by Helen Brooks
'Victoria?' William's voice was bemused. 'Could you tell me what on earth is going on? Your husband's informants must be first-class in keeping him up to date with my whereabouts round the globe, because at seven o'clock this morning he was all but battering my front door down.'
'Oh, William.' Victoria was mortified. 'Oh, I'm sorry.'
'Partly because of jet-lag, and possibly because I felt I was in some Alice in Wonderland world where I didn't have a clue what was going on, I let him have his say without bopping him on the nose,' William continued conversationally. 'And it transpired, when I'd calmed him down enough to accept a cup of coffee, that he'd had the idea we had…how shall I put it?…made a baby. This baby—his baby,' he added evenly.
'What…what did you say?' Victoria whispered, her hand going protectively over the mound of her stomach wherein Zac's child lay. This was the worst scenario she could have thought of.
'That if that was so it was some form of immaculate conception,' William said pleasantly, apparently not in the least put out by the morning's happenings. 'Victoria, the guy was turning inside out—one minute wanting to rip me limb from limb, the next demanding my assurance that I intended to look after you and the baby and face up to my responsibilities. What's going on?'
'I'm so sorry—really I am.' She should have told William yesterday on the telephone what Zac suspected; she shouldn't have decided to wait until she met him for lunch, Victoria thought desperately. The whole situation was turning into a black farce.
'Did you tell him I was the father?' The perplexed note was back in William's voice and she really couldn't blame him.
'No, no, of course not,' Victoria said hastily. 'But when I told Zac I was pregnant it was after we'd just had lunch and he assumed, after seeing us together and my having told you first…'
'And you didn't disabuse him of the idea.' Victoria thought she detected a smidgen of condemnation in William's voice, and this was confirmed when he said, 'Blue-eyes, I'd give my eye teeth for it to be true—we both know that—but this is your husband's baby and you can't pretend otherwise. It's his own flesh and blood, and it's as much his as yours—'
'It isn't.' She wanted to cry, but she had done enough weeping in the last five months to last her a lifetime and she wasn't going to start again. 'He gave up all right to it when he chose to keep Gina in his life. Let them have babies if they want—' the thought was excruciating '—but this one is mine.'
'You are going to have to work this out with him, you know that, don't you?' William said very gently. 'All I can say is that I'm here for you, Blue-eyes, whenever you need me, but I wouldn't lay claim to another man's kid by default.'
'So Zac knows,' Victoria murmured numbly. 'He…he believed you, then? He accepted you weren't the father?'
'Yes, he believed me. I think it was something in my total gob-smacked inertia that convinced him,' William said drily.
Brilliant. Utterly, utterly brilliant. The baby gave the biggest kick so far as though in answer to her desperate thoughts. What was she going to do? He'd be so mad…
'I'm sorry you've been dragged into all this, William,' Victoria said slowly. 'I honestly never intended it that way. I'd made up my mind to come clean with him that day, but he was so…'
'I know.' William paused before adding, 'Do you want me to come round? I've a feeling you'll be seeing him sooner rather than later.'
'No.' It was quick and definite. 'No, I'll have to see him and explain, and then just let everything settle.'
'Hmm!' William's dry, cynical exclamation expressed what Victoria already knew at heart—Zac Harding was not a man to let anything settle. 'Call me if you need me. Is lunch still on?'
'Perhaps…perhaps it'd be better in a week or two. I'll ring you.' All this furore wasn't fair on William, especially knowing how he felt about her. She'd used him enough already, albeit unintentionally, and he had his own life to live without worrying about her. 'Goodbye for now, and…thanks for being such a good friend.'
'Bye, Blue-eyes.' There was a moment's hesitation, and then he said, 'For what it's worth, I think the guy still loves you,' and then the phone went dead.
That doesn't help, William. Victoria stared at the receiver for a full minute before replacing it gently. If Zac did still have any feeling for her beyond physical attraction—and even that would die a quick death if he saw her undressed now, she thought miserably—it wasn't the sort of love that you could build a marriage—her sort of marriage—on. Baby or no baby, she would tell him exactly that when she saw him next.
The opportunity came quicker than Victoria expected, within the next five minutes in fact She was just lifting her hand to open the front door prior to leaving for work when a sharp knock outside made her jump back, her hand going to her throat. Zac. It had to be Zac. Only his knock could denote such angry authority.
'Good morning.' His voice was deep and smooth and controlled, but nevertheless his anger fairly crackled into the space between them as she opened the door and then gestured for him to come inside without returning the salutation. She had the feeling the morning was going to be anything but good. Victoria had backed into the hall and now fairly scuttled into the sitting room as Zac closed the door. His light grey suit jacket was unbuttoned, the pale amber shirt beneath devoid of an accompanying tie, which was unusual for Zac, but she suspected from the ruffled state of his hair that he had been running his hands through it, and probably the tie had been discarded at the same time. He was clearly in the grip of a consuming emotion, and Victoria had the nasty idea it was undiluted fury—and all directed at her.
His big, lean, broad-shouldered handsomeness had an aggressive quality to it at the best of times, but now, here in the tiny feminine flat, it was overwhelmingly intimidating, his powerful masculinity lethal. And she felt scared to death.
He went straight into the attack. 'I can see from the look on your face that you've already spoken to Howard,' he grated angrily, 'so you know I went round there today. Yes?'
'Yes.' Oh, don't be so weak and subservient, she told herself bitterly. All this is not your fault It was Zac who had jumped to conclusions. But, like William said, you let him, didn't you? the voice of conscience accused probingly. It suited you for him to relinquish all rights to his child…
'Do you know the sort of hell you've put me through?' Zac growled, taking a step or two towards her and then stopping abruptly when she reacted by going white. 'And don't look like that, damn it,' he snarled furiously. 'I'm not going to hurt you. What sort of a man do you think I am?'
A furiously angry one. 'Zac, I can explain all this—'
'You told me the child was Howard's,' he ground out tightly.
'No, no, I never did.' She was gabbling, her words coming out in a frantic rush, but she had never been so frightened in her life. 'It was you who said that. You never gave me a chance—'
'He said he's never slept with you, not once,' Zac said accusingly. 'Now I want to hear it from your lips. Is that true?'
Now he was asking her to apologise for not sleeping with someone else? Victoria asked herself wretchedly. Impossible relationship…
'Well?' the word came with the force of a bullet.
'Yes, it's true,' Victoria admitted shakily. 'But I never said—'
'And I'm the only man you have ever slept with.' As a statement of fact it couldn't have been more damning.
Now Victoria raised her head, straightening her slim shoulders as she said very simply, 'Yes, you are. Of course you are.'
Did she have any idea of how beautiful she looked standing there, Zac asked himself savagely, her hair shining like a halo of silver round her delicate, heart-shaped face in which the deep violet-blue of her eyes stood out like two luminescent pools? She looked ethereal, fragile even, and yet there had to be a heart of pure steel beating above the place where the child—his child—lay. She had been prepared to let him believe the baby was Howard's; she had been ruthless in her determination to shut him out of her life, out of their b
aby's life…
This last thought caused him to say, and harshly, 'What the hell right do you think you have in trying to take my child from me? And what makes you tick anyway? Eh?'
And now it was Victoria who went on the attack in an effort to curb her guilt and panic, her voice shrill as she cried, 'Oh, I'm so sorry it didn't go all your way, Zac! You thought you were purchasing a pretty little doll who could be brought out at all the right social occasions, didn't you, and then relegated back to whatever shelf in your life was appropriate in between times, while you enjoyed yourself with your mistress? Well, thanks, but no, thanks. I don't intend to ever take that sort of treatment from anyone again. I'm in control of my life now. Me. Got it?'
She still didn't look pregnant. Zac found a small part of his brain was working quite independently, aloof from the searing emotion that—for a few minutes back there in William Howard's place—had actually brought a red mist before his eyes, so intense had been his rage. She was wearing a long, loose and very pretty pale peach dress in embroidered cotton which, together with the flat brown leather sandals and wide gold hoops in her ears, made her look about fifteen.
But she wasn't fifteen. She was twenty years of age— soon to be twenty-one in October—and a married woman to boot. His woman. The rage flared again, narrowing his eyes and straightening his mouth into a hard grim line. 'You're coming home with me, Victoria. I've had enough of all this,' he ground out tightly.
'No way.' Her chin shot up, her shoulders going back, and as she backed a step or two away from him the morning light from the small window behind her shone through the thin cotton of her dress, emphasising that which he had been unable to see before.
'When is the baby due?' He found he had to wrench his gaze away from her stomach, and his voice was shaking.
There was a long pause before Victoria said, her voice quiet now, 'December. December the twenty-fourth.'
'A Christmas baby,' he said softly, looking into her face.
'Yes.' She eyed him warily, and then, as their gaze caught and held, Victoria was appalled at the surge of fierce longing and desire that swept over her. What was the matter with her? she asked herself with caustic self-contempt. How could she still feel this way after all that he had put her through? He had married her for his own ends; she'd been little more than a pawn on Zac Harding's chessboard, however he might like to dress it up now he had been found out. She couldn't weaken, not now.
And, as though he had been reading her thoughts, Zac's next words were very steady and controlled but back into the onslaught as he said, 'You might not be aware of it, but this whole crazy mess is a direct result of the way you were manipulated and influenced as a child. You can't bring yourself to trust me, can you? That fear of rejection is too strong.'
'Fear of rejection?' Victoria spluttered, unable to believe her ears. He had the nerve to twist this round and make it all her fault? He was one of his own, she had to give him that.
'Exactly.' His eyes had narrowed into pinpoints of black light. 'You were pushed from pillar to post as a child, neglected in the worst possible way, and now, if you do what your heart is telling you to do and you listen to me, it makes you too vulnerable. That's it, isn't it?' he finished dominatingly.
'No, that is not it,' Victoria hissed, beside herself with rage at the amateur psychoanalysis. 'Have you forgotten that a few weeks before our marriage you set Gina Rossellini up in her own apartment? And besides that you and my mother conspired behind my back in this giant of a business deal—'
'Nonsense. No one conspired about anything,' he interrupted coldly. 'You're fast developing a persecution complex if you ask me.'
'How can you say that?' Victoria all but stamped her foot in frustration. 'Two important things in your life— two huge things by any standards—and you didn't mention a word to me. I was your fiancée, Zac, the person who was supposed to be closer to you than anyone else, and you kept things like that from me. Why would you have done that unless it was because Gina was your mistress and you had ulterior motives for our marrying?'
'I didn't want to bother you with unimportant trivia.'
It was so outrageous that if Victoria hadn't been so furious she would have laughed, but as she stared at him, her eyes sparking, she forced herself to take a long hard breath before she said, 'I don't believe you for a moment but even if that was the truth it's reason enough for the divorce to go through. I want a partner who sees me as a real woman, not a decorative appendage on the end of his arm or some little doll's head who is too shallow to discuss anything of teal importance with. I want to share everything with the man I love: all his decisions, his worries, his joys, his lows. I want to be the other half of a perfect whole. I don't just want to be loved—I want to be needed.'
'And you think I don't need you?' Zac snapped angrily.
'Oh, I've no doubt I come from the right stock,' Victoria returned tartly, 'and that as a hostess and suitable breeding machine I would be more than adequate for your purposes. But do I think you need me? I know you don't You're autonomous, Zac.'
There was a menacing darkness to his face that would have intimidated her even just a few days ago, but since she had felt the baby move—and it was kicking more and more each day now; she had thought it had a football in there with it last night—something in her persona had shifted. This was a baby inside her, a real baby, and she was going to be its mother. It would rely on her for everything, and the fiercely protective love that had been born that day told her she couldn't allow her child to be brought up in the same way she had been. She owed it that at least.
Zac's world was the same one as her parents—she knew that now—and she had been a fool to think otherwise. She didn't want her baby to grow up thinking that money could buy anything, that mistresses and affairs were a way of life, that nannies and chauffeurs and hired help had time to listen and parents did not.
'Do you seriously think I'm going to stand by and let you ruin three lives?' Zac asked grimly. 'You are my wife and this is our child. It will be brought up accordingly—'
'You can't make me stay married if I don't want to,' Victoria said wildly, 'and you can't make me take your money either. I have a bit of my own from my inheritance from my grandmother, and that'll see me through for a year or so until I can put the baby in a nursery during the day and go out to work again.'
'Over my dead body,' he ground out viciously. 'I'm not having a child of mine living from hand to mouth, and I'll fight you through every court in the land for custody, I'm warning you now, Victoria. You won't win, I swear it.'
'And I'll fight you back,' she countered tremblingly, but the overwhelming awfulness of what was happening was making her shake visibly. 'If that's what it takes, I'll fight you back.'
'Sit down,' Zac said flatly after a long screaming moment of silence. 'This is not doing you or the baby any good.'
'No.' Pregnant or no, she was not being labelled the weak little woman, Victoria thought truculently. If nothing else, the last few months since her marriage had shown her she could stand on her own two feet more than adequately. The fact that she wanted nothing more in all the world than to be able to lean on someone—no, not someone, she corrected herself honestly; she wanted the impossible, she wanted Zac—and ask him to share the anxiety and moments of sheer panic that went hand in hand with the unnerving thought of caring for a new life was between her and her Maker. Zac didn't know she was scared witless at times by how she was going to cope by herself, and she would rather die than admit it to him. Especially after his threats about custody.
Black eyes glinted a warning. 'I'm not asking—I'm telling you,' Zac said grimly. 'Sit.'
'There is no need for me to sit,' Victoria protested weakly, but her shaking legs were telling a different story and after one more glance at Zac's dark face she sat—the possibility of collapsing in a little heap in front of him proving a worse option than Zac thinking he had won.
But he hadn't won, and what was more he had no right to co
me in here throwing his weight about, she thought militantly as she added, 'I want you to go now. I just want to be left alone; that's not too much to ask.'
'When I'm good and ready,' he answered sharply, watching her from the middle of the room—astride and arrogant—with his hands on his lean hips. 'We've things to settle here.'
'You can't bully me, Zac.' She raised her chin defiantly.
'Bully you?' he growled incredulously. 'Bully you?'
He was as mortally offended as if she had accused him of some obscene practice, Victoria thought with a touch of satisfaction that she had pierced that thick skin just a bit. 'Yes, bully me,' she repeated firmly. 'What else do you call it when you barge into my home like this?'
'I have never 'barged' in my life, Victoria,' Zac said with considerable dignity, glowering at her from his stance across the room, 'and far from bullying you I came here this morning to discuss our child. Our child,' he added with heavy meaning.
'We've said everything that can be said,' she countered sharply.
'Oh, no, Victoria.' It was dark and soft, and she shivered at the tone. 'We haven't even begun. Trust me on that if nothing else. No one takes what is mine, not even you.'
Her mouth had gone dry, and try as she might she couldn't stop the menacing threat in his face and voice from freezing her vocal cords as he stared at her one last time before turning abruptly and walking out of the flat. She heard the front door bang behind him with something akin to disbelief, and then, as though the noise had released her from her frozen state, she jumped up and ran to the door, sliding the bolt across with shaking fingers before sliding down the smooth wood and onto the thick, expensive Axminster carpet as all strength left her.
Victoria wasn't aware how long she sat there in the hall, dry-eyed and shaking, before she made herself rise and walk into the kitchen where she made a pot of very hot and very strong coffee.
She drank one mugful straight down so fast it almost scalded the roof of her mouth, but it provided the necessary adrenalin to make her voice firm and calm when she telephoned Mrs Bretton and told her she would be an hour or so late that morning. After kicking her sandals off, she poured herself another coffee, and was sitting on one of the tall upholstered stools in the kitchen with her eyes shut and her hands cupped round the white, gold-rimmed mug as she inhaled the fragrant aroma, when the doorbell rang.
