'Are you always that grateful when someone buys you a meal?' he asked with caustic derision. 'They must be lining up in droves if so. You're selling yourself too cheaply, Victoria.'
If she'd been holding anything she would have thrown it 'You—'
'No labels,' he warned darkly. His eyes were black ice, and she couldn't reconcile this terrifying stranger with the man she had promised to love, cherish and honour for the rest of her life.
'I wouldn't have needed William's help if you hadn't set your mistress up in a tawdry love nest,' Victoria raged, using the weapon of attack to cover the pain that was tearing her apart. 'And you know that as well as I do. Oh, I'm not staying here to listen to any more of your accusations. I hate you. I hate you.'
She surprised them both with the speed with which she turned and was out of the front door, and even when the soft summer evening was shattered by his harsh, 'Victoria!' she kept on running, her only desire to escape his dark presence.
He caught her up halfway down the short pebbled drive, and as he seized her arm, spinning her round, no power on earth could stop her hand from swinging into hard, fierce contact with his face. The sound was like a pistol shot and for a moment everything was breathtakingly still, the dying sunshine, with the fragrance of burning leaves wafting on the breeze, dappling the scene with a mellow warmth that was quite at odds with the savage emotion darkening Zac's face.
As the seconds ticked by and they remained frozen in a motionless tableau, Victoria swallowed hard. 'I'm sorry, Zac,' she said shakily after what seemed an eternity, willing herself not to compound the mistake by bursting into tears. 'I shouldn't have hit you. I know that. I…I apologise.'
He didn't say anything for a full thirty seconds more, and then his voice was quite without expression. 'I'll take you back.'
'There's…there's no need.' The urge to cry was paramount and she was fighting it with all her might. 'I can get a taxi; it's no problem.' She didn't dare look at him.
'I'll take you,' he repeated flatly. 'Get in the car.'
Victoria didn't argue further. She was feeling very strange, and the truth of the matter was that she didn't trust her trembling legs to get her any further than the few feet to Zac's Jaguar. She tottered over to the car, her head whirling.
Once he had shut the passenger door she watched him walk round the bonnet and slide into the driving seat. He was mad. Oh, he was mad, Victoria thought bleakly. And the mark of her handprint was plainly visible. She couldn't believe that she had done that, that she had hit him. And it made it all the worse because she knew, no matter what the provocation, he would never raise his hand to her.
They drove in a dark, terribly oppressive silence for some miles before Victoria said, her voice very small, 'I only left my new telephone number with your secretary when I called yesterday, didn't I? The flat's in Richmond, in—'
'I know where it is,' he cut in coldly.
Of course. Her mother. No doubt her mother was desperately trying to worm herself back into Zac's good books by keeping him informed of his wife's whereabouts, Victoria thought bitterly. Coral had done nothing but command her to return to her husband since she had come back from Tunisia, and one of the reasons Victoria hadn't told her mother where she was in the initial few weeks after the wedding was that she'd known it would be instantly reported to Zac.
Her mother was far more concerned with swelling the Chigley-Brown coffers with the lucrative business deal her lawyers had set up with the Harding empire, and which her daughter's scandalous behaviour—her mother's own words—had jeopardised, than worrying about respecting her daughter's wish for solitude. No doubt Zac had known about the flat even before she had the key.
They said nothing more on the journey to Richmond, and when Zac drew into the charming little mews in which the flat was situated Victoria was out of the car before he had a chance to open the door for her, her face as white as a sheet.
'Goodbye, Zac.' He had walked round to her side, his face dark and sombre, and stood looking down at her with unfathomable eyes. She couldn't read a thing from his expression.
'Goodbye, Tory.' Somehow the 'Tory' sounded more final than anything else could have done, and in that moment Victoria knew he was really saying goodbye. Goodbye to his old pet name for her and all the intimate connotations it held. Goodbye to their marriage, their dreams, their hopes for the future. And she couldn't bear it. Oh, she couldn't bear it…
For a long moment the truth trembled on her lips. She wanted to tell him she had never slept with William, that he was nothing more than a friend, that she could never allow any other man access to her body or her heart She wanted to tell him th
at this child she was carrying was his flesh and blood, and that she wanted it more than she had ever wanted anything in her life because it was his, A unique part of them both.
Something of her inward struggle must have shown on her face, because she saw the dark eyes narrow as he frowned questioningly at her. 'What is it?' he asked softly. 'What's the matter?'
But nothing had changed. She continued to stare at him as her mind raced. The reasons that had caused her to walk out on him in the first place were still there. Very much still there. Something her mother had let slip, whether by design or mistake Victoria wasn't sure, about Gina being at a social function recently along with Zac burnt in her memory.
Victoria suspected Coral had woven the juicy titbit into the conversation with the intention of making her jealous and spurring her on to fight for him—in view of the other woman's brazenness—but it had had the opposite effect.
She wasn't going to fight for him. Victoria looked up into the familiar handsome face she loved so much. If she started that now, she would end up fighting the same battle for the rest of her life. Because there was always another Gina round the corner, when the present model had departed.
If she wasn't enough for him, then it was better he pursued the life he wanted with women who could cope with his morals and outlook. Because she couldn't. She couldn't. She loved him too much to share him.
And she would raise his child her way, she told herself with a sudden fierceness that darkened her eyes to midnight-blue. It would have her values, her principles, right or wrong. And it was probably better he didn't suspect the child was his in the long run. That way he would leave them both alone.
'What is it?' he asked again.
Now she found the strength to shake her head quickly and say, 'Nothing, nothing. Goodbye, Zac.' And she turned in one swift movement and walked across the cobbles to the front door.
This was goodbye, then. This was how love affairs ended, was it? she asked herself desperately as she fumbled blindly for her key. They had been married, she'd thought she was going to spend the rest of her life with him, and it was all gone.