Modern Romance Collection: June 2018 Books 1 - 4. Miranda Lee

table at the far end while Jack literally tried to run to her.

      As she hastily scooped up Jack before he fell, for while he could walk he could not yet run, she noticed that Zac had forsaken his business suits in favour of close-fitting jeans and a white linen shirt against which his skin glowed. He looked, Freddie thought resentfully, like a health advert, not at all like a man who should’ve been nursing a monster hangover. She moved towards him stiffly, face tight, eyes evasive as she set Jack down to play with the toys scattered across the terrace.

      ‘Mariette is bringing your breakfast,’ Zac murmured casually.

      ‘I didn’t ask for any.’

      ‘I ordered for you.’

      ‘But you don’t know what I wanted,’ Freddie pointed out thinly.

      ‘I ordered a selection,’ Zac assured her with a steely glint in his brilliant eyes as he surveyed her. ‘You suit blue. You look lovely.’

      ‘I seriously doubt that,’ Freddie countered with an angry flush, thinking of how her perfectly groomed self the day before had failed to attract such interest.

      ‘Let’s not argue in front of the kids,’ Zac urged warningly.

      Resenting that reproof, Freddie breathed in so deep that she was vaguely surprised she didn’t explode like a bag of hot air, because suddenly she was so angry with him that she could barely breathe and hold the furious words in.

      ‘These are for you...’ Zac announced, lifting an elaborate and very large bouquet of flowers in a vase up onto the table. ‘And this...’

      ‘This’ was a jewellery box, and she didn’t want to open it. Flowers, and presumably diamonds. He had utilised a whole host of brain cells to come up with those as an apology, she thought nastily, but neither gift hit the right spot. She glanced at him, reading the wary light in his glorious crystalline eyes, the wariness of a man dealing with an unknown quantity and wondering how she would react.

      Mariette arrived with an entire trolley of food and a maid to serve. Freddie felt embarrassed accepting only fruit, a croissant and a cup of tea. But even the melting tenderness of the pastry fought to make it past her tight throat. Did she give Zac the benefit of the doubt and move on past the debacle of their wedding day? Even if she didn’t feel the smallest bit forgiving? As a rule she didn’t sulk or hold spite, but he had to explain himself at the very least, she decided. She lifted the jewellery box so that he couldn’t call her bad mannered and flipped up the lid on a diamond-studded gold watch.

      ‘Wow...thank you so much,’ she said generously, determined to be gracious, glancing across at him. Momentarily those lean, darkly handsome features surrounded by his blue-black luxuriant hair and accentuated by those bright pale blue eyes literally blew her concentration to smithereens.

      ‘How can you drink tea instead of coffee in the morning?’ Zac asked inconsequentially, watching her with an intensity that made her skin tighten over her bones and set up a disturbing throb between her thighs.

      ‘It’s what I’m used to,’ she muttered, recognising that he planned to gloss over the whole wedding day thing without even making an actual apology aside of the flowers and the watch, and recognising too that she could never look herself in the face again if she allowed him to use his electrifying sexuality to derail her.

      Jennifer and Isabel arrived to collect the children to take them out into the garden. An unearthly silence fell across the terrace after their departure and Freddie swallowed hard, still picking nervously at shreds of her croissant.

      Entranced, Zac watched her pluck another shred of pastry and place it between her moist pink lips and his jeans tightened. He thought about sex. She clasped the watch round her slender wrist. He thought about more sex. He discounted her tension, reckoning that what they both needed was a good rousing tumble in bed to find each other again.

      ‘Are you planning to say sorry?’ Freddie asked, shattering both his expectations and his mood. ‘Even thinking about it? Or is it just a case of not being able to get the words out?’

      ‘You know that I regret my attitude yesterday,’ Zac told her tautly. ‘It’s obvious, isn’t it?’

      Freddie nodded. ‘But you can’t expect flowers and a designer watch to do the job for you.’

      ‘They always have in the past.’

      ‘Then you’ve been mixing with the wrong kind of woman,’ Freddie responded acidly. ‘And to be frank, sorry wouldn’t even begin to cover it.’

      Zac sprang out of his chair, the legs of it scraping harshly across the stone tiles beneath. ‘I got drunk. I didn’t kill anyone!’ he flashed back at her with sudden anger.

      ‘You pretty much opted out of our entire wedding day,’ Freddie declared, shaken by that anger but persisting. ‘You weren’t there to start the dancing with me. You weren’t there even to cut the cake. It was humiliating and hurtful and, obviously, people noticed your absence. All I need you to do now is explain why...’

      ‘I’m no good at those kinds of explanations.’

      ‘But you could, at least, try,’ Freddie said gently.

      ‘Meu Deus...what do you want from me?’ Zac demanded rawly. ‘An apology? You already have it.’

      ‘I need to know why—’

      ‘No, you don’t!’ Zac fired back at her, his broad chest heaving as he dragged in a deep sustaining breath. ‘You don’t. I don’t have that kind of conversation with women.’

      ‘I’ll forgive and forget if you just tell me why,’ Freddie exclaimed in appeal. ‘I need to understand.’

      Rage glittering in his glorious eyes and the sense of being trapped intensifying, Zac compressed his lips hard. ‘I won’t argue with you. I’m going out for a while,’ he told her, turning on his heel and striding down the terrace at speed.

      For a startled moment, Freddie simply stared after him and then she chased after him, only to be greeted by the slam of the front door and a look of curious enquiry from Mariette. Her face colouring, she returned to the terrace, now blind to the wonderful view. He had walked out sooner than talk—not a very productive approach to a new marriage. But was she expecting too much from him too soon? Their marriage was not supposed to be a meeting of hearts and minds.

       Practicality not sentiment.

      The words rang like a falling tombstone of foreboding at the back of her mind.

      Zac backed away from conflict, reluctant to get that involved with anyone. She couldn’t live like that, she thought fearfully, never really knowing where she stood with him. But he had told her where she stood before they married, hadn’t he? Practicality covered everything and emotions didn’t have to be considered. But what if she already felt more than she should for him? Freddie grimaced at that suspicion but there it was, feelings she couldn’t avoid, feelings he wouldn’t want her to feel. It hurt when he walked away, refusing to answer her questions, refusing to shed a glimmer of light on what went on in that complex head of his, because hopefully if she understood better she could forgive more easily. Tears prickled her eyes as she sat there and listened to the roar of a powerful motorbike firing up and then the quieter sound of his security team following in a car.

      Was she so unreasonable? Had she driven him away? And when would he return?

      * * *

      Zac travelled quite a distance before he cooled off. Angel had asked him, if he had the time, to check out the work he was having done on his yacht and report back to him. He drove down to the Saint Laurent du Var Marina and paused at a waterside café to order an espresso, avoiding the glances of a group of youthful tourists giving him inviting looks from nearby. Angel and Vitale seemed to have taken to marriage like ducks to water, Zac reflected resentfully, so why was it all going wrong for him? He had asked Freddie to marry him, had wanted her to marry him.