In a sudden movement, Zac tore himself free, breathing heavily and raking a hand roughly through his tousled hair as he sprang upright again. ‘So, why do you lie about how I make you feel? What’s your game?’ he demanded rawly.
‘G-Game?’ she stammered blankly, focusing on the prominent bulge at his denim-clad groin, and then on the stray black hairs still caught between her greedily clutching fingertips.
‘Your agenda, because obviously there is one,’ Zac bit out. ‘Evidently it’s not money.’
‘No, it’s not,’ she agreed, stricken, hastily unfolding her legs and sliding upright on knees that wobbled because sheer shock was still rocking her. Shock that he could make her feel like that and that he should be the one with sufficient control to back off, not her, as it should have been in all fairness, she acknowledged guiltily. ‘I don’t have an agenda, Zac.’
Zac shot her a chillingly angry appraisal. ‘Oh, I think you do. I think you’re one of those archaic women who thinks the longer she says no, the keener I’ll become!’ he spelt out with derision, thinking of how she had become rather more encouraging since she had learned that he owned the hotel that employed her. ‘That doesn’t work for me. I don’t do keen with women.’
‘I didn’t think you did,’ Freddie told him, lifting her chin in a defiant signal of intent that Zac was unaccustomed to receiving from a woman. ‘I’ve known from the start that all you want is a one-night stand and I certainly wouldn’t waste my time or yours playing games with you. I don’t want or need a man in my life right now but I don’t mind admitting...just so you can see how very unsuited we are...that I would want more caring and commitment than a one-night stand. So, anyway, thanks for the evening out and the food.’
And with that, Freddie sidestepped him and stalked out of the door in high dudgeon.
Her eyes were stinging with tears and she furiously dashed them away in the lift. He had only confirmed what she had already guessed about the level of his interest and it was at rock-bottom level: sex. Talking about caring and commitment to a guy like that was undignified and humiliating, she censured herself angrily. Why had she bothered saying those stupid things? You couldn’t ask or magically wish into being what wasn’t being offered and Zac wasn’t chasing a waitress for anything more lasting than a spirited toss between the sheets. Of course, there was also his crazy wager, which his stupid brother had involved her in by choosing her as the target of a bad joke. The royal brother had seen her hostility towards Zac and had known it would be a very tall order for Zac to bring her to the ball acting ‘lovelorn’. Lovelorn, what a very outdated word, she thought wearily as she climbed on a bus home, planning the little white lie she would give Claire and certainly not the unlovely truth that she wasn’t prepared to be quite as much fun as other young women her age.
Should she have considered a one-night stand? No, no, where was her brain travelling now? Yes, she had been very attracted to him but not enough to ditch long-held convictions. She would have felt used and foolish if she had slept with him; she also would have wanted more from him than he was prepared to give and that would have hurt her. And she might already be feeling hurt, but she rather suspected she would have felt even worse had she become intimate with Zac and then had to serve drinks to his next casual lover. It was better to play safe, she reasoned, wiser to stand by her beliefs and stay on an even keel.
When she got home, Claire was out and a babysitter was installed. Just managing to pay the babysitter with what she had in her purse, she was too restless to slide into bed and go straight to sleep the way she always did. Instead she went browsing on her aunt’s laptop, snooping online to satisfy the curiosity that Zac had aroused. That exercise piled shock on shock! The Quintal da Rocha diamond mines in Russia and South Africa belonged to Zac and his brother was a Crown Prince. She recalled the diamond studs in one of his ears and his charismatic confidence and slowly marvelled that she had simply not worked out for herself that Zac’s striking level of blazing assurance was only innate in someone of wealth.
Yet she, biased as she was against men, had immediately assumed he was some sort of chancer up to no good when she’d first seen him, she conceded ruefully, condemning him on the slender facts that he was breathtakingly good-looking and bold because Lauren’s vicious boyfriend, Cruz, had had rather similar characteristics. Annoyed by her misconceptions and even more annoyed by the unhappiness dogging her, she forced herself to go to bed. Her sole consolation was that Zac would surely soon be off on his travels again to attend his royal brother’s ball. She had satisfied almost all her curiosity with a series of searches. But she also knew that she would find it easier to get back to normal if Zac left the hotel for a while...or stopped using the hotel bar.
* * *
When Freddie walked out on him, Zac punched the wall with so much force that blood dripped down it and then he swore in every language he knew even though he knew that on one level she was right and there was no way on earth they could meld their respective wants and wishes. Caring? Commitment? Zac very nearly shuddered with distaste at the concept. He didn’t know how to do either and he had no desire to learn. As he was, he was free as a bird and he had no plans to change that pleasurable state, certainly not for a woman. Women were always available, tall, short, curvy, thin—he wasn’t particular. At least he hadn’t been until he had met her. He would get drunk and wash her out of his mind, he decided with grim determination.
What he could not understand was what he had found so attractive about her in the first place! Possibly a man reached a certain age and was programmed to crave a different kind of woman. Maybe it could even be his father’s genes at play. Charles Russell was certainly a man who liked to settle down with women in committed relationships. He had freely admitted that he would have married Zac’s mother if he had got the chance and was currently seriously spending time with Angel’s very glam grandma-in-law, Sybil.
Zac shook his head in bewildered anger while arrogantly marvelling at Freddie’s resistance to him. Then he found himself wondering abstractedly if anyone would ever take the time to read Eloise that dragon story and, with another curse word of finality, rolled his eyes heavenward and consigned the whole Freddie debacle to history and oblivion. He would attend the ball alone...so what? No big deal, was it? He liked being alone; he preferred his own company.
CHAPTER FOUR
ONLY TWO DAYS LATER, Freddie’s whole world imploded.
‘I did warn you last year that I wouldn’t do this for ever,’ Claire reminded the younger woman briskly, having announced her imminent plans to move to Spain with her boyfriend. ‘I’ve already given social services a month’s notice, so they’ll be looking for a new foster home for Eloise and Jack...although I got the impression they’re actually hoping to put them up for adoption now. Cruz finally acknowledged paternity and signed off any interest in them. Oh, Freddie, for heaven’s sake, don’t look at me like I’m a monster!’
Freddie was trembling and biting her lip hard, determined not to vent any of the very emotional feelings flying through her head and brimming on her lips. ‘I’m not. I’m shocked, that’s all, but you did warn me before we got the kids,’ she conceded, striving to be fair. ‘It’s just I thought our arrangement would last a bit longer—’
‘And maybe it would’ve done if I hadn’t met Richard,’ Claire cut in with a grimace. ‘I was in a bad place when I agreed to take on the kids with you but now my life’s opening up again. Richard will be the chef in his parents’ restaurant and I’ll work front of house. We’re getting the little apartment above the restaurant to live in...it’s nothing fancy but it’ll do us fine and it will be a fresh start for me.’
Freddie tried very hard not to be selfish and not to surrender to a heart that felt as if it were being torn apart inside her. When she had begun living with Claire, Claire had been getting over a broken engagement and she had been unemployed. Fostering the children had suited the brunette back then, giving her the breathing space she had n
eeded to rethink her future, and then Richard had entered her life.
‘Yes,’ Freddie agreed, struggling to block out the upsetting images of Eloise’s and Jack’s distress at being parted from her, because they had never lived without her in their lives. It would be her job to try and prepare the children for the changes ahead, she warned herself sternly, her role to ensure that any move went as smoothly as possible.
Claire planted her hand firmly on the back of her niece’s tautly spread fingers. ‘They’re not our kids, Freddie.’
‘But they feel like it.’ Tears were openly swimming in Freddie’s eyes.
‘To you, not to me, I’m afraid.’ Claire sighed. ‘They’re Lauren’s kids. She chose to have them.’
‘I don’t think she chose anything,’ Freddie protested.
‘She was an addict. She made her mistakes and I don’t feel the need to make sacrifices in her memory and neither should you,’ Claire emphasised stridently. ‘Haven’t you already given up enough for those kids? OK...grieve, but let them go and live your own life now.’
‘That’s the problem. I don’t want to let them go!’ Freddie sobbed helplessly. ‘I love them like they’re my own!’
‘But they’re not yours or mine,’ Claire reminded her single-mindedly. ‘I don’t even know yet if I want to have children! Why aren’t you thinking about how Lauren’s lifestyle destroyed yours? You should’ve gone to university, should’ve let her go but instead you hung in there trying to save someone who refused to be saved.’
‘I know... I know,’ Freddie gasped in grudging acknowledgement and sniffed into the tissue she had grabbed, struggling to master her turbulent emotions, for Claire’s reminder had roused deep sadness for the once loving sister she had lost. ‘But I couldn’t turn my back on Eloise.’
‘You’ll have to learn how to step back now,’ the brunette pointed out with the coolness of her pragmatic temperament. ‘Let them go, Freddie, and move on with your own life like I’m doing.’
* * *
The day he got back from Lerovia, Zac wasn’t looking for Freddie but he inevitably noticed her the instant she came on shift, walking strangely slowly, seemingly drained of her usual energy. He lounged back fluidly in his chair on the terrace, reminding himself that he no longer had an interest there. He watched while she took an order from a table of drunken men, city types, sharply suited, arrogantly convinced of their right to torment the cute little waitress with catcalls and comments. She kept her head down, doing her job by rote, her delicate profile set.
But when she returned with the tray, the guy on the outside seat ran his hand up the back of her slender thigh, fingers sidling up under the hem of her shorts. Zac stiffened, long, powerful thighs bracing. She stepped back, saying something, and the hand fell back; however, as she served the rest of the drinks the guy simply grabbed her, dragging her down onto his lap by force. Zac exploded out of his seat like a volcano. He was well aware that uninvited physical contact plunged Freddie into panic mode.
Freddie froze, trying to stay calm, recognising that the guy who had grabbed her was simply showing off, potentially not meaning any actual harm. And then suddenly she was plucked off the guy and set aside and her assailant was airborne, being shaken by someone much larger as a terrier shook a rat. And the customer was not a small man, yet he was being held off his feet and controlled like a dangling puppet and there were fear and consternation in his red sweaty face, his brash smart comments dying an immediate death.
‘Let him down,’ Freddie told Zac in shock once she realised who had stepped in to rescue her.
But sheer outrage had flushed Zac’s perfect features, his light eyes bright as a silver sword blade in the dimness of the bar, his rage at the man’s behaviour unconcealed.
‘The waitress is here to bring you drinks, nothing else,’ Zac informed the offending customer in a raw controlled undertone. ‘You don’t get to touch. She’s not for sale like the drinks.’
‘Put him down,’ Freddie urged again, shaken by Zac’s wrathful intervention and embarrassed by all the attention now coming their way, not to mention the bar manager and the burly bouncer now approaching them, eager to avoid an incident.
‘If that’s what you want,’ Zac drawled grudgingly, slowly lowering the guy to the ground again.
‘It is. Thanks,’ Freddie proffered uneasily, keen to dial the tone down because Zac had looked as if he wanted to do a lot more than hold the guy in the air. Zac had looked as though he wanted to punch him and was barely restraining the urge to do so.
Zac stared down at her, noticing that her eyes were swollen and red rimmed. ‘Bring me an espresso,’ he told her casually, ‘and whatever you want for yourself, and then you’ll join me for a break.’
‘It’s not time for me to have a break.’
‘It is now,’ Zac told her without skipping a beat, pulling out the I’m-the-boss card without an ounce of self-consciousness, his assurance absolute.
Freddie duly collected two coffees from the bar and walked out onto the terrace into the bright sunlight to carry her tray to Zac’s corner table. He ranged back in his seat like a panther forced into a reluctant retreat, luxuriant black hair feathering round his breathtakingly handsome bronzed features, only accentuating silvery pale blue eyes laced with lancing enquiry.
‘What’s wrong with you?’ he demanded of her, because she looked as though a light had gone off inside her.
‘There’s nothing wrong,’ she told him evasively.
Zac widened his stunning ebony-lashed eyes in scornful disagreement. ‘Do I look that stupid?’ he traded drily. ‘Sit down and tell me what’s happened.’
Freddie settled down into the seat opposite, her limbs heavy and clumsy to do her bidding because sleepless nights extracted a cost. ‘I’m losing the kids,’ she admitted with gruff abruptness. ‘It’s...painful...’
‘Eloise and Jack? How can you lose them?’ Zac questioned with a frown.
And she explained in as few words as possible about Claire and Richard’s plans and shared the insights gained from her own general enquiries with the social services earlier that same day. ‘I haven’t got enough to offer...to foster or adopt them,’ she admitted in pained conclusion. ‘I’m only twenty-two, without a reliable income or a settled home. I can’t offer them a mother and a father, so I wouldn’t be a serious contender if they’re putting my niece and nephew up for adoption.’
Zac breathed in deep, fascinated by her sudden rush of candour. ‘How long have you been with them?’
Freddie’s triangular face tightened, soft mouth tightening. ‘Since they were born. My sister, Lauren, was a heroin addict. She wasn’t capable of looking after Eloise and I stayed with her because someone had to do it.’
Zac gazed into her melted caramel eyes and dropped his scrutiny, unhappily encountering the soft pert swell of her unconfined breasts stirring as she shifted back into her seat opposite him, the light fabric of her top outlining the delectable contours of her delicate curves. He wondered how much of a bastard he was to notice her sexual allure in the middle of such a conversation but the heavy readiness at his groin was inescapable. Desire thrummed hungrily through his big powerful frame and with a very male sense of relief he celebrated the return of his libido, which had proved unsettlingly absent and inactive while he was in Lerovia. He wanted Freddie and substitutes, he had discovered, wouldn’t do, no matter how beautiful and alluring they were.
‘The children are very attached to you,’ he remarked uncomfortably, wondering why he had even encouraged such a conversation in the circumstances. ‘But perhaps two parents would be better for them than one.’
In dismay and hurt at that statement, Freddie gazed back at Zac’s lean, hard-boned face, involuntarily mesmerised by the glow of those glittering light eyes below lush black lashes, her body suddenly turned taut and growing uncomfortably hot in places she didn’t want to acknowledge. Even without trying, Zac contrived to emanate a powerful wave of electrifying sexual magnetism.
‘I had only one parent and she was mostly absent during my childhood,’ Zac divulged unexpectedly. ‘I loved her but she wasn’t up to the challenge.’
‘Oh...’ Freddie muttered awkwardly.
‘She had good intentions but she put my stepfather first and he didn’t want her to have anything to do with me because I wasn’t his child,’ Zac admitted curtly, already questioning why he was making such a personal admission. ‘Having another parent around would have been a big improvement for me while I was growing up.’
Well, that was telling her, Freddie conceded unhappily, wishing the dialogue had gone another way so that she wouldn’t have to feel that her powerful need to hang onto her sister’s children was an entirely selfish urge. Zac quite clearly did believe that, if there was a choice, two parents would invariably be preferable to one.
‘When do you have to give them up?’ Zac prompted quietly.
Freddie lost colour and gave him a speaking look of reproach, her eyes burning with tears. ‘The end of the month, before Claire leaves the UK. They’ll go into foster care initially, unless the authorities identify a potential adoptive couple beforehand,’ she told him painfully. ‘And perhaps they will because they’re attractive children, young enough to become part of a new family. It’s probably horribly selfish of me to want to keep them with me when I don’t have much to offer in terms of material things.’
Zac studied her swimming eyes and grimaced, feeling guilty without reason. ‘You love them.’
‘But, unfortunately, my love doesn’t have a value in the same way because Eloise and Jack are still young enough to forget me and learn to love other people.’ Freddie sighed in grudging acknowledgement of that reality. ‘I would have to be contributing a lot more...and I don’t have more yet there’s nothing I wouldn’t do to keep them!’