‘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 lovelorn 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?’
And he didn’t get it, he really didn’t get that it was offensive to try and buy people like products, she registered in frustration. ‘Because it’s wrong.’
His eyes were a very light, almost crystalline blue in the sunshine, she marvelled as he stared down at her, her brain momentarily a complete blank. ‘You accept my tips,’ he reminded her stubbornly.
‘Because the tips go into a communal pot for all the staff and when I turned your tip down the first time, it naturally annoyed the other wait staff,’ Freddie explained. ‘That’s why I returned and accepted it and didn’t refuse again.’
Zac was furious at the explanation and immediately resolved to change the rules in the bar, so that Freddie got to keep her own tips: her sneakers were faded and had a hole in one toe. Even the buggy was threadbare—in fact all three of them looked poverty-stricken in comparison to the children he saw around the hotel. Jack lurched out of the buggy again and headed straight for his knees and Zac let him cling, grudgingly impressed by the baby’s huge smile. Jack definitely knew how to make friends. Zac’s wide, full mouth