The Baby Secret

by Helen Brooks

  'You didn't trust me.' It was a painful little statement, but he didn't duck it, nodding slowly as he stared into her eyes.

  'I don't suppose I did,' he admitted quietly, 'although it was more that I didn't acknowledge you were a grown, mature woman if anything. And I couldn't believe my luck either—that you would love me, marry me. I've done so much, seen so much, and you were so pure, so innocent…'

  She continued to sit quietly, her eyes enormous as she stared into the dark, handsome face so close to hers. She wanted to believe him, believe it was really as simple as he was saying, but she didn't. She hadn't been brought up on happy endings.

  'The merger was your mother's idea, and the benefit was all on her side,' Zac said slowly after a full minute had ticked by. 'It was immaterial to me whether it went through or not.'

  She nodded. She believed him on that at least. It was so like Coral to cash in where she could. 'I see.'

  The tone of her voice was dull, and he continued to look at her some moments more before he said, 'Hasn't anything I've said made any difference? You think I'm lying to you?'

  No, she didn't think he was lying. It was something of a revelation, but there was no joy or thankfulness with it. She believed his explanation, but all this had shown her that she wasn't sure of him—or any man's ability to love for ever—deep inside. The problem wasn't Zac's, it was hers. She drew in a deep breath, her heart thudding. It had been all along.

  Sooner or later something like this would have cropped up and she would have dealt with it in the same way—by running away. And that would have been so much worse if it had been after her child was born, or even after several were born. It was she who wasn't cut out for marriage. Oh, God, help me. It was a cry from her heart, but one she didn't believe was answerable. She'd destroy them both with her fears if she stayed.

  'Tory?' Zac asked tersely. 'Answer me.'

  'I don't think you're lying to me.' It was the answer he had wanted but he was in no doubt there was still something terribly wrong. Her face was stricken and as white as a sheet. 'But—' Victoria stopped abruptly. How could she explain?

  'But?' He knew he had to keep his temper but it was hard going. She was putting obstacle after obstacle in his way, their way.

  'But I don't want to be married to you, Zac.' And this time her voice was firmer than it had been for the whole of the conversation, Zac recognised with a sick kind of despair as he forced himself to show no reaction and to keep perfectly calm and still.

  'Any particular reason why?' he asked stonily.

  'I shouldn't have married you in the first place,' she answered with cruel conviction. 'I see that now, and…and I'm sorry. It's not you—I thought it was, but it's not you. It's me. I can't trust you, Zac; I don't think I'm capable of trusting anybody,' she finished with a bewildered little frown.

  'And if I said I could make you trust me?' he asked with careful control, praying that the tumult of emotion that was tearing him apart wouldn't show in his face. 'What then?'

  'Oh, Zac.' It was kind—almost patronising—and for a shocking moment he wanted to shake the truth into her.

  'You're saying that's impossible, is that it?' he said with a calm he was far from feeling. 'And you won't give us a chance?'

  'Yes.' It was curt and definite.

  'I don't accept that for a minute,' he said forcefully.

  'Well, whether you accept it or not that's the way I feel,' Victoria said wearily. 'I don't want to keep the baby from you—we can work out access and everything—but I want a divorce. And I'm sorry about today; it should never have happened—'

  'The hell it shouldn't,' Zac cut in furiously. 'You're my wife.'

  'And it can never happen again,' Victoria finished as though he hadn't spoken. 'Do…do you want me to leave straight away?'

  Hell, she meant it. He stared at her, for once in his life utterly lost as to what to do or say next. She loved him, she knew he loved her, and it didn't make any difference. He wished her father wasn't dead so that he could beat him into a pulp. He wished Coral wasn't a woman so he could do the same to her…

  'Zac? I can go back to the flat now; I'd be fine there.'

  'You're staying here with me until our child is born, Tory.' Suddenly he knew exactly how he was going to handle this. 'And then we'll sort out a place of your own for you and the baby, I promise.' He eyed her white face expressionlessly. 'There'll be no repeat of today, I promise you that too, and no divorce.'

  'Zac, I can't stay here after today,' she said tremblingly.

  'I'm content with an indefinite separation.' Content? Who was kidding whom? Zac asked himself with savage, caustic self-mockery. 'We can remain friends and bring up the kid amicably—two homes is better than no home at all, after all.'

  'But that's not fair on you. Surely a divorce is better?' Victoria asked numbly. 'It would be more straightforward.'

  'There has never been a divorce in my family and I don't intend to break the mould,' Zac said shortly. 'I entered this marriage intending it should last our lifetimes; it isn't me who has welched on the deal.' It was below the belt but he was fighting for his life. If he agreed to a divorce he was lost.

  Victoria flinched visibly. 'I…I see. I hadn't thought… No, I see.' She nodded miserably. 'If that's what you want.'

  'Okay, so that's settled, then.' Zac looked at her tremulous mouth, her white-gold hair that felt like silk and the translucent texture of her skin, and remembered how it had been that day. His arousal was instant and fierce, knotting him up inside as his mind played with the memory of her full rounded stomach and ripe breasts as she had sat astride him, her body joined with his.

  He forced himself to rise slowly and walk around the table as though their conversation had been nothing more than pre-dinner banter. 'I'll heat up the food in the microwave,' he said evenly. 'It won't take a minute.'

  'I…I don't think I want anything now. I couldn't…'

  'You'll eat, Victoria.' Zac's voice was still even, but it carried that certain note she knew meant business. 'And you'll rest, and you'll do all the other things that mean the remainder of this pregnancy will be trouble-free. We're doing right from now on, okay?' She didn't answer right away, and he leant on the table, his eyes fixing on her troubled face as he repeated, 'Okay? I'm taking care of you until the baby is here.'

  There was a long, long pause, and then Victoria nodded again as she said, 'I think I would be all right in the flat by myself but if you want me to stay here I will. But just until the baby is born, Zac.' She raised violet-blue eyes to his. 'And then it's back to how things were before the accident.'

  Over his dead body. Zac held her gaze, his own straight and clear. 'Of course,' he said silkily.

  'And I really think we need to get something in writing,' Victoria said uneasily. 'It needn't be heavy, I don't mean that, but it will make things so much simpler in the long run.'

  'You think so?' Zac smiled, a crocodile sort of smile. 'Then your experience of lawyers is different to mine,' he said quietly. 'We can come to some sort of understanding ourselves without involving the vultures. I'll agree to an agreement being drawn up by a third party, something detailing the necessary technicalities, but that's all, Tory. I mean it.'

  She stared at him uncertainly. She didn't have a clue where he was coming from, she thought anxiously, but she didn't like it anyway. This smacked of an expensive, beautifully packaged gift that when unwrapped revealed an empty box. But she couldn't fight him now; he was altogether too… too Zac.

  'And incidentally…' He allowed a tense pause, the black gaze becoming lethal. 'You aren't going to shut me out of my child's life…or yours.'

  CHAPTER TEN

  The conversation with Zac had opened up a Pandora's box of issues in her life, Victoria found over the next few weeks, and they were ones which she had mentally brushed under the carpet since childhood without ever really being aware of their existence.

  She grappled with them one by one, often trying to push them back insi
de that box in her head when it got too darn painful, but the lid was well and truly off and she had to acknowledge this was truth time, crucifying as it was.

  William had said much the same thing when—as luck would have it—he had called to see her a couple of days after she was on her feet again. She had left a message explaining her changed circumstances on his answering machine the day after Zac had brought her home, along with her new telephone number and a request that he phone her when he could.

  Victoria had been in the bath that morning when the phone had rung first thing, and she had nearly fallen off her seat later at breakfast when Zac had said with elaborate casualness, 'Oh, by the way, Howard phoned earlier to see how you were. He's calling by for a cup of coffee later. I didn't think you'd mind.'

  'William's coming here?' Victoria stared at the dark face of her husband in amazement. 'To the house?' she added weakly.

  'Is anything wrong with that?' Zac asked smoothly.

  'No, no, of course not; it's just that…' Victoria didn't know how to say it. 'You don't mind?' she finished tentatively.

  'Should I?' The black glittering eyes were piercingly intent.

  'Well, you know what I mean.' She wriggled uncomfortably and then stopped abruptly when she realised what she was doing. 'You had the idea at one time we were more than just friends.'

  'Victoria, if I thought there was the slightest possibility of anything like that Howard wouldn't get within a mile of you,' Zac said pleasantly, so pleasantly that the portent of his words didn't register for a few seconds. 'However, I am content that as far as you are concerned, at least, the friendship is a platonic one.' He raised dark, sardonic eyebrows at her confusion.

  'And you don't mind that William…?' She suddenly realised she had been about to say something stupid and let her voice trail away, conscious of a deep red colour creeping up her neck and into her face. Why couldn't she think before she spoke?

  'Loves you?' Zac finished evenly, always one to call a spade a spade. He settled back in his chair, narrowing his eyes as his gaze washed over her hot face. 'What do you think, Victoria?' he asked softly. 'Do you think I mind?'

  'I don't know.' She didn't know how to handle this conversation either, and it annoyed her. It annoyed her very much.

  'William is a rare thing in this world of ours,' Zac said thoughtfully, shifting slightly in his seat so that the powerful muscles in his shoulders bunched under the pale ivory shirt he was wearing and caused her breath to catch in her throat. 'He's an honourable man, or perhaps you didn't know that?'

  'Of course I knew,' Victoria snapped testily, irked at the insinuation Zac knew William better than she did. 'I'm just surprised you recognised it,' she added waspily.

  'I never let prejudice get in the way of discernment,' Zac said evenly. 'You should know that by now.'

  'And your discernment picked up William's honourable qualities immediately, I suppose,' Victoria said irritably. She didn't know if she liked Zac allowing William to visit her, which was quite ridiculous, not to mention perverse.

  'More or less.' He tilted his head, inspecting her angry face. 'Of course it was better after I'd met him for a drink and we got down to basics,' he added silkily, his eyes watchful.

  'You've gone out for a drink with William?' she asked sharply, her blue eyes flashing to his face. Now she didn't like that.

  'Uh-huh.' He seemed pleased at her reaction if his lazy—and fascinatingly sexy—smile was anything to go by.

  'Why?' she asked brusquely. 'Why on earth would you do that?'

  'Because you are my wife, Victoria, and that's my child under your heart.'

  She liked the way he put that but she wasn't going to betray it by the flicker of an eyelash. 'That's no answer,' she said militantly. 'And you know that as well as I do.'

  'No?' He smiled again but it didn't reach the jet-black eyes. 'I thought it was rather a good one, actually. William Howard cares about you, a blind man could see that, and that's okay—I can live with that—as long as he knows the score.'

  'And now you feel he does know the score?' Victoria asked angrily, furious at his arrogance. Megalomaniac— she'd always known it.

  'Oh, I'm positive.' He nodded slowly, his eyes cold and hard.

  'Well, how cosy.' She didn't really know why she was quite so angry, but it was taking all her will-power not to throw her coffee at him. 'So it's all friends together now, is it?'

  He looked at her expressionlessly. 'No, we're not friends, Tory,' he said cryptically, 'and you've still got a hell of a lot to learn about men.'

  It was the end of the conversation.

  William was nursing a broken arm when he arrived later that morning—a result of getting a little too close to some trouble on his latest assignment, he told Victoria with a wry smile—and after Mrs Watts, who had shown him into the drawing room, had bustled off to the kitchen for the coffee tray and Victoria had fussed over him he said, 'Well, Blue-eyes, how goes it?'

  'Okay.' She smiled brightly, but she had never been able to fool William. 'Zac sends his regards, by the way; he's at work of course—' But she wasn't allowed to get away with the banal.

  'Your message said you're back here just until the kid is born?' William, like Zac, didn't waste words. 'You still haven't got things sorted with Zac?' he asked carefully.

  'No. Yes. Oh…' She gazed at him helplessly. 'It's such a mess, William. I don't believe Zac was cheating on me, but…'

  'Okay.' William settled down in the chair and smiled, his hazel eyes crinkling at the corners. 'Tell Uncle William all about it.' And so she related that last caustic confrontation with Zac almost word for word, but without mentioning the day of lovemaking that had preceded it That was too precious to share.

  'You can't duck and dive, Blue-eyes.' William's face was deadly serious by the time she had finished pouring out her heart. 'The guy loves you, and you love him, and that's his kid you're carrying. You owe it to both of them to make some decisions here.'

  Zac and William were more alike than they knew, Victoria thought wryly as William virtually repeated Zac's words.

  'You've got to sort these fears out now before they cripple you for life,' William continued softly. 'You do see that, don't you? Take some counselling, do whatever it takes, but get it all out into the open. Then, when you've faced the worst, you can take stock and decide where to go from there. But it'll be your decision because you know yourself, and you don't yet.'

  It was good advice and Victoria knew it, and they talked some mote before Zac arrived home for an early lunch— something he had not done before. The two men were cool with each other, but not unfriendly, although William left almost immediately.

  'You'll let me know when it happens?' William paused before climbing into the taxi and looked straight at Zac, who nodded quietly. 'Thanks.' Then, with one last look at Victoria, he was gone. Victoria watched the taxi depart feeling more alone than ever.

  And so Victoria wrestled with herself. The baby helped. As the demons of inadequacy, fear, rejection and a whole host more were brought out into the open, the vigorous reassurance—as it kicked enough goals to be top of the first division—from someone who wouldn't be ignored and was depending on her utterly was like a solid rock she could hold onto. And hold on she did.

  And Zac helped too, strangely enough, as time went on.

  She hadn't known what to expect—the first morning after the cataclysmic day of lovemaking—-but he had metamorphosed into a charming although somewhat remote companion, who treated her as something between an old friend and maiden aunt, with the emphasis on the latter.

  Not that many maiden aunts had stomachs that were about to explode, Victoria thought drily as she stood gazing out of the bedroom window one morning in the first week of December.

  It was a bitterly cold day, the sky low and heavy with grey snow clouds that spoke of severe weather conditions in the next few days, but Victoria was as warm as toast as she looked out into the bleak winter's day outside where the birds wer
e squabbling and fighting over some bacon rind Mrs Watts had put on the bird table.

  She'd had a restless night, partly due to the fact that she was now as big as a barrage balloon and no matter how she positioned herself her stomach seemed to be within an inch from her nose, and all her main organs squeezed into some remote painful recess where they didn't fit, but mainly due to a memory that had surfaced the night before and wouldn't leave her alone.

  It was her mother who had started the process in a roundabout sort of way by phoning in the afternoon, just before her plane left for the Bahamas, with a duty call wishing her daughter a happy Christmas. She hadn't mentioned Victoria's impending confinement at all until Victoria had brought it up.

  'Ah, yes.' Coral's tone had been flat. 'How are things going? I trust you're reconciled to adapting to married life now? I got your note saying you were living with Zac again.'

  'I also said it wasn't a permanent situation,' Victoria had reminded her steadily, 'but I felt I ought to let you know in view of the flat being empty for a time. Once the baby's born I shall go back there until Zac sorts out something more suitable.'

  'Oh, he's told you, then?' Coral had said without interest.

  'Told me?' Victoria had wrinkled her brow at the receiver.

  'About the flat,' Coral had snapped irritably. 'I said at the time he might as well, but he was sure you wouldn't live there if you knew. He can be as stubborn as you, Victoria.'

  Why did every conversation with her mother resemble a minefield of some kind? Victoria had asked herself wearily, at the same time as her heart began to thud with the uncomfortable feeling Coral knew something she didn't, something important.

  'What, exactly, do you mean, Mother?' she'd asked carefully.

  There had been a few moments of blank silence, and then Coral had said, her voice tart now, 'Oh, he hasn't told you, then? Well, I don't suppose it matters now if you are going to let him buy you a place anyway. The flat was Zac's idea if you must know—there is no friend of mine. Zac didn't want you struggling money-wise or living somewhere unsuitable, so he set it all up with the owner on the understanding you mustn't know. Surely you were surprised the rent was so low, Victoria?' she'd added irritably. 'You pay a fraction of the cost Anyway, I must go. I'll speak to you when I return in January.'