Zac’s dead-eyed look told her what he thought of that little attempt to defend herself, so she closed her mouth. He started to walk around her, like a shark. She stared straight ahead, rigid with tension.
He said from behind her, ‘Whether or not you currently work there is beside the point. Tell me—did you get a bonus for getting pregnant, or was it an all or nothing deal?’
Rose’s hands were digging so deeply into her bag that she wouldn’t be surprised if she was gouging holes in the leather. She refused to turn around, and again said tightly, ‘It wasn’t like that.’
Zac made a rude snorting sound. ‘Assuming that you are pregnant and that it is mine, I’d say you’re still on the payroll. So essentially that’s a transaction many would call—’
‘Stop it!’ Rose’s voice rang out harshly.
Zac came back to stand in front of her, lifting an eyebrow. ‘Such a spirited defence.’
His eyes dropped to where the bag covered her belly. She was at that slightly uncomfortable stage of pregnancy where her belly was finally looking more defined and less like bloated swelling, and she hated feeling that self-consciousness now. As if he cared how she looked. As if she should care!
Rose gathered up her strength in the face of his utter condemnation, justified as it was. ‘I am pregnant with your baby and I was just a maid. I’m not saying those meetings weren’t engineered to bring us together...’ She faltered then, knowing that however she tried to defend herself she couldn’t deny that on some very crude level Zac was right.
But he wasn’t even listening. He stood back, arms folded. Formidable and distant. ‘As much as I’d love to believe otherwise, I suspect you probably are carrying my child. Jocelyn Lyndon-Holt is so obsessed with the precious family bloodline that she would never leave something that important to chance.’
No, she wouldn’t. Rose knew that all too well, feeling sick when she thought of his mother.
Zac’s voice was harsh. ‘The moment you agreed to accept money from her to deliberately seduce me, you crossed a line that millions of women cross every day in this city. And each one of them probably has more integrity than you.’
Rose fought hard to keep her chin up. This was the least she deserved. She knew that. But, even so, she couldn’t help saying, ‘I didn’t want to do it. I walked away that first night.’
Zac took a step back, incredulity stamped all over his handsome face. ‘That was just a ploy to incite me to chase you. To want you.’
Bitter gall burnt Rose’s insides. Of course he would think that. Why wouldn’t he?
‘I won’t ask again,’ he rapped out. ‘Tell me what the going rate is for playing God with my life and giving me a child I had no intention of ever fathering.’
The futile anger that had risen up in a flash drained away again. He was right. That was exactly what she’d done. She’d played God. And still she couldn’t answer him. Because how could she say the price had been her father’s life when that life was held in such delicate balance at the moment? She couldn’t break the non-disclosure agreement... If she did, her father would suffer. She didn’t care what might happen to her. But it wasn’t just about her any more.
In the face of Zac’s clear hostility all she could cling to now was the fact that she was doing this for her father. To save him. This had to be worth it. It had to be. And she had to protect the innocent baby she carried, who did not deserve this opprobrium.
Zac was glaring at her now, silently demanding an answer, and Rose said the only thing she could.
‘I’m not telling you anything.’
* * *
Zac looked at Rose and the rage inside him reached boiling point. I’m not telling you anything. Of course she wouldn’t. She didn’t want to jeopardise the undoubtedly sizeable settlement she was due when her child—his child!—took that hated name and came in line to inherit the Lyndon-Holt fortune.
Zac was dangerously close to the edge of his control, and he didn’t like to admit that even before, when his life had been ripped asunder, he hadn’t felt so volatile. He’d vowed never to let himself be put in that position again—at the mercy of secrets and lies. And yet here he was, teetering on the very lip of it.
He turned abruptly away from that pale face and those huge eyes and stalked to the window. He couldn’t look at her and not fall over the edge.
He wasn’t sure what he’d ex
pected, but he’d expected her to show something different from the innocent persona she’d projected both times they’d met before. He’d expected her to be confident. Triumphant. Crowing. Greedy.
And she was none of those things. Or not yet, at least. She just had those huge eyes that looked so damn full of something that mocked him for his initial weakness. Because he’d believed in it. In her.
The revelation that she’d used her physical innocence as a bargaining chip that night made him bilious. Her virginity might have been real, but every other moment had been a poisonous fabrication.
He recalled persuading her to stay and those eyes looking at him with such unbelievable torment. As if she’d truly had to wrestle with her conscience. And then she’d run, perfecting her act, before popping up again the following week. What an unmitigated fool he’d been to trust that it had been mere coincidence.
As much as Zac would have loved to have her escorted from his building and excised from his life for good, he couldn’t. She was pregnant. He’d noticed the barely perceptible thickening of her waist that she was trying to hide under that bag. And he hated that he’d noticed. And that it wasn’t having a cooling effect on his hormones. Hell, as soon as he’d seen her photo in the paper his libido had roared back to life.
Pregnant. He was still reeling from that shock and coming to terms with the fact that he most likely was the father. He’d never contemplated this reality, too intent on making sure the Lyndon-Holt name died out with his grandmother. As he’d told her years before, she could take her bitter legacy to the grave or leave it to a cats’ home for all he cared.