got cosy spaces and I could do so much with those rooms. And look at Eloise and Jack enjoying the freedom to run wild outdoors...’
Zac duly looked, to discover that unsurprisingly the kids were doing their best to resemble storybook-perfect kids passing through a flower-strewn meadow in aid of Freddie’s arguments. ‘And we won’t be tripping over staff here,’ she pointed out, having already accepted that Zac would not live without, at the very least, a housekeeper and a cook.
Raised with domestic staff, Zac could imagine no other way of living. He didn’t want his wife preoccupied with the necessities of life when he or the children wanted her attention. But Freddie found live-in staff intrusive and was only slowly adapting to her new luxury lifestyle.
‘You could breed horses here,’ she reminded him, relieved that he had found something to be positive about on the property.
They had been married for exactly eight weeks, having flown back from France on three separate occasions to attend adoption assessment sessions with the children. After the initial ructions, those seven weeks at the Villa Antonella had been blissfully happy. Zac had settled down and he hadn’t shown any disappointment when her period had arrived within days of their wedding, confirming that she hadn’t yet conceived.
That he wasn’t impatient on that score was a plus, she reflected fondly. Yes, she was fond of him, she conceded, but fondness and love were two different things. She was fond of vanilla ice cream and even fonder of being wakened in the early hours by an insanely sexy masculine presence in her bed, but love she kept strictly focussed on the children. Zac was gorgeous and great company and many, many things she admired in a man.
He was amazingly patient with Eloise and Jack and, when Freddie had come down with a two-day virus, he had been kind in a way she had not expected him to be because those who rarely got ill usually weren’t very sympathetic towards those who did. She had definitely made the right decision when she married him, she told herself happily. Of course, it would be a wrench when the time came for Zac to walk away, particularly if she didn’t manage to give him a child and uphold her side of their bargain, but, knowing what lay ahead, she could prepare herself for that development. Practicality, not sentiment, she reminded herself resolutely, and there was no reason why she shouldn’t enjoy their time together as a family, although sometimes she felt guilty at just how much she was enjoying being married to him.
‘If you want this house, I’ll buy it,’ Zac breathed reluctantly.
‘It’s not your style, though.’
‘I like the stables and I’m prepared to be persuaded,’ Zac informed her, snaking out a strong arm as she knelt beside him and tipping her down onto his lap.
Freddie, demonstrating how much she had changed after two months of marriage, kissed him passionately and his arms tightened around her as he rocked her over the prominent bulge at his groin. A faint groan of frustration was wrenched from her as his arousal connected with the most intimate part of her.
‘We could go back into the house and—’
‘Yes!’ she gasped with an eagerness she couldn’t hide, and her cheeks reddened because just recently she couldn’t seem to keep her hands off Zac and she was starting to wonder if that was quite normal or a sign that she was a little oversexed.
Zac laughed with rich appreciation. ‘You really, really want this house.’
She gazed into his pale glittering black-lashed eyes, feeling her heart race at speed and her entire body heat to an embarrassing degree. ‘I want you,’ she contradicted without hesitation.
Being married wasn’t so bad, Zac conceded, tugging his wife across the overgrown lawn to the house with one powerful hand. True, he had had to make explanations to Eloise about why he regularly forgot to wear pyjamas, and Jack, since he had learned how to climb out of his cot, allowed no such niceties to hold him back from a full-scale assault on the marital bed. Meal times had got messy but bath time was fun and bed time from an adult point of view was even more fun-filled, Zac acknowledged as he pinned Freddie to a wall and kissed her breathless, feeling as sexually voracious as a man who hadn’t indulged in months, which would have been very untrue. But then Freddie acted on his libido like an aphrodisiac. Once was never enough and, now she was no longer as shy or nervous, she had become his dream lover, as enthusiastic and seemingly as sexually obsessed with him as he was with her. What was there not to like in that magical combination?
The skirt of her dress was up round her waist and there was a ripping sound as Zac impatiently dispensed with her skimpy silk knickers. She reckoned he preferred silk because it tore easily. Excitement sent her heart racing and her body pulsing as he unzipped, braced her back against the wall and suddenly he was there where she most needed him. She gasped and gasped again as he locked her legs round his waist to sink deeper into her slick, tender flesh. As he ground against her, possessing her with potent strength, carnal sensation pounded through her body in wave after wave until the pleasure rose to an unbearable crescendo and sent her flying high.
‘You’ll have to carry me back to the car,’ she muttered after she had regained her voice, her head drooping down onto a broad shoulder for support. ‘I’m done.’
‘You can’t be. You had an early night last night and you slept late this morning. I had to wake you for breakfast,’ Zac reminded her, settling her down onto her own feet and bending down to retrieve her underwear and stuff it in his pocket.
Freddie swallowed back a yawn. ‘You exhaust me...but in the nicest possible way,’ she completed with a cheeky grin.
Zac made her pause before he opened the front door, long fingers combing through her tumbled hair to tidy it. But it made no perceptible difference. Her face was still pink from her climax and her eyes shone like stars. ‘You still look like you’ve been thoroughly—’
‘Pleasured is the word,’ Freddie slotted in hastily, because Zac was trying to clean up his speech since Eloise had picked up a bad word after listening to him and if she had repeated that word once, she had repeated it a thousand times, making every adult in her radius cringe.
Zac looked down at Freddie and wished there were a bed within reach. ‘Were you?’
‘Thoroughly,’ she told him, revelling in his spontaneous smile.
‘By the way, there was something I’ve been meaning to discuss with you,’ Zac told her in the back of the limo, Jen and Izzy and the children travelling in the car behind them. ‘Who told you about the chalet girl in Klosters?’
Freddie grimaced. ‘Her mother on our wedding day. I saw her with your father’s party. He must have brought her, obviously not knowing how she felt about you.’
‘I did first meet her in Dad’s office with her mother and then she miraculously took a job at his ski retreat the week I was staying there with Vitale and Angel. She was a desperately pushy girl and I hate being hassled. I didn’t sleep with her because if I had she would have clung like a limpet.’
‘OK, so she lied to her mother and made you out to be the bad guy.’
‘What did her mother say to you?’ Zac demanded angrily.
‘Pretty much that once you slept with a woman you lost interest.’
Zac’s bright eyes gleamed with amusement. ‘Well, you know that’s not true where you’re concerned.’
But
