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‘On top of Josh’s death, the birth had revealed Moira had a heart condition—a bad one. A few weeks after the funeral she had a heart transplant, but it didn’t work as well as some and she was…not exactly an invalid, but not completely healthy either. But she had a good life, meeting her friends for lunch and shopping and generally indulging herself. Of course, in view of her illness, there was no way I could broach the matter of a divorce and she didn’t seem to want one. Life went on. After two years I was beginning to feel I was going mad—trapped in a loveless marriage, playing the nurse rather than the husband when I was home from work, putting up with her rages when she blamed me for getting her pregnant, which had made her ill. She rarely mentioned Josh, it was as though he had never existed, but I put that down to the way she was dealing with her grief. Everyone copes in different ways.’
‘You don’t have to say any more if it’s too painful.’ Rachel squeezed his arm. ‘Really, Zac, there’s no need.’
As though she hadn’t spoken, he continued, ‘Two years to the day she had the transplant, she had a massive heart attack while lunching with a friend of hers. She died within minutes. At the funeral I met the friend. His name was Jack. Their affair had been going on for some months and apparently there had been someone else before him. She’d told him I was violent and used to knock her about—apparently I’d said I’d kill her if she ever left. He didn’t even know she’d ever had a son, and I still don’t know if she ever loved or grieved for our baby. Maybe she blamed him too for making her ill. But he was just a little boy.’
‘Zac, I—I don’t know what to say.’ At some point he had moved his arm from her fingers and now she didn’t know what to do, whether to reach out to him again or remain still.
‘You don’t need to say anything. I merely wanted to make you understand that commitment and marriage and a family is a route I’ll never go down, that’s all. I can’t…’ He paused and she knew the iron control had slipped for a second. ‘I can’t go there,’ he continued huskily. ‘That’s why it would have been wrong of me to destroy the dream you have of giving yourself to the man you intend to share the rest of your life with.’
She ought to be feeling grateful to him that he hadn’t acted as Giles would have done in the same circumstances. And she was; in a way she was. But another part of her was stirred with such a tremendous sense of loss it was making it difficult to think. She didn’t understand why this man had got under her skin from the moment she’d laid eyes on him, but he had. And her response to him was cerebral as well as physical, much as she would have liked to explain her weakness away as merely sexual attraction. Everything had slotted into sharper focus since Zac had come into her world and the power of his attraction was frightening. It would have been frightening even if he had wanted her in the same way she wanted him—
The thought caused an explosive full stop. How did she want Zac? Deep in her heart, how did she want him?
The answer came with terrifying simplicity: for ever.
Stupid, stupid, stupid, she berated herself in the next instant, her hands clenched into fists under the duvet. Even without his corrosive history, someone as handsome, as striking as Zac would never be seriously interested in a woman like her. Long ago she’d faced the fact she was only average—average height, average build, average face. And she had been grateful for even that after a childhood of being the ugly duckling.
‘Have I upset you? I didn’t want to do that.’
His voice was deep and husky and she wished she could see his face, even as she knew she’d die if he turned the light on and read what surely must be in her face. Swallowing over the hard, painful lump in her throat, she whispered, ‘I’m upset for you, for what you must have gone through. But I repeat, you’ve always been very honest with me, Zac.’
‘Not really.’ It was rueful, even self-derisive. ‘If it’s truthfulness we’re majoring on here, I’ve wanted you from the first moment I laid eyes on you—wet, windblown and incredibly antagonistic to the supposed burglar ransacking your home.’
Rachel’s heartbeat surged into a frantic rhythm.
‘This weekend was going to be a full-on seduction to get you warm, willing and wanton in my bed.’
Bull’s-eye in every regard, then. She couldn’t help but smile?
?it was either that or cry, and she didn’t intend to shed any more tears that night.
‘Rachel? Say something,’ he said into the lengthening silence. ‘Anything to put me out of my misery.’
Like what? ‘I’m sorry the weekend hasn’t turned out quite like you planned,’ she said with weak sarcasm.
‘So am I.’ His voice exuded a low sensuality that would have made her weak at the knees if she hadn’t been lying down. The tone changed as he added, ‘But it needn’t be wasted, need it? If I promise to behave myself, we can still have a good time.’ He hesitated for only a moment. ‘I like being with you, Rachel. More than I’ve liked being with someone for a long, long time. Do you believe that?’
Speaking from the heart in a way she wouldn’t have been able to do but for the blanketing darkness, she said, ‘No.’
‘No?’ His voice was so surprised it was almost soprano. Then in a more normal tone, he said, ‘That’s the wrong answer.’
‘It’s the honest answer and we seem to be going for honesty tonight.’
‘OK. Still on that theme, why is it so unlikely I want to be with you more than any other woman?’
She might have known he’d go for the jugular. Picking her words carefully and vitally aware of the male body inches away from hers, she said, ‘I’m nothing special, Zac, and you’re a man who must be used to beautiful women.’
‘Forgetting for the moment that beauty is only skin deep and it takes the whole woman—body, soul and spirit—to hold a man, you’re one hell of a beautiful woman, Rachel. What you see when you look in the mirror is clearly different from anyone else, but take it from me, you turn men on without trying.’
Now he was being kind. And she clearly hadn’t been able to make him lose his head or she wouldn’t still be a virgin right now. Deciding the conversation needed to be steered elsewhere, she decided to state the obvious. ‘From the weather reports tonight it looks like we’ll be snowed in for the weekend so it would be silly not to make the best of it. So we carry on as friends?’
Even as she said it she knew she was being ridiculous. She and Zac had never been friends. From the first, something vital and electric had made that impossible, and now it was even more so. But she wanted this weekend. Dangerous as it was to play with fire, she wanted two whole days where she had him to herself. Well, herself and a pub full of warbling walkers, that was.
‘Friends,’ he agreed very softly, and the next moment she felt his hand find her chin and turned her face so he could kiss her lips. It was a light kiss, a mere skimming of her lips, but as he settled himself on his side of the bed once more her throat had gone dry and the burning ache of wanting that had been glowing since he had touched her fanned into fierce life. This was so unfair, all of it, she thought wretchedly.
The wind was moaning outside and the landlady had clearly turned the central heating off for the night because the temperature inside the room was getting steadily cooler. Rachel snuggled deeper under the covers, taking care not to touch the hard masculine body lying beside her. But she remembered how it had felt—warm, powerful, his arousal rigid against her belly.
She knew she wasn’t going to be able to sleep for a long time.
