He gave a surly shrug.
‘I mean it…’ Emma shivered. ‘You are not to see anyone else. I won’t be humili…’ Her voice trailed off. It was a bit late for that.
‘Fine,’ he clipped. ‘I am as good as my word—and here it is. If during our time together I sleep with another woman then you can walk away without owing me a cent. Now…’ he turned his face to the screen to conclude the messy business ‘…can I have your bank details?’
‘I hate what you did to me,’ Emma said, just to be sure he knew it. But Zarios was as unmoved as he was unimpressed.
‘Your bank details, Emma?’
She hated herself even more for giving them.
CHAPTER SEVEN
‘YOU’VE got it?’ Jake was pale with relief. ‘I can ring them…you can transfer it now…’
‘Why don’t I just deposit it into your account?’
‘For Beth to see?’
‘She’s going to find out, Jake. Once the inheritance goes through, you’re going to have to explain why there isn’t any…’
‘That’s weeks away.’ Jake shook his head.
‘It’s two weeks away, Jake. And you can deny it all you like, but this problem isn’t going to go away. Beth has to be told.’
‘I know that,’ Jake shrilled. ‘I know that. But I can’t tell her now, Em. Not with the way things are. If Beth and I can just get past this… And anyway…’ his face crumpled in despair ‘…I don’t trust myself with that sort of money…’
‘You’re getting help?’
‘I’m going to meetings every day… I haven’t gambled in weeks.’
Her bank details jumped up on the screen and Emma swallowed, reeling at the balance, her fingers hovering over the keyboard as Jake read out his loan shark’s details.
‘You have to pay me back, Jake.’
‘You know I will.’
‘No, Jake, I don’t.’ She turned to face her brother. ‘I want it in writing. I want the money you owe me to go directly into my bank account when the settlement goes through.’
‘Are you saying you don’t trust me?’
‘I don’t trust you, Jake.’ After what she’d had to go through today, it wasn’t hard to say. ‘I don’t trust you with money—I’d be an absolute fool to. I need it in writing.’
‘Fine!’ he snapped, ripping out a piece of paper from her printer and scrawling a note stating the sum that was being borrowed, and that he would pay her back at the time of their settlement. ‘Satisfied?’
Emma took the piece of paper and placed it in her bag, hardly able to make out the digits on the keyboard as her eyes swam with tears. She knew the second she hit ‘confirm’ she was truly indebted to Zarios. For the next two weeks she was a pawn in the elaborate game he was playing—conning poor Rocco.
‘Never do this again, Jake. I will never help you again.’
‘I’ll never ask.’
And he meant it. Staring into eyes that were as blue as her own, seeing the wretchedness in his features, the shame, the grief, the embarrassment, she knew that he meant it and reached out her arms to her brother.
‘I’m so ashamed…’ he sobbed. ‘I hate myself more than you hate me.’
‘I don’t hate you, Jake. I’m just scared for you.’
‘I miss them, Em.’
‘I know.’
‘They’d be so ashamed…’
‘Don’t think about that.’
‘I’ll make them proud.’ He was a snivelling mess, his grief, his shame, his fear so raw, so real, that surely, surely this was his rock bottom? Surely this had to be the last time? ‘I’m never gambling again. I’m going to make you proud—make Beth and the twins proud…’
‘Make yourself proud, Jake.’ She gave a tired smile as he glanced at his watch.
‘I’ve got a meeting…’
‘Then go.’
‘How did you get Zarios to agree?’
‘It doesn’t matter.’ Emma gave a thin smile. ‘You’ve got the money.’
‘Thank you.’
Jake wasn’t the only one with an important meeting to attend. Staring out of her window Emma watched as Zarios’s sleek silver car purred up to the kerb. She could almost sense that he knew the money had just been spent.
That she was now his.
That thought was confirmed when, instead of opening his car door, instead of walking down the path to her flat, Zarios gave a short burst on his horn that told her, as if she didn’t already know, he was here.
That he had come to claim what he now owned.
‘Emma!’ Rocco rose from his chair and embraced her. ‘It is good of you to come and see me…’
The house was just as it always was whenever Emma went there. Situated in the exclusive Melbourne suburb of Toorak. The door had been opened by Roula, Rocco’s elderly housekeeper, and she had walked them through the home which was more like a vast mausoleum to his brief marriage—its walls and surfaces lined with images of their brief union.
Emma was shocked at the frailty of Rocco as he held her. In the few weeks since she’d last seen him he’d aged more than a decade, and Emma knew it wasn’t just his illness he was suffering from, but a broken heart—he’d loved her parents, too.
‘You should have told me you were bringing Emma over,’ Rocco scolded his son.
‘What, and spoil the surprise?’ Zarios smiled.
‘I am too old for surprises.’
‘You’re sixty,’ Zarios pointed out, but it was hopeless. Age really was just a number, and despite his wealth, despite the trappings they afforded, the years really had ravaged his father.
‘Emma is staying tonight,’ Zarios informed Rocco. ‘She needs a break, and there is also something—’
‘You should have said—I will tell Roula to make up a room, that we have a guest…’
‘There is no need to make up a room for a guest. Emma is family,’ Zarios corrected him, and Emma noticed the slight swallow before he continued. ‘Or she will be soon.’
A smudge of a frown flickered over Rocco’s brow. ‘You two?’
‘Yes.’
‘Are together?’ Still Rocco frowned. ‘Since when?’
‘Since Eric’s birthday.’
‘But what about Miranda…’
‘That is why I ended it with Miranda, Pa…’
‘Why didn’t you say?’ Rocco’s voice was bemused. ‘Why did you let me think the filth in the papers was true?’
‘We wanted to be sure…’ Zarios took her hand and Emma realised he was as skilled a liar as he was a lover. ‘Pa, we know how big this is, and we had to be sure. With everything that has happened these past few weeks, as terrible as they have been, it has helped us to make up our minds. I have asked Emma to marry me, and happily she has agreed.’
He would lie at his own father’s grave, Emma thought, and then realised with a cold drench of horror that in effect she was doing the same: manipulating this wonderful man who, as Rocco’s eyes sought hers for clarification, perhaps trusted Emma more than he did his own son.
‘Is this true?’ Rocco asked. ‘You two really are engaged?’
She could feel Zarios’s hand tighten around hers, attempting to provoke a response, but all she could manage was the tiniest nod.
‘We are going to get a ring tomorrow…’ Zarios filled in the long silence. ‘We wanted to tell you before the papers got hold of it.’
‘And you are happy?’ Rocco asked, still more stunned than pleased.
Even when Roula, the housekeeper, was duly summoned, when champagne was poured and toasts given, there was a forced joviality about it all—and not just from Emma.
Rocco, she realised, was clearly choosing to reserve judgement—he was wary with his words, thin with his sentiment—and for the first time Emma glimpsed what Zarios had meant when he had said that his relationship with his father wasn’t one she could understand. On the night his only son had announced his engagement, after a cursory glass of champagne and some rather stra
ined small talk and stilted interaction between father and son, Rocco reminded Zarios of the time in Europe, and that he had an important call that needed to be made.
‘I shouldn’t be long.’ Zarios glanced at his watch, and then to Emma, and for the first time she saw just a flicker of nervousness in his eyes. No doubt he was worried at leaving her alone with his father.
‘Avetti is an important client…’ Rocco waved him away. ‘You will take as long as is necessary.’
Pensively, Rocco smiled over at Emma, once they were alone. ‘You must have mixed feelings at a time like this?’
‘I do.’ Emma nodded, able to look him in the eye now, because for that second in time she was telling the truth.
‘Come!’ He stood up and gestured to a large dresser, where Emma joined him. ‘I found this photo of your father and I just the other week, when I was going through some papers. You will not have seen it—I didn’t even know I had it.’
She smiled at the image of two grubby little boys sitting on a wall, their knees grazed and dirty. It hurt almost too much to look at the image of her father, so she focused instead on Rocco. As dark as Zarios, but with a cheeky grin, there was a lightness about him Emma could never imagine in his son.
She was right—there in the another photo was Zarios, at eight or nine years old, refusing to smile for his school photo, looking as serious and as accusing as he did now.
‘He hated boarding school.’ Rocco interrupted her thoughts. ‘I hated sending him. I thought I was doing the right thing by him at the time—it is a choice I regret.’
Hearing the wistful note in Rocco’s voice, seeing his kind, tired eyes, reminded her so much of her dad it made her brave enough for an observation. ‘You don’t seem pleased, Rocco, about the engagement?’
‘I am torn,’ Rocco admitted. ‘I love my son, but…’ He frowned, more to himself than to Emma. ‘Your parents meant the world to me. In some ways with them gone I feel more responsible towards you—almost as if you were a daughter. If I could forget for a moment that Zarios was my son, as much as I love him, I have to be honest—I am not sure he is what I would wish for my daughter…’
Which was hardly a glowing reference from a father, but it was said with more concern than malice. His eyes filled with tears as they came to rest on another photo. Emma followed his gaze, her throat tightening, because there, in contrast to the austere photo of his youth, was a very different Zarios.
A smiling, happy little boy, three, maybe four years old, running along the beach carrying a plastic windmill.
And there he was again, grinning and laughing, wrapped in his mother’s arms, with a smiling Rocco looking proudly on.
A different Zarios and a different Rocco, too.
‘You would never have met Bella.’ Rocco picked up the photo and gazed at it fondly, then handed it to Emma. ‘Our marriage broke up before you were even born.’
‘She’s beautiful.’
‘She was…’ Rocco smiled. ‘She was also way too young to be married. She was just sixteen. Things were different in those days. The marriage was arranged by my grandparents—Bella was from my village back home. She came to Australia speaking no English.’
‘As you did.’
‘I was younger. I picked up the language more easily—and I had friends like your father to help me. Bella was just lost. I tried to make things easier on her, but she never settled. Now, when I look back, I think she must have been depressed after Zarios was born. But in those days we didn’t really understand or talk about such things. I tried to make it work. We went back to Italy, but still she was unhappy.’
‘So Zarios went to boarding school…?’
‘And I came back here.’ He nodded at the question in her voice. ‘Here was the only place I could make the money to pay the fees and support my family, too…the lucky country!’ He shook his head sadly. ‘It didn’t feel like it. I went back to Italy as often as I could, opened a business there, but here was where the money was being made. Of course I hoped his mother might be around more for him…’
It was unfathomable to Emma. She thought of her own happy childhood, of her parents who, even with their faults, would have moved heaven and earth for her, and wondered, just as her parents had over the years, how Bella could have excluded herself so totally from her son’s life.
‘More than anything I want Zarios to be happy. Always the hurt is there—always with Zarios anger. I want my son to find the love that has been missing for most of his life. You do love my son, Emma?’
Rocco’s question was direct, his eyes so searching that she shouldn’t be able to answer it. But, looking down to the photo she held in her hands, Emma knew she wanted to see Zarios happy, too. Wanted back what they had found that morning. Wanted the man she knew was there beneath the pomp and scorn. Wanted the merry dark eyes that danced in this photograph, that she was sure she had glimpsed that wonderful morning, to dance for her again.
There was no doubt she was indebted to him, and not just financially—he had saved her life when she’d nearly drowned, had held her hand when she’d identified her parents, had sat and offered quiet support that first long, lonely night.
Tears coursed down her cheeks, but not for the reason Rocco thought. Emma realised as she nodded, as she told Rocco what he wanted to hear, that she was actually speaking the truth.
She loved him.
She hated him, but somehow had loved him over the years—had loved him that one wonderful morning together—and despite all that had been said, all that was, all that could never be, still somehow she loved him.
‘Then you will both be okay—love is what will see you through,’ Rocco said wisely. ‘Love is what was missing in my marriage. Not,’ he added sadly, ‘on my side. For my son to have asked for your hand in marriage, he must love you, too.’
Oh, she wished that this were true, that Zarios did love her, did want to rescue her from the hell of these past weeks.
Wished that it were that simple.
‘You’re quiet,’ Zarios noted when finally they were alone and could let down the charade as the bedroom door closed behind them.
‘I’m tired.’ Emma sat at the dressing table and wearily attempted to remove her make-up while Zarios unashamedly undressed behind her. Tired was an understatement. She had been running on adrenaline since her meeting with Zarios, had been sitting on tenterhooks all evening as her head throbbed with a low-grade headache, and her mind was too tired to even attempt to make sense of what she had agreed to. ‘Actually, I’ve got a headache.’
‘Isn’t it a bit early in our relationship to be making such excuses?’ It was said so tongue in cheek and with such irony that as she caught his glance in the mirror Emma couldn’t help but smile. But it faded. ‘What will your dad say when he finds out?’
‘What can he say?’ Zarios shrugged.
Instead of the naked figure she had been sure she’d be sleeping with, he had pulled on a pair of black pyjama bottoms—only they did nothing to detract from his beauty. Even in the dimmed bedroom light she could see his reflection in the mirror, his body muscled and gleaming, the pants making him look like some martial arts expert, and just as toned and dangerous. Leaving on her panties, she pulled on a T-shirt and climbed into bed beside him. Turning off the light and rolling on her side, she braced herself for his onslaught—it never came. His breathing settled, and his body just relaxed beside hers as Emma lay twitching and restless, positive that the second she lowered her guard, allowed the heavy drape of sleep that was closing in to wrap around her, then Zarios would surely pounce.
Only he didn’t.
The usual shot of adrenaline that had been her bed-mate since her parents’ death catapulted her awake at 4:00 a.m., but instead of sitting bolt upright and grappling for the light switch, having to relieve the nightmare all over again as she gulped down a drink of water, an arm heavy with sleep wrapped around her, sliding her across the bed in one easy movement. At first Emma was so stunned she didn’t r
esist, just lay in his arms, her heart pounding. She was infinitely grateful for the contact, felt the fear seeping out of her as his solid presence soothed.
‘Go back to sleep, Emma.’ His low voice growled a welcome order as an idle hand stroked her hair, and she wished she could obey—wished she could close her eyes and desist. Only an unchecked niggle was scratching, reminding her of his distaste when she’d walked into his office—of his first assumption as to the reason she was there.
Wandering back into the forest, tentatively she searched for that arrow he had aimed.
She had definitely had her period on the day of the funeral.
Her body was spooned into his—Zarios’s heavy arm across her waist, his hand loosely dusting her stomach, like any normal couple in bed. She struggled for a second against his unwitting affection, but deep in slumber, too comfortable to move, Zarios gripped her tighter. Emma stumbled deeper into the wilderness, locating the arrow and staring at a segment of her shattered heart. Tentatively she probed it.
She’d had her period that day, but it was six… She screwed her eyes tightly closed as she did the maths. No, it was eight weeks now since she’d had another.
‘Dorme…’ Zarios mumbled, pulling her closer towards him. ‘Sleep now.’
It was easier to ignore it, easier to cover the remains with leaves rather than probe it with a stick, to just lie in his arms and do as he told her.
Even the lazy tumescence of his manhood that stirred as he dreamed didn’t startle Emma. Instead the naturalness of it soothed.
Feeling him asleep but alive beside her, it was easy, too easy, to forget what had brought them to this point.
Maybe she was more like Jake than she realised. Because it was easier to forget about her problems than try to solve them—easier to just close her eyes and drift back to sleep, with Zarios there beside her…
CHAPTER EIGHT
DESPITE her mother’s theories, even in her art student days wild parties hadn’t been a regular feature on Emma’s agenda.
Bedded for Pleasure, Purchased for Pregnancy Page 8
