by Helen Brooks
'And did you spend part of the night with Gina when she called you after taking an overdose?' she continued flatly, her heart thudding as the nightmare escalated at his grim.
'Yes, I did.'
'And she is your mistress.'
It was a statement, not a question, and now his cool control was absolute when he said evenly, 'We had a relationship once, Victoria. Past tense.'
She wanted to believe him. She couldn't believe how much she wanted to—but she didn't. 'Why didn't you tell me about her before, Zac? Especially knowing she would be here at the wedding?' Victoria asked numbly. And she had actually liked Gina when she had met her, she thought with a stab of fierce self-disgust at her own credulity. She'd thought the other woman charming.
'She wasn't relevant to you and me,' he said softly. 'That's why.' He went to take her arm again but she jerked away tightly.
'Wasn't relevant?' What planet was this man on? What planet were they all on? Victoria asked herself bitterly. And them she remembered something Zac had let slip a couple of weeks before, and she felt her heart crack and break into a hundred tiny pieces.
'You had lunch with her recently,' she stated slowly, searching her memory. 'You said you were helping her buy an apartment, putting her in touch with the right people.' And now she stepped back a pace, her violet eyes black with pain. 'You were setting up a love nest, weren't you? And tins morning, this morning—' She couldn't express how his withdrawal from her when she had first awoken was affecting her. 'I hate you,' she said bitterly.
'Victoria!' He caught her arm as she went to swing away from him, forcing her to remain where she was. 'Listen to me, for crying out loud. Listen, I can explain all this.'
'You left me on our wedding night to go to her,' Victoria said slowly, her voice fiat but her eyes expressing her shock and horror. 'You still care about her, don't you? You still love her. When she called you, you went to her and left me.'
'Victoria, I married you,' he said with savage restraint, his fingers bruising the soft flesh of her arm. 'I love you.'
'Tell me you feel nothing for her. Tell me,' she insisted hotly. 'Tell me you didn't buy her that apartment, that I'm wrong.'
And then his eyes flickered again and she knew he wouldn't say it Because he knew she would know he was lying.
'I'm going back to the room for a while; I want to be alone,' she said shakily. 'I'll join you and the others later.'
'I'm coming with you; this has gone far enough—'
'No.' She interrupted his angry voice with a sharp lift of her chin and a straightening of her body. 'I need…I need some time before I come into breakfast, and then…we can talk afterwards. I can't now; I just can't.' Her voice broke then, and as his face twisted and he would have taken her in his arms she backed away so sharply she almost fell over. She couldn't bear for him to touch her. She hated him. Oh, she hated him.
'Please, Zac,' she said with touching dignity, 'if you've ever had any feeling for me at all, let me have a few minutes by myself. I feel you owe me that at least.'
'This is crazy,' he ground out furiously through clenched teeth. 'Your damned mother wants shooting!'
'I'll see you in a few minutes.' Her voice was dismissive, and she didn't argue the point further, walking swiftly over to the lifts and entering the first one without turning her head. She had half expected him to follow, and by the time she reached their suite and realised he wasn't going to something had solidified in her heart, making it feel like a ten-ton weight.
Their bags were sitting in the corner, packed and labelled for their month's honeymoon in Jamaica, but Victoria took only her overnight case and handbag with her, leaving the hotel quietly by the back entrance through the kitchens to avoid Reception and the possibility that Zac might be there. Facing him again was unthinkable.
Once outside in the cool chill of the late March morning, she stood uncertainly looking from left to right along the side road bordering the rear of the hotel. She couldn't go to their beautiful new house in Wimbledon, or her mother's apartment in Kensington—they would be the first places Zac would look for her—and most of their friends' and relations' homes were out for the same reason. She bit her lip, her face desperate. And then it came to her. William. She could go to William.
William was the brother of one of her old schoolfriends, and she had known him since her first visit to her friend's house when she had been eight years old and terribly shy. He had teased her, played with her, and never once led her to believe he considered an eight-year-old girl beneath his fifteen-year-old notice.
For the next few years Victoria had spent most of the holidays from boarding-school with his family. Her mother had been only too pleased to be spared the inconvenience of having her around—something Coral had made abundantly clear several times—and when Victoria was thirteen, and the family had moved abroad, William had stayed in England. He had a very modern bachelor pad with enough gadgets for a James Bond movie, and she had still continued to visit him now and again before she had left England for the year in Romania.
He had a high-pressured and absorbing job in the BBC, which meant he was out of the country for weeks at a time on some assignment or other, but she knew he had been due home from the latest mission the night before. He had sent a polite note to her a couple of weeks ago to say he regretted he was going to miss the wedding by hours. So, more likely than not he would be in, and, best of all, Zac had never met him. In fact she wasn't even sure if Zac knew of the other man's existence.
William had been in—very in as it happened—and once he had got dressed and the lady had left, insisting she had been due to leave in the next hour anyway, he had let Victoria cry herself into a frenzy and then out of it again. He had held her close, murmuring soothing nothings and asking no questions until she was calmer, at which point he had made a pot of very strong coffee and they had talked the afternoon away.
At the end of that time he'd offered her unconditional sanctuary for as long as she felt she needed it, with an additional invitation of the use of his holiday home in Tunisia which he'd recently inherited from his grandmother.
And she hadn't seen Zac again.
CHAPTER TWO
There was a wonderful aroma drifting through from the kitchen, and as Victoria came out of the tangle of her thoughts she found she was sniffing the air like a child. He really could cook.
'You look about twelve this morning.'
The deep, velvety soft voice from the doorway brought her head swinging round to see Zac watching her, his eyes very intent She stared at him for a moment, and then shrugged carefully, her voice reserved as she said, 'Looks can be deceptive.' And in this case particularly so, she added silently. She was a grown woman with a child— his child—growing inside her. A bolt of something she recognised as fear shot through her, and she turned her head abruptly, hiding her face with the shining, silken veil of her hair. That piercing gaze was too perceptive by half, and it was one of Zac's strengths that he used mercilessly.
Zac mustn't know about the baby. Her mind was screaming a warning to her. In the dark days since their wedding she had come to realise she knew very little about the powerful, enigmatic man she had married so trustingly, but one thing she did know. He was the type of male who would fight tooth and nail for what was his, and he would certainly see this tiny being as belonging absolutely to the Harding empire. Her feelings would be incidental.
She had been raised in the care of nannies and chauffeurs and hired help and it had been miserable. She didn't intend to let that happen to her child. And it was hers, all hers, she told herself fiercely. It was even her mistake that meant it had been conceived at all. She had decided to take the pill several months before, but in all the furore of the wedding she had forgotten that one, vital night, and a possible pregnancy had been the last thing on her mind when she had fled the next morning. She had just wanted to put as many miles between them as she could.
'Come and eat.' His voice was cool now, cool and hard, b
ut she welcomed that It emphasised that he was a stranger, that the man she had fallen in love with, the powerful, tender lover and fascinating companion, had been a figment of her wishful imagination, nothing more. Her Zac had never existed.
They ate at the tiny marbled breakfast bar that was just big enough to accommodate two plates, and Victoria had to admit that the light fluffy omelette and grilled fish doused in lemon and herbs were delicious. Zac had opened a bottle of wine he had found in the fridge, looking slightly surprised when Victoria insisted she only wanted a glass of orange juice but saying nothing.
But once the meal was finished and they had taken their coffee through to the sitting room he said plenty.
'Well?' Victoria had sat down in the rocking chair again but Zac remained standing, darkly brooding and slightly menacing as he leant against the far wall. 'Have you punished me enough or do you intend to continue with this charade?' he asked coolly.
'Charade?' It was only the thought of the damage black coffee would do to William's tasteful furnishings that saved him. 'You think this is a charade, a game, Zac? Think again,' Victoria said tightly as she placed the mug on the table next to her before temptation overcame her. How dared he stand there and say that?
But he had seen her hand tremble, and now he said, his voice grating, 'If you act like a child you should expect me to treat you like one. How could you leave like that, without saying a word? It was the height of stupidity.'
'But I am stupid, Zac,' Victoria glared at him, her pale skin stained scarlet and her jaw setting. 'I believed every word you told me, didn't I? You can't get much more stupid than that.'
'I have never lied to you,' he stated with outrageous righteousness. And then, when she stared at him in furious disbelief, her mouth opening and shutting as she sought for a suitably cutting reply, he added, 'I can see that you disagree with that.'
'You…you said you loved me,' she managed at last.
'I do love you, Victoria.' It was as cold as ice. 'It was you who left me, remember? I didn't go anywhere.'
'And you think that unreasonable?' she asked incredulously. 'You leave me on our wedding night to go to someone else—-'
'I did not choose to leave you,' he said calmly, as though that made everything all right. 'I answered a distress call from a human being who needed help, because I was the only person who could.'
Of course you were, she thought with agonising pain— you were the cause of it in the first place. 'You kept it a secret,' she accused sharply. 'You didn't tell me what had happened although you had several opportunities. You weren't going to tell me, were you?'
'No, I was not.' It was not the answer Victoria had expected; she had expected him to lie and perversely it hurt all the more that he hadn't bothered to do even that. 'There was no need for you to be bothered with such unpleasantness,' Zac said coolly. 'This was my problem, and as such I dealt with it as I saw fit.'
Oh, it was his problem all right! 'You married me because you wanted to extend your business empire,' Victoria stated with painful flatness, 'and don't bother to deny it; I know it's true. You probably fancied me too, and I was malleable enough—stupid enough—for your purposes. You had planned to go on exactly as you'd always done, hadn't you? I wouldn't even have made a dent in your life. There was to be no sharing, no real commitment.'
'That is all absolute rubbish and you know it,' he said angrily. 'I never lied to you, not once. If you had asked me about Gina, or the business deal with your mother's attorneys, I would have told you as much as you wanted to know.'
'That's easy to say now,' she shot back furiously, 'but how could I ask about something I didn't know a thing about?' She had always considered herself a quiet, gentle, easy-going sort of person, certainly not someone who would ever contemplate doing another human being serious physical harm, but right at that moment, if she had had anything in her hands, she would have thrown it straight at Zac's handsome, superior face. She wanted to hurt him. She wanted to really, really hurt him, and the knowledge shocked her more than she could express, acting like a bucket of cold water on the fire of her temper.
'Did you buy that apartment for Gina?' she asked now, her voice shaking. 'Just a few weeks before we got married? Did you?'
'I'm not answering that before I explain the circumstances,' he said after a long moment of looking at her white face from which all colour had fled.
'I think you just did,' she whispered numbly, her eyes desolate.
'Victoria, I had responsibilities I couldn't walk away from,' he bit back tightly. 'Responsibilities that necessitated action.'
'I know. Responsibilities to your mistress,' she said dully.
'No, to a member of my family,' he growled deeply. 'She is a distant cousin of mine, and her mother had phoned me from Italy to say that Gina had problems and needed help. I couldn't refuse her.'
'Did her mother know you were sleeping with her daughter?' Victoria asked with uncharacteristic cynicism.
'My affair with Gina ended before I met you,' Zac said with rigid self-control. 'And that is the truth, Victoria. I swear it.'
'I don't believe you.' She stared at him with pain-filled eyes.
The words hung in the air for an eternity, and as Victoria wrenched her eyes from his and turned to stare out into the garden—anything to avoid looking at his face and seeing the look that had come into the dark eyes at her words—she focused on a small, flat, large-eyed lizard that had changed its colour to suit the large stone on which it was hanging by the tiny suckers on its toes.
How could life go on—the sun shine so brightly, the flowers and trees look so beautiful—when her world was ending? she asked herself silently. But she had to finish this now—it was even more important after what she had learnt that morning.
She had thought he was different, she'd believed he really loved her as she did him—and she had loved him, so much—but he was part of her mother's world, not hers. She didn't want to spend the rest of her life with a man whose values resembled those of her father. Her mother might have been able to handle it—-in fact her mother had clearly relished it—but Victoria knew herself well enough to recognise she would destroy herself if she tried to do the same. The last two months had confirmed that if nothing else. But there was more, much more, she understood now.
And it wasn't just Gina, or even the merger, big as those issues were. In all their months of being together, in all the magic and laughter and joy, he had never really talked to her, she thought numbly. She had been like a pretty little doll to him, an entertaining novelty he had picked up and decided to buy, and she had been too captivated and under his spell to see the warning signs. But they had been there. And now she was taking notice.
She wanted her child brought up in the real world, with real people. It wouldn't be easy, but she wouldn't ask Zac or her mother for a penny. She would work—she would get a job doing anything, and she would make it by herself. She wanted nothing more to do with their seedy little world. It was over.
'Don't do this, Victoria.' Zac's voice was as cold as ice. 'You're throwing away something precious because of hurt pride, that's all. Let me explain; let's talk it through from the beginning.' And then, more urgently, he said, 'It'll be all right, trust me.'
'It's too late.' She turned back to him then, her blue eyes with their long thick lashes shadowed with pain. 'It's all far, far too late. We should never have married, Zac. We're worlds apart in everything that matters. And you know it too, deep down.'
'The hell we are,' he ground out in savage denial. 'The hell we are. You're my wife and I don't let go of what is mine.'
He reached her in three angry strides, pulling her up out of the rocking chair and into his arms with a fury that was all the more intense for being suppressed, his mouth fastening on hers.
She was too stunned at first to fight him, and then, as she began to twist and turn in his hold, the smell and taste and feel of him began to spin in her head. She had been starving for this, physically starving fo
r long, wretched, tear-filled weeks, and as he devoured her mouth desire rose hot and strong in her veins. But it would be madness to give in to it.
She still continued to struggle, the knowledge of her weakness where this man was concerned shameful and humiliating, but she was fighting herself more than him and she knew it. She was aware of the power in his muscled body, and also that he was using his strength to restrain rather than force her, but his mouth was hungry and urgent and inciting a response in the depth of her she didn't want to give. Dared not give.
'Don't…don't do this.' Her voice was shaking and frantic.
'Why not?' He raised his head slightly, his eyes glittering and black as he moved her back against the whitewashed wall of the sitting room. 'I've been thinking of nothing else for weeks.'
'I don't want to,' she protested tremblingly, moving her head as he tried to take her lips again. 'And I don't want you—I don't.'
'Yes, you do,' he growled thickly. He was breathing raggedly, his body taut and his thighs hard against hers. 'That night, our wedding night, was just a taste for both of us. I want more, much more. You're mine, Tory; you'll always be mine…'
She froze, the blood turning to liquid ice in her veins. Was this what the great love she had thought they'd shared had been reduced to? An animal mating, the satisfaction of physical lust, the possessor taking the possession he had acquired? He didn't love her—he didn't know what love was. None of his kind did. Her mind continued to race as he began to kiss her again.
He had bought an apartment for Gina just weeks before they had got married. He had gone to her, on their wedding night, the minute Gina had called. And there had been a big incentive for him to rush her down the aisle— a lucrative deal for all concerned.
He had taken her as his wife because she met all the criteria he had laid down for the future Mrs Harding, and because, as he had said more than once during their engagement, it was time he settled down and became a family man. He wanted children, and she was a suitable breeding machine. But he hadn't been prepared to cut the tie with Gina in the last resort. And she hated him.