such speculation was only to be expected. Of course, the staff was gossiping about Zac’s apparent interest in her, and his intervention earlier on her behalf had only encouraged conjecture. Naturally everyone would assume that she was having sex with him. And if Zac had had anything to do with it, she thought ruefully, she would have been. No, it would have happened only once, she reasoned, unable to imagine that any more enduring relationship would have developed between them. Zac bore all the hallmarks of a man who got easily bored.
She slid through the door that communicated with the hotel foyer, her cheeks warm with discomfiture. She was shabbily dressed, a hoodie pulled on over her top and skinny jeans and sneakers in place of the shorts and high heels. She had put some concealer over her swollen eyes and she was depressingly conscious that she looked tired and washed out. She entered the lift Zac had used and a burly man in a suit stepped in straight after her and stuck a card in a slot.
‘The penthouse?’ he queried, looking her over doubtfully. ‘Miss Lassiter?’
‘Yes.’
‘Mr da Rocha is expecting you,’ he informed her as the doors closed. ‘I’m Marco, one of his security team, and I work for him.’
Freddie realised that the private lift would not have worked for her without that all important card. When the lift stopped Marco led the way, opening the door to the penthouse and standing back for her to enter before closing the door on her heels. A door inside the suite opened and Zac strolled out, half naked, a pair of jeans hanging loose and unbuttoned on his lean hips.
‘Oh, it’s you. Make yourself at home,’ he urged casually. ‘Pour yourself a drink.’
And with that careless suggestion he stalked back barefoot into the bedroom, leaving her breathless because Zac half naked was an unforgettable sight: an expanse of ripped, incredibly muscled torso liberally inked with intricate designs leading down to a V of muscle that emphasised his flat, hard stomach and his narrow waist. Flustered and more nervous than ever, she tugged off her hoodie because she was too warm, and finger-combed her hair before approaching the well-stocked bar and choosing a juice. She was very grateful that he hadn’t hung around long enough to notice that she had been welded to the floor and staring at him like an awestricken schoolgirl.
Annoyance that she was so easily overwhelmed by Zac’s sheer impact licked at her. Yes, he was utterly, absolutely gorgeous but surely she was capable of acting normally around him? Had she ever acted normally around him? She didn’t think she had. From that very first glimpse, he had unsettled her, then he had outraged her and from that point on she had become nervous, judgemental and oversensitive in his radius.
Zac reappeared fully dressed in a black shirt and jeans. His attention went straight to the glass in her hand. ‘Tomato juice...really?’
‘Alcohol would send me to sleep at this time of night,’ she said defensively.
‘I was teasing,’ Zac assured her while he studied her and asked himself if access to her was worth what he would be sacrific
ing. Of course, it wouldn’t be, his intelligence told him. No woman would ever be worth his freedom. But he had to be practical and work with the system, and if he married her and she didn’t conceive his lawyers would be able to move to break the trust. One way or another marriage would be a step forward and he would move closer to his goal of complete independence and control of the diamond mines that were his family heritage.
‘Why did you say that we might be able to help each other?’ Freddie pressed tautly.
Zac settled down carelessly opposite her on the arm of a sofa and leant back, wide shoulders squared, long, powerful thighs spread and braced. ‘I’m the heir to the Quintal da Rocha diamond mines. I receive the profits but I won’t be able to control the business until I have produced an heir of my own. That iniquitous arrangement was laid down in a legal trust by my great-great-grandfather a long time ago and I deeply resent it.’
‘You have to have a child?’ Freddie whispered with disconcerted emphasis.
‘Yes, and if you are willing to try and give me that child I am willing to marry you and attempt to adopt Eloise and Jack with you,’ Zac completed smoothly.
The mention of marriage shocked Freddie so much that she took a great desperate gulp of her tomato juice and almost choked on it, coughing and then clearing her throat with a painful swallow while Zac continued to steadily watch her. ‘You’d be willing to adopt Eloise and Jack?’ she prompted shakily, careening wildly from one thought to the next, all her thoughts disjointed and incomplete.
‘If you also agree to meet my condition by giving me a child,’ Zac responded with measured cool.
‘Do you have a criminal record?’ Freddie demanded, disconcerting him with the staggering abruptness of that question.
Ebony brows drew together in perplexity. ‘Of course not.’
Freddie went pink. ‘Just asking. You probably couldn’t be considered as an adoptive parent with a record.’
Zac was entertained by that tactless leap-frogging question that revealed that she was already considering his proposition. ‘Have you ever been pregnant?’ he traded in return.
Freddie stiffened and shook her head. ‘Er...no, I’m afraid, no proven fertility record here.’
Zac lifted and dropped a fatalistic shoulder. ‘Either of us could be infertile. At this point, it doesn’t really matter because I have to go through the motions...marry and try to have a child, and if it doesn’t happen for us I can then go to court and ask for the trust to be set aside.’
‘You would truly be prepared to adopt Eloise and Jack with me?’ Freddie prompted, sudden tears burning the backs of her eyes at the idea that there could possibly be a solution that would enable her to keep her sister’s children.
‘Yes, if you agree. You said you’d do anything to keep them and I will also pretty much do anything it takes to gain control of the da Rocha business empire,’ Zac admitted grimly.
As if she had been winded by a feverish sprint, Freddie coiled back almost bonelessly into the sofa and snatched in a deep shuddering breath, striving to calm down and think with clarity. She had to set down her glass because her hand was shaking so badly. ‘Do you think we’d have a chance of adopting the kids together?’ she asked anxiously, refusing to plunge herself into the turmoil of considering what it would be like to marry Zac and have a child with him and instead concentrating on what was most important to her at that moment.
‘I don’t see why not if we present ourselves as a loving couple. I’m wealthy enough to buy us a home. I’m also mixed race, like the children.’
‘Are you?’ Freddie studied him in surprise.
‘My grandmother on my mother’s side is black. My grandfather was white,’ Zac explained. ‘Brazil is a huge melting pot of ethnic diversity and if you’re like me you can’t choose your genes when you reproduce. I’m telling you that now because any child we have could take after either side of my family.’
Freddie nodded understanding.
‘Not every woman could comfortably accept that possibility,’ Zac admitted, involuntarily amused by Freddie’s complete lack of reaction to his frankness.
His mother had been haunted by the spectre of her husband’s racism and her fear of having a child of a darker complexion than her own while Zac had been relentlessly bullied at an almost exclusively white school for being the only child that was different. He had learned to fight to protect himself at an early age, but he had also had to learn how to back down when there were too many ranged against him. The trouble that had erupted around Zac then had led to him being labelled an agitator, a tag he had fiercely resented.
Silence fell while Zac surveyed Freddie, coiling tendrils of lust curling up hotly through him. He remembered the rounded little curve of her bottom in the shorts, the shapely length of her legs, and pictured her spread across his bed in various different positions, anticipation and hunger leaping through his veins. He could not remember ever wanting a woman with such fierce immediacy. Had her reluctance sustained his desire? Was he truly so basic that he needed the challenge she had represented? And why did the idea of getting her pregnant turn him on as hard and fast as a bullet? Wasn’t that a little kinky? A hard line of colour suffused his exotic, high cheekbones and, sliding upright, he strode over to the bar to pour himself a drink.
‘Not for me, thanks,’ Freddie framed when he glanced at her enquiringly.
‘You’re very quiet,’ he murmured warily.
‘Shocked,’ Freddie contradicted. ‘Marriage...seriously, you and me?’
‘Not a for-ever kind of marriage,’ Zac qualified softly. ‘But I would still continue to be involved in the children’s lives, regardless of what happens between us.’
The marriage would not be permanent, Freddie interpreted, but he was still promising that he would go on being a father to the children. Obviously he was planning on an eventual divorce to regain his freedom, leaving her a single parent with three children. A child with Zac, having a child with Zac, she grasped suddenly, her face and body gripped by heat at the notion. She stared down at her feet, shutting out that silly flush of sexual awareness and exasperated by it, because just then it struck her as a trivial issue when compared to the awful threat of losing her sister’s children, whom she loved and who had learned to love her. Sex was no big deal, she told herself urgently. Sex would have to be no big deal if they were forced to try and conceive a child because that could take months and months to achieve. The alternative would be to lose Eloise and Jack, whom she could not bear to imagine her life without. That recollection steadied her nerves and cooled her down. She had to keep on reminding herself of what the end result of such an arrangement would be.
‘Is divorce a stumbling block for you?’ Zac prompted with a frown.
‘No. But this idea of yours...well, it’s a lot to get my head around,’ she confided ruefully, cheeks colouring as she encountered his pale glittering gaze, finally recognising how very intense he could be because she could feel the raw force of his volatile temperament in that assessing appraisal.
‘You said you’d do anything,’ he reminded her sibilantly.
‘Marriage and a baby?’ Freddie quipped. ‘Not something I’d even got around to thinking about yet.’
‘If we married, you would also be financially secure for life. You would never have to work again if you didn’t want to,’ Zac continued.
And even though she knew he was trying to tempt her, she was filled with anticipation of what her life could be like were she free to live it and have sufficient money to afford childcare. She had missed out on her place at college, where she had planned to train as a teacher, because after finding Eloise cold, wet and hungry in her cot, forgotten by Lauren, she had known that there was no way she could leave a baby alone with her sister. Not when Eloise needed her, not when Freddie loved Eloise as much as if she had given birth to her herself. Those were the truths that had reshaped Freddie’s future and forced tough, unselfish choices on her.
‘All I want is w
hat’s best for the children. That has to be my main aim,’ Freddie declared. ‘You’d have to start taking the time to get to know them properly.’
‘I’ll do whatever it takes. I want you—’
‘For a while,’ Freddie interposed ironically, brown velvet eyes flickering over his lean, darkly handsome features, her mouth running dry. ‘And I come as a package with two children. I don’t want them damaged in any way by our choices.’
‘We’re only human. We can’t see the future but my motivation is good. I don’t want anyone harmed by this arrangement.’
‘But why did you pick me?’ she asked baldly.
‘I can be businesslike about this with you because you have as much to gain from the marriage as I do,’ Zac stated. ‘I like that because it gives us a better chance of making it work. Com certeza...of course, if I wasn’t attracted to you, it wouldn’t work on any level.’
Freddie reddened, lashes cloaking her gaze as she tore her attention from his lean, powerful figure, her body slowly heating. Her nipples prickled and tightened, her thighs pressing tightly together to ease the sudden compulsive ache between them. Wanting without any hope of satisfaction hurt, she finally acknowledged, but she still tensed at the prospect of giving way to that need.
But Zac was offering her what she wanted in return for what he wanted and she deemed it a fair bargain if he was willing to take on parenting her niece and nephew and any child they had of their own. She concentrated on the positives. Zac would give them security. Zac would be another parent to support her. After a while he would not be around on a daily basis as a father, but in a world where nothing was certain and marriages often broke down that was not unusual and at least he was being honest about his intentions from the outset.
She didn’t have an alternative choice. Nobody else was coming to rescue her. And even Zac wasn’t rescuing her, she reflected wryly. He was offering her a lifebelt on one hand and demanding his pound of flesh with the other. They would be equal partners in the marriage because both of them would be bringing something important to the table. Would she be able to conceive? How long would it take to accomplish that feat? And what would it feel like to have Zac as a husband and lover and then lose him again? But all those scary questions were for the future and not relevant to the present.