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Sounding distinctly reluctant, he said after a few seconds, ‘It’s a mine nearby. It was defunct, but we did some exploration and discovered a new seam of iron.’
Rose frowned. ‘I didn’t know you were involved with the industry—I thought you dealt only in finance and the hotel and nightclub business.’
He raised a brow. ‘There’s a lot you don’t know about me, Rose.’
She might have asked more about the business if she’d felt she could. But Zac was right—what on earth did she really know about him? It scared her to think how easily she’d trusted herself to him in the beginning. And he’d only had to kiss her yesterday before she’d started cleaving to him again like some kind of starved groupie.
Zac stood abruptly from the table, putting down his napkin, clearly done with their tense dinner. ‘If you’ll excuse me, I have some calls to make. You should get an early night—you look tired.’
If Rose had felt at a low ebb earlier next to Zac’s rude vitality, now she felt even more lacklustre. She didn’t doubt that not many women had the nerve to appear in Zac’s company looking anything less than stunning.
He was about to walk away when she called after him lightly, ‘I presume I’m to be seen and not heard for the next ten days?’
Zac turned back, the lines of his body suddenly tense. ‘Don’t worry, Rose, I won’t forget you’re here.’
He disappeared into the sprawling villa and Rose deflated like a balloon, all the tension leaving her body. She hated it that she was in such a constant state of awareness around him when he barely tolerated her.
Something dangerous tugged on her emotions now that she was mercifully unobserved. If only those two first times she’d met him hadn’t been so magical...if only she hadn’t been tempted to take what he was offering and convince herself that it would be okay
...
Rose shook her head at herself. She had to stop thinking like that.
She had no regrets...
She put a hand over her small belly and took a deep breath, trying not to let a feeling of being all alone steal over her. She refused to give in to that vulnerability. She’d gotten herself into this situation—her and this baby—and it was up to her to make the best of it.
CHAPTER SEVEN
FOR THREE DAYS Rose had an almost pleasant time. A wave of exhaustion had seemed to hit her after that first night, and she’d spent most of her time sleeping, taking long siestas during the hottest part of the day. Then Maria had taken her into the local village when she’d gone shopping the previous day, and Rose had loved looking around the market and the small artisan shops.
Zac had come and gone from the villa, sometimes using a helicopter, and hadn’t offered to share a meal with Rose again. She’d gotten used to eating alone on the terrace and told herself she didn’t mind. How could she mind? She was in one of the world’s most amazing locations and she was being waited on hand and foot, like a princess.
She’d braved the pool earlier, and lay beside it now after a long, leisurely swim. She was trying to engage with a book she’d taken from one of the bookshelves in the comfortable den.
That was the other thing about this house...it didn’t resemble the ascetic decoration of Zac’s apartment in New York. This was more like a home. Rose could imagine a family here...children chasing each other through the pathways and gardens...
She put down the book and closed her eyes, losing herself for a moment in the daydream, an unconscious smile making her mouth curl up...
* * *
Zac stood at a standstill in the shadows of a tree near the pool. Rose was reclining on a sun lounger in a bikini. As a connoisseur of women’s clothing, Zac knew this bikini was perfectly respectable—demure, even—but his eyes devoured her slim limbs and high breasts as if he’d never seen a semi-naked woman before.
His body got hard in an instant, and he scowled at his reaction. She wasn’t even trying to be sexy. She had a hand spread across her burgeoning belly and Zac felt the most compelling impulse to go over and place his hand there too, feel it for himself. Would it be firm? Could she feel the baby kicking yet?
In an effort to try and break out of his stasis he dragged his gaze up to her face and saw her smile. He had been feeling a measure of guilt for having left her to her own devices for the last three days. Ridiculous guilt. It wasn’t as if she was his lover and he was here to entertain her. She was here merely because he wanted her where he could keep an eye on her. And she was in the lap of luxury.
Maria, who was clearly a fan of Rose, seemed to think it was her duty to give him a blow-by-blow account of all her movements. So he knew she’d been sleeping a lot. And that she’d gone to the market and had enjoyed it, by all accounts.
And now here she was, with an enigmatic secret smile on her mouth.
Zac battled with the darkness lodging inside him as the insidious suspicion struck him that he was jealous of that smile, of whatever was causing it.
Frantically, he denied it to himself. Why wouldn’t she be smiling? he rationalised. She’d hit the jackpot, exactly as that headline had said. She had his baby in her belly and she would want for nothing ever again.
A surge of protectiveness rose up inside him for the child as he thought of Rose scheming with his grandmother. All of which renewed Zac’s intentions to make sure his child remained in his custody, kept well out of his grandmother’s reach and protected from whatever future machinations Rose had planned.
Except right now she looked less like a devious manipulator and more like that fey creature Zac had likened her to when he’d first seen her. Damn her.
