Though he suspected even that had more to do with the death of her mother—grief propelling her to such an emotional act of rebellion—than the fact that she had truly loved him.
She’d been right when she’d told him that she thought they had been more in love with the idea of each other, than they had truly been in love with the people they were.
‘Can we show Seth how to rig the boat again?’
Robbie’s excited voice penetrated Zeke’s thoughts. Both boys were standing, excited and expectant, in front of him.
‘Please, Zeke?’ Seth urged, and Zeke wasn’t prepared for the longing he felt to hear his son call him Daddy.
His son. It was a transformative feeling, this rush of...pride and...love, which poured through him, like nothing he’d ever known before.
‘Sure.’ Zeke laughed, glad of the distraction. ‘Why not?’
* * *
It was a good hour before Zeke looked for Tia again. His pulse momentarily accelerated when she wasn’t where he’d last seen her—of course she wasn’t. Scanning the area, Zeke could only come up empty. She must have gone home without him.
It was ludicrous how let down that made him feel.
He moved around the harbour, interacting with all the kids as he would normally do, Seth and Robbie proudly flanking either side of him. But knowing that Tia had been here and was now gone dampened his mood in a way it surely had no business doing.
He shouldn’t expect her to stay; they weren’t a family. He didn’t know how to be a father. He had hardly had a shining example to follow. But he wanted it. He thought he could learn it. Tia might not agree.
The fear clenched at him more than he could have believed possible. A red-hot poker to his belly.
It was only as he crossed the road bridge to the other side that he caught sight of Netty’s bobbing head. He had no idea how he managed to make his voice light and easy.
‘Have you seen Tia?’
‘Hey, boys.’ Netty smiled happily. ‘I see Robbie and Seth have been having the best time with you, Zeke, so Tia went home. Apparently you have some gala to go to tonight?’
‘She left?’ He heard the flat tone to his voice, but Netty didn’t seem to notice.
‘Yeah, she figured Seth was safe with his dad, so she told me she was going to get a shower and get ready.’
‘Right.’ He nodded on autopilot.
Tia had told Netty that he was Seth’s father? It was the first time that she’d told anyone, as far as he knew. His heart thundered in his chest.
‘Thanks, Netty.’ He reached out for Seth, the little boy confidently gripping his hand.
Father and son.
‘Bye, Zeke,’ Robbie chanted happily before turning to his mum, chattering nineteen to the dozen.
Leaving Seth and Zeke to return to the chateau.
Home.
* * *
Nothing had quite prepared Tia for the almost overwhelming barrage of yelled questions, cameras shoved in her face, and flashbulbs going off blindingly in their eyes, right from the moment they stepped out of their limousine. She might have known the men of the local chateau would be minor celebrities out here. Especially when they looked like Ezekial Jackson and William Zane.
In spite of a whole week of coaching herself to keep her distance from her estranged husband, she plastered a tight, bright smile to her lips and took comfort from the heat of Zeke’s steely body pressed against hers, as she gripped his arm tightly. As if she would never let go.
As if she never wanted to.
Even her body, it seemed, had never been more aware of just how close they were walking. Her pulse tapping out a message, like a Morse code warning. Her radial, her carotid, her femoral. Growing ever more intimate—just as Zeke himself might have managed.
‘Just a few more steps.’ His deep voice suddenly vibrated sensuously against the skin just in front of her tragus as he leaned down close—perhaps too close—to conceal his words from the plethora of mics and cameras. ‘You’re doing just fine.’
He shouldn’t know her, be able to read her, so damned easily.
‘Why wouldn’t I be?’ Somehow, she managed to up the wattage of her public smile, even as she muttered out a response through her teeth.
When he dipped his head towards her again, amusement threaded through his tone, it was all she could do to supress the delicious shiver that chased right through her.
‘Of course, my mistake. Antonia Farringdale is never thrown.’
‘It’s just a ball.’ She had never been so glad to reach the end of a carpet and step through doors that finally, mercifully, restored a degree of anonymity from the press on the other side. ‘A party by any other name.’
She braced herself, waiting for Zeke to throw back the fact that they had never really attended parties, balls, or even merely nightclubs together.
Ever.
Not as the young, fresh-faced new Royal Marine and his young, university-bound bride. And not as the battle-hardened, secretive SBS and black ops specialist and his second-in-her-class, rising star of an army trauma doctor wife.
They hadn’t had time for partying. Any more than they’d had the contacts for social networking. And she’d never once lamented that fact.
Until now.
Standing, suddenly frozen, on the inside of the huge doors, Tia surveyed the scene in front of her. It was like something out of a fairy tale, either animated or acted, it made little difference. It was breathtaking, spellbinding.
Everything and everyone glittered, from the stunning gowns to the tinkling laughter, as though magic had been sprinkled all over. The whole place seemed brighter than reality, more resonant. The colours richer.
And something permeated Tia in that instant. She felt abruptly supercharged. Even the music seemed to slink across the floor all the way from the ballroom, winding itself around her feet first, insinuating its way up her body, until her blood was pumping to the same, compelling rhythm.
* * *
‘Dance with me.’
She shook her head instinctively, although the temptation to acquiesce was almost suffocating.
‘It wasn’t a question,’ he censured gently.
But the arm he moved around her waist was less gentle, compelling her to move, to stay by his side as he led them, without another word of objection from her, the length of the hall and around the marble pillars to the ballroom itself.
‘I don’t know how to dance,’ she murmured, even as she walked with him.
‘You’ll remember. You once told me that you used to dance with your father at Christmas events.’
His voice was even, giving nothing away. Panic began to rise inside her.
‘The Zeke I knew didn’t know how to dance.’
‘Now I do.’ He shrugged. ‘So I guess all you really need to do is follow.’
And then they were on the floor with his one arm circling her waist, his other hand tucking one of her arms to his chest, drawing her to him, and then there was a jolt and everything...changed.
Tia couldn’t move, could hardly even breathe. It took her the longest time to realise that the jolt hadn’t been the room, but merely some forgotten, aged electricity that had arced between the two of them.
People were dancing, spinning around them like the multicoloured horses, helicopters and fire engines on the merry-go-round Seth had loved to play on at the park in the last town where they’d lived.
But it was as if she and Zeke were in their own little bubble, right in the centre of them. Staring at each other as if neither of them could work out if they were in their past or their present.
‘Are you going to put your other hand on me?’ he asked dryly, but there was a rasp to his voice that hadn’t been there a few moments ago. ‘Or do you intend to dance with your arm dangling awkwardly by your side?’
; She didn’t answer. She couldn’t. She merely lifted her leaden arm and, somehow, placed it on his shoulder.
Even so, it felt surreal when he began moving, leading her smoothly, and she began to follow. As though they had done it a hundred times in the past when the truth was they’d never once danced a ballroom dance together in all their years as a couple.
‘Like the waltz we never had,’ he muttered unexpectedly in her ear.
‘At the wedding celebration that was never ours? We didn’t even have a wedding breakfast.’
The words were out before she could swallow them back.
‘That’s because we had no friends and family to share it with.’ His voice lacked any kind of emotion. ‘Anyway, we had lunch at the nearest country pub we could find.’ He shrugged. ‘It was better than burger and fries at the nearest fast-food joint.’
‘What the hell were we thinking?’ she whispered.
‘We weren’t,’ Zeke answered simply. ‘You were rebelling against your father and all his rigid rules. I thought if I had something—someone—back home waiting for me then it meant I would have something to anchor me and keep me safe on every mission.’
It didn’t surprise her at all that Zeke never once used the word love. So why did it leave her feeling so raw inside? So scraped out.
Perhaps because the truth was, despite his belief to the contrary, she hadn’t married him out of some misplaced sense of rebellion. She had married Zeke because she’d loved him. The only man she had ever loved.
Maybe, shamefully, still loved, if she was going to be truly honest with herself.
‘We were young,’ she managed at last, an attempt at an excuse, which she might not like but was infinitely less painful than the contempt and regret with which he seemed to view their marriage.
‘Worse. We were idiots,’ Zeke ground out furiously. ‘You were right that we were selfish and, because of it, you and your father fell out. I pushed you away. But even more unacceptable of all, our son has been fatherless for his entire life.’
She glanced at him, making no attempt to conceal her shocked expression.
‘Is that an apology?’ she asked at length.
Zeke gritted his teeth. It had always been a standing joke between them that he hated making apologies. He wondered if she’d ever known it was because growing up his father had beat him until he’d apologised for everything. From the lack of food to the fact it was raining on a day his old man had wanted to walk down to the pub.
‘It was an observation,’ he hedged after the silence got to him.
‘It sounded like an apology to me,’ Tia muttered, but he could hear the soft smile in her voice. Could imagine the gentle curve of her sensuous mouth.
He locked his jaw even tighter.
‘Take it, then. It’s the closest you’re going to get to one.’
‘Then it will have to do. For now.’
It was too revealing. Too intimate. Yet, Zeke still didn’t let her go.
If anything, he crushed her all the more tightly until it was almost painful, although she didn’t think he was even aware of it. And, perversely, she didn’t say anything, as though the pain could numb some of the guilt she’d felt, for too many years.
Irrationally, her eyes began to prickle and Tia dropped her head to Zeke’s shoulder before he could see them.
He tensed for a second, but his steps didn’t falter, and then they were whirling across the floor together. As a Tia and Zeke from a different life—a parallel universe—might have done.
As though, if they kept spinning and swirling fast enough, hard enough, long enough, they could spin themselves a new history. A different story. It was inevitable that the moment would end. With all the ceremony of a bubble bursting.
‘There’s the mayor, Jean-Michel Deram. I have to find Zane—we need to put our case forward now.’
She tried not to read too much into the fact that Zeke actually looked regretful to be leaving her. As though he was enjoying this moment between them as much as she was.
Or was she just being fanciful?
‘Shall I come with you? Perhaps turning on a little feminine charm would help to lighten the situation, so he doesn’t feel ambushed.’
‘I’m fairly certain that in Jean-Michel’s world he is accustomed to being ambushed, as you call it. But yes, you should come. Thank you.’
And when he looked at her like that—as though they were finally back on the same side when she couldn’t remember how they’d got onto opposing sides—she felt as though she were invincible. Just as she had over a decade ago.
CHAPTER TEN
IT WAS ALMOST impossible to keep his mind on business when Tia was sparkling and glowing like that, Zeke realised half an hour later. When he wasn’t sure he could recall a single thing he’d uttered since they’d come off the dance floor to put Z-Black’s case to Jean-Michel.
She’d known when to hold back when the conversation had flowed, and had instinctively lightened the conversation on the few occasions it had threatened to degenerate into an argument between passion and bureaucracy. All the while keeping them on point, finding a softer way to reiterate whatever point he and Zane had been trying to make a little too forcefully.
Every smile and laugh from Tia seemed to weave a magic spell over their company. She shimmered. And he had been wholly unable to drag his gaze away from her. Even when she had excused herself from the negotiations, Zeke had found he was only listening to Jean-Michel with one ear. The other listening out for Tia’s tinkling laughter.
He was constantly seeking her out as she moved gracefully through the room, her less than perfect French and evident English accent only appearing to delight the company all the more.
It had started from the moment she’d positively floated down the stairs at the chateau, poured into a dress that was both modest and which made his body tighten so painfully that he wanted to throw her over his shoulder, carry her upstairs to his suite and rip every last shred of material off that sensuous body of hers.
It had continued when they’d been in his expansive four-by-four, which had felt altogether too cramped and suffocating, as the back seat of the car had thrown up all manner of salacious memories from their early marriage that he would do better to forget.
Dancing with her had been a mistake. It had left him hyper-aware of her, and too distracted to focus on the reason he’d even come to this infernal ball in the first instance.
Tia, however, despite her earlier declarations of hating galas and balls, appeared to be the social butterfly of the night. Watching her was mesmerising.
Occasionally a man had got too close, too hands-on, and Zeke had barely been able to stop himself from asserting himself.
But Tia wouldn’t have thanked him for his interference. He could almost hear her voice in his head reminding him that she was perfectly capable of looking after herself.
Only he didn’t want her to have to.
And then, suddenly, she turned and smiled at him from across the floor. A dazzling, arresting smile that stopped his heart in an instant. Before he could process what she was doing, she had ducked away from the pawing man, and adhered herself to Zeke’s side.
He tried not to let his body react. Fighting the instinct to place a possessive arm around her shoulders. It wasn’t him she wanted, it was merely his physical protection from her unwanted suitor.
And then, despite his self-cautions, as the man followed her, clearly not taking the hint, Zeke set his glass down and very slowly, very deliberately, set himself between Tia and her harasser.
He had the sense that half the room was watching avidly, but the man’s eyes were still fixed covetously, drunkenly, on Tia and he almost didn’t even notice Zeke’s unspoken warning.
Almost.
Belatedly, his eyes crossed, and then he jerked his head back as he tried to look up w
ithout stumbling backwards.
Zeke crossed his arms over his chest, knowing it made him look all the more imposing. Finally, the man conceded defeat and, spinning around, marched in a not quite straight line in the opposite direction.
For a moment, Zeke watched him go, and then he turned to his wife, and held out his hand and hoped for her sake that she had the good sense not to object.
In his heart she was still his. His. There would never be anyone else for him and, whilst she was with him at this chateau, there could never be anyone else for her.
He couldn’t have borne it.
It was weak, and shameful, but he couldn’t let her go and he couldn’t empty his mind of her since that moment back in her consultation room.
Actually, he had never been able to empty his mind of her since he’d turned up for his first day as a lifeguard only to see her scrubbing down the fibreglass sailboats in those little denim shorts and bikini top she’d favoured all those years ago.
Oh, he’d pretended that he’d got over her—even to himself—but he was beginning to realise just how much of a hopeless lie that had been.
And now here she was again, daring him to be his own undoing. Making him walk away from the mayor of the town where his livelihood was based—millionaire or not.
Just to be with her.
‘So, shall we finish that dance?’
Her whole body might as well have been on fire, the way that Zeke was looking at her. So directly. As though he was seeing her for who she was—and who she used to be—rather than as the doctor who had done a terrible thing to him.
It was a heady experience, crowding in on her and making her feel naked and vulnerable in front of him. Despite everyone else in the room. As though he owned her, body and soul.
Or perhaps that was just the wanton side of her. The one that Zeke—and only Zeke—had always brought out in her. They had been getting so close these last few weeks, almost like they had once been, maybe it was just inevitable.
Her pulse beat out a rapid tattoo onto her skin, as though trying to warn her not to be so naïve. He wanted his son, and keeping her close, keeping her amenable, was a perfect tactic. And Zeke was nothing if not a tactician; his military training had taught him that much. Always thinking three moves ahead.
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