by Lynne Graham
A weathered stone building loomed ahead of them, every tall window brilliantly lit up in welcome. Zac removed Jack from Freddie’s arms. ‘I’ll take him. You look exhausted.’
Zac had returned to planet earth again, she registered irritably, feeling that she could have done without being told that she looked so tired. She wasn’t vain but she had lived through a disastrous wedding day polished up to her very best and had received not a single compliment from her uninterested bridegroom. She said nothing as they trudged up the path towards the brightly lit frontage of the massive house.
The house reminded her of a postcard of a fantasy Provencal retreat, replete as it was with regimented lines of painted smoky blue shutters and flowers and terracotta vases ornamenting every window and door. But even with the light fading fast she could see the bulk of the house stretching back, recognising that it far outstripped in size any normal house. The number of staff waiting to greet them in the marble-floored hall was another reminder that she had married a man who was unaccustomed to looking after himself in any way. He handed Jack straight over to a young woman. ‘This is Jennifer, Freddie. She will be helping Isabel with the kids.’
Jack screeched at physical contact with yet another stranger and almost threw himself out of the unfortunate Jennifer’s arms. Freddie grabbed him back. ‘It’s all right. I’ll see to settling the children down tonight. They’re overtired and nervous of strangers,’ she said apologetically.
Jennifer showed the way upstairs to the rooms readied for the children and Freddie heaved a sigh of relief at the freedom to do something familiar even if it was in an unfamiliar place. Two nannies? Was he crazy? Was he expecting Eloise and Jack to be kept out of sight by staff as children had been for centuries in well-off families? Who did he think he was to make such arrangements without involving her?
She wanted to strangle Zac and scream at him and it was an effort to smile gratefully at the nannies as she sat down to rock Jack back to sleep in what was undoubtedly the nursery of a little boy’s dreams, with a cot shaped like a race car. By the time she got Jack ensconced in his cot and went into the bedroom next door, Eloise was already sleeping peacefully in a miniature four-poster bed draped in pink. All the luxury surrounding her, all the fancy toys piled up waiting to be played with, felt surreal and foreign and alienating to Freddie, and for a moment she wanted desperately to be back in the safe confines of the tiny bedroom she had shared with her niece and nephew.
Instead she had a housekeeper introducing herself as Mariette in broken English and offering to show her to the master bedroom suite. Once again, Zac was nowhere to be seen and at that moment, feeling totally isolated, Freddie didn’t care. She wanted normal and for her that meant a shower and a bed and the renewed strength that would come from a good night’s sleep. She had barely slept at all the previous night, lying awake dreamily thinking about Zac, her first sexual experience and their future together. Now the chances of them achieving some rosy perfect state of coupledom struck her as both pathetic and unlikely.
Zac walked into the master suite at one in the morning, the need to make amends having finally overcome his fierce pride, but he was too late. Freddie was already dead to the world, curled up in a tight little ball hugging a pillow on the far side of the bed. He studied her, the flush of sleep on her delicate features, the tousled dark blonde hair playing across the pillow, the relaxed line of her lush pink mouth. So lovely and so fragile, he acknowledged reluctantly, and he had hurt her. Getting married was fast proving to be a learning experience and the first lesson was that his behaviour affected her as well. Pretty basic one that, he acknowledged grimly, but then Zac had never had another person’s needs and wishes to consider before.
In the morning, he would make everything right, he assured himself. Quite how to go about achieving that objective escaped him, but he was fairly sure that some serious thought would give him the answer. But why the hell had he brought her to the Villa Antonella, a place haunted by his earliest bad memories? The place where his short-lived but once normal family life had disintegrated into messy broken shards overnight?
He couldn’t answer that question either.
CHAPTER EIGHT
FEELING ALMOST REJUVENATED by a night of unbroken rest, Freddie bounced out of bed and then looked at the time and almost laid an egg. What about the children? She should have been up two hours earlier to look after them! And then she remembered the nannies and the guilt ebbed, but only very slowly because feeding Eloise and Jack still felt like her job.
After another shower, she applied the lightest possible make-up from the new stash that had been part of her makeover and selected a cool cotton sundress from the new wardrobe of summer clothing Zac had ordered on her behalf. Only then did she feel ready to greet the sunshine blazing through the tall windows.
Zac was always giving her stuff. He was very generous, she acknowledged ruefully, but it didn’t cancel out his stubborn go-it-alone attitude. She headed to the children’s bedrooms first but both were empty. Jennifer was coming upstairs as Freddie went down and informed her that Eloise and Jack were with Zac out on the terrace. She was disconcerted by that news, for she had uncharitably assumed that the hiring of two nannies indicated that Zac wanted the kids kept out of his hair as much as possible. Mariette showed her out to the wide stone terrace that ran along the rear of the house to take advantage of the truly spectacular panoramic view across the rural valley behind it.
Freddie came to a sudden halt to appreciate the landscape. Olive trees with silvery foliage crowded terraces ringed by ancient stone walls and lavender fields stretched over the furthest hill, the brilliant purple furrows of blooms seeming to perfume the fresh air. The terrace was shaded by an ornate ironwork pergola lushly wrapped in grape vines and wisteria.
‘Auntie Freddie... Auntie Freddie!’ Eloise came running down the terrace to show her a picture of a dragon, or was it two dragons? ‘See...they getting married.’
‘Very nice,’ Freddie assured her niece, trying not to notice that the larger dragon shape was adorned with what looked very like a tattoo. Eloise was already demonstrating a natural artistic ability that far outstripped her age group.
Tension laced Freddie’s slight frame when she saw Zac rising from the table at the far end while Jack literally tried to run to her.
As she hastily scooped up Jack before he fell, for while he could walk he could not yet run, she noticed that Zac had forsaken his business suits in favour of close-fitting jeans and a white linen shirt against which his skin glowed. He looked, Freddie thought resentfully, like a health advert, not at all like a man who should’ve been nursing a monster hangover. She moved towards him stiffly, face tight, eyes evasive as she set Jack down to play with the toys scattered across the terrace.
‘Mariette is bringing your breakfast,’ Zac murmured casually.
‘I didn’t ask for any.’
‘I ordered for you.’
‘But you don’t know what I wanted,’ Freddie pointed out thinly.
‘I ordered a selection,’ Zac assured her with a steely glint in his brilliant eyes as he surveyed her. ‘You suit blue. You look lovely.’
‘I seriously doubt that,’ Freddie countered with an angry flush, thinking of how her perfectly groomed self the day before had failed to attract such interest.
‘Let’s not argue in front of the kids,’ Zac urged warningly.
Resenting that reproof, Freddie breathed in so deep that she was vaguely surprised she didn’t explode like a bag of hot air, because suddenly she was so angry with him that she could barely breathe and hold the furious words in.
‘These are for you...’ Zac announced, lifting an elaborate and very large bouquet of flowers in a vase up onto the table. ‘And this...’
‘This’ was a jewellery box, and she didn’t want to open it. Flowers, and presumably diamonds. He had utilised a whole host of brain cells to c
ome up with those as an apology, she thought nastily, but neither gift hit the right spot. She glanced at him, reading the wary light in his glorious crystalline eyes, the wariness of a man dealing with an unknown quantity and wondering how she would react.
Mariette arrived with an entire trolley of food and a maid to serve. Freddie felt embarrassed accepting only fruit, a croissant and a cup of tea. But even the melting tenderness of the pastry fought to make it past her tight throat. Did she give Zac the benefit of the doubt and move on past the debacle of their wedding day? Even if she didn’t feel the smallest bit forgiving? As a rule she didn’t sulk or hold spite, but he had to explain himself at the very least, she decided. She lifted the jewellery box so that he couldn’t call her bad mannered and flipped up the lid on a diamond-studded gold watch.
‘Wow...thank you so much,’ she said generously, determined to be gracious, glancing across at him. Momentarily those lean, darkly handsome features surrounded by his blue-black luxuriant hair and accentuated by those bright pale blue eyes literally blew her concentration to smithereens.
‘How can you drink tea instead of coffee in the morning?’ Zac asked inconsequentially, watching her with an intensity that made her skin tighten over her bones and set up a disturbing throb between her thighs.
‘It’s what I’m used to,’ she muttered, recognising that he planned to gloss over the whole wedding day thing without even making an actual apology aside of the flowers and the watch, and recognising too that she could never look herself in the face again if she allowed him to use his electrifying sexuality to derail her.
Jennifer and Isabel arrived to collect the children to take them out into the garden. An unearthly silence fell across the terrace after their departure and Freddie swallowed hard, still picking nervously at shreds of her croissant.
Entranced, Zac watched her pluck another shred of pastry and place it between her moist pink lips and his jeans tightened. He thought about sex. She clasped the watch round her slender wrist. He thought about more sex. He discounted her tension, reckoning that what they both needed was a good rousing tumble in bed to find each other again.
‘Are you planning to say sorry?’ Freddie asked, shattering both his expectations and his mood. ‘Even thinking about it? Or is it just a case of not being able to get the words out?’
‘You know that I regret my attitude yesterday,’ Zac told her tautly. ‘It’s obvious, isn’t it?’
Freddie nodded. ‘But you can’t expect flowers and a designer watch to do the job for you.’
‘They always have in the past.’
‘Then you’ve been mixing with the wrong kind of woman,’ Freddie responded acidly. ‘And to be frank, sorry wouldn’t even begin to cover it.’
Zac sprang out of his chair, the legs of it scraping harshly across the stone tiles beneath. ‘I got drunk. I didn’t kill anyone!’ he flashed back at her with sudden anger.
‘You pretty much opted out of our entire wedding day,’ Freddie declared, shaken by that anger but persisting. ‘You weren’t there to start the dancing with me. You weren’t there even to cut the cake. It was humiliating and hurtful and, obviously, people noticed your absence. All I need you to do now is explain why...’
‘I’m no good at those kinds of explanations.’
‘But you could, at least, try,’ Freddie said gently.
‘Meu Deus...what do you want from me?’ Zac demanded rawly. ‘An apology? You already have it.’
‘I need to know why—’
‘No, you don’t!’ Zac fired back at her, his broad chest heaving as he dragged in a deep sustaining breath. ‘You don’t. I don’t have that kind of conversation with women.’
‘I’ll forgive and forget if you just tell me why,’ Freddie exclaimed in appeal. ‘I need to understand.’
Rage glittering in his glorious eyes and the sense of being trapped intensifying, Zac compressed his lips hard. ‘I won’t argue with you. I’m going out for a while,’ he told her, turning on his heel and striding down the terrace at speed.
For a startled moment, Freddie simply stared after him and then she chased after him, only to be greeted by the slam of the front door and a look of curious enquiry from Mariette. Her face colouring, she returned to the terrace, now blind to the wonderful view. He had walked out sooner than talk—not a very productive approach to a new marriage. But was she expecting too much from him too soon? Their marriage was not supposed to be a meeting of hearts and minds.
Practicality not sentiment.
The words rang like a falling tombstone of foreboding at the back of her mind.
Zac backed away from conflict, reluctant to get that involved with anyone. She couldn’t live like that, she thought fearfully, never really knowing where she stood with him. But he had told her where she stood before they married, hadn’t he? Practicality covered everything and emotions didn’t have to be considered. But what if she already felt more than she should for him? Freddie grimaced at that suspicion but there it was, feelings she couldn’t avoid, feelings he wouldn’t want her to feel. It hurt when he walked away, refusing to answer her questions, refusing to shed a glimmer of light on what went on in that complex head of his, because hopefully if she understood better she could forgive more easily. Tears prickled her eyes as she sat there and listened to the roar of a powerful motorbike firing up and then the quieter sound of his security team following in a car.
Was she so unreasonable? Had she driven him away? And when would he return?
* * *
Zac travelled quite a distance before he cooled off. Angel had asked him, if he had the time, to check out the work he was having done on his yacht and report back to him. He drove down to the Saint Laurent du Var Marina and paused at a waterside café to order an espresso, avoiding the glances of a group of youthful tourists giving him inviting looks from nearby. Angel and Vitale seemed to have taken to marriage like ducks to water, Zac reflected resentfully, so why was it all going wrong for him? He had asked Freddie to marry him, had wanted her to marry him. He had chosen her and would still have chosen her even when she was almost shouting at him, he acknowledged grudgingly. But she wanted more from him than any other woman ever had. The flowers and the watch hadn’t cut the ice.
What had come over him at the wedding? He was accustomed to responsibility but not to being responsible for other people, with the exception of employees with whom he had no personal ties. From childhood he had learned to hold people at bay to ensure they couldn’t hurt him. If he didn’t let anyone get close he was safe. But Freddie and the children weren’t going to hurt or betray him. He was more likely to hurt them by failing to live up to their expectations, he reasoned impatiently. What if she fell in love with him? He would have to warn her off on that score. The very last thing he wanted to do was hurt Freddie, he acknowledged without hesitation. Or Eloise, or Jack. He was getting attached to the three of them even if he wasn’t supposed to do so.
Practicality not sentiment, he reminded himself with a groan of frustration. But practicality didn’t take any account of emotions or emotional women. And Freddie was emotional, all wide, accusing, hurt eyes and quivering lips. Eloise looked at him in much the same way when he refused to read the dragon story twice over at the same sitting. Jack? Jack was simple in his demands, content solely with attention.
Freddie’s emotional outlook, however, was infinitely preferable to the kind of brassy, avaricious females who littered his past, Zac conceded wryly. She stood up for herself too. She wasn’t a doormat eager to agree with everything he did and said. Freddie hadn’t wanted the watch, she had wanted words, only what was he to do when the words wouldn’t be the ones she wanted to hear? Honesty at any cost? What woman really wanted that?
* * *
The day went past very slowly for Freddie because Zac was such an unknown quantity. For all she knew he could have flown back to London or Brazil or even gone o
ff with another, less demanding woman. ‘Unpredictable’, Angel Valtinos had labelled his half-brother, and now for the first time she was seeing that in Zac and it unnerved her that a simple request for an explanation could infuriate him to such an extent. She bathed the children and saw them into bed, promising that Zac would be back soon and praying that she was right.
She was shocked when she walked out onto the terrace and saw him simply standing there looking out over the valley.
‘Zac...’ she breathed with irrefutable relief. ‘Where have you been?’
‘I went to Nice, checked out the work being done on Angel’s yacht...he asked me to,’ he told her with a fluid shrug as he slowly turned round to face her. ‘How are you?’
‘I wasn’t sure you’d come back,’ she whispered tightly.
‘I may storm off but I’ll always come back,’ Zac murmured with wry amusement. ‘I don’t like losing my temper with people.’
‘I’m not people, I’m your wife,’ she protested as the sun went down behind him in a crimson and golden blaze of colour, the light picking up the straight angle of his dark brows above his deep-set eyes and the wide sensual line of his mouth and sending a shiver of awareness travelling through her. ‘But I’m not sure you were really ready to take on a wife.’
Zac raked long brown fingers through his black hair and breathed in deep. ‘For a split second when I saw you and the children in the church, I felt trapped. I had no excuse to feel like that because I asked you to marry me. Even so, the sudden awareness that I was going to be a husband and a father to two, possibly three kids, knocked me sideways. Being free—the ability to get up and go where I like when I like and do as I like—has always been very important to me. The idea of being tied down filled me with—’
