by Lynne Graham
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 ha
rd 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.
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 im
agine 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.