The Baby Secret

'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.'