by Helen Brooks
When Victoria next opened her eyes it was with the sensation that she was struggling up through layers of thick cotton wool, the exhaustion that had blanketed her senses taking a second or so to fade as she tried to adjust her mind to where she was.
The air was cooler. That was the first thing that registered in her dazed mind. And the dusky shadows of evening were beginning to stretch across the lawn. That was the second. The third was Zac's intent, narrowed gaze as she turned her head and saw him stretched out on a blanket at the side of her, an open briefcase and scattered papers all around him telling her he had been working while she had slept. And working for some time by all accounts.
'Oh, I'm sorry.' Victoria couldn't believe she had fallen asleep like that, her horrified face speaking for itself as she struggled upright, and hot colour staining her cheeks scarlet. 'What time is it?' she asked confusedly. 'Is it late?'
'Just gone seven,' Zac said expressionlessly.
'Seven?' She had slept for over five hours, she thought feverishly. What must he be thinking?
She found out what he was thinking when Zac said, his voice still level and even, 'Victoria, I'm going to ask you something, and I want a truthful answer. Are you ill?'
'What? No, no, I'm not ill,' she said hastily. She hadn't wanted it to be as abrupt as this, but suddenly there was no other way to say it. 'I'm…I'm expecting a baby. That's what I wanted to talk to you about,' she said hesitantly, feeling suddenly shy.
He didn't move a muscle, not even a flicker of those thick black eyelashes, and Victoria found herself beginning to babble as she continued, 'That's…that's why I'm not feeling too good at the moment—morning sickness and all that. Of course it's natural, perfectly natural, but that doesn't help much when it's happening.' She stopped abruptly; she was handling this all wrong. 'I'm sorry I didn't tell you before, in Tunisia,' she said more slowly, 'but I just couldn't.'
'You felt you should tell the father first.' It was a statement not a question, and for a moment she didn't understand what he was getting at And then it hit her, like a vicious body blow in the solar plexus, whitening her face to chalk and strangling anything she would have said in her throat as the pain gripped her with merciless fingers. 'Did you plan it?' he asked grimly, and now there was a very strange expression on his face that frightened her. 'Did you plan it?' he repeated in a low growl.
The shock was still so great that her vocal cords seemed frozen, but she managed a shake of her head as he rose slowly to his feet to stand looking down at her with savage revulsion.
'So it was an accident.' Dark colour stained the chiselled cheekbones, his midnight-black eyes bitter. 'On your part at least, but I have no doubt that Howard knew exactly what he was doing. He's in love with you and you presented him with the perfect opportunity. And this is our noble, holier-than-thou William, is it?'
'You've got this all wrong.' But she had left it too late to protest her innocence, and her confusion and panic didn't impress him in the least, his eyes flicking over her with grim fury.
'Sure I have,' he snarled viciously.
'I mean it,' she said desperately, trying to form coherent words through the whirlwind in her head. 'I didn't… We haven't—'
She wasn't making much sense but he seemed to understand what she was trying to say anyway, his face contemptuous as he glared at her with narrowed, glittering eyes. 'Don't give me that, not now,' he bit out furiously. 'You knew he was crazy about you and what could happen when you ran to him for comfort. You knew. You lived in his home, for crying out loud, and then he visited you in Tunisia—-how many times? Two, three, four? Why would he take all the time and trouble to follow you like that if you weren't having an affair? He wanted to hide you away out there, didn't he? Give himself more time to convince you you'd married the wrong man. And he's succeeded beyond his wildest expectations.'
'It wasn't like that,' she protested. Why wouldn't he listen!
'I could understand the way it looked to you about Gina,' Zac said tightly. 'I could even understand why you ran from me instead of staying to thrash it out—the lack of communication in your childhood and your fear of confrontation… But this.' He literally ground his teeth. 'I've never wanted to hurt anyone before like I want to hurt you.'
He turned then, ignoring her agonised, 'Zac, Zac, wait,' and strode up the garden without turning found, entering the house and disappearing from sight as she watched him disbelievingly.
Victoria sat in the gentle summer air for some minutes more, her senses clamouring and a beating in her head that pulsed with her heartbeat. This was going from bad to worse. Was she mad, or was it everyone else?
He thought this was William's baby. She still couldn't believe it He actually thought that she was carrying another man's child. How could he think that—how dared he? The blinding confusion and hurt gave way to sheer white-hot anger. Just because he had the morals of a torn cat, how dared he assume she was the same? This was worse than anything that had gone before.
Well, she wasn't going to beg and plead for him to believe her, she told herself bitterly, her chin rising a notch and her violet-blue eyes dark with pain. He could think what he liked, and he had only married her because it had suited him to, however much he would like her to think differently now. She had been young and naive, and a virgin—a suitable mother for his future son and heir. And the merger of the family fortunes wasn't to be sneezed at either. How dared he act the aggrieved husband now?
By the time Victoria rose from the bench and walked towards the house she was seething with a mixture of injured pride and a deep, deep black rejection that made her soft mouth hard.
He wanted to have his cake and eat it, that was the main component of all this, she told herself as she stepped into the flower-scented conservatory and walked through into the kitchen beyond. A wife to play the gracious hostess and act as a breeding machine for the next generation of Hardings, a mistress for his pleasure. And he'd been caught out, big time.
He had had plenty of opportunity to tell her about Gina before they were married, and if his ridiculous story about Gina's mother asking him to help her daughter was true, why hadn't he explained it all at the time? And what man set an ex-mistress up in an apartment anyway? He must think she was a moronic half-wit, not just naive and stupid. The old cliché of what was good for the goose was good for the gander—or, in this case, what was good for the gander was good for the goose—clearly didn't sit too well with Zac's male chauvinistic tendencies. Well, she wouldn't lose too much sleep over that! she told herself bitterly.
Zac walked out of the enormous, south-facing drawing room as she entered the hall from the kitchen, his face dark and grim, but Victoria found the rage that had her in its grip provided more than enough adrenalin to face him without flinching.
'I'm going.' She made to pass him after one scathing, furious glance, but he caught her arm, swinging her round to face him.
'When I say so,' he bit out savagely. 'And I don't yet.'
'Let go of me, Zac.' She didn't struggle, standing stiff and dignified in his grasp, her face icy, and her regal composure seemed to infuriate him still more.
'Why should I? You're still my wife,' he said bitterly, a muscle moving at the side of his jaw and his handsome face stony.
'In name only.' She tried to ignore the fact that her heart was pounding like a sledgehammer at his nearness, the magnetic dark quality to his virile maleness overwhelmingly seductive even in his rage. 'That's all. It means absolutely nothing.'
Did he and Gina quarrel? The thought popped into her mind with piercing pain. Gina was a full-blooded Italian, Zac was half Italian—that made for a passionate relationship, didn't it? Latin blood and all that. And no doubt they had lots of fun making up. The thought stiffened her back still more.
'Then perhaps we ought to do something about that?' he suggested with soft venom. 'You think me the lowest of the low. I haven't got a thing to lose, have I?'
'Don't you dare touch me,' she gasped wildly as
he pulled her closer, his thighs hard against hers. 'I hate you.'
'And you love the noble William,' he grated harshly. 'What an inconsistent creature you are. Or do you love him, Victoria?' he asked softly, his eyes lethal. 'I wonder. Shall we put it to the test? Could it be that in your desire to punish me you were hoisted by your own petard? Did he take advantage of you? Forgive the old-fashioned phrase,' he added with caustic mockery, 'because we both know you are far from old-fashioned.'
'Let go of me.' Victoria was frightened now. This dark, angry stranger bore no resemblance to the man who had courted her with such tender passion, and who had made her wedding night a wild, sensual experience of pure ecstasy.
'You took it upon yourself to be judge and jury, didn't you, my gentle maiden?' Zac continued relentlessly, his body moving against hers as he spoke, her wrists trapped in one of his strong hands behind her back, and his other hand imprisoning her head as he held a handful of her silky soft hair in his powerful grip. 'I wasn't allowed to speak in my defence; I was hung, drawn and quartered and expelled from your life as though I was nothing. But that was your body beneath mine on our wedding night, your lips that begged me for more until you moaned my name over and over. I was there—I know you weren't thinking of him then.'
'Stop this. Please, Zac, stop it' She had made up her mind she wouldn't beg him for anything again, but now she found herself doing just that 'What do you expect from me anyway?'
'When I married you I thought it was going to be for ever, Tory. How could you do this to us?' he asked thickly.
He kissed her. Not the persuasive, passionate kisses that had always thrilled her and had her trembling and wanting more. This kiss was hot and brutal, a challenge from his hard maleness to her soft femininity, and it was ruthless in its intent.
Victoria tried to arch away, but he merely used her struggles to inflame them both, exploiting every move she made with savage determination, an unmistakable claim in his mouth and hands and body. She knew what he was doing, what he was trying to prove, but it didn't seem to make any difference to her traitorous body. It wanted him. She wanted him. Shock and humiliating dismay ripped through her. How could she still want him to make love to her after all she'd found out? Where was her pride, her self-worth?
'You want me.' As though emphasising her tortured thoughts his voice came low and thick as his mouth lifted from hers for one long moment, his hands now stroking over her body and her arms, freed from their iron constraint, pushing weakly at his chest. 'I could take you now—you want me, Victoria.'
'No…' It was a lie and they both knew it, to her shame.
'Yes, you want me.' His mouth took hers once more, hard and irresistibly knowing, and as she began to melt again she suddenly found herself thrust from him with enough force to make her totter backwards against the wall, her hands going out to steady herself.
'But I don't want you.' He was staring at her with narrowed, glittering eyes that pierced her soul with their contempt, his face dark and angry and his big body taut and rigid. 'Not with the smell of him about you. What sort of woman are you anyway? How could you indulge in the sort of scene you and William were revelling in at lunch-time and then respond to me like this?'
'What sort of scene?' Victoria objected vehemently, hating him, loving him. 'William had just bought me lunch, that's all.'
'Are you always that grateful when someone buys you a meal?' he asked with caustic derision. 'They must be lining up in droves if so. You're selling yourself too cheaply, Victoria.'
If she'd been holding anything she would have thrown it 'You—'
'No labels,' he warned darkly. His eyes were black ice, and she couldn't reconcile this terrifying stranger with the man she had promised to love, cherish and honour for the rest of her life.
'I wouldn't have needed William's help if you hadn't set your mistress up in a tawdry love nest,' Victoria raged, using the weapon of attack to cover the pain that was tearing her apart. 'And you know that as well as I do. Oh, I'm not staying here to listen to any more of your accusations. I hate you. I hate you.'
She surprised them both with the speed with which she turned and was out of the front door, and even when the soft summer evening was shattered by his harsh, 'Victoria!' she kept on running, her only desire to escape his dark presence.
He caught her up halfway down the short pebbled drive, and as he seized her arm, spinning her round, no power on earth could stop her hand from swinging into hard, fierce contact with his face. The sound was like a pistol shot and for a moment everything was breathtakingly still, the dying sunshine, with the fragrance of burning leaves wafting on the breeze, dappling the scene with a mellow warmth that was quite at odds with the savage emotion darkening Zac's face.
As the seconds ticked by and they remained frozen in a motionless tableau, Victoria swallowed hard. 'I'm sorry, Zac,' she said shakily after what seemed an eternity, willing herself not to compound the mistake by bursting into tears. 'I shouldn't have hit you. I know that. I…I apologise.'
He didn't say anything for a full thirty seconds more, and then his voice was quite without expression. 'I'll take you back.'
'There's…there's no need.' The urge to cry was paramount and she was fighting it with all her might. 'I can get a taxi; it's no problem.' She didn't dare look at him.
'I'll take you,' he repeated flatly. 'Get in the car.'
Victoria didn't argue further. She was feeling very strange, and the truth of the matter was that she didn't trust her trembling legs to get her any further than the few feet to Zac's Jaguar. She tottered over to the car, her head whirling.
Once he had shut the passenger door she watched him walk round the bonnet and slide into the driving seat. He was mad. Oh, he was mad, Victoria thought bleakly. And the mark of her handprint was plainly visible. She couldn't believe that she had done that, that she had hit him. And it made it all the worse because she knew, no matter what the provocation, he would never raise his hand to her.
They drove in a dark, terribly oppressive silence for some miles before Victoria said, her voice very small, 'I only left my new telephone number with your secretary when I called yesterday, didn't I? The flat's in Richmond, in—'
'I know where it is,' he cut in coldly.
Of course. Her mother. No doubt her mother was desperately trying to worm herself back into Zac's good books by keeping him informed of his wife's whereabouts, Victoria thought bitterly. Coral had done nothing but command her to return to her husband since she had come back from Tunisia, and one of the reasons Victoria hadn't told her mother where she was in the initial few weeks after the wedding was that she'd known it would be instantly reported to Zac.
Her mother was far more concerned with swelling the Chigley-Brown coffers with the lucrative business deal her lawyers had set up with the Harding empire, and which her daughter's scandalous behaviour—her mother's own words—had jeopardised, than worrying about respecting her daughter's wish for solitude. No doubt Zac had known about the flat even before she had the key.
They said nothing more on the journey to Richmond, and when Zac drew into the charming little mews in which the flat was situated Victoria was out of the car before he had a chance to open the door for her, her face as white as a sheet.
'Goodbye, Zac.' He had walked round to her side, his face dark and sombre, and stood looking down at her with unfathomable eyes. She couldn't read a thing from his expression.
'Goodbye, Tory.' Somehow the 'Tory' sounded more final than anything else could have done, and in that moment Victoria knew he was really saying goodbye. Goodbye to his old pet name for her and all the intimate connotations it held. Goodbye to their marriage, their dreams, their hopes for the future. And she couldn't bear it. Oh, she couldn't bear it…
For a long moment the truth trembled on her lips. She wanted to tell him she had never slept with William, that he was nothing more than a friend, that she could never allow any other man access to her body or her heart She wanted to tell him th
at this child she was carrying was his flesh and blood, and that she wanted it more than she had ever wanted anything in her life because it was his, A unique part of them both.
Something of her inward struggle must have shown on her face, because she saw the dark eyes narrow as he frowned questioningly at her. 'What is it?' he asked softly. 'What's the matter?'
But nothing had changed. She continued to stare at him as her mind raced. The reasons that had caused her to walk out on him in the first place were still there. Very much still there. Something her mother had let slip, whether by design or mistake Victoria wasn't sure, about Gina being at a social function recently along with Zac burnt in her memory.
Victoria suspected Coral had woven the juicy titbit into the conversation with the intention of making her jealous and spurring her on to fight for him—in view of the other woman's brazenness—but it had had the opposite effect.
She wasn't going to fight for him. Victoria looked up into the familiar handsome face she loved so much. If she started that now, she would end up fighting the same battle for the rest of her life. Because there was always another Gina round the corner, when the present model had departed.
If she wasn't enough for him, then it was better he pursued the life he wanted with women who could cope with his morals and outlook. Because she couldn't. She couldn't. She loved him too much to share him.
And she would raise his child her way, she told herself with a sudden fierceness that darkened her eyes to midnight-blue. It would have her values, her principles, right or wrong. And it was probably better he didn't suspect the child was his in the long run. That way he would leave them both alone.
'What is it?' he asked again.
Now she found the strength to shake her head quickly and say, 'Nothing, nothing. Goodbye, Zac.' And she turned in one swift movement and walked across the cobbles to the front door.
This was goodbye, then. This was how love affairs ended, was it? she asked herself desperately as she fumbled blindly for her key. They had been married, she'd thought she was going to spend the rest of her life with him, and it was all gone.