скачать книгу бесплатно
‘Twenty-eight.’
‘Really?’ Her wondering gaze grew even wider. ‘Maybe it’s a boy thing, but I just can’t imagine making such a crazy bet and risking losing something I valued out of pride.’
His nostrils flaring, Zac computed that far from complimentary comment and drew in a long steadying breath before continuing, ‘Vitale was the guy I was with the day you had your...episode,’ he selected finally, shooting her a sidewise glance.
‘Oh, you mean when I screamed and shouted at you?’ Freddie translated with unexpected amusement. ‘Yeah, it was a rough day after too many rough days in a row...sorry about that. So, your brother was the nice guy?’
Zac jerked his chin in affirmation even while his temper rocketed at that unjust designation being bestowed on Vitale. What was so bloody nice about Vitale? His half-brother had hushed her like a sympathetic audience and every word he had spoken had been fake as hell! Hadn’t she realised that? Was she blind or deaf? He wasn’t fake or a smoothie like Vitale! But were those qualities what she found attractive in a man?
‘And the nice guy who was present when you broke down,’ Zac enunciated with raw precision, ‘bet me that I couldn’t bring you “all lovelorn and clingy”, as he put it, to his precious royal ball at the end of this month.’
As Eloise released Zac’s hand to race off ahead of them to the swings, Freddie stopped dead with the buggy, her face a mask of shock. ‘Me?’
‘And suitably polished up to royal standards,’ Zac said with even greater scorn.
‘I don’t do lovelorn and clingy,’ Freddie muttered blankly, still struggling simply to accept that Zac could have a brother with some sort of royal connection. ‘Are the two of you crazy competitors or something?’
‘Or something,’ Zac fielded non-committally. ‘But I’m here today because I was wondering if, for a very generous price—’
‘No,’ Freddie slotted in flatly straight away. ‘And don’t embarrass me by quoting figures! I was annoyed with you last week when you offered to pay me for an hour of my time and I wanted to teach you a lesson by landing you with me and the kids, but this paying me nonsense has to stop now.’
Zac frowned, level black brows pleating, his bewilderment patent. ‘But why?’
And he didn’t get it, he really didn’t get that it was offensive to try and buy people like products, she registered in frustration. ‘Because it’s wrong.’
His eyes were a very light, almost crystalline blue in the sunshine, she marvelled as he stared down at her, her brain momentarily a complete blank. ‘You accept my tips,’ he reminded her stubbornly.
‘Because the tips go into a communal pot for all the staff and when I turned your tip down the first time, it naturally annoyed the other wait staff,’ Freddie explained. ‘That’s why I returned and accepted it and didn’t refuse again.’
Zac was furious at the explanation and immediately resolved to change the rules in the bar, so that Freddie got to keep her own tips: her sneakers were faded and had a hole in one toe. Even the buggy was threadbare—in fact all three of them looked poverty-stricken in comparison to the children he saw around the hotel. Jack lurched out of the buggy again and headed straight for his knees and Zac let him cling, grudgingly impressed by the baby’s huge smile. Jack definitely knew how to make friends. Zac’s wide, full mouth compressed.
‘Obviously... I mean, I assume,’ Freddie stumbled, unable to read the sleek, taut lines of Zac’s darkly handsome face and trying not to offend, ‘you’re not short of money but people who are short of money have pride too.’
‘But if I’ve got it and you need it, it’s a simple exchange and not offensive,’ Zac incised with ringing, argumentative conviction.
‘I won’t take that thousand pounds under any circumstances because it is wrong and it would make me feel like a con artist! Or like a person you could buy, like a hooker or something!’ Freddie declared vehemently.
Passion fired her eyes to glowing gold, Zac noted absently, the fit of his jeans tightening as a wave of desire washed over his body. ‘But that’s not how I think of you,’ he objected in a driven tone, wondering why absolutely everything had to be so infuriatingly complicated with her and hating it. He was reminded of Vitale and all his many dos and don’ts, which prevented his half-brother from enjoying the freedom that Zac cherished.
‘How could you feel like a hooker when I haven’t even touched you?’ Zac asked thickly, thinking about touching her to such an extent that even a vacant swing was pushing him into highly inappropriate fantasies.
Freddie’s heart was hammering again. Those eyes of his filled her vision, full of glitter and a kind of wild rebellion that was strangely appealing to a young woman who always, always played safe. She so badly wanted him to understand her point of view that she wanted to shake him into properly listening, which she knew he wasn’t doing.
‘Eu quero voce...I want you,’ Zac growled in English the instant he realised what he had spoken in his own language. ‘Why is that wrong?’
‘I didn’t say it was wrong!’ Freddie gasped. ‘I said it was wrong to try and use money to tempt me.’
Zac was on firmer ground now and he extended a hand to wind long brown fingers very slowly through the fall of her hair, his every hunting instinct on high alert in an adrenalin charge beyond anything he had ever experienced. ‘But you already want me,’ he contended with devastating assurance. ‘You wanted me the first time you saw me, so why are we still arguing about it?’
And Freddie deflated as suddenly as a balloon that had had an unfortunate collision with a pin. Colour surged hotly up her face in a crimson tide. That he should know that with such appalling certainty, that he should feel in his bones what she had studiously denied even to herself, shook her rigid and utterly silenced her.
Zac tugged her closer and bent his arrogant dark head lower and lower until he finally found her mouth, where the sultry sweet taste of her released a surge of such powerful lust he trembled with it. He eased her up into his arms, ignoring Jack’s pleas to be lifted, indeed forgetting the child’s very existence.
Freddie had never ever had a kiss of that magnitude. Admittedly, life had ensured that she had not had the opportunity to have many kisses, but when she got her arms wrapped round Zac’s neck for the merest fraction of a second she felt as if she never ever wanted to let go because she felt safe, safe for the first time since she had lost her parents, safe as if nothing bad could ever happen to her again. And that unholy kiss, the passionate pressure of that wide, sensual mouth on hers, the plunge of his tongue, that tiny provocative flick he performed across the roof of her mouth... All of a sudden, Freddie wanted what she had never wanted before and she wanted it so very badly, an ache stirred between her slender thighs, heat bursting in her pelvis, her nipples tightening so hard and fast it prickled and hurt.
Zac set her down on the ground again, vindicated in his every claim, rejoicing in her responsiveness, wishing he had had the chance to demonstrate their potential chemistry when he had first met her. Showing worked better for him than telling, he acknowledged, now in a good enough mood to scoop up a red-faced, crying Jack and hold him against his shoulder to console him for being ignored.
Freddie almost fell over when Zac returned her to earth. She was dizzy, disorientated, her brain refusing to function, her legs wobbling while her mouth felt swollen and hot. Her hands clenched into fists because she wanted to hit Zac for that lethal demonstration of power over her. Her pride was stung, her heart was still racing and for one unforgivable instant she had forgotten the children. Eloise was shouting to be pushed on the swing and Jack? Jack, astonishingly, she registered, was in Zac’s arms, his little head laid down trustingly on Zac’s shoulder as the need for his morning nap overcame his little body. Since Freddie could not think of a single thing to say, she rushed over to push her niece on the swing, leaving Zac standing.
Zac scanned her stiff and flushed little face with growing annoyance. What was wrong with her now? This was why he didn’t date, didn’t chase women, didn’t ever make an effort. He thought about planting Jack back in the buggy and strapping him in and leaving, but Jack was clutching his jacket in one hand and emanating a rather endearing little snore of contentment, a contentment that would be shattered by any sudden movement. It would be good practice for him when he became a father some day, he told himself begrudgingly. His own child might be horrible; at least Jack was smiley with relatively simple needs.
Eloise, though, would be more demanding, he recognised as the little girl called for him to push her instead of her aunt and he studiously ignored the invite. And then the oddest memory occurred to him, a very early one as he cried for his mother’s attention and failed to receive it. Before he knew what he was doing, Zac had stalked over to the swings, passed Jack over to Freddie, who was still acting like a frozen popsicle, and he had taken over pushing the swing. Sometimes children should get what they wanted, he decided generously. Just because he hadn’t didn’t mean others should be disappointed too.
Freddie defrosted while Zac pushed Eloise because he was being so unexpectedly helpful and it was very immature to want to punish him for making her enjoy a kiss. What was a kiss? Or what was it about a single kiss that made her dangerously crave another? It was too risky for someone in her position, she reasoned unhappily.
‘I can’t have a fling with you!’ she whispered to Zac over the top of her niece’s head.
‘What’s a “fling”?’ Zac fielded in his usual speaking voice.
‘Work it out!’ Freddie urged impatiently.
‘But why not?’ he asked equally baldly. ‘You’re not married. You don’t have a boyfriend.’
‘We can’t talk about it here,’ Freddie incised, her colour rising again.
‘And whose fault is that? You arranged this,’ Zac reminded her harshly.
‘You were supposed to walk away and lose interest!’ Freddie flung at him accusingly, striving not to focus on that tantalisingly tempting mouth of his.
‘I’m obstinate,’ Zac declared with a sudden slashing grin of one-upmanship that emanated extraordinary charisma. ‘It takes more energy to put one over me, meu pequenino.’
Freddie dropped her head, dark streaky golden hair semi-screening her troubled expression, because she abruptly recognised that on some level she was dragging out their meeting for her own purposes and there was no point in wasting Zac’s time when she had no plans to let anything go any further. ‘Look, it’s time for us to go,’ she declared, fighting her awareness of his compelling appeal with all her might.
‘Or I could treat you to lunch.’
‘No, Jack will scream if he’s wakened,’ Freddie muttered woodenly, wondering how Zac had contrived to travel from hateful to almost bearable in the course of an hour and hurriedly squashing the pointless reflection. ‘We have to go home.’
Zac shrugged a wide shoulder and fell into step beside her as she gathered up Eloise and lowered Jack back into the buggy. ‘Aren’t you leaving?’ Freddie demanded in surprise.
‘I’ll see you home,’ Zac countered stiffly, angrily aware that his welcome seemed to have worn out, questioning why he should care when there were so many more available women around.
Freddie didn’t know how to shake him off politely and she felt she had to be polite because, whether she liked it or not, he had been a good sport and at least he was no longer trying to stuff banknotes in her direction.
‘You must have some social life,’ Zac remarked drily, walking down the small dismal street of terraced houses.
‘Not really,’ Freddie mumbled, fumbling for her key and about to unlock the door when it opened without warning and framed Claire. ‘Oh, hi, Claire!’ she began.
‘And who’s this?’
Zac extended a hand and introduced himself and Claire invited him in, completely ignoring Freddie’s frantic mute grimaces from behind him.
‘Hot, hot, hot,’ Claire whispered in surprising delight as Freddie passed by her into the cramped hall and Zac lifted in the buggy. ‘I’ll put on the kettle, shall I?’ she added with enthusiasm.
Freddie took Jack upstairs to his cot and when she went down to the lounge, Zac was drinking coffee, comfortably ensconced like a welcome guest while Claire acted as hostess. Maybe he would be attracted to Claire, she thought abruptly and then killed the suspicion, taken aback by how something visceral inside her rose in rage at that idea.
‘I’ll babysit for you so that you can go out with Zac,’ Claire announced, startling her with that unprecedented offer. ‘I keep on telling Freddie that she has to make her own life beyond the kids. You’re not working tonight, are you?’
‘Well, no, but—’
‘Thanks, Claire. I’ll pick you up at eight,’ Zac delivered, sidestepping Eloise’s offer of her dragon storybook and vaulting upright to seize the moment.
Freddie chased him into the hall but he was too quick for her, already out of the front door and down the steps before she could reach him.
‘Why did you do that?’ she returned to ask Claire. ‘I don’t want to go out with him.’
‘Of course, you do. He’s gorgeous,’ Claire parried crushingly. ‘All work and no play will make Freddie a very dull girl and if I can help you to see that I’ll be happier.’
Silenced by that assurance, reluctant to get into a disagreement with Claire, whose opinions tended to be strident, Freddie swallowed hard. She didn’t want to spend more time with Zac when she found him so attractive and was finally admitting that to herself. But pursuing that attraction in any way would be futile. She didn’t want a sleazy one-night stand with him and that was all he was after, a little recreational sex to fill a fleeting moment. That wasn’t her, would never be her. After a frightening attack in her teens, her sister had gone on to have a lot of casual sex and that was ultimately how she’d ended up with her creepy boyfriend. Freddie was still a virgin because she had had little time for a social life, but she still knew that she wouldn’t settle for a meaningless fling. She wanted feelings involved as well as mutual respect and consideration and Zac wasn’t programmed to offer any of that. She needed more before she could give her trust and if that was old-fashioned, well, she was content to be old-fashioned.
* * *
Zac was equally discomfited at the prospect of the evening ahead. He had never been on a date, had never sought that kind of relationship and hadn’t a clue how to go about it. But he had no problem in asking his other brother, Angel, for clarification when he met him out of his office for coffee that afternoon, because his Greek sibling didn’t annoy him the way Vitale did. Angel had a much more laid-back and less judgemental attitude.
‘Never?’ Angel queried in some surprise. ‘By the sound of it, your sex life is pretty basic.’
‘Very basic,’ Zac admitted without embarrassment. ‘But I really want this woman.’
‘Merry would probably be more help than me,’ Angel acknowledged wryly, referring to his new wife. ‘I screwed up very badly with her, so we never really dated as such. Take your lady for a drink or dinner, keep it casual.’
Zac’s ego was mollified by Angel’s confession, but he need not have worried because Freddie had agonised throughout the afternoon before finally texting him her suggestion that they try go-karting.
Zac was astonished by the suggestion because it seemed ridiculously boyish and competitive for a woman who struck him as ultra-feminine, but it appealed much more to his energetic nature than an evening that had to be based on conversation. It did not once occur to him that he was being managed.
* * *
Freddie was delighted by Zac’s assent. The setting would ensure she wasn’t silly and prevent him from getting too handsy. When Claire looked at her in almost comical surprise when she told her where they were going, Freddie simply laughed.
Zac arrived to pick her up on a motorbike, a big black and gold beast that disconcerted her when she had expected him to arrive in some flash sports car. He got off the bike and said very drily, as if he was offering her a huge compliment, ‘I’ve never had a girl on the back of my bike before.’
‘First time for everything,’ Freddie quipped, putting on the helmet he handed her. ‘I haven’t been on a motorbike before.’
He flipped out the foot pegs for her, climbed back astride and voiced several terse instructions. With difficulty, Freddie hopped up behind him and wrapped her arms round him, belatedly appreciating that, while a car would have marooned them in dangerous privacy, a bike offered physical intimacy of a possibly more dangerous kind. Her palms rested against rock-hard abs, her fingers brushing against his belt, and then the bike started up and vibrations travelled through her from head to foot in an unexpectedly exciting way.
She rested her face against the back of his jacket, strands of his black hair whipping against her brow, and the scent of him engulfed her like a rip tide, sent to torment. He smelled clean and male with a hint of some exotic cologne and the combination was one to savour, she acknowledged absently, marvelling that such a reality could make her skin tingle and her body heat while she felt every flex of his powerful abdominal muscles shift beneath her clinging hands. Her fingers spread against the heat of him, her own body savouring the connection in the most astonishing way.
Zac wanted to push her hands down to where he really needed her attention below the belt where she was being so very careful not to touch him. Why was she so inhibited? What did she have against pleasure? He had to work that out before sheer sexual frustration drove him crazy. It had been weeks since he had had a woman and that was a new development for him and not one he appreciated. After all, sex was one of life’s greatest free pleasures and a need he was accustomed to indulging in regularly.
Why was a single woman as attracted to him as he was to her refusing him? Something in her past? What else could it be? Had she been assaulted? Abused? His guts twisted at the suspicion because he despised men who used physical force against the weaker and more vulnerable. MeuDeus,could she be even more complicated than he had already recognised? Once again he asked himself angrily, Why her? Why was he chasing a woman for the first time in his life? Why wasn’t he simply moving on? He swore furiously to himself then that if she refused him again, he would forget about her and seek his pleasure elsewhere...
CHAPTER THREE (#u6fac2da5-b995-58d5-96cd-7c4e8d50df77)
AS HE PEELED off the last of his protective gear, Zac glanced across at Freddie and his wide, sensual mouth quirked with concealed amusement. There she was, benched after being red-flagged for a safety violation, her face still a mask of angry mortification. Yet she had initially gone onto the track with all the risk-taking verve of a nervous elderly lady and then Zac had flashed past her, a manoeuvre that had evidently unleashed her competitive instincts, and the die had been cast as she raced into pursuit of him in flagrant disregard of her apparent lack of experience on the track.
‘Go on...laugh,’ she urged sulkily, her annoyed gaze challenging him to do his worst while even then noticing the natural animal rhythm of his fluid stride. He walked lightly for so large a man yet testosterone seeped from his very pores. Even in a crowded location, his stunning looks stood out and guaranteed female turned heads and interested stares. Her stiff cheekbones flushed on the sinking acknowledgement that she was woman enough to be proud of being seen with him.
‘When you suggested it, I assumed go-karting was a favourite pastime of yours.’
‘You must be kidding. I’ve only been once and that was years ago...a birthday treat with the foster family we were staying with then.’
Zac took her breath away by simply lifting her off her feet and settling her down on the back of his bike. ‘Foster family? We?’ he queried with a frown.
‘Never mind,’ Freddie parried, seeing no reason to share her past with him when he was about to take her home.
Resting her cheek against his broad back as the bike glided through the traffic, Freddie closed her eyes, the oddest sensation of regret tugging infuriatingly at her while her body reacted with heat and awareness to the physical contact with his. The date, as such, was done and dusted and he had to now recognise that she was scarcely the sexy temptress of his dreams. He had enjoyed himself though, for Zac and speed were a perfect match, so hopefully there would be no hard feelings and her job would be safe because she really could not afford to lose her job, she thought fearfully.
Lifting her off the bike, Zac unclipped her helmet. As he herded her forward, he tossed his key fob to the doorman and addressed him in a foreign language. ‘Where the heck are we?’ Freddie demanded, cursing herself for having drifted off into her thoughts and failing to pay attention.
And even by the time she bleated that foolish question she knew exactly where she was and she cringed because she had never walked through the front entrance of The Palm Tree before. Staff had a side entrance and the bar was separate as well and employees were instructed to stay in their designated zone. Ahead of her and below the magnificent crystal chandeliers stretched a blur of mirrored reception counter that was dazzling and disorientating in the bright light.
Something remarkably like panic grabbed Freddie. ‘I can’t be in here... I work here!’ she exclaimed in dismay, trying to pull away from Zac’s controlling hand at her hip.
Zac grabbed her up into his arms as though she were Eloise and strode into his private lift before setting her down.
‘Let me go, for goodness’ sake!’ Freddie launched at him furiously as he slid her down his long, lean body, ensuring that she missed out on not a single angle of his lean, muscular physique. ‘I’m not coming up to your penthouse with you!’
‘Yes, you are,’ Zac countered without hesitation. ‘I have food waiting for us.’
‘I’m not hungry!’ she protested contrarily.
‘And I’m not an abuser of women and dislike being treated as though I am,’ Zac replied very, very drily.
Colour ran in a hot tide up beneath Freddie’s pale complexion and she collided with narrowed eyes the shade of crushed ice, glittering like a dangerous glacier in sunlight below a black lush fringe of lashes. ‘That’s not how I’m treating you.’
‘It is,’ he contradicted. ‘And I don’t like it. I would never touch you without your permission.’
A maddening need to apologise assailed Freddie and she fought it off, examining her behaviour, conceding that she might have come off a little hysterical in her rigid need to protect herself around a man. ‘Look, I have to work here, and obviously I don’t want to be seen inside your penthouse.’
‘And maybe, just maybe,’ Zac incised in a lethal undertone, those eyes luminous and cold as polar stars, ‘I’m tired of doing everything your way, meu pequenino.’
Freddie compressed her lips and studied her scuffed trainers in the rushing silence. Her muscles ached with the tension in the air and her tummy performed a nauseous flip.
‘When were you in foster care?’ Zac continued smoothly as he thrust open the door of what she assumed to be the penthouse suite, because a superb wall of glass overlooked the twinkling lights of the city skyline that bounded one side of the huge room.
Freddie was busy looking around herself at a level of luxury way beyond her experience. There was a tiny elegant kitchen alcove in one corner, not one to be taken seriously, for few who could afford the rates for the penthouse would wish to cook for themselves in a hotel renowned for its cuisine. Another couple of doors led off the main area, which was furnished with a massive wall television and buttery soft leather sofas, currently strewn with car magazines.
‘Freddie?’ he prompted, amused by her frank curiosity about her surroundings.
Freddie relocated her wits, still careful not to look at him. ‘My parents were killed in a car crash when I was ten. I had a completely happy childhood up until then, not so much after that,’ she admitted stiffly, food scents tugging at her nostrils, provoking an embarrassingly loud and needy growl from her stomach.
