About the Authors

LYNNE GRAHAM was born in Northern Ireland and has been a keen romance reader since her teens. She is very happily married to an understanding husband, who has learned to cook since she started to write! Her five children keep her on her toes. She has a very large dog, which knocks everything over, a very small terrier, which barks a lot, and two cats. When time allows, Lynne is a keen gardener.

New York Timesand USA TODAY bestselling author JANE PORTER has written forty romances and eleven women’s fiction novels since her first sale to Mills & Boon in 2000. A five-time RITA® Award finalist, Jane is known for her passionate, emotional and sensual novels, and loves nothing more than alpha heroes, exotic locations and happy-ever-afters. Today Jane lives in sunny San Clemente, California, with her surfer husband and three sons. Visit janeporter.com.

Also By Lynne Graham

Claimed for the Leonelli Legacy

His Queen by Desert Decree

Brides for the Taking miniseries

The Desert King’s Blackmailed Bride

The Italian’s One-Night Baby

Sold for the Greek’s Heir

Vows for Billionaires miniseries

The Secret Valtinos Baby

Castiglione’s Pregnant Princess

Da Rocha’s Convenient Heir

Also By Jane Porter

Bought to Carry His Heir

His Merciless Marriage Bargain

The Disgraced Copelands miniseries

The Fallen Greek Bride

His Defiant Desert Queen

Her Sinful Secret

Stolen Brides collection

Kidnapped for His Royal Duty

And look out for the next Stolen Brides book The Bride’s Baby of Shame by Caitlin Crews Available July 2018

Discover more at millsandboon.co.uk

Da Rocha’s Convenient Heir/Kidnapped for His Royal Duty

Da Rocha’s Convenient Heir

Lynne Graham

Kidnapped for His Royal Duty

Jane Porter

www.millsandboon.co.uk

ISBN: 978-1-474-09563-1

DA ROCHA’S CONVENIENT HEIR/KIDNAPPED FOR HIS ROYAL DUTY

Da Rocha’s Convenient Heir © 2018 Lynne Graham Kidnapped for His Royal Duty © 2018 Jane Porter

Published in Great Britain 2018

by Mills & Boon, an imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers 1 London Bridge Street, London, SE1 9GF

All rights reserved including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form. This edition is published by arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, locations and incidents are purely fictional and bear no relationship to any real life individuals, living or dead, or to any actual places, business establishments, locations, events or incidents. Any resemblance is entirely coincidental.

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www.millsandboon.co.uk

Table of Contents

Cover

About the Authors

Booklist

Title Page

Copyright

Da Rocha’s Convenient Heir

Back Cover Text

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

EPILOGUE

Kidnapped for His Royal Duty

Back Cover Text

Dedication

PROLOGUE

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

EPILOGUE

About the Publisher

Da Rocha’s Convenient Heir

Lynne Graham

An heir for the Da Rocha legacy...

Secured with a ring!

Tycoon Zac’s wedding to innocent waitress Freddie is pure convenience. Dark-hearted Zac will help keep Freddie’s family together, if she provides him with a Da Rocha baby! He’s confident their insatiable passion will soon burn out. But when Freddie falls pregnant, Zac realizes he craves more than just an heir. He wants to keep Freddie in their marriage bed—forever!

CHAPTER ONE

ZAC DA ROCHA, the Brazilian billionaire, powered towards his father’s office on long muscular legs. He was in a rare state of surprise because his stuffy, rigidly formal half-brother, Vitale, the Crown Prince of Lerovia, had just matched the facetious bet Zac had made him earlier that morning. Zac enjoyed yanking Vitale’s chain but he had not expected a retaliation. He raked his hand impatiently through the long, luxuriant dark hair falling onto his broad shoulders and grinned with sudden appreciation, flashing perfect white teeth in the process. Maybe Vitale wasn’t such a narrow-minded bore after all. Maybe he had more in common with his half-sibling than he had assumed.

As quickly as that idea occurred to him, Zac suppressed it again because he wasn’t looking for a family connection. He had never had a family. He had looked up his long-lost father, Charles Russell, out of pure curiosity and had lingered on the edge of the family circle out of pure badness, thoroughly entertained by the immediate animosity of his two half-brothers, Vitale and Angel. The emergence of a third son had shocked and unsettled them and Zac had made little effort to foster a sibling relationship. But then what the hell did he know about blood ties? He had never had a brother or a sister and, what was more, he had had a mother he had seen only once a year if he was lucky, a stepfather who hated him and a birth father whose identity he had only discovered the year before when his mother had finally told him the truth she had long withheld because she was dying.

Yet when it came to his birth father, for once in his life he had landed lucky, Zac conceded grudgingly, because he actually liked Charles Russell. Zac was more accustomed to people who tried to use him and he trusted very few people. His light grey-blue eyes hardened. Fabulously rich from birth and raised like a little prince, surrounded by fawning servants, Zac was very cynical about human nature. But from their first meeting, Charles had taken a genuine interest in his third and youngest adult son, despite the fact that, at twenty-eight and six feet four inches tall, that son was already a man grown.

After only a few hours in the older man’s radius, Zac had realised how much better he would have done had his mother, Antonella, chosen to stay with Charles rather than choosing to marry the playboy fortune hunter, Afonso Oliveira, the love of his mother’s life. Unhappily, while being engaged to Antonella, Afonso had got cold feet and dumped her for several weeks. Heartbroken, Antonella had succumbed to a rebound affair with Charles, then in the process of divorcing a wife who had been cheating on him throughout their marriage with another woman. But then, Afonso had returned to Antonella to ask for her forgiveness and Antonella had followed her heart. When soon after the wedding she had realised she was pregnant, she had fervently hoped that she carried Afonso’s child and had refused to acknowledge that Zac might not be her husband’s son. Sadly, for all of them, Zac’s very rare blood group had become a ticking time bomb in his mother’s marriage.

As Zac strode into his father’s office he was rewarded by an immediate smile of warm welcome and acceptance. He might be a tattooed guy clad in jeans and biker boots with diamond studs in his ear but Charles, the grey-haired older man who greeted him in an immaculate business suit, treated him the exact same as his other sons.

‘I did think of putting on a suit to surprise the brothers,’ Zac murmured deadpan, his strikingly light eyes glittering with self-mockery against his bronzed skin. ‘But I didn’t want them to think I was conforming to expectations or competing.’

‘No fear of that, I think.’ Charles laughed, wrapping his arms round his very tall and vociferously different son in a whole-hearted embrace before stepping back. ‘Any news yet from your lawyers about your chances of breaking the trust?’

The internationally renowned Quintal da Rocha diamond mines had been locked into a trust by Zac’s great-great-grandfather to protect the family heritage. Since his mother’s death, Zac had been in possession of the income from the mines but he would not have the right to control the extensive Da Rocha business empire until he produced an heir of his own. It was an iniquitous arrangement, which had sentenced previous generations to a deeply dysfunctional family life, and Zac had long been determined to break the cycle. Sadly, the answer his legal team had given him was not the one he had sought.

He could not be truly independent or free until he had met the terms of the trust one way or another. Hedged by restrictions throughout childhood and adolescence, he had railed against the trust when he had finally understood how it would limit him. He was the last da Rocha and he enjoyed enormous wealth but until he fulfilled the conditions imposed by that trust he had no more rights than a child to control the diamond mines and the vast business empire built on the back of their profits. He felt sidelined, powerless and dispossessed by his current weak position and there was little he would not have given to be free of it.

‘My lawyers tell me that if I marry and fail over time to produce a child they think there would be little problem breaking the trust,’ Zac revealed grimly, his chiselled cheekbones taut. ‘But that would take years and I’m not prepared to wait for years to run what is mine by right of blood.’

Charles expelled his breath in a slow hiss. ‘So, you’re going to get married,’ he assumed.

Zac frowned. ‘I don’t need to get married,’ he countered. ‘Any heir will meet the terms of the trust, boy or girl, legitimate or otherwise.’

‘Legitimate would be better,’ Charles protested quietly.

‘But the ensuing divorce settlement would cost me a fortune,’ Zac responded with resounding practicality. ‘Why marry when I don’t have to?’

‘For the child’s sake,’ Charles supplied with a grimace. ‘To protect the child from growing up as both you and your mother did, isolated from normal life.’

Zac parted his lips as though he was about to say something and then thought better of it, swinging restively away. His grandfather had found himself married to a barren wife. He had then impregnated a maid in the household, who had given birth to Zac’s mixed-race mother. Antonella had been whisked away to be raised at a remote ranch, separated from her mother and never acknowledged by her aristocratic father once her arrival had refuelled his wealthy lifestyle. She had been an heiress but one from the kind of humble background the rich and sophisticated delighted in despising.

Initially, Zac’s stepfather, Afonso, had assumed that Zac was his child and he had married Antonella, willing to turn a blind eye to her embarrassing background if he could share her riches. When Zac was three years old, however, his need for a blood transfusion after an accident had roused Afonso’s suspicions about his parentage and the truth had emerged. Zac still remembered Afonso screaming at him that he was not his child and that he was ‘a dirty, filthy half-breed’. After that fallout, Zac had been transported to the ranch to be raised by staff, out of sight and out of mind while Antonella worked on repairing the marriage that meant so much to her.

‘He’s my husband and he comes first. He has to come first,’ Antonella had told Zac when he’d asked to go home with her after one of her fleeting visits to see him.

‘I love him. You can’t come to Rio. It will only put Afonso in a bad mood,’ she had argued vehemently years later with tears in her beautiful eyes.

Yet Afonso had enjoyed countless affairs during his marriage while Antonella struggled to give him a child of his own, suffering innumerable miscarriages and finally the premature birth that had claimed her life when she was already well beyond the age when child bearing was considered safe. Afonso had not even come to the funeral and Zac had buried his weak-willed but lovely mother with a stone where his heart should’ve been and the inner conviction that he would never ever marry or fall in love, because love had only taught his mother to reject and neglect her only child.

‘I married two very beautiful women, neither of whom was the least maternal,’ his father, Charles, told him heavily, pulling Zac suddenly back into the present. ‘Angel and Vitale paid the price with unhappy home lives. Right now you’re at a crossroads and you have a choice, Zac. Give marriage a chance. Choose a woman who at least wants a child and give her the opportunity, with your support, to be a normal mother to that child. Children need two parents because bringing up a child is tough. I did the best I could after the divorces but I wasn’t around enough to make a big difference in my sons’ lives.’

It was quite a speech and it came from the heart; Zac almost groaned out loud because he could see where his father was coming from. Although marrying would cost him millions when it inevitably broke down, that legal framework would provide a certain stability for the child. It would be a stability that he had never enjoyed but then, unlike his grandfather, he had always planned to be involved in his child’s life, hadn’t he? Even so, if he wasn’t married to the mother of his child, his freedom to be involved would be dictated by her. He already knew those facts, had worked through all possible options with his legal team and preferred not to think about those facts because they only depressed him. After all, the odds of him having a good relationship with his child’s mother were slim, he reflected impatiently.

Women always wanted more from Zac than he was prepared to give...more time, more money, more attention. But all he had ever wanted from a woman was sex and once that was over, he was done. He was an unashamed player, who had never been in a real relationship, who had never pledged fidelity and who could not bear the sensation of being caged by anyone or anything. In many ways, he had been caged most of his life, raised on a remote ranch before being placed in a stiflingly strict boarding school run by the clergy and forced to follow endless rules. He hadn’t known a moment of true freedom until he reached university and it was hardly surprising that he had then gone off the rails for a while. In fact, it had been a few years before he got back on track and completed his business degree.

And what had brought him back? The discovery that at heart he was a da Rocha and that he couldn’t run away from his birthright. A workers’ dispute in which he was powerless to intervene on their behalf had persuaded him to start attending business meetings and, although he still couldn’t legally call the shots, he had discovered that the directors were very wary of making an outright enemy of him. Like Zac, they looked to the future.

‘How long will you be away?’ Charles prompted, aware that Zac was leaving London to check out the diamond mines in South Africa and Russia.

Zac shrugged. ‘Five...maybe six weeks. I’ve a lot to catch up on but I’ll stay in touch.’

Leaving his father’s office, Zac headed back to The Palm Tree, the small, exclusive and very opulent hotel he had bought in preference to an apartment of his own. His thoughts immediately turned in a more frivolous direction, escaping with relief from the serious ramifications of his father’s sage advice. He had bet his brother that he couldn’t find an ordinary woman and pass her off as his socialite partner at the royal ball to which he had also been invited. Unsurprisingly, Vitale, who didn’t have a humorous bone in his entire body, had been unamused by the challenge but, on emerging from his meeting with their father earlier, Vitale had startled Zac by not only accepting the bet but also by making his own. And what had followed had had very much an ‘own goal’ feel for Zac...

Remember that little blonde waitress who wanted nothing to do with you last week and accused you of harassment? Bring her to the ball acting all lovelorn and clingy and suitably polished up and you have a deal on the bet.

Freddie? Lovelorn and clingy? That was the challenge to end all challenges when he couldn’t even get her to join him for a drink! His even white teeth clenched hard in frustration. Zac had never before met with an outright rejection from a woman and it had infuriated him, his innate need to compete making him persist. But Freddie had interpreted persistence as harassment and had burst into tears in Vitale’s presence, a fiercely embarrassing moment that had frozen Zac where he’d sat in all male horror at what he had unleashed on himself in a public place. Even more gallingly, Vitale had stepped straight in to defuse the scene with all the right soothing words until another waitress had arrived to rescue them. But then that was Vitale, all smooth, slippery and refined in a way Zac was distinctly aware that he himself was not. The most formative years of Zac’s life had been the dropout years when he had belonged to a biker club, not rubbing shoulders with the rich and sophisticated in polite society.

In polite society, Zac was mobbed by women seduced by his great wealth and he avoided such women like the plague, well aware that they would’ve been equally enthusiastic even if he were old, bald and unpleasant. That he was none of those things simply made him more of a target. He had loved the male brotherhood in the club, the easy acceptance, the loyalty and the complete lack of rules that had enabled him to be himself. He had enjoyed women equally happy to enjoy him in bed, women without an agenda, only looking for pleasure. But after a while, even that had got old and as soon as the Brazilian media had discovered his hideout and exposed the story of the billionaire biker boy, he had moved regretfully on, knowing that phase of his life was over.

He revelled now in the anonymity of his life in London and had avoided his siblings’ social gatherings out of a strong desire to preserve it. Spoiled, privileged young women with cut-glass accents didn’t do it for him because they saw him as a prize trophy to be won. He had met with more sincerity and honesty in people his brothers would probably snobbishly deem to be vulgar and uneducated. And even conservative Vitale had conceded that Freddie was a real looker.

Zac only knew that he had never wanted a woman with such instantaneous lust. Lust at first glance, he conceded grimly, thinking it ironic that out of all the many women who wanted him back his libido had had to focus on one who not only did not want him, but also actively appeared to dislike him. He couldn’t accept that he had done or said anything to incite that reaction from her and the injustice had outraged him, encouraging his damaging determination to change her attitude. Meu Deus, after her outburst, he would scarcely be looking in that direction again, which meant that Vitale had won the bet outright and as the loser he would have to hand over his cherished sports car. Exasperation and growing annoyance gripped him. He would now be gone for weeks in any case.

One last try...

When he got back to London next month, what would he have to lose? He could attempt outright bribery, Zac decided with sudden savage cynicism...use the power of money to persuade for once in his life. Freddie had refused his first generous tip and then had just as swiftly changed her mind and accepted it, he recalled with a sceptical curl of his full sensual mouth. She would turn out to be like every other woman he had ever met: she would surrender for money. After all, she wasn’t working all day on her feet as a waitress for fun.

* * *

Freddie was having a dream about a man with eyes the colour of crushed ice, a wealth of silky blue-black hair and a full sensual mouth.

It was a wonderful dream until a little hand shook her arm and a little voice said, ‘Bekfast? Auntie Fred...bekfast?’ while one warm little body pushed for space in her single bed and another warm little body crawled up over the top of her.

With a groan, Freddie woke up and checked her alarm in case she had slept in. Some hope of that with her nephew and niece around, she thought ruefully, with three-year-old Eloise pinning her up against the wall and ten-month-old Jack lying on top of her in a happy baby sprawl.

‘You don’t lift Jack out of his cot,’ she told her niece for the tenth time. ‘He could get hurt. It’s not safe if I’m still asleep—’

‘You wake now,’ Eloise pointed out cheerfully as Freddie scrambled over her with Jack in her arms and went to change him.

A vague recollection of her dream flushed her triangular face and her soft mouth tightened, her brown eyes sparkling with self-loathing. Loser alert, loser alert, she chanted inside her head in exasperation. Eloise and Jack’s father, Cruz, had been a very good-looking guy as well, beautifully dressed and polite, but he had turned out to be a terrifyingly violent drug dealer and a pimp. Her older sister, Lauren, had died of a drug overdose within days of Jack’s birth, utterly destroyed by the man she had loved, who had not only refused to acknowledge his children but had also so far escaped paying a single penny towards their support.

Zac whatever-his-name-was might not be either beautifully dressed or polite, but he had been staying for weeks in the very expensive penthouse suite in the exclusive hotel where she worked in the bar and, although he had been gone for over a month now, the suite was apparently being held for his return. How the heck was he affording that when as far as she could see he didn’t engage in any normal form of work? He also mixed with some very flash, international, business-suited men. He was dubious and up to no good, of course he was, she told herself angrily, furious that the Brazilian had invaded her dreams. It had been bad enough, she acknowledged, when she’d had to see him every day in the bar. And now that he was gone, why hadn’t she completely forgotten about him?

It was even more weird that he had shown such an interest in her in the first place, she reflected irritably. She had seen how attractive he was to women while she worked. Zac wasn’t a mere babe magnet, more a babe tornado. She had seen desperate women do everything but strip in front of him in an effort to gain his attention. They nudged up to him at the bar, tripped nearby, tried to strike up conversations and buy him drinks. And he acted as if they didn’t exist, behaving like a blind celibate monk in their radius. Weird and suspicious, right?

After all, Freddie knew she wasn’t a show-stopper. She was way too undersized to be one. Barely five feet tall and slender, with only a very modest amount of curves. She had dark blonde hair that fell halfway to her waist and plain brown eyes. So why would a guy with Zac’s attributes chase a waitress unless he was a weirdo? Or some kind of user who assumed she would be stupid enough to fall for whatever nefarious purpose he had in mind? Well, no, Freddie had never been stupid and she knew how to look after herself, particularly after having spent years watching her late sister make the very worst decisions possible.

Freddie made breakfast for the children quietly, striving not to wake up her aunt, Claire, who had come home in the early hours. Claire, her late mother’s youngest sister, was only six years older than twenty-two-year-old Freddie, so they had never had the traditional auntie/niece connection, being far too close in age for that, but they had always got on well. Even so, just at present Freddie was worried about the other woman’s mood. Claire was being evasive and quiet, not to mention going out a lot and using a babysitter without ever talking about where she was going. Freddie believed in respecting Claire’s privacy but, at the same time, she couldn’t help worrying herself sick that their little ‘family’ arrangement was somehow at risk.

At Freddie’s instigation, Claire had applied to foster the kids after Freddie was turned down for the job. That had been after Lauren’s death when the welfare services had wanted to remove the kids from Freddie’s care and put them into a foster home with strangers. Freddie had been deemed too young and inexperienced to take charge of the children she had been looking after from birth—for that was the unlovely truth about her late sister’s parenting skills. Lauren’s world had had only two focuses: drugs and her violent, threatening boyfriend. Freddie had long been the only person available to care for Eloise and Jack while trying at the same time to dissuade her sister from her worst excesses.

And there she had failed abysmally, she conceded sadly, having found it impossible either to get Lauren off drugs or to persuade her to break up with Cruz. Grief still filled her when she thought of the loving, light-hearted big sister she had grown up with and clung to in foster care. Their parents had died in a car crash when Freddie was ten and there had been no relatives willing to take them in. Five years older, Lauren had been more like a little substitute mother than a big sister, at least, until she had fallen under Cruz’s influence and every rule had been broken, every moral flouted, every evil permitted. Freddie had been stuck in the middle of all that horror from the day of Eloise’s birth, knowing that if she moved out her niece would be lucky to survive that chaotic household where only constant vigilance protected the weak and vulnerable. Claire had urged her to walk away and turn her back but she had loved Eloise too much to do that.

So, when Claire had generously agreed to apply to be the kids’ foster carer even though she wasn’t really ‘a kiddy person’, as she put it, the agreement had been that Freddie would continue doing the lion’s share of the childcare. That meant that Freddie stayed home days to see to the children and worked nights in a bar, having readied the kids for bed before she left Claire’s tiny terraced home. Claire had confessed herself content to live off the foster-care payments but Freddie had had to find work to bring in some extra money.

And during Zac’s stay at the hotel, his tips had virtually doubled Freddie’s earnings. He had routinely tossed her two fifty-pound notes every time she served him and the first time, aware of his personal interest, she had taken umbrage and tossed them back, telling him she wasn’t for sale, only to be ambushed by another waitress who had angrily reminded her that their tips went into a communal pot, so she had had to go back to Zac’s table and apologise and pick up the discarded notes.

His unsought generosity had, however, reclothed Eloise and Jack, put some very nice meals on the table and now that little gold pile was almost gone it was time for a treat, she thought, determined to start being more positive and stop worrying about Claire, who, ultimately, would do what she wanted to do regardless of what anyone else wanted. Equally, why was she beating herself up about a stupid dream? Fantasies were harmless and, in the flesh, Zac was decidedly a fantasy, a traffic-stoppingly beautiful man whom women stood still to study until they recollected themselves and, blushing, moved on.

Of course, Freddie had done worse several weeks earlier when she had lost her temper with Zac and then burst into floods of tears. The stress of two sleepless nights with Jack running a fever had smashed all her defences flat. Claire had been so irritable about his crying disturbing her sleep and Freddie had been so exhausted, she had simply cracked down the middle and snapped when Zac had merely put a hand on her spine to steady her when she’d wobbled in the very high heels she had to wear for work. She had learned to be very averse to men touching her while she was living with her sister, whose home had overflowed with untrustworthy men. She had developed the habit of maintaining rigid boundaries and it had come back to haunt her at the worst possible moment.

But then, although she had been forced to apologise for the scene she had made to retain her job, she had still believed her hysterical outburst couldn’t have happened to a more suitable person. Zac’s very first words to her, after all, had been unrepeatably dirty and blunt, an invitation to spend the night with him but not one couched in polite or acceptable terms. She had had many such invites before but he was the first who had ever employed that kind of language to her face and she had felt soiled by it, besmirched by the simple fact she had to wear denim shorts, little tops and high heels to work in the hip hotel bar. After all, she was well aware that at least one of her colleagues took money to sleep with customers, and she had always been very careful not to give the wrong impression to the male clientele by being too flirtatious and she never ever gave out her phone number. In any case, for better or for worse, she had no time for a boyfriend in her life. Her life was full to overflowing from the moment she got up at six until she fell into bed worn out soon after midnight.

She checked into work punctually that evening, having earned several admonitions for being late when Claire failed to come home on time to take over charge of the children. Stashing her bag in the locker provided, she put on the shorts and the high heels that she had mercifully finally worn in and walked into the elegant black and white bar, with its eye-catching lighting and mirrored ceiling, to begin serving drinks. The black and white theme and the wonderfully opulent décor ran right through the boutique hotel, where no expense had been spared and where every comfort was on offer to those who could afford the high prices.

‘Mr da Rocha is out on the terrace,’ Roger, the bar manager, informed her.

‘Who the heck is Mr da Rocha?’ she asked.

‘That guy you don’t like. He’s back,’ Roger told her wryly and he lowered his head to whisper tautly, ‘A fairly reliable source tells me that Mr da Rocha bought this place a couple of months ago, so I would watch my step if I were you because if he decides he wants you out, you’ll be history.’

Freddie was drop-dead stunned by that piece of information and she stared wide-eyed after Roger as he moved off to attend to a customer at the bar. Zac owned the hotel? How was it possible that a foul-mouthed, tattooed guy in ripped jeans and biker boots had bought a hotel in one of the most exclusive areas of London? She clenched her teeth in thwarted disbelief. Yes, Zac was a huge mystery because, no matter what he wore or how carelessly he spoke, he emanated a force field of power and arrogance and contrived to appear totally at home in a very upmarket hotel. Practising her brightest smile, Freddie marched out to the terrace, which was unnervingly empty but for him.

And like a juggernaut parked in a too small parking space, Zac overfilled it, his devastating effect all the stronger because it had been so many weeks since she last saw him. He was wearing all black, which was a change from his usual denim blue jeans. Black jeans, black shirt, leather cuff on one arm, his St Jude necklace gleaming gold at his bronzed throat. Patron saint of lost causes, very appropriate, she thought inanely. But he was so outrageously gorgeous standing there that her mouth ran dry and her nipples tightened and her entire body leapt in a response that maddened her because it happened every time she saw him, like an alarm clock shrilling in her ear, reminding her that she was as weak and hormonal around him as every other young woman she saw staring at him with longing. While she might not stare, she was, at heart, no different from the rest of her sex, and the reminder rankled like a stone in her shoe she couldn’t shake loose.

Lounging back against the boundary wall, Zac straightened the instant Freddie appeared, so tiny, so dainty she reminded him of a delicate doll. A doll he wanted to flatten down and spread on the nearest horizontal surface, he reminded himself, looking boldly into eyes that ranged from the colour of melted caramel to that of liquid chocolate. A wall would do perfectly well, he thought absently, so aroused at the sight of her he was threatening the fly in his new jeans, and the infuriating thing was that he didn’t know exactly what it was about her that so turned him on every time she was within view.

‘Mr...er da Rocha,’ she pronounced, startling him with both the name and the undeniably false smile she had pasted on her lips because, most pointedly, she was careful never ever to smile at him.

And he knew right then that somebody had been talking and that she was somehow aware that he was not merely a hotel guest at The Palm Tree. Exasperation shimmered through him. He had bought the hotel for convenience, not for any form of recognition.

‘I have a proposition for you,’ Zac murmured huskily.

He had the most lethal electric sensuality Freddie had ever heard in a man’s voice. He could make a drinks order sound like a caress that skimmed spectral fingers down her rigid spine.

‘I think I’ve already heard that one, sir,’ she tacked on tightly. ‘And I’m going to pass on it—’

‘No, you haven’t heard this one,’ Zac cut in with a raw impatience he did not even attempt to hide. ‘I will give you a thousand pounds to spend an hour with me. And no, not in bed if that’s what you’re thinking. An hour anywhere in any place of your choosing.’

Her lashes fluttered up on utterly bewildered eyes. ‘But why would you offer—?’

‘I want to get to know you,’ Zac lied. ‘A conversation is all I’m asking for, nothing else. So, are you up for it or not?’

‘Anywhere, any place?’ she double-checked, because she didn’t credit his desire to get to know her for a second.

‘Anywhere, any place,’ Zac confirmed.

Freddie straightened her stiff shoulders and thought fast. If he was fool enough to pay, she was bright enough to take advantage. ‘Give me your phone number and I’ll think about it,’ she told him jerkily, barely able to credit that she was willing to sell her scruples down the river to spend even five minutes with him, never mind an hour!

‘There would have to be no crude language and no touching,’ she warned him carefully.

‘I can handle that.’ Zac gave her a huge charismatic smile that flashed white teeth and sent her heartbeat racing.

It was a crying shame that a man with his looks and presence should be so cynical and rough round the edges, Freddie reflected as he strode off the terrace, visibly satisfied with the result of his barefaced bribery. Of course, he didn’t want to get to know her. He wanted to get into her underwear in the most basic way possible and her negative response had simply forced him to raise his game.

But how could she possibly turn down a thousand pounds with Eloise and Jack to consider? With that kind of money she could take them on a little holiday or finally establish a rainy-day fund for emergencies. Yes, she was being greedy and shameless to accept such an arrangement but, as long as he knew upfront that no sex would be involved, he only had himself to blame for his extravagance and his huge ego. And she knew that she was going to enjoy punishing him thoroughly for both flaws.

CHAPTER TWO

‘ARE YOU WORRIED about something?’ Freddie asked Claire gently, striving to redirect her anxiety about meeting up with Zac in an hour’s time towards something hopefully less threatening to her peace of mind. ‘You’ve seemed so preoccupied lately...’

Her aunt, a brunette with her hair tied up in a casual ponytail, shrugged a shoulder and almost squirmed in her seat beneath Freddie’s troubled appraisal. ‘Oh, you know...things get on top of me sometimes.’

‘You must miss Richard,’ Freddie said sympathetically, because Claire’s boyfriend had recently gone out to Spain to help his parents set up the business they had bought out there. At the same time he was expected home within days.

‘Obviously,’ Claire muttered rather cuttingly, rising from the kitchen table with heightened colour in her cheeks. ‘I’ve got some emails to catch up on. See you later.’

And there it was, the refusal to spill the beans again, Freddie reflected ruefully while wondering if she should simply mind her own business because the two women had never been best friends who shared everything. Furthermore, didn’t she have enough to worry about?

Ever since she had made that agreement with Zac da Rocha, she had been regretting it. Her worst sin was impulsiveness. What if the guy turned nasty? From his point of view, she would be wasting his time and he would probably refuse to cough up the money he had offered, so all she was likely to do was embarrass herself and infuriate him. Was that wise when he could—possibly—be her employer? Ridiculous as it still seemed to Freddie, the rumour of his ownership of the hotel was spreading in spite of the fact that for some strange reason he apparently didn’t want anyone to know.

Regret and uncertainty stabbing at her nerves, she had tried to take a rain check on the arrangement she had made with him by text, but Zac was set on denying her any wriggle room while adding that he was looking forward to seeing her, which, in the circumstances, only made Freddie feel worse because by no stretch of the imagination was it going to be a date.

Yet, for all that awareness, Freddie found herself taking more care with her appearance than she usually did on such trips. Her hair was freshly washed and she put on her best jeans and newest top while also ensuring that the children looked presentable. Eloise danced alongside the buggy containing Jack because she adored the park where she could swing and run about. Freddie approached the bench by the central fountain where she had arranged to meet Zac and breathed in deep and slow.

‘Who we meeting?’ Eloise demanded again.

‘A man. A...a friend,’ Freddie fibbed.

‘Name?’ Eloise pressed.

‘It’s Zac,’ Freddie told her reluctantly, fairly sure that Zac would not last five minutes in their company once he registered that she had called his bluff in the most basic way possible. Did he even have a sense of humour?

Freddie stood up to pace the instant she saw Zac in the distance. He was so tall he was easy to spot. Jack grizzled to get out of the buggy and, with a sigh, she freed him, praying that she could keep him out of the water because she had not brought spare clothing out with her. Jack had confounded all expectations by getting up and walking at ten months old on his sturdy little legs. He had never crawled, he had just pulled himself up to walk and Freddie had discovered that her baby boy was suddenly a toddler with even less wit than the average toddler because he was still so young.

Eloise pushed the empty buggy along the path, Jack at her side. Freddie focussed on Zac’s approach, her heart beating very, very fast until it reached such a pitch that even breathing became a challenge. It was nerves, she told herself. He strode with the innate fluidity of a predator and she was hyperaware of every facet of him: the blue-black hair blowing back from his bronzed and perfect features, the sheer beauty of his bold masculinity in the sunlight, those strikingly light eyes of his, the colour of which she was still unsure of, glittering with the same charisma as his wide slashing smile. Oh, heavens, he was going to hate her, she thought with a sudden sharp pang of regret that startled her.

* * *

Were those kids with her? Surely not, Zac reasoned, deeming her too young for such a role while glancing around hopefully for another adult and failing to see one in the vicinity. They were her kids? She had kids? And not just a modest single one, but two? Inferno, what had he got himself into? But Zac had always been a quick study and light on his feet and he was careful not to betray an ounce of his discomfiture while feasting his attention on the slender blonde by the fountain. It was her body, he told himself urgently, just something about those seemingly fragile little bones and tiny curves that hugely turned him on. Or maybe it was the hair, thick and streaky blonde and definitely natural in his opinion, long twirling strands with a slight wave shifting in the breeze. Or was it the face, the unexpectedly dark eyes that were so much more unusual with that hair colour than blue? Or that incredibly voluptuous pink mouth of hers that left him painfully turned on?

Meu Deus, she was finally smiling at him and it lit up her solemn little face like the sun. True, the smile was a tad awkward and stiff, which it ought to be, considering that she had set him up with two kids in tow. Involuntarily, Zac was amused for no woman had ever tried to block him with children before, and he also knew that if he had known in advance what her reservations related to he would have run a mile, because kids and the freedom he valued so highly didn’t work together at all. And how the hell could she even try to fulfil the bet with Vitale for him with two little kids around? To his intense annoyance, the possibility of retaining his precious sports car seemed to move further out of his grasp.

‘Well, you said you wanted to get to know me,’ Freddie reminded him with more than a little desperation, for the silence had stretched far longer than she could be comfortable with. ‘And this is my life pretty much...the kids.’

Zac watched her settle down on the bench while the little girl hovered with huge dark eyes below her mop of blonde curls and the baby clung to her knees. ‘What do you call them?’ he asked.

‘I’m Eloise,’ the little girl informed him importantly while lifting up her dress to show off her underwear.

‘Eloise, leave your dress alone,’ Freddie interposed.

‘And you’re Auntie Freddie’s friend, Zac,’ Eloise completed, skipping over to him to grab his bare arm where a tattoo of a dragon writhed. ‘What’s that?’

‘A dragon.’

‘Like in my storybook?’ Eloise screamed with excitement.

‘And this is Jack,’ Freddie supplied, her face pink with embarrassment.

‘Auntie Freddie?’ Zac queried, his hopes rising afresh while the little girl clambered uninvited onto his lap, the better to examine his tattoo.

‘Get down, Eloise,’ Freddie instructed.

Eloise ignored her. Zac lifted the child down onto the bench between them and extended his arm in the slender hope of getting some peace.

‘I can’t really talk about it here with little ears,’ Freddie admitted awkwardly, wondering if ever a woman had been more punished for trying to outface a man. ‘But my sister...er...passed last year.’

‘And there’s no one else?’ Zac pressed, insanely conscious of the little girl’s eyes clinging to his.

‘Well, there’s my aunt, Claire, who’s twenty-eight and their official foster carer, but my agreement with her is that she’s the official but I do the caring,’ Freddie volunteered in a horrid rush that mortified her because she felt as if she were apologising for her unavailability. ‘As you know I work evenings, so there’s really no room in my life for anything else.’

‘I’m not still trying to...gave up on that,’ Zac lied.

He had so many tells when he lied, Freddie recognised, noting the downward shift of his outrageously long black lashes, the evasive gaze, the clenching of one hand on a long, powerful thigh. Yes, he was still interested in her but currently pretending not to be for some strange reason.

‘So, why did you want to meet up, then?’ she enquired, striving not to sound sarcastic because he had taken the presence of the kids like a gentleman, even if she was convinced that he was far from being one.

Jack wobbled over to him like a homing pigeon and clutched at both his knees, beaming up at Zac with a sunny Jack smile of acceptance. Zac unfroze and stood up with care, trying not to dislodge Jack. ‘Let’s walk,’ he suggested. ‘It’ll occupy the children.’

It was well timed, with both her niece and nephew treating him like a wonderful and mesmerising new toy. When she had made the decision to meet Zac in the park with the children, it should have occurred to her that Eloise and Jack would be fascinated with him because they very rarely had any contact with men. Claire had complained bitterly about the way they hogged her boyfriend’s attention when he came round.

‘We’ll move on to the playground,’ she agreed, lifting Jack, who wailed in protest and putting him back into the buggy.

Finding himself in possession of a trusting little girl’s hand, Zac strode along the path below the trees, trying and failing to slow his stride to match Eloise’s tiny steps. Without further ado, he began telling Freddie about his bet with his brother, Vitale.

‘My goodness, that’s so childish...what age are you?’ Freddie asked in sincere wonderment.

‘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. Meu Deus, 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

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.

Freddie spoke quickly, fearful that he had heard her tummy grumble. ‘What about you? Where did you grow up?’

‘A fazenda...a ranch in Brazil.’ Zac lifted the cover on the food trolley with a flourish. ‘Help yourself,’ he urged.

Grateful to have something to do with her knotted hands, Freddie reached for a plate while scolding herself for her nerves. Being alone with a man was no big deal and it was time she got over her hang-ups from the years spent living with her sister. In any case, Lauren had been the victim of the abuse, not Freddie, who had merely been a powerless shrinking presence. Zac had probably done her a favour by calling her on her attitude to him. After all, some day in the future, she might want a man of her own and she wouldn’t want to scare him off by acting weird, would she? Her spine stretching out of the stiffness she had maintained, she struggled to relax her defences.

‘I would never have picked you out as a country boy,’ Freddie confided as she ate the convenient mini finger foods she had piled on her plate, perched on the edge of a too comfortable sofa.

Zac’s beautifully shaped mouth quirked. ‘I’m not, although I’m quite interested in breeding pedigree horses,’ he admitted, startling her afresh.

Zac watched her ease back into the sofa as though it were a potentially dangerous manoeuvre. Her feet left the floor and she crossed her legs like an elf, making herself at home with him for the first time, and he got a rush out of that display of relaxation, which unsettled him. It was only that she was prickly, difficult and an unknown quantity and he loved a challenge, he told himself squarely. Maybe without really noticing he had got bored with the constant sexual come-ons and the easy conquests. And Freddie was different, so very different from the sort of women he usually bedded. She also looked ridiculously cute sitting there, he acknowledged uneasily, frowning at that aberrant thought.

‘I also wanted to ask if you’ve thought any more about joining me in that bet I mentioned this morning,’ Zac delivered, getting back down to business with a strong sense of relief.

Her vivid little face screwed up tight and she studied him in surprise. ‘You’re still on about that?’ she questioned.

Zac shrugged a broad shoulder. ‘I don’t give up on anything easily.’

No, if she could peel him apart Freddie was convinced she would find the word ‘determined’ stamped through him as though he were a stick of rock. She parted her lips to protest and then closed them again, wanting to be civil. ‘I have the children to look after,’ she said finally.

‘And I could easily hire a nanny,’ Zac traded, once again refusing to take no for an answer. ‘We could have a lot of fun at Vitale’s royal ball. I’m sure you’d enjoy getting all togged up in a fancy designer dress as much as any woman.’

‘No, sorry,’ Freddie muttered, crushing down the temptation offered by that treacherous word, ‘fun’. For a split second, she considered the offer of a nanny’s help and then suppressed the idea again because, with Claire’s current mood, she did not want to risk rocking the boat. It was out of the question. Certainly not while Claire was currently saddled with a boyfriend flying out to Spain whenever he could to help his parents set up their new business. It would be the worst possible time for Freddie to start demonstrating a desire to fly free on her own behalf.

Zac sank down beside her on the sofa, suddenly way too close for comfort, she told herself anxiously. Or was that prickling fullness in her breasts and the sudden tiny betraying burst of heat between her thighs a mortifying wish for him to get closer still? Colour bled up beneath her skin, heating her all over.

‘But that’s crazy,’ Zac argued.

‘You don’t know when to quit, do you?’ Freddie remarked in reproach. ‘I don’t want to talk about this.’

‘But I do,’ Zac parried with irrepressible enthusiasm, light eyes shimmering like stars in the dusk light. ‘I’d like to spend more time with you and I can’t understand why you would fight that when you want it too.’

Eloise and Jack, Freddie reflected without speaking. ‘I don’t want to spend more time with you, though,’ she told him drily, running for her only possible escape hatch.

‘Why do you lie about it?’ Zac demanded with sudden lancing impatience.

Freddie breathed in deep. ‘I’m not lying,’ she told him, looking back at him steadily, literally willing him to believe what she was saying.

His big hands came up to cup her cheekbones, long controlling fingers sliding into her hair to fasten to her skull, and she couldn’t move an inch, brown eyes dilating with an enervating mixture of excitement and dismay.

‘Liar,’ he growled again.

‘Just because I won’t say what you want to hear doesn’t mean I’m lying!’ Freddie proclaimed in desperation.

The silence between them smouldered as if someone had set it on fire, brown eyes clashing with volatile light grey condemnation, and then he took her mouth with a wild, seething passion unlike anything she had ever felt before. It was like being swept away by a tidal wave, like sticking a finger in an electric socket or hitching a ride on a rocket because one minute she was grounded, the next she was flying high on a hunger that consumed her with its ferocious urgency. Sensation roared through her trembling body with every delving exploration of his tongue. He lowered a hand to crush the slight pout of her aching breast and she almost spontaneously combusted inside the prison of her flesh, her body screaming for more while she kissed him back with both hands laced tightly into the luxuriant depths of his long black hair.

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 needed 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!’

Zac watched tears trickle down her taut cheeks, tears she wasn’t even aware that she was shedding because she was resolutely swigging the coffee she had got herself and keeping on talking earnestly, struggling to politely hide her anguish. He wished his mother had been capable of feeling even half as much after she had left him as a little boy marooned on the fazenda month after month, year after year, living in hope of visits or phone calls that had rarely happened. But, sadly for him, Antonella had craved her husband’s child and no other and in all the years that had followed fate had only given her Zac and an endless stream of miscarriages and other disappointments.

There’s nothing I wouldn’t do to keep them.

The words echoed afresh in Zac’s mind. And a subtle illuminating shift took place in his attitude at that point as a recollection of his father’s advice surfaced simultaneously: choose a woman who at least wants a child. His lean, strong face tensed and shadowed. How was he to view a woman willing to make any sacrifice to keep children that were not even hers?

‘You must love children,’ Zac commented with forced casualness.

‘I don’t know about that,’ Freddie demurred uncertainly. ‘But I loved Eloise from the minute she was born...and Jack. He had to be weaned off drugs before he was allowed to leave hospital and I was so worried about his development at first but he’s done so very well.’

‘Jack’s full of life,’ Zac agreed lazily, deep in thought and struggling against so unfamiliar an exercise. He had skimmed along the shallow surface of life for a very long time, having learned far too young that caring too much about anything, wanting anything too much and setting hopes too high invariably hurt like hell. An intelligent man, therefore, should avoid optimistic goals, emotional entanglements and complications.

He needed a child. Freddie, however, needed a husband, willing to take on two children. The prospect of being a parent to three children shattered Zac and drew him up short in his ruminations. To adopt Eloise and Jack, he would definitely have to marry Freddie and meet all conventional expectations to satisfy the authorities involved and it would scarcely be an easy process. In all likelihood that process would also be hedged with regulations likely to curtail his every move. Was he prepared to go to such punitive lengths to solve his inheritance problem?

After all, he could choose virtually any woman to have his child. Zac had few illusions about his own worth on the matrimonial front. He was filthy rich and ambitious women targeted men who could provide a fantasy lifestyle. But in spite of being poor, Freddie didn’t seem mercenary. In fact, she had infuriating principles set in stone that had held Zac to ransom and actually forced him into retreat. He didn’t do caring and commitment, but he also knew that any child would require caring and commitment from him to thrive. He could try to meet those obligations though, couldn’t he? He was not so divorced from humanity that change was impossible, he told himself stubbornly.

Zac focussed on Freddie, tousled dark blonde hair skimming her taut cheekbones, dark chocolate eyes surrounded by wet clogged eyelashes, which signally failed to diminish her appeal. Raw hunger rippled through him, hot as a river of lava, pushing and pulling at him even though he was far too shaken by the concept of becoming a father of three to really want to continue.

‘When you finish work tonight, come up to the penthouse and we’ll talk,’ Zac murmured almost hoarsely through clenched teeth. ‘There’s a possibility that I could be able to help you retain custody of Eloise and Jack.’

Dumbfounded by that claim, which had come at her out of nowhere, Freddie stared in bewilderment back at him, her full pink lips parting in surprise to show pearly teeth. ‘How?’ she asked baldly.

‘We’ll discuss that later.’ Zac dealt her a brooding appraisal. ‘But I can tell you now that it’ll come down to how much you’re willing to give up to hang onto those kids.’

Freddie’s gaze had widened. ‘Anything.’

‘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.’

‘Venha aqui...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

‘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.

Her body was all of a quiver in his radius because it didn’t matter how much he annoyed or confused her, he still fascinated her. Her temperature rose, her heartbeat quickened, her sensitive breasts feeling constricted by her bra. She pressed her slender jeans-clad thighs together tightly, struggling to contain the swelling heat at the heart of her.

‘Don’t look at me like that,’ Zac husked. ‘Not when you don’t want me to do anything about it.’

Freddie turned pink, striving to look inviting and flirtatious rather than desperate to be touched. ‘You can still kiss me.’

‘No, I can’t,’ Zac contradicted. ‘I won’t start anything we can’t finish. I’ve already had enough cold showers to last me a lifetime.’

That blunt response sent a tide of hot colour washing up over her disconcerted face. Her eyes evaded the allure of his glittering and all too compelling light grey gaze. Something tightened low in her pelvis, a contracting thread of very physical yearning that was strong enough to unnerve her.

‘You can’t still believe that I’m going to jilt you at the altar,’ Zac intoned thickly.

Freddie swallowed with difficulty. ‘Not any more,’ she conceded reluctantly.

‘Then come back to the penthouse with me tonight. I’m dying here.’ Zac groaned that feeling admission without a shade of inhibition. ‘I’ve never gone without sex for as long as this.’

‘I’d prefer not to,’ she muttered tightly, that gruff, innately sexual intonation making her body burn hotly from head to toe. ‘Because it’ll be my first time and I just think it’ll feel more relaxed once we’re married.’

Zac frowned, ebony brows drawing together. ‘Your first time at what?’ he queried.

‘At sex,’ Freddie framed, her soft pink lips compressing with embarrassment.

Zac looked back at her, stunned, the riddle Freddie had occasionally shown herself to be suddenly clarified. ‘You’re a virgin...a virgin?’ he said again as if she now fell into the same unlikely category as a unicorn. ‘Are you joking?’

‘No,’ she confirmed flatly.

‘OK.’ Zac rolled his eyes, attempting to compute this new information and utterly failing because he was so startled. ‘But why are you still a virgin?’ he persisted.

‘I don’t want to talk about that, right now,’ Freddie told him hastily, hugely relieved to see that the limo had come to a halt near Claire’s terraced home and that escape into the company of others, where even Zac could not continue such a conversation, was within reach.

‘You can hardly blame me for being surprised,’ Zac murmured in reproof. ‘I had no idea.’

‘It’s not something I feel a need to talk about,’ Freddie parried in frustration.

And Zac looked back to their very first meeting and barely managed to suppress a groan of frustration. Without even knowing it he had blown his chances with her right from the start by assuming that she would be as laid-back and casual about sex as he was. Now he knew differently, now he knew why her barriers went up the instant he got too close, but he still could not even begin to understand why she had retained her inexperience into her twenties. It was a complication he hadn’t expected and he didn’t know how he felt about it. But obviously, any plans to enjoy a sexual marathon to satisfy his currently rampant libido would be out of the question.

Eloise and Jack engulfed him in the narrow hallway. Jack clutched at his knees and Zac hoisted the baby high, ruffling Eloise’s hair as she sucked her thumb and rested her head sleepily against his thigh. The kids were so trusting and openly affectionate with him that it touched even his hard heart. Claire had said enough for him to know that Freddie had dealt with a lot of stuff she shouldn’t have had to deal with in an effort to shield the children from lasting damage at her sister’s hands. But Zac was beginning to recognise the damage done to Freddie, who, like a victim of abuse, was very nervous around men and found it very hard to trust.

‘I took them to the park,’ Claire told Freddie. ‘They’re exhausted and ready for a nap.’

‘I’ll take them upstairs,’ Freddie volunteered.

‘Want the dragon story,’ Eloise mumbled round her thumb, clutching at Zac’s jacket.

Over the past two weeks, Zac had not left the house without having to read the dragon story at least once and he gave way with grace, shepherding Eloise into the lounge where she quickly produced her favourite book. Jack went to sleep on his shoulder while Zac read and then Eloise announced her desire to go to the zoo to see a real dragon. Zac explained that dragons flew so fast and high in the sky that zookeepers couldn’t catch them. Eloise looked sad but cheered up when Zac reminded her that he was taking them to the zoo with Claire the next day while Freddie had her dress fitting.

Freddie watched and marvelled at the noticeable bond even now forming between Zac and her niece and nephew. Their interaction was very comfortable. Both she and Zac had already had initial interviews with social services and character references and basic documentation had been lodged. With their wedding only forty-eight hours away, Freddie believed that everything was progressing as well as could be expected. Zac had also requested permission to apply for passports for the children and to take them abroad for a trip after the wedding.

Claire had said that they were crazy to jump into marriage so fast simply in the hope of adopting the two children. Freddie had kept Zac’s need for a child of his own to herself, leaving the brunette to assume that Zac had fallen madly in love with her and she with him. And in truth, Freddie reckoned that she would’ve fallen for Zac had he not made such a disastrously bad first impression on her. Now when she saw him entertaining the children even for a few minutes, she blessed the quirk of fate that had brought him into their lives, for without him where would she have been? In despair at the threat of losing the children she loved.

Even so, she was nervous as anything at the prospect of meeting Zac’s rich and fancy relatives and their undoubtedly high standards. At least the royal pair would not be present, she thought with relief. Apparently, Prince Vitale’s mother had abdicated after a huge scandal and, now that Vitale was about to become King, he and his pregnant wife were much too involved in official business to spare the time for a family dinner in London.

With such grand people in the family, would Zac’s lofty relatives criticise her the moment she was out of hearing? Would they be shocked by his choice of someone like her? Would they try to persuade him to change his mind at the last minute and not marry her? After all, a waitress with two children in tow was no great catch for a very wealthy and educated man. She would never be his equal in the eyes of the world. Perhaps they would simply shake their heads in surprise and remind themselves that Zac needed an heir and that it might as well be Freddie as any other woman. Perhaps they simply wouldn’t care either way.

That evening, Zac long gone and the children readied for bed, Freddie got dressed for the dinner she was dreading with Zac’s father and his girlfriend and his elder brother and his wife. It bothered her that he had told her so little about himself and she worried that she would stumble in conversation and reveal her ignorance.

Zac stood at the passenger door of the limo watching Freddie descend the steps, her tiny feet in pearlised shoes, ultra-careful in the high heels, her clutch pinned between white-knuckled fingers, her state of nerves patent. But she looked absolutely amazing, like a delicate doll in silver, shapely legs as fragile as the rest of her, big brown eyes anxiously pinned to him.

‘You look fantastic,’ he told her bracingly, wishing she weren’t a virgin, wishing he could lower the privacy shields and pounce on her in the car to live out every fantasy she had awakened. But intelligence warned him to hang onto his self-control. She would trot out all sorts of excuses when he finally tackled her but Zac had already reached his own conclusions: she was scared of sex, scared of everything he made her feel. The last thing she needed from him was more pressure. He would have to be rather more subtle than nature had made him if he didn’t want to risk frightening her off.

‘Thanks,’ she said tautly, settling into the limo to fiddle unnecessarily with her clutch bag while studiously avoiding his attention. ‘So, your father married twice and that’s where Angel and Vitale come from but he had an affair with your mother and she was in love with someone else.’

Zac lounged back with a sigh. ‘Both Charles and Antonella were on the rebound when they met in Brazil. If Afonso hadn’t returned to my mother, Charles would’ve married her as soon as he was free to do so. My father seems to fall in love with every woman he sleeps with. He’s a very tender-hearted man.’

‘But your mother still loved your stepfather even though he treated her so badly? I mean, ditching her when they were engaged to go off with another woman?’ Freddie prompted in surprise, stealing a glance at him, loving how elegant he was in his dinner jacket. Clean-shaven for once without a hint of his usual stubble, his perfect features were revealed from the smooth planes of his high cheekbones to the strong angle of his jawline. His deep-set heavily lashed light eyes gleamed and, caught staring, she reddened, her mouth running dry, all concentration evaporating simultaneously.

Zac shrugged. ‘I never understood her obsession but Afonso Oliveira was it for my mother. She worshipped the ground he walked on and believed he had done a wonderful thing in overlooking her humble background to choose her as a wife.’

‘How was her background humble when she was born into so much wealth?’ Freddie asked in disbelief.

‘She was the illegitimate daughter of a black maid and some people, notably those of my stepfather’s ilk, looked down on her for that. My grandfather ignored my mother’s existence because he was equally snobbish. Afonso was from a similar aristocratic background. The Oliveiras had long since run through their family fortune but that was less important than their reputation and their impressive family tree.’

‘Your mother had a sad life.’ Freddie sighed reflectively. ‘She didn’t really fit anywhere.’

‘Life is what you make of it. Her attachment to Afonso was toxic. Getting too attached to anyone is dangerous,’ Zac pronounced grimly. ‘Think of how attached you are to Eloise and Jack and the sacrifices you’re prepared to make to keep them!’

Unexpectedly, Freddie smiled. ‘But, loving them has enriched my life in so many other ways. Yes, I could have made different choices but they’re my family and they make me happy. I have no regrets.’

The dinner was being held in a private room at an exclusive restaurant. Freddie remembered Charles Russell and his eldest son, Angel, joining Zac for coffee one morning. But the two women, one brunette and one elegant, much older blonde, were completely new to her. The blonde turned out to be Sybil, Charles’ girlfriend and also, it seemed, Merry’s grandmother.

Zac kept one arm wrapped protectively round Freddie’s spine as he introduced her to everyone. Angel’s wife, Merry, admired Freddie’s ring, but although both women were charming Merry seemed a little uncomfortable around Freddie and Zac, while Zac’s father treated Freddie for all the world as though she was his dream choice of bride for his youngest son.

They took their seats while Freddie noted what the other two women were wearing and recognised that Zac had not brought her to the party overdressed. Merry and Sybil sparkled with jewellery and sported stylish outfits sprinkled with the kind of little handmade embellishments that screamed haute couture. Merry talked about her little girl and asked her about Eloise and Jack. Zac shared Eloise’s current obsession with dragons. Charles was asking when he could hope to meet the children when Freddie rose at the last minute to follow the other two women out to the cloakroom.

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