discovering her to have slept with another man behind his back he had evicted her from his life with ruthless efficiency. His bed had not remained empty for very long. His vast fortune meant that there would always be a queue of willing candidates vying to be his mistress, he acknowledged cynically.
He had hardly given Freya a thought since he’d dismissed her back to England and it irritated him to realise that the chemistry between them still burned as fiercely as ever.
‘I did not instruct my grandmother to bring Aimee to you,’ Freya said shakily, still struggling to accept that Zac was really standing in front of her. ‘Trust me; you’re the last person I’d ever turn to for help.’ She glared at him, her green eyes blazing with anger and unconcealed hurt. He was so beautiful, she thought painfully. She couldn’t tear her eyes from him and the sight of his broad chest and powerful abdominal muscles, delineated by his close-fitting, fine-knit jumper, made her insides melt.
Zac was utterly gorgeous but fatally flawed, she reminded herself. His arrogance and cynicism had almost destroyed her, but her body seemed to have a short memory and was responding to his closeness with humiliating eagerness. He had treated her diabolically. When she had needed him most, he had let her down and demolished her pride with his foul accusations that she had been a two-timing whore. Two years ago he’d made it clear that she meant nothing to him, so why was her heart racing? And why was her brain intent on recalling every detail of his kiss, the feel of his hands on her body…?
Frantically she dragged her mind from her memories. ‘I admit I once told Nana Joyce that you’re Aimee’s father—she kept on and on about it, and it’s the truth, whatever you might think,’ she stated with quiet dignity. ‘You were the first and only man I’ve ever slept with, Zac,’ she whispered sadly, ‘but you had your own reasons for choosing not to believe me, didn’t you?’
Zac’s expression of cool disinterest did not flicker and his only reaction to her last statement was a slight quirk of his brows. ‘And what was that, chérie?’
‘You’d decided before I told you I was pregnant that you wanted to end our relationship. After three months together you’d grown tired of me. Don’t deny it,’ she said fiercely. ‘I recognised the signs, the way you mentally withdrew from me during those last few weeks that we were together. The only time we were close was in bed, and even then you were…distant.’
‘Not that distant,’ Zac replied mockingly. ‘Your voracious appetite for sex wouldn’t allow any distance between us, would it, Freya? I still find it amazing that you had the energy to sleep with anyone else when you put so much effort into sleeping with me.’
His deliberate cruelty skewered Freya’s heart and she blinked back the rush of tears that burned her eyelids. ‘How dare you?’ she whispered thickly. ‘Don’t try and appease your guilty conscience by blaming me. You wanted rid of me because you’d set your sights on Annalise Dubois. You were determined to make her your next mistress, but an ex who was pregnant with your baby would have seriously cramped your style.’
In her agitation she leapt off the bed and her head spun. The blood drained from her face and she swayed unsteadily before collapsing back onto the mattress.
‘Enough,’ Zac growled as he stepped forwards and caught Aimee who was determinedly trying to wriggle off the bed. ‘You’re upsetting the child.’ He set Aimee down on the floor and stared speculatively at her blonde curls for a moment before glancing back at her mother.
‘I don’t want anything from you,’ Freya stated angrily. ‘Certainly not money,’ she added, unable to hide the flare of contempt in her eyes. ‘I just want you to accept that I’m telling the truth.’
She stared into his brilliant blue eyes, that were so like Aimee’s, and gave an angry sigh. She had no intention of pursuing him through the courts for a slice of his vast fortune as her grandmother had frequently suggested. He didn’t want her and he didn’t want Aimee, and that was fine, she’d manage without him. She just wanted him to accept that she had never lied to him. ‘Why can’t you be honest with me?’ she pleaded.
Zac glanced down at her and tensed. Her thin hospital nightgown had come unfastened so that he could see the curve of one small, pale breast. To his utter disgust he felt his body’s involuntary reaction—a shaming surge of heat in his loins as desire corkscrewed in his gut.
She’d proved herself to be a faithless whore, damn it, who was still brazenly trying to pass off another man’s child as his. It was humiliating to realise the effect she still had on him. He didn’t want to want her; it dented his pride to know that he was seriously tempted to wind his hand into her hair, angle her head and plunder the softness of her moist pink lips in a kiss that would remind her of the passion they had once shared.
Instead he forced himself to move away from the bed and stared out of the window at the rain lashing against the pane. ‘What would you know of honesty, Freya?’ he demanded coldly, his facial muscles tightening so that his skin was stretched taut over his cheekbones. ‘Did you really think I wouldn’t find out about your secret assignations with that anaemic-looking street artist Simon Brooks?
‘Monaco is a small place and gossip runs rife. I am—’he shrugged his shoulders in a typically Gallic gesture ‘—well known in the principality and the speculation that I was being cuckolded by my mistress soon reached my ears. I might even have found the situation amusing,’ he drawled sardonically. ‘It was certainly a novelty. But your attempts to saddle me with another man’s child were not so funny, chérie.’
‘I swear I never slept with Simon,’ Freya said urgently. ‘The bodyguard you’d assigned to protect me made a mistake that day. But at the time—when you said all those terrible things to me—I couldn’t think straight.’ She had been so devastated by Zac’s refusal to believe that she was carrying his baby and so shocked by his accusation that she had slept with Simon that her mind had gone blank and she had simply walked out of his apartment without even trying to defend herself. ‘I’ve had a long time to think about things since then,’ she added bitterly, ‘and now I believe I know what happened.’ She paused for a moment and stared at Zac, faint hope bubbling in her chest when he remained silent. It was the first time since the fateful night two years ago that they had actually spoken properly. The first time he had listened.
‘It’s true I spent a lot of time with Simon, but he was my friend, nothing more. You were always busy working and I was lonely,’ she admitted quietly, thinking of the young English art student who had befriended her during her stay in Monaco. Simon had been touring the Mediterranean coast, scraping a living selling his paintings. Unlike Zac’s glamorous friends, he’d seemed refreshingly ordinary and down to earth, and she had enjoyed his company. ‘We weren’t lovers—he was just someone from home that I liked to talk to.’
‘And I suppose Michel was lying when he told me he’d seen you and Brooks leave the beach arm in arm to return to his camper van?’ Zac drawled. ‘Sacré bleu! I paid Michel to protect you, but when he saw your distinctive pink jacket hanging on the van door and glimpsed you and your floppy-haired artist rolling around inside, he didn’t know what to do. He certainly didn’t want to be seen as a voyeur,’ he added, his lip curling in distaste. ‘My wealth brings with it a very real threat of kidnap and Michel knew that, as my mistress, you were vulnerable. He didn’t want to leave you without protection, but neither did he want to hang around watching your sexual gymnastics with Brooks. In the end he phoned me to ask my advice—while I was hurrying back from a business trip to take you out to dinner,’ Zac finished grimly.
‘Your announcement as soon as I walked through the door that you were pregnant was ill-timed to say the least, chérie,’ he continued when it was evident that she was beyond words. ‘I’d
