and captured her hand.
‘It has been a pleasure for me also, Freya,’ he replied, lifting her hand to his mouth with a theatrical flourish that caught the attention of everyone in the room. ‘I hope very much that we will meet again.’
Not in this lifetime—if she could help it, Freya vowed silently as she repeated her excuse for leaving the party to the other guests and hurried from the room, acutely conscious of Zac’s gaze burning like a laser between her shoulder blades. As his hostess she supposed she should have remained on hand until his guests departed, but watching him smile and flirt with Miss Joubert was sheer agony and she couldn’t stand another five minutes of it.
Despite Freya feeling bone-weary, sleep proved elusive and two hours later she gave up her restless tossing beneath the sheets and headed for the kitchen to make a milky drink. She had heard Zac’s guests depart soon after she’d left the party, but the light streaming from beneath his bedroom door and the muted sound of a woman’s voice caused her to pause in the hallway. Obviously not everyone had gone home. The image of Zac and the gorgeous Mimi Joubert filled her with sick misery and she stumbled on towards the kitchen feeling as though she had been kicked in the stomach.
Oh, God! How could it hurt so much? After all this time and all the terrible accusations he had flung at her? She wanted to cry like a baby and tears blinded her as she poured milk into a saucepan and set it on the hob to heat. Of course he had a lover. There had probably been a steady stream of sophisticated beauties in his bed during the past two years—but the stark reality that he was at this moment making love to another woman was more than she could bear.
She mopped her wet face frantically with a paper towel. It was time she toughened up and stopped being so pathetic. She had coped with rejection all her life—she should be used to it by now, she thought bleakly, recalling the years of her childhood when she had tried so hard to win her grandmother’s love. But Nana Joyce hadn’t wanted her any more than her mother had done, and Zac had never made any pretence that he loved her. It was her own stupid fault that she had given him her heart and it should have come as no surprise that he had treated it with callous disregard.
Too late she heard the hiss of scalding hot milk as it frothed onto the hob. With a cry she grabbed the saucepan handle as a smell of burning filled the kitchen and, to her horror, the smoke alarm activated.
‘What the hell are you playing at? I thought you were in bed.’
‘I couldn’t sleep.’ Freya jerked her gaze from Zac’s furious face and ran cold water over the ruined pan while he reached up and switched off the alarm. His hair was ruffled and his robe loosely fastened, as if he had leapt up from bed and dragged it around him. He looked indecently sexy and the knowledge that he was naked beneath the black silk caused her heart to thud unevenly.
‘That’s no reason to wake the rest of the household,’ he said tersely, his eyes narrowing as he noted the streaks of tears on her face.
‘I’m sorry—I didn’t mean to disturb you,’ she muttered miserably, unable to dismiss the picture of him tearing himself out of Mimi Joubert’s arms. ‘I think the pan’s salvageable if I scrub it.’
‘Leave it.’ He snatched the pan that she had filled with soapsuds and, infuriated by his highhandedness, she grabbed it back again.
‘Let me do it. Go back to bed. You don’t want to keep Miss Joubert waiting,’ she hissed beneath her breath, and then gasped when he forcibly removed the saucepan from her hand and spun her round to face him.
‘What?’ His tone was deceptively mild, but the glinting fury in his gaze warned that he had reached the limits of his patience.
‘Miss Joubert—I know she’s staying with you,’ Freya murmured uneasily, trying to edge away from him and finding herself jammed up against the worktop. ‘I don’t care,’ she told him sharply, terrified that he might think she was jealous. Her cheeks burned when he continued to stare at her speculatively, as if he could see inside her head. ‘We’re both free agents and you can sleep with who you like.’
‘Merci, chérie,’ he murmured sardonically, ‘but I have no plans to leap into bed with a business acquaintance I met for the first time a few days ago.’ He paused for a heartbeat and then said softly, ‘It was clear from your behaviour with Lucien Giraud this evening that you do not feel bound by the same constraints of moral propriety.’
‘Meaning what, precisely?’
‘Meaning that you were all over him like a rash,’ he growled, his face twisting in distaste. ‘You’re not even fully recovered from your injuries, and yet you waste no time trying to seduce another wealthy lover. Perhaps you are already preparing for the outcome of the DNA test,’ he sneered, ‘and are intending to sell yourself to Giraud in return for financial security for you and your child.’
His cruel taunt pierced her heart and in an agony of hurt she brought her hand up to meet his cheek with a resounding crack. For a few seconds she stared at him in horror, and then closed her eyes as a wave of shame and nausea swept over her. She deplored physical violence, but how dared he insinuate that she was no better than a whore? The blazing fury in his eyes warned that she had pushed him too far and with a cry she shot down the hall, but had only gone a few paces before he caught hold of her and swung her into his arms.
‘Take your hands off me!’ She pummelled her fists against his chest and gasped when he marched determinedly towards his room. ‘If you’re planning a threesome, you can damn well think again.’ Burning up with embarrassment, she screwed her eyes shut when he strode through the door and deposited her on the bed. Surely she had plumbed the depths of humiliation? she thought wildly, convinced that Zac and his beautiful bed-mate must be laughing at her.
But when she cautiously lifted her lashes there was only Zac staring down at her—no hint of amusement on his face, just stark, primitive hunger and an implacable determination in his eyes that sent alarm feathering down her spine.
‘I AM a patient man,’ Zac stated with a mind-boggling disregard for the truth, ‘but I’ve had as much as I’m prepared to take from you.’
Frozen to the bed, Freya watched him activate the remote to turn off the television, before his hands moved to the belt of his robe. ‘Obviously I was wrong about Miss Joubert. I’m sorry,’ she muttered thickly. She watched him with wide, disbelieving eyes, her blood pounding in her veins when he loosened the belt and shrugged out of his robe to stand before her, gloriously and unashamedly naked.
‘Zac!’ She swallowed hard and tried to tear her gaze from the masculine perfection of his body. His skin gleamed like polished bronze in the lamplight and her eyes skittered down over the rippling muscles of his abdomen, following the path of dark hairs that arrowed down his taut stomach to his thighs. He was aroused—and it was the sight of his boldly erect manhood that finally penetrated the fog clouding her brain. ‘What are you doing?’
‘Taking what you were so blatantly offering to Lucien Giraud,’ he replied coolly, foiling her attempt to scramble off the bed by coming down beside her and pinning her to the mattress with insulting ease.
‘I was not.’ Tears stung her eyes at the contempt in his, but her traitorous body recognised its soul mate and molten heat surged through her veins, leaving her weak with longing. One look was all it took to arouse her to fever pitch—what chance did she stand if he touched her, kissed her…? ‘Zac, I don’t
