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‘I don’t want a damn hen party! What I want is five minutes of your time.’
‘Are you dying of some life-threatening disease?’
‘What? Of course not!’
‘Are you afraid I won’t be a good husband?’ he asked, noting the raw edge to his voice, but realising how much her answer meant to him.
‘Zaccheo, this is about me, not you.’
He let her non-answer slide. ‘You’ll be a good wife. And despite your less than auspicious upbringing, you’ll be a good mother.’
He heard her soft gasp. ‘How do you know that?’
‘Because you’re passionate when you care. You just need to channel that passion from your undeserving family to the one we will create.’
‘I can’t just switch my feelings towards my family off. Everyone deserves someone who cares about them, no matter what.’
His heart kicked hard and his grip tightened around the phone as bitterness washed through him. ‘Not everyone gets it, though.’
Silence thrummed. ‘I’m sorry about your parents. Is...your mother still alive?’ Her voice bled the compassion he’d begun to associate with her.
It warmed a place inside him even as he answered. ‘That depends on who you ask. Since she relocated to the other side of the world to get away from me, I presume she won’t mind if I think her dead to me.’
‘But she’s alive, Zaccheo. Which means there’s hope. Do you really want to waste that?’ Her pain-filled voice drew him up short, reminding him that she’d lost her mother.
When had this conversation turned messy and emotional?
‘You were close to your mother?’ he asked.
‘When she wasn’t busy playing up to being a Pennington, or using me to get back at my father, she was a brilliant mother. I wish... I wish she’d been a mother to both Sophie and me.’ She laughed without humour. ‘Hell, I used to wish I’d been born into another family, that my last name wasn’t Pennington—’ She stopped and a tense silence reigned.
Zaccheo frowned. Things weren’t adding up with Eva. He’d believed her surname was one she would do just about anything for, including help cover up fraud. But in his boardroom on Monday, she’d seemed genuinely shocked and hurt by the extent of her father’s duplicity. And there was also the matter of her chosen profession and the untouched money in her bank account.
A less cynical man would believe she was the exception to the abhorrent aristocratic rule...
‘At least you had one parent who cared for you. You were lucky,’ he said, his mind whirling with the possibility that he could be wrong.
‘But that parent is gone, and I feel as if I have no one now,’ she replied quietly.
The need to tell her she had him flared through his mind. He barely managed to stay silent. After a few seconds, she cleared her throat. Her next words made him wish he’d hung up.
‘I haven’t signed the prenup,’ she blurted out. ‘I’m not going to.’
Because of the last clause.
For a brief moment, Zaccheo wanted to tell her why he wanted children. That the bleak loneliness that had dogged him through his childhood and almost drowned him in prison had nearly broken him. That he’d fallen into a pit of despair when he’d realised no one would miss him should the worst happen.
His mother had emigrated to Australia with her husband rather than stay in the same city as him once Zaccheo had fully established himself in London. That had cut deeper than any rejection he’d suffered from her in the past. And although the news of his trial and sentencing had been worldwide news, Zaccheo had never once heard from the woman who’d given him life.
He could’ve died in prison for all his mother cared. That thought had haunted him day and night until he’d decided to do something about it.
Until he’d vowed to alter his reality, ensure he had someone who would be proud to bear his name. Someone to whom he could pass on his legacy.
He hadn’t planned for that person to be Eva Pennington until he’d read about her engagement in the file. But once he had, the decision had become iron cast.
Although this course was very much a sweeter, more lasting experience, Zaccheo couldn’t help but wonder if it was all worth the ground shifting so much beneath his feet.
Eva was getting beneath his skin. And badly.
Dio mio. Why were the feelings he’d bottled up for over two decades choosing now to bubble up? He exhaled harshly.
Rough and ruthless was his motto. It was what had made him the man he was today. ‘You’ll be in your wedding dress at noon tomorrow, ready to walk down the aisle where our six hundred guests will be—’
