her face with the shining, silken veil of her hair. That piercing gaze was too perceptive by half, and it was one of Zac’s strengths that he used mercilessly.
Zac mustn’t know about the baby. Her mind was screaming a warning to her. In the dark days since their wedding she had come to realise she knew very little about the powerful, enigmatic man she had married so trustingly, but one thing she did know. He was the type of male who would fight tooth and nail for what was his, and he would certainly see this tiny being as belonging absolutely to the Harding empire. Her feelings would be incidental.
She had been raised in the care of nannies and chauffeurs and hired help and it had been miserable. She didn’t intend to let that happen to her child. And it was hers, all hers, she told herself fiercely. It was even her mistake that meant it had been conceived at all. She had decided to take the pill several months before, but in all the furore of the wedding she had forgotten that one, vital night, and a possible pregnancy had been the last thing on her mind when she had fled the next morning. She had just wanted to put as many miles between them as she could.
‘Come and eat.’ His voice was cool now, cool and hard, but she welcomed that. It emphasised that he was a stranger, that the man she had fallen in love with, the powerful, tender lover and fascinating companion, had been a figment of her wishful imagination, nothing more. Her Zac had never existed.
They ate at the tiny marbled breakfast bar that was just big enough to accommodate two plates, and Victoria had to admit that the light fluffy omelette and grilled fish doused in lemon and herbs were delicious. Zac had opened a bottle of wine he had found in the fridge, looking slightly surprised when Victoria insisted she only wanted a glass of orange juice but saying nothing.
But once the meal was finished and they had taken their coffee through to the sitting room he said plenty.
‘Well?’ Victoria had sat down in the rocking chair again but Zac remained standing, darkly brooding and slightly menacing as he leant against the far wall. ‘Have you punished me enough or do you intend to continue with this charade?’ he asked coolly.
‘Charade?’ It was only the thought of the damage black coffee would do to William’s tasteful furnishings that saved him. ‘You think this is a charade, a game, Zac? Think again,’ Victoria said tightly as she placed the mug on the table next to her before temptation overcame her. How dared he stand there and say that?
But he had seen her hand tremble, and now he said, his voice grating, ‘If you act like a child you should expect me to treat you like one. How could you leave like that, without saying a word? It was the height of stupidity.’
‘But I am stupid, Zac.’ Victoria glared at him, her pale skin stained scarlet and her jaw setting ‘I believed every word you told me, didn’t I? You can’t get much more stupid than that’
‘I have never lied to you,’ he stated with outrageous righteousness. And then, when she stared at him in furious disbelief, her mouth opening and shutting as she sought for a suitably cutting reply, he added, ‘I can see that you disagree with that.’
‘You...you said you loved me,’ she managed at last.
‘I do love you, Victoria.’ It was as cold as ice. ‘It was you who left me, remember? I didn’t go anywhere.’
‘And you think that unreasonable?’ she asked incredulously. ‘You leave me on our wedding night to go to someone else—’
‘I did not choose to leave you,’ he said calmly, as though that made everything all right. ‘I answered a distress call from a human being who needed help, because I was the only person who could.’
Of course you were, she thought with agonising pain—you were the cause of it in the first place. ‘You kept it a secret,’ she accused sharply. ‘You didn’t tell me what had happened although you had several opportunities. You weren’t going to tell me, were you?’
‘No, I was not.’ It was not the answer Victoria had expected; she had expected him to lie and perversely it hurt all the more that he hadn’t bothered to do even that. ‘There was no need for you to be bothered with such unpleasantness,’ Zac said coolly. ‘This was my problem, and as such I dealt with it as I saw fit.’
Oh, it was his problem all right! ‘You married me because you wanted to extend your business empire,’ Victoria stated with painful flatness, ‘and don’t bother to deny it; I know it’s true. You probably fancied me too, and I was malleable enough—stupid enough—for your purposes. You had planned to go on exactly as you’d always done, hadn’t you? I wouldn’t even have made a dent in your life. There was to be no sharing, no real commitment.’
‘That is all absolute rubbish and you know it,’ he said angrily. ‘I never lied to you, not once. If you had asked me about Gina, or the business deal with your mother’s attorneys, I would have told you as much as you wanted to know.’
‘That’s easy to say now,’ she shot back furiously, ‘but how could I ask about something I didn’t know a thing about?’ She had always considered herself a quiet, gentle, easy-going sort of person, certainly not someone who would ever contemplate doing another human being serious physical harm, but right at that moment, if she had had anything in her hands, she would have thrown it straight at Zac’s handsome, superior face. She wanted to hurt him. She wanted to really, really hurt him, and the knowledge shocked her more than she could express, acting like a bucket of cold water on the fire of her temper.
‘Did you buy that apartment for Gina?’ she asked now, her voice shaking. ‘Just a few weeks before we got married? Did you?’
‘I’m not answering that before I explain the circumstances,’ he said after a long moment of looking at her white face from which all colour had fled.
‘I think you just did,’ she whispered numbly, her eyes desolate.
‘Victoria, I had responsibilities I couldn’t walk away from,’ he bit back tightly. ‘Responsibilities that necessitated action.’
‘I know. Responsibilities to your mistress,’ she said dully.
‘No, to a member of my family,’ he growled deeply. ‘She is a distant cousin of mine, and her mother had phoned me from Italy to say that Gina had problems and needed help. I couldn’t refuse her.’
‘Did her mother know you were sleeping with her daughter?’ Victoria asked with uncharacteristic cynicism.
‘My affair with Gina ended before I met you,’ Zac said with rigid self-control. ‘And that is the truth, Victoria. I swear it.’
‘I don’t believe you.’ She stared at him with pain-filled eyes.
The words hung in the air for an eternity, and as Victoria wrenched her eyes from his and turned to stare out into the garden—anything to avoid looking at his face and seeing the look that had come into the dark eyes at her words—she focused on a small, flat, large-eyed lizard that had changed its colour to suit the large stone on which it was hanging by the tiny suckers on its toes.
How could life go on—the sun shine so brightly, the flowers and trees look so beautiful—when her world was ending? she asked herself silently. But she had to finish this now—it was even more important after what she had learnt that morning.
She had thought he was different, she’d believed he really loved her as she did him—and she had loved him, so much—but he was part of her mother’s
