'I want you to go now,' she repeated stubbornly.
'No way, Victoria.' It was final, and she knew him well enough to know that she could talk until she was blue in the face and they would still end up having that meal.
But she still persisted. 'You've got no right to barge in here like this—' She stopped abruptly as he rounded on her angrily, his dark eyes flashing fire and his face black with rage.
'I have every right,' he stated with imperious authority. 'I am your husband—or had that little fact slipped your memory?'
'Only until the divorce becomes final,' she countered swiftly. 'And…and I'm not using my married name any more.'
'That doesn't make you any less married,' he said with unarguable logic. 'You're my wife, Victoria. It's legal.'
'We were barely married.' Victoria was aware her voice was higher-pitched than normal and strived desperately to bring it down an octave or two as she continued, 'It was only for a day.'
'And a night.' His gaze narrowed as he saw his words register in her liquid, violet-blue eyes, his cleanly sculpted mouth twisting in a sardonic smile as he added, 'Don't forget the night, Victoria. Annulment is definitely not an option.'
As if she could forget. She stared at him, her face suffusing with enough colour to satisfy even Zac. She had been an innocent twenty to his experienced and far from innocent thirty-five, and he had taken her into a heaven that was indescribable. The wedding had been a fairy-tale one of white lace and orange blossom, despite the fact that it had all been arranged in as little as four months from the point at which they had got engaged, and every moment had been one of exquisite beauty and romance. But the night… The night had been one of unforgettable passion.
Victoria had been nervous when he had first shut the door of their hotel room, and they were alone at last.
Nervous of her naiveté, of her potential inability to please and satisfy a well-versed man of the world like Zac, of her ingenuousness and lack of sophistication in the arts of love.
She had met Zac Harding the day after she had returned to England from Romania, where she had been taking a year out after A levels working in an orphanage before taking up her university place. She had been nineteen and untouched.
It had been her mother who had introduced them. Coral Chigley-Brown had thrown one of her little parties—ostensibly to celebrate Victoria's safe return from that 'awful place', as her mother termed Romania, but really because Coral was the sort of social butterfly who found a different excuse for a soiree of some kind every week. Even now Victoria could picture the look of satisfaction on her mother's pretty, expertly made-up face as she had watched Zac's dark, glittering eyes narrow with interest on her daughter. She just hadn't known her mother's real reason for desiring an alliance between the Chigley-Browns and the Hardings. Not then.
'Victoria?' Zac's voice brought her back from a dark place. 'I presume this little idyll far from the madding crowd has a kitchen?'
'A kitchen?' She stared at him as though the words were foreign to her and then nodded towards an arched doorway. 'Through there, but if you insist on staying for a meal I'll see to it.'
'Sit down; you look as though you need to,' he said drily. 'I'll sort something out for us.' He eyed her mockingly.
'You?' If he had taken all his clothes off and danced the conga she couldn't have looked more amazed, Zac reflected somewhat cynically. 'You can cook?' Victoria asked weakly.
'Yes, I can cook, Victoria,' he said smoothly. 'I can do a lot of things you are not yet aware of. Now, sit down and think nice thoughts, and once you are looking less drained we can commence battle. Okay?'
He didn't wait for an answer, striding through the doorway into the small kitchen where she heard him beginning to clatter about like an army of chars among William's pots and pans.
She needed to sit down if she were being honest, Victoria thought shakily, staring at the empty doorway one more time before making tremblingly for the rocking chair. It wasn't just that she had skipped breakfast before going to the appointment with the doctor because she had been feeling ill, or the heat and feeling of nausea that were now combining to make her light-headed; it was…it was him, Zac. All her troubles were down to Zac.
He was right when he said there were lots of things she didn't know about him, Victoria thought with painful honesty as she flopped down in the cushioned cane. Their whirlwind courtship and swift marriage had been very much a public affair, and they had hardly been alone at all in the preceding months.
Why hadn't it occurred to her to be suspicious about that? she asked herself now. It was natural for newly engaged couples to want to be alone, surely, but Zac hadn't seemed to want that. But then with Gina in tow, why should he? He'd had everything he wanted.
Lies, lies, lies—their whole relationship had been built on a pack of lies, and it had only been hours after their union that the house of cards had come tumbling down.
Victoria had been vaguely aware of the telephone ringing very early the morning after their wedding, and of Zac reaching out a hand and speaking quietly into the receiver.
She had heard him mutter something into the phone, and then, after sitting up abruptly, he had padded through into the sumptuous sitting room of the bridal suite at the hotel where they had held the reception, and continued the call on the extension in there.
She had still been half awake when he had come back into the bedroom and begun dressing, and her sleepy, 'Zac, is anything wrong?' had brought a reply of, '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.