The Baby Secret

‘Just a business crisis I need to sort out with Jack before we fly to Jamaica this morning. Go back to sleep, darling, I’ll only be a few minutes.’

And, trusting, blind fool that she was, she had gone back to sleep, exhausted by the excitement of the day before and her consuming, wildly passionate and utterly thrilling initiation into the intimacy of married life. Had there ever been such a fool as she?

When she had next surfaced it was to Zac gently kissing her awake, his eyes dark and hot, but when she had held out her arms in an unspoken invitation for him to join her in the massive bed he had shaken his head slowly, softening the refusal with a laughing reminder that they had arranged to share breakfast with the guests who had stayed over at the hotel after the late evening reception. It made her squirm with humiliation now to think of it.

She had felt a little hurt before she’d told herself she was being silly. This was the first day of their lives together as man and wife—they had all the time in the world in which to share their love. But as she had dressed, Zac watching her with a strange expression on his dark, handsome face, Victoria hadn’t been able to rid herself of the impression that something was wrong even as she told herself she was being ridiculous.

He hadn’t been the adoring, besotted bridegroom of the day before, or the ardent, sensual lover of the night hours, a lover who had tenderly tempered his considerable sexual prowess to her nervous inexperience until she had been as wildly abandoned as he was. He’d been different. Something had changed, and she hadn’t been able to put her finger on it. He’d seemed preoccupied.

And then, shockingly, in the elegant, air-conditioned luxury of the hotel lounge, she had discovered why her husband of a few hours had refused her fumbling sexual advances that morning.

Zac had wanted to make a phone call before they went through to join the others for breakfast, and she had sat down in one of the deeply cushioned sofas to wait for him, glancing idly at a glossy magazine and reflecting that she had never imagined it was possible to feel so happy. But she felt loved, she’d told herself joyfully. For the first time in her life she felt really loved. Hers had been a privileged childhood in the material sense, but her parents had never made any secret of the fact that they hadn’t wanted a child and that she was an intrusion into their lives.

When she had been shipped off to boarding-school at the tender age of seven, it had been her nanny she had cried for—she had barely known her parents. And when her father had died three years later she had attended the funeral of a stranger. As she had gone into her teenage years she had tried to get to know her mother, but after countless cold rebuffs had finally accepted they were a million miles apart in everything that mattered.

Her mother was an avid socialite who used her considerable wealth for a life of pampered luxury, and who worried more about a chip in her nail varnish than starving children in the Third World. Victoria’s gentle, sweet nature was anathema to her mother—Coral saw it only as weakness and despised her for it.

And so, as Victoria had sat waiting for her new husband on this, the first morning of her new life, her heart had sunk slightly when that familiar voice had sounded at her elbow, saying, ‘Victoria? What on earth are you skulking out here for?’

There had been no real justification in Coral’s taking advantage of Zac’s generous offer to provide accommodation at the hotel for any guests who wanted to stay over for the night after the celebrations—she only lived a short drive away in a sumptuous apartment in Kensington—but it hadn’t surprised Victoria either. Coral was like that. She took everything she could and then some.

‘Skulking?’ Victoria forced a smile as she turned in her seat to look up at the hard, pretty face staring down at her. ‘I’m not skulking, Mother. I’m waiting for Zac,’ she said quietly.

‘Are you?’ Her mother paused, frowning slightly before she said, ‘You really ought to get in there with all the others and show them you don’t care, Victoria. It’s the only way.’

‘Don’t care?’ Victoria echoed confusedly.

‘Exactly.’ Coral’s voice was sharp and impatient.

‘Mother, I’m sure this conversation is making sense to you but I don’t have a clue what you are on about,’ Victoria said patiently. ‘What is it I’m not supposed to care about?’

‘You mean you don’t know?’ Coral sank gracefully into a seat opposite her daughter, crossing her legs and raising her chin slightly in order to show her profile to its best advantage to anyone who might be watching. ‘I would have thought Zac would have told you by now,’ she added disapprovingly, her eyes narrowing on Victoria’s beautiful, slightly bewildered face. It was a source of constant aggravation to Coral that such beauty had been wasted on someone who didn’t care for the social scene, and who didn’t—in Coral’s opinion—make the best of themselves.

Victoria stared at her mother, the little prickles running down her spine telling her she was about to hear something she didn’t want to hear. But still she said, ‘Go on,’ her voice steady.

‘Gina Rossellini—that second, or is it third cousin of Zac’s?—took an overdose last night. She was in the room next to mine and there was such a commotion at about four o’clock this morning. Stupid woman.’ The last two words were vicious. ‘It’s all for Zac’s attention of course. I know her type.’

‘Mother...’ Victoria shook her head slowly, her sleek fall of silver-blonde hair that was cut in feathered wisps down to her shoulder blades shimmering under the artificial lights of the hotel lounge. ‘What are you trying to tell me?’ she asked quietly, her stomach doing a mighty cartwheel. ‘Are you saying that there is something going on between Zac and Gina Rossellini?’

‘She’s been his mistress for years, girl; I thought you knew,’ Coral said irritably. ‘Everyone else on the planet does.’

‘I... How could I know?’ Victoria was suddenly aware of the moment in piercing detail—the subdued, discreet lighting overhead, the dusky pink carpet and luxurious furnishings, the faint perfume from the fresh flowers at the side of them—it was all stamped on her consciousness along with the horror of her mother’s next words that chilled her blood to liquid ice.

‘Well, it doesn’t matter much one way or the other, does it?’ Coral said matter-of-factly. ‘Your father’s mistress knew him long before I did and if you’re wise you won’t put anything in the way of this association continuing. A mistress is very useful, Victoria. She can take care of all that—’ her mother flicked a languid hand with a distasteful wrinkle of her small nose ‘—side of things which men seem to find so important. As long as she knows her place—as Linda Ward did—she can be an asset to you.’

‘Linda... Aunty Linda! You mean Aunty Linda was father’s mistress?’ Victoria asked faintly. She’d always known Linda Ward as one of her parents’ close friends, although her mother had always treated the other woman with a patronising condescension Victoria hadn’t understood until this very moment. ‘And you didn’t mind?’

‘Of course not.’ Her mother was clearly losing patience as she snapped, ‘All men have mistresses, Victoria, if they can afford them. For heaven’s sake open your eyes, girl. Of course one would prefer they have a little more control and discretion than Gina obviously has, but that comes of her having Latin blood, I suppose. Still, Zac’s mother was Italian so I suppose Gina suits him in certain regards. Men look for different things in wives and mistresses,’ Coral continued in the normal superior manner she adopted when talking to her daughter.

‘Mistresses are for certain...basic needs; wives are chosen for their social connections and pedigree, and for the continuation of the family name if so required . . .’

‘Zac...Zac isn’t like that,’ Victoria protested dazedly. ‘I don’t know what happened with Gina, but he isn’t still seeing her, I know it. And he married me because he loves me, not because of my name or standing or anything like that,’ she finished a trifle wildly, her hands clenching into two fists at her sides.

‘Pull yourself together.’ It was soft but deadly. ‘Don’t you dare cause a scene, Victoria. Of course Zac has a regard for you, but an alliance with the Chigley-Browns is also very useful to him. Your father’s business interests were very far-reaching, and there is already a deal going through to cement an alliance.’

‘I don’t believe you.’ Victoria glared at her. ‘I don’t.’

But her mother’s sharp ears caught the soft quiver in the brave protest, and her hard blue eyes that resembled cold glass were piercing. Coral sighed irritably, before she snapped, ‘I do hope you aren’t going to be difficult about all this, Victoria. For a grown woman of twenty you really are most childish. Zac spent peat of the night in Ginas’s room when he was called to her side—now face that and get on with things for goodness’ sake. I don’t know how many of our guests—’ ours? thought Victoria numbly ‘—are aware of the situation, but you need to handle this with the sophistication Zac will naturally expect of his wife.’

‘I don’t believe you.’ This time it was a fierce hiss, and Coral actually drew back in her chair, her light blue eyes wide with shock and surprise, as Victoria continued, ‘You disgust me, do you know that? You have always disgusted me, although when I was younger I couldn’t put a name to why. But you’re shallow, utterly selfish, and you don’t care about anyone but yourself. You’ve never loved me; I don’t believe you’ve ever loved anyone.’

Victoria rose as she finished speaking, glaring down at her mother with blazing blue eyes. ‘I’m going to find Zac now, and I know he’ll tell me it was all lies. We want to have a real marriage, something you couldn’t possibly understand.’

‘Victoria.’ Angry though her mother was, her voice still didn’t rise above a certain level, her control absolute. ‘Sit down at once and behave yourself. I’m ashamed of you.’

‘I’m a married woman, Mother, and your time of telling me what to do is over,’ Victoria said tightly. ‘I couldn’t believe the terrible scene you caused when I said I wanted to go to help the children in Romania, or the tactics you used to try and stop me going, but you failed then and you will continue to fail. I make my own decisions now; kindly remember that in future. And we will never agree on anything; I accept that now. We’re worlds apart.’

She was shaking so much as she walked over to join Zac that he couldn’t fail to notice, and as he finished his telephone call abruptly the thought did flash through Victoria’s mind as to why he couldn’t have used the phone in their suite.

‘Tory?’ It was his pet name for her and she welcomed the security of the intimacy for a moment. ‘What’s wrong?’ He took her arm as he spoke, moving her into a quiet corner as he held her against his chest before moving her away slightly in order to look down into her face. ‘Has someone upset you?’

‘My...my mother.’ Victoria breathed deeply, willing herself to remain strong. ‘She said things, things about you and...Gina.’

‘What things?’ His voice was expressionless and calm, but Victoria had seen the impact in his eyes and her heart stopped before racing on like an express train. There was something in this.

‘She said Gina was your mistress.’ Victoria pulled away from him now, standing straight and stiff as she looked intently into his face. ‘And that your business interests are forming a merger with my father’s. She said it’s all been arranged for ages.’

‘And?’ He continued to look at her with the poker face she had seen him adopt with other people in other situations. But not her. Never with her. With her he had been open and warm and tender... Black foreboding took all the colour from her face.

‘Isn’t that enough?’ Victoria asked tightly. ‘Is it true?’

‘Tory, let’s go somewhere more private to discuss this.’

‘Where did you go when you left our room last night?’ she asked with painful dignity, holding her slender body ramrod-straight. ‘Did you go to see Gina because she had taken an overdose?’

‘Victoria, I’m not prepared to discuss this here.’ The ‘Tory’ had gone, Victoria thought with grim discernment, and in that moment she knew whom he had been phoning too. Gina Rossellini.

‘Why did she do that, Zac?’ She ignored his furious frown with a regal composure her mother would have been proud of. ‘Was it because she couldn’t handle seeing you marry someone else? Because she’d thought she was going to be the one you took down the aisle, rather than becoming the one you kept on the side? And why did you marry me anyway? Were my connections better than hers? Have I swelled the Harding coffers?’ she persisted stiffly.

‘Is that what Coral told you?’ he asked grimly.

But he hadn’t denied it. He hadn’t denied it. She couldn’t believe this was happening to her. ‘Zac, are you, or are you not, dealing with the people who now run my father’s business interests for my mother with a view to an alliance?’ Victoria asked woodenly. ‘A simple yes or no will do.’ She stared at him desperately.

‘Yes.’ And he didn’t bat an eyelid. Not an eyelid.

‘And did you spend part of the night with Gina when she called you after taking an overdose?’ she continued flatly, her heart thudding as the nightmare escalated at his grim,

‘Yes, I did.’

‘And she is your mistress.’

It was a statement, not a question, and now his cool control was absolute when he said evenly, ‘We had a relationship once, Victoria. Past tense.’

She wanted to believe him. She couldn’t believe how much she wanted to—but she didn’t. ‘Why didn’t you tell me about her before, Zac? Especially knowing she would be here at the wedding?’ Victoria asked numbly. And she had actually liked Gina when she had met her, she thought with a stab of fierce self-disgust at her own credulity. She’d thought the other woman charming.

‘She wasn’t relevant to you and me,’ he said softly. ‘That’s why.’ He went to take her arm again but she jerked away tightly.

‘Wasn’t relevant?’ What planet was this man on? What planet were they all on? Victoria asked herself bitterly. And then she remembered something Zac had let slip a couple of weeks before, and she felt her heart crack and break into a hundred tiny pieces.

‘You had lunch with her recently,’ she stated slowly, searching her memory. ‘You said you were helping her buy an apartment, putting her in touch with the right people.’ And now she stepped back a pace, her violet eyes black with pain. ‘You were setting up a love nest, weren’t you? And this morning, this morning—’ She couldn’t express how his withdrawal from her when she had first awoken was affecting her. ‘I hate you,’ she said bitterly.

‘Victoria!’ He caught her arm as she went to swing away from him, forcing her to remain where she was. ‘Listen to me, for crying out loud. Listen. I can explain all this.’

‘You left me on our wedding night to go to her,’ Victoria said slowly, her voice flat but her eyes expressing her shock and horror. ‘You still care about her, don’t you? You still love her. When she called you, you went to her and left me.’

‘Victoria, I married you,’ he said with savage restraint, his fingers bruising the soft flesh of her arm. ‘I love you.’

‘Tell me you feel nothing for her. Tell me,’ she insisted hotly. ‘Tell me you didn’t buy her that apartment, that I’m wrong.’

And then his eyes flickered again and she knew he wouldn’t say it. Because he knew she would know he was lying.

‘I’m going back to the room for a while; I want to be alone,’ she said shakily. ‘I’ll join you and the others later.’

‘I’m coming with you; this has gone far enough—’

‘No.’ She interrupted his angry voice with a sharp lift of her chin and a straightening of her body. ‘I need...I need some time before I come into breakfast, and then...we can talk afterwards. I can’t now; I just can’t.’ Her voice broke then, and as his face twisted and he would have taken her in his arms she backed away so sharply she almost fell over. She couldn’t bear for him to touch her. She hated him. Oh, she hated him.

‘Please, Zac,’ she said with touching dignity, ‘if you’ve ever had any feeling for me at all, let me have a few minutes by myself. I feel you owe me that at least.’

‘This is crazy,’ he ground out furiously through clenched teeth. ‘Your damned mother wants shooting!’

‘I’ll see you in a few minutes.’ Her voice was dismissive, and she didn’t argue the point further, walking swiftly over to the lifts and entering the first one without turning her head. She had half expected him to follow, and by the time she reached their suite and realised he wasn’t going to something had solidified in her heart, making it feel like a ten-ton weight.

Their bags were sitting in the corner, packed and labelled for their month’s honeymoon in Jamaica, but Victoria took only her overnight case and handbag with her, leaving the hotel quietly by the back entrance through the kitchens to avoid Reception and the possibility that Zac might be there. Facing him again was unthinkable.

Once outside in the cool chill of the late March morning, she stood uncertainly looking from left to right along the side road bordering the rear of the hotel. She couldn’t go to their beautiful new house in Wimbledon, or her mother’s apartment in Kensington—they would be the first places Zac would look for her—and most of their friends’ and relations’ homes were out for the same reason. She bit her lip, her face desperate. And then it came to her. William. She could go to William.

William was the brother of one of her old schoolfriends, and she had known him since her first visit to her friend’s house when she had been eight years old and terribly shy. He had teased her, played with her, and never once led her to believe he considered an eight-year-old girl beneath his fifteen-year-old notice.

For the next few years Victoria had spent most of the holidays from boarding-school with his family. Her mother had been only too pleased to be spared the inconvenience of having her around—something Coral had made abundantly clear several times—and when Victoria was thirteen, and the family had moved abroad, William had stayed in England. He had a very modern bachelor pad with enough gadgets for a James Bond movie, and she had still continued to visit him now and again before she had left England for the year in Romania.

He had a high-pressured and absorbing job in the BBC, which meant he was out of the country for weeks at a time on some assignment or other, but she knew he had been due home from the latest mission the night before. He had sent a polite note to her a couple of weeks ago to say he regretted he was going to miss the wedding by hours. So, more likely than not he would be in, and, best of all, Zac had never met him. In fact she wasn’t even sure if Zac knew of the other man’s existence.

William had been in—very in as it happened—and once he had got dressed and the lady had left, insisting she had been due to leave in the next hour anyway, he had let Victoria cry herself into a frenzy and then out of it again. He had held her close, murmuring soothing nothings and asking no questions until she was calmer, at which point he had made a pot of very strong coffee and they had talked the afternoon away.

At the end of that time he’d offered her unconditional sanctuary for as long as she felt she needed it, with an additional invitation of the use of his holiday home in Tunisia which he’d recently inherited from his grandmother.

And she hadn’t seen Zac again.

CHAPTER TWO

THERE was a wonderful aroma drifting through from the kitchen, and as Victoria came out of the tangle of her thoughts she found she was sniffing the air like a child. He really could cook.

‘You look about twelve this morning.’

The deep, velvety soft voice from the doorway brought her head swinging round to see Zac watching her, his eyes very intent. She stared at him for a moment, and then shrugged carefully, her voice reserved as she said, ‘Looks can be deceptive.’ And in this case particularly so, she added silently. She was a grown woman with a child—his child—growing inside her. A bolt of something she recognised as fear shot through her, and she turned her head abruptly, hiding her face with the shining, silken veil of her hair. That piercing gaze was too perceptive by half, and it was one of Zac’s strengths that he used mercilessly.

Zac mustn’t know about the baby. Her mind was screaming a warning to her. In the dark days since their wedding she had come to realise she knew very little about the powerful, enigmatic man she had married so trustingly, but one thing she did know. He was the type of male who would fight tooth and nail for what was his, and he would certainly see this tiny being as belonging absolutely to the Harding empire. Her feelings would be incidental.

She had been raised in the care of nannies and chauffeurs and hired help and it had been miserable. She didn’t intend to let that happen to her child. And it was hers, all hers, she told herself fiercely. It was even her mistake that meant it had been conceived at all. She had decided to take the pill several months before, but in all the furore of the wedding she had forgotten that one, vital night, and a possible pregnancy had been the last thing on her mind when she had fled the next morning. She had just wanted to put as many miles between them as she could.

‘Come and eat.’ His voice was cool now, cool and hard, but she welcomed that. It emphasised that he was a stranger, that the man she had fallen in love with, the powerful, tender lover and fascinating companion, had been a figment of her wishful imagination, nothing more. Her Zac had never existed.

They ate at the tiny marbled breakfast bar that was just big enough to accommodate two plates, and Victoria had to admit that the light fluffy omelette and grilled fish doused in lemon and herbs were delicious. Zac had opened a bottle of wine he had found in the fridge, looking slightly surprised when Victoria insisted she only wanted a glass of orange juice but saying nothing.

But once the meal was finished and they had taken their coffee through to the sitting room he said plenty.

‘Well?’ Victoria had sat down in the rocking chair again but Zac remained standing, darkly brooding and slightly menacing as he leant against the far wall. ‘Have you punished me enough or do you intend to continue with this charade?’ he asked coolly.

‘Charade?’ It was only the thought of the damage black coffee would do to William’s tasteful furnishings that saved him. ‘You think this is a charade, a game, Zac? Think again,’ Victoria said tightly as she placed the mug on the table next to her before temptation overcame her. How dared he stand there and say that?

But he had seen her hand tremble, and now he said, his voice grating, ‘If you act like a child you should expect me to treat you like one. How could you leave like that, without saying a word? It was the height of stupidity.’

‘But I am stupid, Zac.’ Victoria glared at him, her pale skin stained scarlet and her jaw setting ‘I believed every word you told me, didn’t I? You can’t get much more stupid than that’

‘I have never lied to you,’ he stated with outrageous righteousness. And then, when she stared at him in furious disbelief, her mouth opening and shutting as she sought for a suitably cutting reply, he added, ‘I can see that you disagree with that.’

‘You...you said you loved me,’ she managed at last.

‘I do love you, Victoria.’ It was as cold as ice. ‘It was you who left me, remember? I didn’t go anywhere.’

‘And you think that unreasonable?’ she asked incredulously. ‘You leave me on our wedding night to go to someone else—’

‘I did not choose to leave you,’ he said calmly, as though that made everything all right. ‘I answered a distress call from a human being who needed help, because I was the only person who could.’

Of course you were, she thought with agonising pain—you were the cause of it in the first place. ‘You kept it a secret,’ she accused sharply. ‘You didn’t tell me what had happened although you had several opportunities. You weren’t going to tell me, were you?’