at another man the way you looked at Lucien Giraud tonight, so help me, chérie, I will not be responsible for my actions.’
For a few seconds Freya stared at him in stunned silence while her brain assimilated his words. Bitterness, humiliation and rage congealed her blood and she closed her eyes for a moment, shocked by the level of pain he could still inflict on her. How could she love him when he seemed determined to shred her heart into a thousand pieces? She obviously possessed a masochistic streak, she thought as agony swept through her.
‘If—overlooking my indiscretion with Brooks—is your way of saying that you forgive me for having sex with Simon, you’re wasting your breath,’ she said tightly, her voice shaking with emotion. ‘At a risk of repeating myself, I never slept with him or anyone else—ever.’ She pushed against his chest with a force borne of desperation, terrified that she was actually going to be sick. ‘How dare you! How dare you take that high and mighty tone with me? Your arrogance sickens me—you sicken me,’ she flung at him.
All this time she’d struggled as a single mother, juggling work and childcare and using her few precious hours of free time while Aimee slept to study for her degree, in the hope that she could improve her financial situation. And all the while Zac had lived here in his luxury penthouse apartment, refusing to accept that he was the father of her child while he thought the worst of her. Not for much longer, she thought furiously. The results of the DNA test would force him to accept the truth and she hoped he suffered an overdose of remorse when he realised how cruelly he had misjudged her.
He was staring at her through narrowed eyes, his jaw tense, but she no longer felt overawed by him. Her pride had finally come to her rescue and, although it was way too late to salvage her self-respect, she had to try. With jerky movements she dragged her negligee over her head, ignoring the pain in her wrist. The pain in her heart was a thousand times worse and she scrambled to her feet, desperate to escape before she broke down in front of him. ‘I don’t need anything from you, Zac, certainly not your arrogant assertion that you’ll overlook something I didn’t even do,’ she told him fiercely. ‘But one day soon you’ll come crawling to me on your hands and knees, and hear me now—I will never forgive you for your treatment of me.’
Freya woke with a start as sunlight filtered through the blinds and slanted across her face. Dazedly she stared at the clock on her beside table and gave a disbelieving frown—surely it couldn’t really be ten a.m.? She sat up and groaned as she quickly fastened the front of her nightgown, her cheeks flaming when she recalled how Zac had stripped her last night before he had pushed her flat on her back and taken her with a savagery that had escalated her excitement to fever pitch.
What did that make her? she wondered dismally as she recalled her wanton response to him. And how could she have been so stupid and so utterly lacking in pride? He had looked down his arrogant nose at her while he’d stated that he was prepared to overlook her affair with Simon Brooks, but she was innocent and his lack of faith hurt as much now as it had two years ago. Every day that she spent with him he stripped away another layer of her protective shell, leaving her raw and vulnerable, and she knew she had to leave before the damage to her heart was irreparable.
A hesitant tap on the door heralded the arrival of the maid. ‘Ah, you are awake,’ Elise said with a smile. ‘Shall I bring you breakfast in bed?’
‘No, thank you, Elise.’ Freya jumped to her feet. ‘Where is my daughter?’
‘She is in the pool with Monsieur Deverell.’
Freya snatched up her robe and paused on the way to the en suite to stare blankly at the maid. ‘Zac has taken Aimee swimming?’ she queried, her voice sounding sharp as panic and confusion mingled. To her chagrin, Aimee had developed an instant fascination with Zac and, to give him credit, he treated the little girl with a gentle patience that he never revealed to anyone else—certainly not her, Freya thought bleakly.
Elise nodded. ‘Madame Lewis is with them. Monsieur Deverell said that you’d had a disturbed night, and should be left alone to sleep,’ she told Freya innocently. ‘I’ll tell him you are awake now. He wishes to see you in his study as soon as you are dressed.’
The temptation to pass on a message to Zac telling him to go to hell was so strong that Freya had to bite her lip. It wasn’t fair to involve the penthouse staff in their private war, she reminded herself, and had to be content with cursing him beneath her breath as she stormed into the bathroom.
After the quickest shower on record, she dressed in a simple skirt and blouse suitable for travelling in, although her injured wrist still made it impossible for her to fasten her bra. She packed the few belongings she had brought from England and moved into the nursery where she swiftly stowed Aimee’s clothes into a holdall ready for their immediate departure. With any luck Zac was still on the roof-garden, she thought as she raced along to his study and scooted across to his desk to search for her and Aimee’s passports. One thing was certain, after her humiliating capitulation in his bed she could not risk remaining in Monaco for another night.
‘Looking for something?’ His lazy drawl brought her head up and she blushed and jumped guiltily away from the desk to find him standing in the doorway.
‘Passports,’ she replied, swallowing at the sight of him in chinos and a cream shirt, open at the neck to reveal the tanned column of his throat. ‘Aimee and I are leaving. I refuse to stay here and be subjected to your vile accusations any more,’ she said heatedly.
‘Ah.’ He stepped into the room and her heart lurched when he shut the door behind him and turned the key in the lock.
She could not look at him without remembering how she had writhed beneath him in abject surrender just hours before and she gave a silent groan of despair as her body stirred into instant life. Her palms felt suddenly damp and she wiped them down her skirt. ‘Elise said you wanted to see me about something,’ she muttered, tension prickling her skin when he moved towards her. As he walked around his desk she edged away from him, and at his terse command to sit down she subsided into the chair facing him.
He studied her speculatively for a few moments, but his gaze did not quite meet hers and she gained the curious impression that he felt awkward.
‘I owe you an apology,’ he said brusquely.
Astounded, she stared at him, wondering if she had heard him correctly. Zac apologising to her had to be a first, but the fact that he felt the need to made her realise how much he obviously regretted making love to her. ‘It’s all right,’ she mumbled as she inspected her lap with sudden fascination. ‘I’m not proud of my behaviour either. We just got carried away, but obviously it’s an experience neither of us wants to repeat.’
Black eyebrows winged upwards. ‘I was not apologising for last night, chérie,’ he said silkily, his eyes glinting with amusement. ‘It was an incredible experience that I have every intention of repeating. You enjoyed it too,’ he added before she could comment, ‘so don’t play the innocent martyr with me because you’re a wildcat in bed and I have the scratches on my back to prove it.’
‘Oh!’ Scarlet-faced, she wished a hole would open up and swallow her, and more than anything she longed to wipe his smug grin from his face.
‘My only regret about last night is that I was rough with you,’ he continued, his husky, accented voice sliding over her like a velvet cloak. ‘I was, as you so succinctly put it, carried away, and I’m afraid that in my urgency to possess you I might have hurt you. Did I, ma petite?’
His words evoked a stark image in Freya’s mind of how she had begged him to take her; how she had enticed him with her
