‘Who we meeting?’ Eloise demanded again.
‘A man. A...a friend,’ Freddie fibbed.
‘Name?’ Eloise pressed.
‘It’s Zac,’ Freddie told her reluctantly, fairly sure that Zac would not last five minutes in their company once he registered that she had called his bluff in the most basic way possible. Did he even have a sense of humour?
Freddie stood up to pace the instant she saw Zac in the distance. He was so tall he was easy to spot. Jack grizzled to get out of the buggy and, with a sigh, she freed him, praying that she could keep him out of the water because she had not brought spare clothing out with her. Jack had confounded all expectations by getting up and walking at ten months old on his sturdy little legs. He had never crawled, he had just pulled himself up to walk and Freddie had discovered that her baby boy was suddenly a toddler with even less wit than the average toddler because he was still so young.
Eloise pushed the empty buggy along the path, Jack at her side. Freddie focussed on Zac’s approach, her heart beating very, very fast until it reached such a pitch that even breathing became a challenge. It was nerves, she told herself. He strode with the innate fluidity of a predator and she was hyperaware of every facet of him: the blue-black hair blowing back from his bronzed and perfect features, the sheer beauty of his bold masculinity in the sunlight, those strikingly light eyes of his, the colour of which she was still unsure of, glittering with the same charisma as his wide slashing smile. Oh, heavens, he was going to hate her, she thought with a sudden sharp pang of regret that startled her.
* * *
Were those kids with her? Surely not, Zac reasoned, deeming her too young for such a role while glancing around hopefully for another adult and failing to see one in the vicinity. They were her kids? She had kids? And not just a modest single one, but two? Inferno, what had he got himself into? But Zac had always been a quick study and light on his feet and he was careful not to betray an ounce of his discomfiture while feasting his attention on the slender blonde by the fountain. It was her body, he told himself urgently, just something about those seemingly fragile little bones and tiny curves that hugely turned him on. Or maybe it was the hair, thick and streaky blonde and definitely natural in his opinion, long twirling strands with a slight wave shifting in the breeze. Or was it the face, the unexpectedly dark eyes that were so much more unusual with that hair colour than blue? Or that incredibly voluptuous pink mouth of hers that left him painfully turned on?
Meu Deus, she was finally smiling at him and it lit up her solemn little face like the sun. True, the smile was a tad awkward and stiff, which it ought to be, considering that she had set him up with two kids in tow. Involuntarily, Zac was amused for no woman had ever tried to block him with children before, and he also knew that if he had known in advance what her reservations related to he would have run a mile, because kids and the freedom he valued so highly didn’t work together at all. And how the hell could she even try to fulfil the bet with Vitale for him with two little kids around? To his intense annoyance, the possibility of retaining his precious sports car seemed to move further out of his grasp.
‘Well, you said you wanted to get to know me,’ Freddie reminded him with more than a little desperation, for the silence had stretched far longer than she could be comfortable with. ‘And this is my life pretty much...the kids.’
Zac watched her settle down on the bench while the little girl hovered with huge dark eyes below her mop of blonde curls and the baby clung to her knees. ‘What do you call them?’ he asked.
‘I’m Eloise,’ the little girl informed him importantly while lifting up her dress to show off her underwear.
‘Eloise, leave your dress alone,’ Freddie interposed.
‘And you’re Auntie Freddie’s friend, Zac,’ Eloise completed, skipping over to him to grab his bare arm where a tattoo of a dragon writhed. ‘What’s that?’
‘A dragon.’
‘Like in my storybook?’ Eloise screamed with excitement.
‘And this is Jack,’ Freddie supplied, her face pink with embarrassment.
‘Auntie Freddie?’ Zac queried, his hopes rising afresh while the little girl clambered uninvited onto his lap, the better to examine his tattoo.
‘Get down, Eloise,’ Freddie instructed.
Eloise ignored her. Zac lifted the child down onto the bench between them and extended his arm in the slender hope of getting some peace.
‘I can’t really talk about it here with little ears,’ Freddie admitted awkwardly, wondering if ever a woman had been more punished for trying to outface a man. ‘But my sister...er...passed last year.’
‘And there’s no one else?’ Zac pressed, insanely conscious of the little girl’s eyes clinging to his.
‘Well, there’s my aunt, Claire, who’s twenty-eight and their official foster carer, but my agreement with her is that she’s the official but I do the caring,’ Freddie volunteered in a horrid rush that mortified her because she felt as if she were apologising for her unavailability. ‘As you know I work evenings, so there’s really no room in my life for anything else.’
‘I’m not still trying to...gave up on that,’ Zac lied.
He had so many tells when he lied, Freddie recognised, noting the downward shift of his outrageously long black lashes, the evasive gaze, the clenching of one hand on a long, powerful thigh. Yes, he was still interested in her but currently pretending not to be for some strange reason.
‘So, why did you want to meet up, then?’ she enquired, striving not to sound sarcastic because he had taken the presence of the kids like a gentleman, even if she was convinced that he was far from being one.
Jack wobbled over to him like a homing pigeon and clutched at both his knees, beaming up at Zac with a sunny Jack smile of acceptance. Zac unfroze and stood up with care, trying not to dislodge Jack. ‘Let’s walk,’ he suggested. ‘It’ll occupy the children.’
It was well timed, with both her niece and nephew treating him like a wonderful and mesmerising new toy. When she had made the decision to meet Zac in the park with the children, it should have occurred to her that Eloise and Jack would be fascinated with him because they very rarely had any contact with men. Claire had complained bitterly about the way they hogged her boyfriend’s attention when he came round.
‘We’ll move on to the playground,’ she agreed, lifting Jack, who wailed in protest and putting him back into the buggy.
Finding himself in possession of a trusting little girl’s hand, Zac strode along the path below the trees, trying and failing to slow his stride to match Eloise’s tiny steps. Without further ado, he began telling Freddie about his bet with his brother, Vitale.
‘My goodness, that’s so childish...what age are you?’ Freddie asked in sincere wonderment.
‘Twenty-eight.’
‘Really?’ Her wondering gaze grew even wider. ‘Maybe it’s a boy thing, but I just can’t imagine making such a crazy bet and risking losing something I valued out of pride.’
His nostrils flaring, Zac computed that far from complimentary comment and drew in a long steadying breath before continuing, ‘Vitale was the guy I was with the day you had your...episode,’ he selected finally, shooting her a sidewise glance.
‘Oh, you mean when I screamed and shouted at you?’ Freddie translated with unexpected amusement. ‘Yeah, it was a rough day after too many rough days in a row...sorry about that. So, your brother was the nice guy?’
Zac jerked his chin in affirmation even while his temper rocketed at that unjust designation being bestowed on Vitale. What was so bloody nice about Vitale? His half-brother had hushed her like a sympathetic audience and every word he had spoken had been fake as hell! Hadn’t she realised that? Was she blind or deaf? He wasn’t fake or a smoothie like Vitale! But were those qualities what she found attractive in a man?
‘And the nice guy who was present when you broke down,’ Zac enunciated with raw precision, ‘bet me that I couldn’t bring you “all lovelo
rn and clingy”, as he put it, to his precious royal ball at the end of this month.’
As Eloise released Zac’s hand to race off ahead of them to the swings, Freddie stopped dead with the buggy, her face a mask of shock. ‘Me?’
‘And suitably polished up to royal standards,’ Zac said with even greater scorn.
‘I don’t do lovelorn and clingy,’ Freddie muttered blankly, still struggling simply to accept that Zac could have a brother with some sort of royal connection. ‘Are the two of you crazy competitors or something?’
‘Or something,’ Zac fielded non-committally. ‘But I’m here today because I was wondering if, for a very generous price—’
‘No,’ Freddie slotted in flatly straight away. ‘And don’t embarrass me by quoting figures! I was annoyed with you last week when you offered to pay me for an hour of my time and I wanted to teach you a lesson by landing you with me and the kids, but this paying me nonsense has to stop now.’
Zac frowned, level black brows pleating, his bewilderment patent. ‘But why?’
Freddie dropped her head, dark streaky golden hair semi-screening her troubled expression, because she abruptly recognised that on some level she was dragging out their meeting for her own purposes and there was no point in wasting Zac’s time when she had no plans to let anything go any further. ‘Look, it’s time for us to go,’ she declared, fighting her awareness of his compelling appeal with all her might.
‘Or I could treat you to lunch.’
‘No, Jack will scream if he’s wakened,’ Freddie muttered woodenly, wondering how Zac had contrived to travel from hateful to almost bearable in the course of an hour and hurriedly squashing the pointless reflection. ‘We have to go home.’
Zac shrugged a wide shoulder and fell into step beside her as she gathered up Eloise and lowered Jack back into the buggy. ‘Aren’t you leaving?’ Freddie demanded in surprise.
‘I’ll see you home,’ Zac countered stiffly, angrily aware that his welcome seemed to have worn out, questioning why he should care when there were so many more available women around.