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Good luck to her, Kate thought, trying to conjure some sympathy for the future bride and failing—maybe it wasn’t very sisterly but surely any woman who married this man would know exactly what she was getting.
‘I just came to—’
‘See Freya,’ said Kate, who knew full well he had come to check up on her.
He responded to the smooth interruption after a short, startled silence with a tip of his head.
‘Well, it’s great timing. I was just going to order some outdoor play equipment. Freya and I are going to start on a collage this afternoon. Perhaps your papa would like to help you collect some things outside—leaves...twigs... And I wonder where Nanny keeps her glitter.’
‘Glitter!’the little girl echoed, round-eyed.
‘Don’t worry, I’ll find some,’ Kate tossed over her shoulder with airy confidence.
Marco watched her go, a reluctant, admiring gleam in his eyes, well aware that he had just been ruthlessly manipulated. She had balls, he would give her that, but that did not mean he was going let it pass.
The other side of the door, Kate took a step into the sitting room and, backing into the wall, leaned weakly against it, the adrenaline rush making her knees shake, but before she could nurse the triumph the door opened with no warning.
Marco Zanetti stood in the open doorway saying loudly, ‘I have an idea about the glitter.’ Before he added, ‘Be right back with you, Freya!’
‘Glitter?’
Marco closed the door and got straight to the point. ‘Save your child psychology for the five-year-olds. I think you’re a little out of your depth with the grown-ups.’
Kate levered herself off the wall. She had never liked confrontations but she was not going to back down from this one. ‘I don’t know what you mean.’
‘The playing-dumb thing will not work with me. Imean, I will not be played. Certainly not by a woman whose sole role is to provide a safe, stimulating and educational environment for Freya. You will not designate me little tasks. I am not a five-year-old. Nothing else outside the nursery concerns you,’ he outlined with biting emphasis.
Her apprehension was swallowed by a wave of anger. ‘Well, that’s me in my place,’ she snapped out sarcastically. As if she were ever likely to forget what her place was in an environment where you were judged on which table you sat on. ‘You say that Freya is my only concern, and I agree. Quite frankly, I don’t give a damn about you except in the way it influences your daughter...she isachingfor you to notice her. She is hungry for your attention.’
It was the verbal equivalent of having the rug pulled out from under his feet. In his head Marco was stretched out on the floor with her small foot on his chest.
‘I do notice her,’ he pushed out dangerously quietly, but she seemed oblivious to the danger, the warning.
‘It’s not her fault her mother died. What would your wife think if she knew that—?’
The slow-burn fuse finally reached the blue touchpaper and all Marco’s hard-fought-for control snapped. He took a step towards her, his fury only increasing when she took an involuntary step back, seemingly intimidated by his sheer physicality and the waves of emotion rolling off him.
‘That I am a cruel, unnatural father?’
Kate shook her head, desperately trying to back-pedal.
‘I know you have other calls on your time, but this time with Freya at this age—it is such a small window, and before you know it it’s gone, and Freya is lonely.’
He met her appeal with cold silence and an expression that would have made a stone wall look warm and yielding.
‘If you can’t, then she at least needs more social contact with children her own age, she needs...’
What he could not give.
‘She is so isolated. Are there no other children in the palace her age?’
‘It is a bit late to go into professional mode,’ Marco bit back, seeing her flinch and telling himself her white face meant nothing whatsoever to him. Why would it? ‘You may disapprove of me but I’m the only parent Freya has ever had, her mother’s not here.’ The words slipped under, around and through every steel impenetrable barrier he had ever erected.
Kate froze, her eyes sliding from the visible pulse in his temple to his grey metallichurtingstare. ‘S-sorry?’
‘Her mother never even got a chance to hold her!’
‘I’m sorry.’
