'There are things that need sorting.' His voice was clipped now. 'About the divorce and so on. We can't bury our heads in the sand. And I prefer to do our talking face to face.'
She didn't. Victoria stared at him, the butterflies in her stomach throwing themselves into a mad St Vitus's dance that had her feeling nauseous. It was too painful, but obviously he wasn't affected in the same way she was, and why would he be? His heart wasn't involved after all. Just his pride.
The thought tightened her mouth and put steel in her backbone, enabling her to say quite coolly, 'Very well, you'd better come in, then,' as she fetched her key out of her handbag.
'Thank you.' It was dark and ironic, but she ignored the sarcasm, opening the white-painted front door to her downstairs flat and entering it quickly as she prayed for self-control.
She hated him. She did, she hated him. How could he be so darn composed and imperturbable when every nerve in her body was screaming and twanging at his presence?
'This is very nice.'
His dark bulk filled the minute hall as she turned at the sitting-room door, and she took a deep hard breath before she could say, 'Yes, I was very lucky to find it at just the right time. My mother knows someone…'
'I don't doubt it.' Now the sarcasm was dipped in pure venom. He clearly hadn't forgiven her mother for her part in all this.
'Zac—' She stopped abruptly before forcing herself to continue. 'If…if you're going to be here for a while, couldn't we at least pretend to be civil?' Her voice shook.
'Perhaps.' He eyed her broodingly without coming any further into the flat. 'There's one thing I want to ascertain first. Did you send my cheque back because William Howard is supporting you now?' he asked flatly, his face cold and closed.
'Not.' Her indignation was transparently honest. 'I can take care of myself, thank you very much. I don't need William or…or anyone.' She eyed him militantly, her eyes flashing.
'A questionable comment—' his eyes moved to her stomach before returning to her face '—but we won't argue the point now.' He closed the front door behind him before taking the two steps across the hall that brought him into the pretty, slightly ultra-feminine sitting room that reminded Victoria of a chocolate box.
'When are you going to tell Coral she is going to be a grandmother?' he asked without preamble as Victoria sat down carefully in one of the deeply cushioned bucket chairs and gestured for him to do the same in the other one. The sitting room was tiny—as were the other three rooms that made up the elegant little flat—and the two chairs, a coffee table, a portable TV and small midi system with a few CDs stacked in the built-in unit that ran across all of one wall made up the sum total of furniture in the neat little room. Even then it felt crowded, especially with Zac in residence.
'I…I don't know. Soon, I suppose.' The question had taken Victoria aback. She had half expected that Zac would have already paraded his account of the result of her supposed unfaithfulness to her mother, but obviously that wasn't so.
'Why haven't you told her before this, Victoria?'
His voice was quite without expression but intimidating none the less, and again she spoke perfectly truthfully as she said, 'Because she won't be interested other than feeling annoyed at being forced to acknowledge she has reached an age where a grandchild is possible. She'll treat it as a personal affront.'
'It's not the fact that the child will be a bastard that is holding your tongue?' he asked coldly.
Oh, he was good. He knew exactly which button to press to get the maximum pain, Victoria thought bitterly. She waited a moment until she could trust her voice not to shake before she answered, 'No, it's not that. And I don't really care what she thinks.'
He nodded slowly. 'But you do intend to tell her the truth?' he asked softly. 'The whole truth, including the honourable William?'
The truth? How could she tell her mother the baby was Zac's without Coral getting right on the phone the moment she left and relating their conversation word for word to Zac? But she couldn't say it was William's either, she thought wildly. She hadn't even told William yet what Zac suspected—the other man had been sent to some skirmish or other in the Middle East a few days after her devastating row with Zac, and he had no idea he was now the honorary father of a four-and-a-half-month-old foetus.
'Victoria?' He wasn't going to let her off the hook.
'Leave it, Zac, please.' She raised tortured eyes to his narrowed black ones. 'I shan't lie to my mother if that's what you're asking.' But apart from that she didn't have a clue what to say.
He nodded again, standing for a moment more before he seated himself in the chair she had indicated. 'I take it this admirable honesty was extended to your employer too?' he asked smoothly, leaning back in the chair as though he was utterly at ease with himself and his surroundings, and crossing one leg over the knee of the other. 'Mrs Bretton, isn't it?'
It was a very male pose, and with his considerable height and breadth his dark masculinity became even more flagrant than normal, causing her breath to catch in her throat.
In the twenty-four-hours-a-day 'morning sickness' days of her pregnancy, her general discomfort had taken care of any feelings of desire more than adequately—Victoria had found that constant nausea was the greatest anti-aphrodisiac there was—but since she had been feeling better she'd been horrified to find her thoughts, and certainly her dreams at night, had been nothing short of erotic at times. And all very definitely featuring Zac.
Which—in the circumstances—was incredibly humiliating, she thought bitterly. But it was his fault—he was such a lean, hard, sexy man, with that extra something that was indefinable but which could make any woman from the age of sixteen to sixty weak at the knees with just one glance. He was…well, he was Zac Harding. And there weren't too many around.
Victoria forced her mind away from the big powerful body, and hoped Zac would attribute her burning cheeks to distress at his sudden appearance or the awkwardness of the situation—anything but lust—and tried to make her voice as smooth as his as she said, 'If you are asking me if Mrs Bretton knows I'm expecting a baby, of course she does. The position is only temporary anyway, until her daughter comes back from a trip to America at the beginning of November.'
'And then you intend to do what?' Zac asked quietly, his narrowed eyes tight on her flushed face.
'I…I'm not sure,' Victoria prevaricated stumblingly. She wished she'd had a chance to freshen up after getting home, change her crumpled dress for one of the new ones perhaps, and renew her make-up, brush her hair… Oh, stop it. The voice of condemnation was loud in her head. Who are you trying to impress anyway? Do you think any amount of titivation on your part would make him want you when there's Gina—warm and passionate and very definitely not pregnant—to hand? She took a deep breath, and her voice was firmer when she continued, 'Mrs Bretton said there's the chance of a few mornings a week in the run-up to Christmas when they are usually rushed off their feet.'
'Oh, good,' Zac drawled with hateful sarcasm. 'You might even be able to have the baby in the back of the shop and then get straight up and continue with whatever it is you do there.'