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‘People often say stuff like that but they don’t really mean it,’ Zac dismissed with a sceptical glance. ‘We’ll talk about it and see if we can help each other.’
‘Help each other?’ she queried in wonderment.
Zac compressed his wide sensual mouth and finished his black coffee, refusing to expand on the topic.
In a complete daze, Freddie went back to work and watched Zac stride out of the bar twenty minutes later without even looking her way. How could he possibly help her? And how could she possibly help him? Her mind whirled with fantastical supposition, none of which made sense or seemed remotely likely. Meanwhile she was conscious of the stares of her co-workers and a new disturbing wariness in their attitude towards her.
‘Obviously he’s nailing her and you can’t blame her, can you? I’d have him in a heartbeat!’ one of the bar staff was opining when Freddie entered the locker room after work to change.
A horrible silence fell when her presence was noted and the other two women got very busy with their lockers before leaving in haste. Freddie’s face was burning but such speculation was only to be expected. Of course, the staff was gossiping about Zac’s apparent interest in her, and his intervention earlier on her behalf had only encouraged conjecture. Naturally everyone would assume that she was having sex with him. And if Zac had had anything to do with it, she thought ruefully, she would have been. No, it would have happened only once, she reasoned, unable to imagine that any more enduring relationship would have developed between them. Zac bore all the hallmarks of a man who got easily bored.
She slid through the door that communicated with the hotel foyer, her cheeks warm with discomfiture. She was shabbily dressed, a hoodie pulled on over her top and skinny jeans and sneakers in place of the shorts and high heels. She had put some concealer over her swollen eyes and she was depressingly conscious that she looked tired and washed out. She entered the lift Zac had used and a burly man in a suit stepped in straight after her and stuck a card in a slot.
‘The penthouse?’ he queried, looking her over doubtfully. ‘Miss Lassiter?’
‘Yes.’
‘Mr da Rocha is expecting you,’ he informed her as the doors closed. ‘I’m Marco, one of his security team, and I work for him.’
Freddie realised that the private lift would not have worked for her without that all important card. When the lift stopped Marco led the way, opening the door to the penthouse and standing back for her to enter before closing the door on her heels. A door inside the suite opened and Zac strolled out, half naked, a pair of jeans hanging loose and unbuttoned on his lean hips.
‘Oh, it’s you. Make yourself at home,’ he urged casually. ‘Pour yourself a drink.’
And with that careless suggestion he stalked back barefoot into the bedroom, leaving her breathless because Zac half naked was an unforgettable sight: an expanse of ripped, incredibly muscled torso liberally inked with intricate designs leading down to a V of muscle that emphasised his flat, hard stomach and his narrow waist. Flustered and more nervous than ever, she tugged off her hoodie because she was too warm, and finger-combed her hair before approaching the well-stocked bar and choosing a juice. She was very grateful that he hadn’t hung around long enough to notice that she had been welded to the floor and staring at him like an awestricken schoolgirl.
Annoyance that she was so easily overwhelmed by Zac’s sheer impact licked at her. Yes, he was utterly, absolutely gorgeous but surely she was capable of acting normally around him? Had she ever acted normally around him? She didn’t think she had. From that very first glimpse, he had unsettled her, then he had outraged her and from that point on she had become nervous, judgemental and oversensitive in his radius.
Zac reappeared fully dressed in a black shirt and jeans. His attention went straight to the glass in her hand. ‘Tomato juice...really?’
‘Alcohol would send me to sleep at this time of night,’ she said defensively.
‘I was teasing,’ Zac assured her while he studied her and asked himself if access to her was worth what he would be sacrificing. Of course, it wouldn’t be, his intelligence told him. No woman would ever be worth his freedom. But he had to be practical and work with the system, and if he married her and she didn’t conceive his lawyers would be able to move to break the trust. One way or another marriage would be a step forward and he would move closer to his goal of complete independence and control of the diamond mines that were his family heritage.
‘Why did you say that we might be able to help each other?’ Freddie pressed tautly.
Zac settled down carelessly opposite her on the arm of a sofa and leant back, wide shoulders squared, long, powerful thighs spread and braced. ‘I’m the heir to the Quintal da Rocha diamond mines. I receive the profits but I won’t be able to control the business until I have produced an heir of my own. That iniquitous arrangement was laid down in a legal trust by my great-great-grandfather a long time ago and I deeply resent it.’
‘You have to have a child?’ Freddie whispered with disconcerted emphasis.
‘Yes, and if you are willing to try and give me that child I am willing to marry you and attempt to adopt Eloise and Jack with you,’ Zac completed smoothly.
The mention of marriage shocked Freddie so much that she took a great desperate gulp of her tomato juice and almost choked on it, coughing and then clearing her throat with a painful swallow while Zac continued to steadily watch her. ‘You’d be willing to adopt Eloise and Jack?’ she prompted shakily, careening wildly from one thought to the next, all her thoughts disjointed and incomplete.
‘If you also agree to meet my condition by giving me a child,’ Zac responded with measured cool.
‘Do you have a criminal record?’ Freddie demanded, disconcerting him with the staggering abruptness of that question.
Ebony brows drew together in perplexity. ‘Of course not.’
Freddie went pink. ‘Just asking. You probably couldn’t be considered as an adoptive parent with a record.’
Zac was entertained by that tactless leap-frogging question that revealed that she was already considering his proposition. ‘Have you ever been pregnant?’ he traded in return.
Freddie stiffened and shook her head. ‘Er...no, I’m afraid, no proven fertility record here.’
Zac lifted and dropped a fatalistic shoulder. ‘Either of us could be infertile. At this point, it doesn’t really matter because I have to go through the motions...marry and try to have a child, and if it doesn’t happen for us I can then go to court and ask for the trust to be set aside.’
‘You would truly be prepared to adopt Eloise and Jack with me?’ Freddie prompted, sudden tears burning the backs of her eyes at the idea that there could possibly be a solution that would enable her to keep her sister’s children.
‘Yes, if you agree. You said you’d do anything to keep them and I will also pretty much do anything it takes to gain control of the da Rocha business empire,’ Zac admitted grimly.
As if she had been winded by a feverish sprint, Freddie coiled back almost bonelessly into the sofa and snatched in a deep shuddering breath, striving to calm down and think with clarity. She had to set down her glass because her hand was shaking so badly. ‘Do you think we’d have a chance of adopting the kids together?’ she asked anxiously, refusing to plunge herself into the turmoil of considering what it would be like to marry Zac and have a child with him and instead concentrating on what was most important to her at that moment.
‘I don’t see why not if we present ourselves as a loving couple. I’m wealthy enough to buy us a home. I’m also mixed race, like the children.’
‘Are you?’ Freddie studied him in surprise.
‘My grandmother on my mother’s side is black. My grandfather was white,’ Zac explained. ‘Brazil is a huge melting pot of ethnic diversity and if you’re like me you can’t choose your genes when you reproduce. I’m telling you that now because any child we have could take after either side of my family.’
Freddie nodded understanding.
‘Not every woman could comfortably accept that possibility,’ Zac admitted, involuntarily amused by Freddie’s complete lack of reaction to his frankness.
His mother had been haunted by the spectre of her husband’s racism and her fear of having a child of a darker complexion than her own while Zac had been relentlessly bullied at an almost exclusively white school for being the only child that was different. He had learned to fight to protect himself at an early age, but he had also had to learn how to back down when there were too many ranged against him. The trouble that had erupted around Zac then had led to him being labelled an agitator, a tag he had fiercely resented.
Silence fell while Zac surveyed Freddie, coiling tendrils of lust curling up hotly through him. He remembered the rounded little curve of her bottom in the shorts, the shapely length of her legs, and pictured her spread across his bed in various different positions, anticipation and hunger leaping through his veins. He could not remember ever wanting a woman with such fierce immediacy. Had her reluctance sustained his desire? Was he truly so basic that he needed the challenge she had represented? And why did the idea of getting her pregnant turn him on as hard and fast as a bullet? Wasn’t that a little kinky? A hard line of colour suffused his exotic, high cheekbones and, sliding upright, he strode over to the bar to pour himself a drink.
‘Not for me, thanks,’ Freddie framed when he glanced at her enquiringly.
‘You’re very quiet,’ he murmured warily.
‘Shocked,’ Freddie contradicted. ‘Marriage...seriously, you and me?’
‘Not a for-ever kind of marriage,’ Zac qualified softly. ‘But I would still continue to be involved in the children’s lives, regardless of what happens between us.’
The marriage would not be permanent, Freddie interpreted, but he was still promising that he would go on being a father to the children. Obviously he was planning on an eventual divorce to regain his freedom, leaving her a single parent with three children. A child with Zac, having a child with Zac, she grasped suddenly, her face and body gripped by heat at the notion. She stared down at her feet, shutting out that silly flush of sexual awareness and exasperated by it, because just then it struck her as a trivial issue when compared to the awful threat of losing her sister’s children, whom she loved and who had learned to love her. Sex was no big deal, she told herself urgently. Sex would have to be no big deal if they were forced to try and conceive a child because that could take months and months to achieve. The alternative would be to lose Eloise and Jack, whom she could not bear to imagine her life without. That recollection steadied her nerves and cooled her down. She had to keep on reminding herself of what the end result of such an arrangement would be.
‘Is divorce a stumbling block for you?’ Zac prompted with a frown.
‘No. But this idea of yours...well, it’s a lot to get my head around,’ she confided ruefully, cheeks colouring as she encountered his pale glittering gaze, finally recognising how very intense he could be because she could feel the raw force of his volatile temperament in that assessing appraisal.
‘You said you’d do anything,’ he reminded her sibilantly.
‘Marriage and a baby?’ Freddie quipped. ‘Not something I’d even got around to thinking about yet.’
‘If we married, you would also be financially secure for life. You would never have to work again if you didn’t want to,’ Zac continued.
And even though she knew he was trying to tempt her, she was filled with anticipation of what her life could be like were she free to live it and have sufficient money to afford childcare. She had missed out on her place at college, where she had planned to train as a teacher, because after finding Eloise cold, wet and hungry in her cot, forgotten by Lauren, she had known that there was no way she could leave a baby alone with her sister. Not when Eloise needed her, not when Freddie loved Eloise as much as if she had given birth to her herself. Those were the truths that had reshaped Freddie’s future and forced tough, unselfish choices on her.
‘All I want is what’s best for the children. That has to be my main aim,’ Freddie declared. ‘You’d have to start taking the time to get to know them properly.’
‘I’ll do whatever it takes. I want you—’
‘For a while,’ Freddie interposed ironically, brown velvet eyes flickering over his lean, darkly handsome features, her mouth running dry. ‘And I come as a package with two children. I don’t want them damaged in any way by our choices.’
‘We’re only human. We can’t see the future but my motivation is good. I don’t want anyone harmed by this arrangement.’
‘But why did you pick me?’ she asked baldly.
‘I can be businesslike about this with you because you have as much to gain from the marriage as I do,’ Zac stated. ‘I like that because it gives us a better chance of making it work. Com certeza...of course, if I wasn’t attracted to you, it wouldn’t work on any level.’
Freddie reddened, lashes cloaking her gaze as she tore her attention from his lean, powerful figure, her body slowly heating. Her nipples prickled and tightened, her thighs pressing tightly together to ease the sudden compulsive ache between them. Wanting without any hope of satisfaction hurt, she finally acknowledged, but she still tensed at the prospect of giving way to that need.
But Zac was offering her what she wanted in return for what he wanted and she deemed it a fair bargain if he was willing to take on parenting her niece and nephew and any child they had of their own. She concentrated on the positives. Zac would give them security. Zac would be another parent to support her. After a while he would not be around on a daily basis as a father, but in a world where nothing was certain and marriages often broke down that was not unusual and at least he was being honest about his intentions from the outset.
She didn’t have an alternative choice. Nobody else was coming to rescue her. And even Zac wasn’t rescuing her, she reflected wryly. He was offering her a lifebelt on one hand and demanding his pound of flesh with the other. They would be equal partners in the marriage because both of them would be bringing something important to the table. Would she be able to conceive? How long would it take to accomplish that feat? And what would it feel like to have Zac as a husband and lover and then lose him again? But all those scary questions were for the future and not relevant to the present.
‘Yes. I am attracted to you,’ she said stiffly, reckoning that there was no longer any need to pretend otherwise.
A wide appreciative grin slashed Zac’s mouth. ‘No more lies, then.’
‘No more lies,’ she agreed ruefully. ‘I’m saying yes to your proposition because you’re the only hope I have of keeping Eloise and Jack and I’ll do whatever I have to do to facilitate that.’
‘Venhaaqui...come here,’ Zac urged.
Stiff as a plank of wood, Freddie rose from her seat and approached him. He swept her up like a doll and held her high with the kind of controlled physical strength that shook her. ‘You won’t regret this decision,’ he told her and then he kissed her.
Hotly, extravagantly, passionately and with all the energy that drove him, he crushed her soft lips beneath his, both arms banded so tightly round her narrow ribcage that she could barely breathe. But she didn’t want to breathe, she just wanted to fall deeper into that kiss. His tongue ravaged the tender interior of her mouth and a shower of sparks flew up inside her, tingling along every nerve ending in her slender body. His tongue teased and flicked and darted and with a gasp she closed her arms dizzily round his neck.
‘We could get this project off to a flying start right now,’ Zac suggested thickly.
And Freddie froze and let go of him, pushing him away until he had to let her down to stand on her own feet again.
‘Problem?’ Zac quipped very drily, his eyes luminous and coolly enquiring in the dim lights.
‘I’m not getting into bed with you until we’re legally married,’ Freddie spelt out in a defiant rush as she fought for what little security she could retain, which to her meant staying safe and uncommitted to the last possible moment. ‘You could still be shooting me a crazy seduction line. After all, you are the guy who bets sports cars away! I won’t take the risk of getting pregnant until you’ve proved your commitment to our agreement.’
Zac stared at her in astonishment. ‘You think this could be a scam?’ he breathed incredulously, astonished by the level of her distrust. ‘I’ve never had to seduce a woman in my life!’
Freddie backed away another few steps, embarrassed now that she had voiced her reservations. ‘I’m naturally suspicious—’
‘Of men,’ Zac slotted in boldly. ‘You don’t trust my sex.’
‘My past experiences have not been good,’ Freddie conceded reluctantly.
‘Then tomorrow we’ll get this party started with a visit to my London lawyers. They’ll make a start on the adoption application and advise us on how soon we can get married here. Bring your birth certificate and your passport and the children’s,’ Zac advised, his lean, hard-boned face set with purpose.
Freddie groaned out loud. ‘Zac... I don’t have a passport and neither do the children. In any case the authorities wouldn’t allow us to take the children out of the UK without their permission.’
‘You’ve never been abroad?’ Zac asked in astonishment.
‘Never,’ Freddie confirmed.
‘My lawyers will deal with all the details,’ Zac pronounced with innate arrogance.
‘And I’ll have the children in tow,’ Freddie warned. ‘And they can’t go on a motorbike.’
‘Obviously not,’ Zac fielded drily. ‘Stop putting obstacles in my path, meu pequenino. When I want something, I allow nothing to get in my way...and I want you.’
Freddie went pink, disconcerted by that unequivocal statement of intent. And yet in the strangest way she found his determination to have her ridiculously flattering, because no man had ever wanted her with such stubborn, resolute intensity. Of course that wouldn’t last, she told herself ruefully, not once he realised how inexperienced and ordinary she was. No doubt he was expecting fireworks in the bedroom. How would he feel when he instead wakened to find Eloise and Jack in bed with them at some ungodly hour of the morning? Family life, she thought heavily, was likely to be a big culture shock for Zac.
CHAPTER FIVE (#u6fac2da5-b995-58d5-96cd-7c4e8d50df77)
‘IT’S PERFECT,’ ZAC pronounced as Freddie smoothed an apprehensive finger down over the knee-length, shimmering silver sheath dress.
‘But what does it cost?’ Freddie hissed in an anxious undertone, fearful of attracting the attention of the saleswoman, who was grander than a queen.
Zac dealt her a silencing look that was equally intimidating. Requesting prices was apparently a vulgar act in his radius. Apparently, prices were no longer her business but his.Freddie sucked in a steadying breath but it didn’t work. From the instant she had agreed to marry Zac, her life had begun changing at warp speed.
The next morning, he had taken her straight into a meeting with his London lawyers. Freddie had tried to keep Eloise and Jack entertained in a corner while incomprehensible legal jargon interwoven with long voluble snatches of Portuguese had whirled round the room. Zac had made copious notes on his phone and dragged her out of there again, but only after she had filled in a sheaf of official documents. They had climbed back into the limousine that had picked them up that morning, a real genuine long black limousine complete with car seats for the children, and that was the first time Freddie had actually come to terms with the idea that Zac was very rich.
New experience after new experience had bombarded her ever since and she felt dizzy from the shock of it all. Without the children around to ground her, she felt lost. Claire had agreed to keep Eloise and Jack while they went shopping for a new outfit for Freddie. Zac had wanted to hire a nanny and had been exasperated when he had finally grasped that only Claire was officially allowed to take care of the children. That was Zac, infuriated by red tape and rules, always impatient to move quickly past them to the next challenge.
A giant blue diamond solitaire ring weighed down Freddie’s left hand and if she stirred even a finger it sparkled with blinding brilliance. It was a very beautiful and eye-catching ring.
‘Play everything by the book,’ Zac’s legal team had advised him, and that seemed to entail doing stuff that Zac’s unconventional heart rebelled against. He had been told to give her an engagement ring, introduce her to his family and play up his family connections, not one of which acts came naturally to him. So, Freddie could not feel flattered by anything Zac had done or arranged although she was grateful that he was willing to do it to facilitate their application to adopt Eloise and Jack.
‘You do what you have to do,’ Zac had enunciated through gritted teeth as he had slid that extraordinarily opulent ring onto her ring finger.
No, there had been no risk of Freddie suspecting that Zac cherished more romantic feelings for her than he was willing to share with her. And shopping with him even for one morning was a bit of a nightmare for a shy, introverted young woman. Evidently, he liked women clad in skimpy lingerie, and he had been wildly disconcerted by her mortification when he had discussed his preferences for what she was to wear with the saleswoman. More than ever, it had made Freddie feel as though she was just a body to Zac, a body for him to dress and impregnate at the same speed with which he did everything else. That very evening they were joining his family for what he had described as ‘an informal dinner’. Yet the event obviously required her to wear a designer dress with all the trimmings.
‘Those shoes,’ Zac indicated to the hovering assistant with a careless sweep of one bronzed hand. ‘That bag.’
‘You have to get more into the spirit of this,’ Zac censured as he herded her back out to the limousine like a wayward sheep, who might stray. ‘You’ve got a fitting for your wedding dress tomorrow.’
Two days earlier, Freddie had chosen the dress in a breathtakingly impressive designer atelier while Zac had turned Jack upside down to keep him amused and strings of baby chuckles had filled the air and Eloise had stood by awaiting her turn.
‘I don’t see why it matters what I wear when I meet your family,’ Freddie admitted. ‘It’s not as if you even want me to meet them!’
‘I’m not close to my half-brothers but over time that could change, particularly when all of us have young children. I would like the connection for our children,’ Zac admitted with emphasis. ‘Growing up, I had virtually no family and it made me a loner. I want the kids to have a different experience. And it does matter what you wear when you meet my family.’
‘How?’
‘Angel’s wife, Merry, and my father’s girlfriend, Sybil, will look as if they walked straight off a Paris catwalk. I will not have you look less than them in any way,’ Zac completed grimly, his pride on the line. No way would he allow Freddie to be patronised or labelled unfit for such exclusive company. Without effort she would outshine all of them, he thought with satisfaction, surveying her delicate triangular face and her warm brown eyes.
She would be the perfect wife for him, he savoured. She wouldn’t be clingy or needy because she would be far too wrapped up in the children to worry about what he was doing. She wouldn’t make demands or throw temperamental jealous or possessive tantrums. She would just get on with things the way he did without making a big song and dance about them. Freddie was wonderfully practical, so she wouldn’t go falling for him or anything inconvenient like that either. She had already signed the pre-nuptial agreement without the smallest difficulty. ‘A woman in a million,’ one of his lawyers had commented afterwards and Zac had felt very real pride in his future wife, who was so gloriously free of avarice and ambition.
Unaware of the unspoken accolades coming her way, Freddie settled into a corner of the opulent limo and studied Zac’s lean, darkly handsome face. He looked so different from the man she had first met. He had abandoned his jeans and worn sharply tailored suits for all their official appointments and, ironically, he wore a suit with the panache of one born to such formality. Exquisitely tailored in a fine grey wool and silk blend, his present dark grey suit outlined his broad shoulders and wide chest and enhanced his lean hips and long powerful legs to perfection. In jeans he looked incredibly masculine and sexy but in a suit he was to die for.
