The Frenchman's Marriage Demand

‘I no longer care what you think,’ she told him wearily, unable to stifle a groan when Aimee scrambled over her and knocked against her sore ribs—bruised in the accident by the force of her seat belt locking against her. ‘I can’t imagine what you’re doing here, but I think it’s best if you leave.’

‘Believe me, I’m not here through choice,’ Zac ground out savagely. ‘I was at Deverell’s London office this morning to give a press conference announcing record profits made by the Oxford Street store, when your grandmother turned up with your daughter. Presumably you’d planned the timing of her visit to create maximum impact,’ he added harshly. ‘Her accusation, that Aimee is my child, was overheard by several journalists as well as members of my staff and rumours have already got back to the Deverell board.’

‘Aimee was in London? I don’t understand,’ Freya said sharply, frowning in confusion. ‘The hospital phoned my grandmother yesterday and asked her to look after Aimee. Where is Nana Joyce now?’

‘Jetting off across the Atlantic for the start of her cruise, I imagine,’ Zac replied. ‘She went on about how she’d saved for years for a round-the-world trip and that nothing, not even the fact that you were in hospital, would induce her to miss it.’

His eyes darkened as he remembered his meeting with Joyce Addison.

‘I’m sick to death of feckless fathers,’ she told him when she marched into his office wheeling a pushchair in front of her and handed him an enormous holdall, which, she informed him, contained all the necessary paraphernalia for an eighteen-month-old child. ‘I was left to bring up Freya after her mother got herself pregnant at sixteen by some shiftless Lothario she’d met at a funfair. Sadie soon got bored of motherhood and went off, leaving me stuck with a child I didn’t want.

‘I thought I’d warned Freya of the dangers of handsome men who want nothing more than a good time,’ Joyce continued, trailing her eyes over him as if he were some sort of stud, Zac recalled furiously. ‘I told her when you offered her a job on that fancy boat of yours that you were only after one thing, and evidently you both got more than you bargained for. But now it’s time you took responsibility for your actions.

‘I don’t know how long Freya is going to be in hospital and I’m not waiting to find out. If you won’t look after Aimee, you’d better hand her over to social services, because I refuse to be landed with another baby.’

Joyce Addison’s vitriolic tirade had captured the attention of everyone at the Deverell offices—although his staff had done their best to hide their curiosity, Zac conceded darkly. The whole, unbelievable scenario had been bloody humiliating, he thought bitterly—and there was only one person he could blame.

‘You can drop the act, Freya,’ he said coldly. ‘It’s quite obvious you told your grandmother to bring Aimee to me, and, having met Joyce, I can’t even blame you,’ he went on, ignoring Freya’s gasp. ‘I wouldn’t leave a dog in your grandmother’s care, let alone a young child. But if all this is a ploy to get money out of me in the form of maintenance—you can forget it.’

He glared at her, his anger increasing when he felt his body’s response to Freya, with her small, heart-shaped face and mass of silky honey-blonde hair. She had intrigued him for barely three months, but two years on he could instantly recall her slender, pale limbs and small, firm breasts. The passion they had shared had been explosive, he acknowledged, aware of an uncomfortable tightening in his groin as unbidden memories surfaced. He had wanted her from the moment she’d first joined the crew of his luxury yacht, The Isis, and the attraction between them had been mutual.

Shy, innocent Freya had been unable to hide her awareness of him and he had wasted no time persuading her into his bed. Although it had been a shock to discover just how innocent she was, he thought grimly. He liked his women to be self-confident and experienced in bed—willing participants in the mutual exchange of sexual pleasure without the pressure of emotional ties. But the temptation of her satiny skin as she curled her legs around him and the enticement of her breathless whispers begging him to make love to her had been impossible to resist. She had proved a willing pupil and he had delighted in tutoring her. Her shyness and inexperience had been refreshing and against his better judgement he had invited her to move into his penthouse apartment as his mistress.

It was a decision he had later regretted and after 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 just learned from a man I trusted implicitly that you and Brooks were lovers, and I was certain that I wasn’t the child’s father. It wasn’t difficult to work out that you were pregnant by your penniless artist and hoping to pass the baby off as mine.’

The cold fury in his eyes caused Freya to shiver but this was possibly the only chance she would ever have to defend herself and make Zac see that he was wrong about her. ‘Michel didn’t see me,’ she insisted desperately. ‘He just thought he did. I’d gone to the beach to meet Simon and a group of his friends, including his girlfriend. Kirsten was feeling cold and I lent her my jacket before I walked into the town. She has blonde hair like mine and Michel must have mistaken her for me…’ She stumbled to a halt, her heart sinking at the mockery in Zac’s eyes. ‘I didn’t go to Simon’s van that day and I was never unfaithful to you, Zac,’ she insisted. ‘You have to believe me.’

He stared at her in silence for a few moments and then laughed unpleasantly. ‘You’ve had two years to think of a story. Is that really the best you can do, chérie?’ He paced the room like a caged tiger, his pent up aggression almost tangible. ‘Non!’ he stated fiercely, slicing his hand through the air to emphasise his anger. ‘I refuse to be manipulated by you. I want a paternity test and once I’ve proved conclusively that you are a liar, I never want to see you or hear from you again. Do you understand?’

‘How can you be so sure that I’m lying?’ Freya whispered numbly. Clearly Zac’s opinion of her couldn’t sink any lower and she was shocked by how much it hurt. The contempt in his tone made her want to shrivel but pride brought her head up. The silence between them vibrated with a tension that shredded her nerves and she visibly flinched when he swung round and stared at her.

His expression filled her with a curious sense of foreboding and she felt her stomach churn. She could not tear her gaze from the sculpted beauty of his face but his eyes were hard and cold and, despite the stifling warmth of the hospital ward, she shivered.

Zac paused and then said unemotionally, ‘Because I had a vasectomy—years before we met. The truth is, chérie, that it’s medically impossible for Aimee to be my daughter.’

CHAPTER TWO

ZAC watched the shock and confusion on Freya’s face with clinical detachment before he glanced at Aimee. The little girl stared up at him solemnly, her pretty little face surrounded by her mass of curls and her pink cheeks glowing with health. She was not a Deverell, thank God, he thought with quiet certainty. This child would not suffer the way his twin sisters had suffered—victims of the devastating illness that had taken their lives before they were a year old.

He had been a teenager when his mother had given birth to twins. The babies had appeared normal but within a few months both had died from an incurable genetic disorder and after their deaths doctors had warned his parents there was a fifty-per-cent chance that he had also been affected. He had escaped the illness but there was no test available to show if he carried the gene.

The trauma of watching his sisters die and witnessing his parents’ grief had never faded. As an adult he had made the decision that he could not risk the slightest chance of passing on the gene to his own children and had taken the necessary steps to ensure that he would never be a father. The faint regret he’d felt at the time had soon faded and he had moved on, determined to enjoy his life and take advantage of the benefits his billion-pound fortune afforded him.

He couldn’t have children, but why would he want to be tied down to the responsibilities of a family when he could afford fast cars, power boats and all the trappings of his wealth? He enjoyed an endless supply of beautiful women who entertained him briefly before he grew bored and looked around for new pleasures.

Freya had intrigued him for longer than most but he had never viewed her as becoming a permanent feature in his life. It hadn’t occurred to him to mention his vasectomy when she had been his mistress and he felt under no obligation to explain the reason for it now.

Freya stared wildly at Zac, feeling as though the world had actually shifted on its axis. ‘The operation must have failed,’ she croaked, struggling to assimilate his shocking announcement. ‘I don’t understand how it could have happened, but Aimee is your child,’ she insisted desperately.

‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ Zac snapped irritably. ‘It’s impossible.’ Although that wasn’t strictly true, he acknowledged silently. He’d always known that the procedure carried a one-in-two-thousand chance of reversal, but when Freya had sprung the news of her pregnancy, less than an hour after his security guard, Michel, had seen her with Simon Brooks, he had angrily assumed that she’d been having an affair with the Englishman for weeks and that the baby she was carrying couldn’t possibly be his own. He was still convinced that this was the case and he felt a surge of disgust for Freya and her pathetic excuses.

He would have marginally more respect for her if she stopped lying and admitted that she’d been caught out, he brooded darkly, his lip curling in contempt. She was beautiful—more so, if anything, than she had been two years ago—but beneath her exquisite shell she was rotten to the core and once he had the proof he would have nothing more to do with her.

‘The nurse informed me that you’ve been discharged,’ he said tersely, raking his eyes over Freya’s pale face as he strode towards the door. ‘Hurry up and get dressed. We’re flying to Monaco immediately where I’ll make the necessary arrangements to carry out the DNA test and end this wild speculation once and for all.’

Half an hour later, Freya’s temper was at boiling point. Zac seemed to think he could just waltz back into her life and take over. ‘I am not going to Monaco with you,’ she repeated for the twentieth time as she followed him across the hospital car park and watched him strap Aimee into the child-seat that his secretary had apparently lent him when he’d driven down from London. It was still raining hard and he had turned up the collar of his leather jacket. With his hair slicked back from his face and his black brows lowered in an ominous scowl he looked more gorgeous than ever and she groaned silently at her body’s traitorous response to him.

He was mean, moody and magnificent, she thought bleakly, not to mention the most arrogant, overbearing man she had ever met. Two years ago he had swept her away on his boat and straight into his bed. She had given him her virginity but he had stolen her heart, she thought sadly. After a lifetime devoid of any emotional security she had willingly become his mistress, but his cruel rejection had almost destroyed her and she could not risk returning to the place where she had once been so happy.