‘But if I’ve got it and you need it, it’s a simple exchange and not offensive,’ Zac incised with ringing, argumentative conviction.
‘I won’t take that thousand pounds under any circumstances because it is wrong and it would make me feel like a con artist! Or like a person you could buy, like a hooker or something!’ Freddie declared vehemently.
Passion fired her eyes to glowing gold, Zac noted absently, the fit of his jeans tightening as a wave of desire washed over his body. ‘But that’s not how I think of you,’ he objected in a driven tone, wondering why absolutely everything had to be so infuriatingly complicated with her and hating it. He was reminded of Vitale and all his many dos and don’ts, which prevented his half-brother from enjoying the freedom that Zac cherished.
‘How could you feel like a hooker when I haven’t even touched you?’ Zac asked thickly, thinking about touching her to such an extent that even a vacant swing was pushing him into highly inappropriate fantasies.
Freddie’s heart was hammering again. Those eyes of his filled her vision, full of glitter and a kind of wild rebellion that was strangely appealing to a young woman who always, always played safe. She so badly wanted him to understand her point of view that she wanted to shake him into properly listening, which she knew he wasn’t doing.
‘Eu quero voce... I want you,’ Zac growled in English the instant he realised what he had spoken in his own language. ‘Why is that wrong?’
‘I didn’t say it was wrong!’ Freddie gasped. ‘I said it was wrong to try and use money to tempt me.’
Zac was on firmer ground now and he extended a hand to wind long brown fingers very slowly through the fall of her hair, his every hunting instinct on high alert in an adrenalin charge beyond anything he had ever experienced. ‘But you already want me,’ he contended with devastating assurance. ‘You wanted me the first time you saw me, so why are we still arguing about it?’
And Freddie deflated as suddenly as a balloon that had had an unfortunate collision with a pin. Colour surged hotly up her face in a crimson tide. That he should know that with such appalling certainty, that he should feel in his bones what she had studiously denied even to herself, shook her rigid and utterly silenced her.
Zac tugged her closer and bent his arrogant dark head lower and lower until he finally found her mouth, where the sultry sweet taste of her released a surge of such powerful lust he trembled with it. He eased her up into his arms, ignoring Jack’s pleas to be lifted, indeed forgetting the child’s very existence.
Freddie had never ever had a kiss of that magnitude. Admittedly, life had ensured that she had not had the opportunity to have many kisses, but when she got her arms wrapped round Zac’s neck for the merest fraction of a second she felt as if she never ever wanted to let go because she felt safe, safe for the first time since she had lost her parents, safe as if nothing bad could ever happen to her again. And that unholy kiss, the passionate pressure of that wide, sensual mouth on hers, the plunge of his tongue, that tiny provocative flick he performed across the roof of her mouth... All of a sudden, Freddie wanted what she had never wanted before and she wanted it so very badly, an ache stirred between her slender thighs, heat bursting in her pelvis, her nipples tightening so hard and fast it prickled and hurt.
Zac set her down on the ground again, vindicated in his every claim, rejoicing in her responsiveness, wishing he had had the chance to demonstrate their potential chemistry when he had first met her. Showing worked better for him than telling, he acknowledged, now in a good enough mood to scoop up a red-faced, crying Jack and hold him against his shoulder to console him for being ignored.
Freddie almost fell over when Zac returned her to earth. She was dizzy, disorientated, her brain refusing to function, her legs wobbling while her mouth felt swollen and hot. Her hands clenched into fists because she wanted to hit Zac for that lethal demonstration of power over her. Her pride was stung, her heart was still racing and for one unforgivable instant she had forgotten the children. Eloise was shouting to be pushed on the swing and Jack? Jack, astonishingly, she registered, was in Zac’s arms, his little head laid down trustingly on Zac’s shoulder as the need for his morning nap overcame his little body. Since Freddie could not think of a single thing to say, she rushed over to push her niece on the swing, leaving Zac standing.
Zac scanned her stiff and flushed little face with growing annoyance. What was wrong with her now? This was why he didn’t date, didn’t chase women, didn’t ever make an effort. He thought about planting Jack back in the buggy and strapping him in and leaving, but Jack was clutching his jacket in one hand and emanating a rather endearing little snore of contentment, a contentment that would be shattered by any sudden movement. It would be good practice for him when he became a father some day, he told himself begrudgingly. His own child might be horrible; at least Jack was smiley with relatively simple needs.
Eloise, though, would be more demanding, he recognised as the little girl called for him to push her instead of her aunt and he studiously ignored the invite. And then the oddest memory occurred to him, a very early one as he cried for his mother’s attention and failed to receive it. Before he knew what he was doing, Zac had stalked over to the swings, passed Jack over to Freddie, who was still acting like a frozen popsicle, and he had taken over pushing the swing. Sometimes children should get what they wanted, he decided generously. Just because he hadn’t didn’t mean others should be disappointed too.
Freddie defrosted while Zac pushed Eloise because he was being so unexpectedly helpful and it was very immature to want to punish him for making her enjoy a kiss. What was a kiss? Or what was it about a single kiss that made her dangerously crave another? It was too risky for someone in her position, she reasoned unhappily.
‘I can’t have a fling with you!’ she whispered to Zac over the top of her niece’s head.
‘What’s a “fling”?’ Zac fielded in his usual speaking voice.
‘Work it out!’ Freddie urged impatiently.
‘But why not?’ he asked equally baldly. ‘You’re not married. You don’t have a boyfriend.’
‘We can’t talk about it here,’ Freddie incised, her colour rising again.
‘And whose fault is that? You arranged this,’ Zac reminded her harshly.
‘You were supposed to walk away and lose interest!’ Freddie flung at him accusingly, striving not to focus on that tantalisingly tempting mouth of his.
‘I’m obstinate,’ Zac declared with a sudden slashing grin of one-upmanship that emanated extraordinary charisma. ‘It takes more energy to put one over me, meu pequenino.’
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.
Freddie didn’t know how to shake him off politely and she felt she had to be polite because, whether she liked it or not, he had