by Maya Blake
He shrugged. ‘Then donate it to your favourite charity.’
Since she wasn’t going to win that one, she moved on to the tenth and last clause.
Eva jerked to her feet, her heart pounding as she reread the words, hoping against hope that she’d got it wrong the first time. But the words remained clear and stark and frightening. ‘You want...children?’ she rasped through a throat gone bone dry with dread.
‘Sì,’ he replied softly. ‘Two. An heir and a spare, I believe you disparagingly refer to that number in your circles. More if we’re lucky—stop shaking your head, Eva.’
Eva realised that was exactly what she was doing as he rose and stalked her. She took a step back, then another, until her backside bumped the sleek black cabinet running the length of the central wall.
He stopped in front of her, leaned his tall, imposing frame over hers. ‘Of all the clauses in the agreement, this is non-negotiable.’
‘You said they were all non-negotiable.’
‘They are, but some are more non-negotiable than others.’
A silent scream built inside her. ‘If this one is the most important why did you put it last?’
‘Because you would be signing directly below it. I wanted you to feel its import so there would be no doubt in your mind what you were agreeing to.’
She started to shake her head again but froze when he angled himself even closer, until their lips were an inch apart. Their breaths mingling, he stared her down. Eva’s heart climbed into her throat as she struggled to sift through the emotions those words on the page had evoked.
Zaccheo was asking the impossible.
Children were the reasons why her last two relationships before him had failed before they’d even begun.
Children were the reason she’d painfully resigned herself to remaining single. To spurning any interest that came her way because she hadn’t been able to bear the thought of baring her soul again only to have her emotions trampled on.
She wouldn’t cry. She wouldn’t break down in front of Zaccheo. Not today. Not ever. He’d caused her enough turmoil to last a lifetime.
But he was asking the impossible. ‘I can’t.’
His face hardened but he didn’t move a muscle. ‘You can. You will. Three days ago you were agreeing to marry another man. You expect me to believe the possibility of children weren’t on the cards with Fairfield?’
She shook her head. ‘My agreement with Harry was different. Besides, he...’ She stopped, unwilling to add to the flammable tension.
‘He what?’ Zaccheo enquired silkily.
‘He didn’t hate me!’
He seemed almost surprised at her accusation. Surprise slowly gave way to a frown. ‘I don’t hate you, Eva. In fact, given time and a little work, we might even find common ground.’
She cursed her heart for leaping at his words. ‘I can’t—’
‘You have twenty-four hours. I suggest you take the time and review your answer before saying another word.’
Her stomach clenched. ‘And if my answer remains the same?’
His expression was one of pure, insufferable arrogance. ‘It won’t. You make feeble attempts to kick at the demands of your ancestry and title, but inevitably you choose blood over freedom. You’ll do anything to save your precious family name—’
‘You really think so? After the meeting we just had? Are you really that blind, or did you not see the way my sister and my father treat me? We are not a close family, Zaccheo. No matter how much I wish it...’ Her voice shook, but she firmed it. ‘Have you stopped to think that you pushing me this way may be the catalyst I need to completely break away from a family that’s already broken?’
Her terse words made his eyes narrow. But his expression cleared almost immediately. ‘No, you’re loyal. You’ll give me what I want.’
‘No—’
‘Yes,’ he breathed.
He closed the gap between them slowly, as if taunting her with the knowledge that she couldn’t escape the inevitability of his possession.
His mouth claimed hers—hot, demanding, powerfully erotic. Eva moaned as her emotions went into free fall. He feasted on her as if he had all the time in the world, taking turns licking his way into her mouth before sliding his tongue against hers in an expert dance that had her desperately clutching his waist.
Wild, decadent heat swirled through her body as he lifted her onto the cabinet, tugged up the hem of her dress and planted himself between her thighs. Her shoulders met the wall and she gasped as one hand gripped her thigh.
Push him away. You need to push him away!
Her hands climbed from his waist to his chest, albeit far slower and in a far more exploratory fashion than her screeching brain was comfortable with. But she made an effort once she reached his broad shoulders.
She pushed.
And found her hands captured in a firm one-handed hold above her head. His other hand found her breast and palmed it, squeezing before flicking his thumb over her hardened nipple.
Sensation pounded through her blood. Her legs curled around his thickly muscled thighs and she found herself pulled closer to the edge of the cabinet, until the powerful evidence of his erection pushed at her core.
Zaccheo gave a deep groan and freed her hands to bury his in her hair. Angling her head for a deeper invasion, he devoured her until the need for air drove them apart.
Chests heaving, they stared at each other for several seconds before Eva scrambled to untangle her legs from around him. Every skin cell on fire, she struggled to stand up. He stopped her with a hand on her belly, his eyes compelling hers so effortlessly, she couldn’t look away.
The other hand moved to her cheek, then his fingers drifted over her throbbing mouth.
‘As much as I’d like to take you right here on my boardroom cabinet, I have a dozen meetings to chair. It seems everyone wants a powwow with the newly emancipated CEO. We’ll pick this up again at dinner. I’ll be home by seven.’
She diverted enough brainpower from the erotic images it was creating to reply. ‘I won’t be there. I’m working tonight.’
A tic throbbed at his temple as he straightened his tie. ‘I see that I need to put aligning our schedules at the top of my agenda.’
She pushed him away and stood. ‘Don’t strain yourself too much on my account,’ she responded waspishly. She was projecting her anger at her weakness onto him, but she couldn’t help herself. She tugged her dress down, painfully aware of the sensitivity between her unsteady legs as she moved away from him and picked up her handbag and the folder containing the prenup. ‘I’ll see you when I see you.’
He took her hand and walked her to the door. ‘I guarantee you it’ll be much sooner than that.’ He rode the lift down with her to the ground floor, barely acknowledging the keen interest his presence provoked.
Romeo was entering the building as they exited. The two men exchanged a short conversation in Italian before Zaccheo opened the door to the limo.
When she went to slide in, he stopped her. ‘Wait.’
‘What is it?’ she demanded.
His lips firmed and he seemed in two minds as to his response. ‘For a moment during the meeting, you took my side against your father. I’ll factor that favourably into our dealings from now on.’
Eva’s heart lifted for a moment, then plunged back to her toes. ‘You don’t get it, do you?’
He frowned. ‘Get what?’
‘Zaccheo, for as long as I can remember, all I’ve wished was for there to be no sides. For there not to be a them against us. Maybe that makes me a fool. Or maybe I’ll need to give up that dream.’
His eyes turned a shade darker with puzzlement, then he shrugged. ‘Sì, bellissima, perhaps you might have to.’
And right in front of the ear
ly lunch crowd, Zaccheo announced his ownership of her with a long, deep kiss.
* * *
Eva could barely hear herself think above the excited buzz in Siren’s VIP lounge as she cued the next song.
She was sure the unusually large Monday night crowd had nothing to with Ziggy Preston, the famous record producer who’d been coming to watch her perform on and off for the past month, and everything to do with the pictures that had appeared in the early-evening paper of her kissing Zaccheo outside his office this afternoon. Avoiding the news had been difficult, seeing as that kiss and a large-scale picture of her engagement ring had made front-page news.
One picture had held the caption ‘Three Ring Circus’—with photos of her three engagement rings and a pointed question as to her motives.
It’d been a relief to leave Zaccheo’s penthouse, switch off her phone and immerse herself in work. Not least because blanking her mind stopped her from thinking about the last clause in the prenup, and the reawakened agony she’d kept buried since her doctor had delivered the harrowing news six years ago. News she’d only revealed twice, with devastating consequences.
She almost wished she could blurt it out to Zaccheo and let the revelation achieve what it had in the past—a swift about-face from keen interest to cold dismissal, with one recipient informing her, in the most callous terms, that he could never accept her as a full woman.
Pain flared wider, threatening the foundations she’d built to protect herself from that stark truth. Foundations Zaccheo threatened.
She clutched the mic and forced back the black chasm that swirled with desolation. Her accompanying pianist nodded and she cleared her throat, ready to sing the ballad that ironically exhorted her to be brave.
She was halfway through the song when he walked in. As usual, the sight of him sent a tidal wave of awareness through her body and she managed to stop herself from stumbling by the skin of her teeth. Heads turned and the buzz in the room grew louder.
Zaccheo’s eyes raked her from head to toe before settling on her face. A table miraculously emptied in front of the stage. Someone took his overcoat and Eva watched him release the single button to his dinner jacket before pulling out a chair and seating himself at the roped-off table before her.
The sense of déjà vu was so overwhelming, she wanted to abandon the song and flee from the stage. She finished, she smiled and accepted the applause, then made her way to where he pointedly held out a chair for her.
‘What are you doing here?’ she whispered fiercely.
He took his time to answer, choosing instead to pull her close and place a kiss on each cheek before drawing back to stare at her.
‘You couldn’t make dinner, so I brought dinner to you.’
‘You really shouldn’t have,’ she replied, fighting the urge to rub her cheeks where his lips had been. ‘Besides, I can’t. My break is only twenty minutes.’
‘Tonight your break is an hour, as it will be every night I choose to dine with you here instead of at our home. Now sit down and smile, mio piccolo uccello che canta, and pretend to our avid audience that you’re ecstatically happy to see your fiancé,’ he said with a tone edged in steel.
CHAPTER NINE
ZACCHEO WATCHED MYRIAD expressions chase across her face. Rebellion. Irritation. Sexual awareness. A touch of embarrassment when someone shouted their appreciation of her singing from across the room. One glance from Zaccheo silenced that inebriated guest.
But it was the shadows that lurked in her eyes that made his jaw clench. All day, through the heady challenge of getting back into the swing of business life, that look in her eyes when she’d seen his last clause in the prenuptial agreement had played on his mind. Not enough to disrupt his day, but enough for him to keep replaying the scene. Her reaction had been extreme and almost...distressed.
Yes, it bothered him that she saw making a family with him abhorrent, even though he’d known going in that, had she been given a choice, Eva would’ve chosen someone else, someone more worthy to father her children. Nevertheless, her reaction had struck hard in a place he’d thought was no longer capable of feeling hurt.
The feeling had festered, like a burr under his skin, eating away at him as the day had progressed. Until he’d abruptly ended a videoconference and walked out of his office.
He’d intended to return home and help himself to fine whisky in a toast to striking the first blow in ending Oscar Pennington’s existence. Instead he’d found himself swapping his business suit for a dinner jacket and striding back out of his penthouse.
The woman who’d occupied far too much of his thoughts today swayed to her seat and sat down. The pounding in his blood that had never quite subsided after that kiss in his boardroom, and increased the moment he’d entered the VIP room and heard her singing, accelerated when his gaze dropped to her scarlet-painted lips.
Before he’d met Eva Pennington, Zaccheo had never labelled himself a possessive guy. Although he enjoyed the thrill of the chase and inevitable capture, he’d been equally thrilled to see the back of the women he’d dated, especially when the clinginess had begun.
With Eva, he’d experienced an unprecedented and very caveman-like urge to claim her, to make sure every man within striking distance knew she belonged to him. And only him. That feeling was as unsettling as it was hard to eradicate. It wasn’t helped when she toyed with her champagne glass and avoided eye contact.
‘I don’t appreciate you messing with my schedule behind my back, Zaccheo,’ she said.
He wasn’t sure why the sound of his name on her lips further spiked his libido, but he wanted to hear it again. He wanted to hear it fall from her lips in the throes of passion, as he took her to the heights of ecstasy.
Dio, he was losing it. Losing sight of his objective. Which was to make sure she understood that he intended to give no quarter in making her his.
He took a bracing sip of champagne and nodded to the hovering waiters ready to serve the meal he’d ordered.
‘It was dinner here or summoning you back to the penthouse. You should be thanking me for bending like this.’
She glared. ‘You really are a great loss to the Dark Ages, you know that?’
‘In time you’ll learn that I always get my way, Eva. Always.’
Her eyes met his and that intense, inexplicable connection that had throbbed between them right from the very start pulled, tightened.
‘Did it even occur to you that I may have said yes if you’d asked me to have dinner with you?’
Surprise flared through him, and he found himself asking, ‘Would you?’
She shrugged. ‘I guess you’ll never know. We need to discuss the prenup,’ she said.
He knew instinctively that she was about to refuse him again. A different sort of heat bloomed in his chest. ‘This isn’t the time or place.’
‘I don’t...’ She paused when the waiters arrived at the table with their first course. As if recalling where they were, she glanced round, took a deep breath, and leaned forward. ‘I won’t sign it.’
Won’t, not can’t, as she’d said before.
Bitterness surged through his veins. ‘Because the thought of my seed growing inside you fills you with horror?’
Her fingers convulsed around her knife, but, true to her breeding, she directed it to her plate with understated elegance to cut her steak.
‘Why would you want me as the mother of your children, anyway? I would’ve thought you’d want to spare yourself such a vivid reminder of what you’ve been through.’
‘Perhaps I’m the one to give the Pennington name the integrity it’s been so sorely lacking thus far.’
She paled, and he cursed himself for pursuing a subject that was better off discussed in private. Although he’d made sure their table was roped off and their conversation couldn’t b
e overheard, there was still more than enough interest in them for each expression flitting across Eva’s face to be captured and assessed.
‘So we’re your personal crusade?’ she asked, a brittle smile appearing on her face as she acknowledged someone over his shoulder.
‘Let’s call it more of an experiment.’
Her colour rose with the passionate fury that intrigued him. ‘You’d father children based on an experiment? After what you’ve been through...what we’ve both been through, you think that’s fair to the children you intend to have to be used solely as a means for you to prove a point?’ Her voice was ragged and he tensed.
‘Eva—’
‘No, I won’t be a part of it!’ Her whisper was fierce. ‘My mother may have loved me in her own way, but I was still the tool she used against my father when it suited her. If my grades happened to be better than Sophie’s, she would imply my father was lacking in some way. And believe me, my father didn’t pull his punches when the situation was reversed.’ She swallowed and raised bruised eyes to his. ‘Even if I cou—wanted to why would I knowingly subject another child to what I went through? Why would I give you a child simply to use to prove a point?’
‘You mistake my meaning. I don’t intend to fail my children or use them as pawns. I intend to be there for them through thick and thin, unlike my parents were for me.’ He stopped when her eyes widened. ‘Does that surprise you?’
‘I... Yes.’
He shrugged, even though it occurred to him that he’d let his guard down more with her than he ever had with anyone. But she had no power to hurt him. She’d already rejected him once. This time he knew the lay of the land going in. So it didn’t matter if she knew his parental ambitions for the children they’d have.
‘My children will be my priority, although I’ll be interested to see how your family fares with being shown that things can be done differently. The right way.’
He watched her digest his response, watched the shadows he was beginning to detest mount in her eyes. He decided against probing further. There’d been enough turbulent emotions today. He suspected there would be further fireworks when she found out the new business negotiations he’d commenced this afternoon.
