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‘Even when I took your virginity.’ He saw the colour flood up under her skin, and smiled, wryly. ‘Not a pleasant memory for either of us, I suspect. One half of me loathed myself for what I’d done, while the other struggled to excuse my behaviour by insisting that you were a shrewd tactician, using your virginity as a bargaining counter.
‘I thought I was getting over you when I left you behind in the Caribbean—a cowardly action if ever there was one. Having carried you through that forest in my arms, having lain at your side, bathing your fever-soaked body, I knew I was dangerously close to succumbing completely and begging you to marry me—and then you appeared at the Mellors’. The shock almost drove me out of my mind, especially when I discovered that you were engaged to their son.’
‘I broke off our engagement the moment Malcolm returned home,’ Tamara told him softly, ‘but he persuaded me to pretend we were still engaged just for that weekend. He didn’t want to ruin his parents’ plans for the weekend.’
‘Instead of which he almost discovered me on the point of making love to you,’ Zach concluded grimly, his eyes fixed firmly on her soft lips as he added huskily, ‘It’s a pity he didn’t, because if I’d made love to you then I’d never have been able to let you go and we’d have avoided all these weeks of misery and anguish. It was after that weekend that I faced the truth—that I loved you and that you were the innocent you seemed; an innocence I myself had destroyed. I thought you were engaged to Mellors, but I told myself engagements could be broken; I even contemplated telling him the truth, and wiping the smug smile of satisfaction off his face when I told him that I’d possessed you, felt your body quicken with desire—and then came that damned lunch, and I discovered you were pregnant,’ Zach said flatly. ‘I didn’t know what I wanted to do the most—kill you, kill Mellors, or kill myself.’
‘I was terrified you would discover the truth; that you would think I was using the baby to force you into a relationship you didn’t want, so I let you think it was Malcolm’s,’ Tamara confessed.
‘Even thinking that you were carrying his child didn’t alter the way I felt about you. I forced you to come and work for me, but having you so close and yet so distant nearly drove me out of my mind. I wanted to punish you; to have you beg me to make love to you; to have you admit that you cared nothing for Mellors. That afternoon when I came back and found you asleep from exhaustion …’
‘I wanted you to make love to me then,’ Tamara admitted softly, ‘but I was terrified of betraying how I felt about you, and then there was Julie …’
‘An old friend,’ Zach shrugged her aside as unimportant. ‘I admit that I did put her up to it, in the hope that she might make you jealous.’
‘Well, you certainly succeeded,’ Tamara told him wryly.
‘I could have throttled Mellors when he damn near let that horse savage you. I wanted to ask him if he cared the slightest about you or your child.’
‘I was terrified you would say something to him,’ Tamara admitted, ‘I was so thankful to see Nigel.’
‘Yes, so I noticed.’
‘It wasn’t very fair of you to go to the Board over his head,’ Tamara reproached him.
‘I was a man in love, and as such fairness never entered into it. When I received Dot’s letter, I could hardly believe my eyes. What did I think of you breaking your engagement? she asked me.’
‘I heard you asking Nigel about it,’ Tamara admitted. ‘I was terrified that once you knew the truth about my engagement you’d put one and one together, and …’
‘Come up with three?’ Zach suggested softly, his eyes smiling as he glanced at the soft swell of her stomach.
‘Zach, you don’t have to feel responsible …’ she began uncertainly. ‘You …’
‘Why the hell not?’ Zach demanded. ‘I am responsible, I want to be responsible.’ His voice shook suddenly. ‘Tamara, haven’t you the faintest idea of how it makes me feel to know that that’s my child growing inside you; to know that no other man has ever touched you or known you as I have? It’s primitive and old-fashioned, and if you’d asked me six months ago I’d have said I didn’t give a damn about virginity and certainly never expected it in my wife—and I still think it’s morally wrong for any man to expect a standard of behaviour from a woman that he hasn’t held to himself, but as I said, taking you, knowing that I was the first, teaching you to respond to me, touched something elemental deep inside me, inside most men, I suppose; something that goes way beyond civilisation and logic. I love you,’ he whispered huskily, ‘and I can’t think of anything my life has held that means more to me than loving you. That first time,’ he said abruptly, changing the subject. ‘If I hurt you …’
‘Fleetingly,’ Tamara told him. ‘And I wanted you so badly it didn’t matter.’
‘And the baby?’ Zach pressed, anxiety lying at the back of his eyes.
‘Can’t you guess? He’s the most important thing in my life,’ Tamara teased, adding quickly, ‘After his father, of course.’
Her muscles contracted as Zach bent his head to kiss her rounded belly; all that was feminine and instinctive within her rising up to meet the sensual promise of his touch.
‘Mine,’ Zach murmured slowly, and Tamara knew he wasn’t merely referring to the life she held cradled within her. ‘You realise, of course, that his arrival is likely to arouse a certain amount of speculation and gossip?’
Tamara shrugged. ‘Lots of couples don’t marry these days …’
‘But we aren’t going to be among them,’ Zach told her flintily. ‘What I meant was that his arrival so speedily after our marriage will be talked about. We won’t even be able to pretend he’s premature.’
‘I don’t care,’ Tamara told him, amazed to realise that it was perfectly true. ‘I’m not ashamed of what happened between us; it was the most beautiful thing in my life, and I treasured it because I knew I would never experience it again.’
‘Then you knew wrong, didn’t you?’ Zach told her throatily, drawing her down against him and letting her feel the aroused heat of his desire. ‘As I’m going to prove to you just as soon as you promise me that you’ll marry me as soon as it can be arranged.’
‘And if I don’t?’ Tamara teased,
She felt him draw slightly away, his eyes darkening. ‘If you don’t then it will be a solitary memory,’ he told her flatly. ‘I want you as my wife, Tamara, as the mother of my children—not someone to share the odd night of pleasure with. I want all or nothing, so which is it to be?’
Her open arms and shining eyes gave him his answer, and as his arms
