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
