He walked her over to a quieter spot and let her go. ‘Well? What’s so important it couldn’t wait?’
She took a deep breath, which made her breasts rise against the dress. Distracting.
‘I need you to know that there was always so much more to this for me—from the first night we met. The last thing I wanted to do was betray you...or derail your life... Even when I knew I was being unconscionably selfish in going back to your apartment with you that day, I told myself that you’d make sure we were protected. I thought I could take a sliver of what you were offering and then walk away and never see you again. It would be my secret, to hold tight forever.’
She gestured to the dress with a jerky movement.
‘I just wanted to try and show you that the girl you met that night was the girl you thought I was. Unbelievably naive and gauche. But I was caught up in something I didn’t know how to navigate. And yes, there was an agenda, but I hated every moment of the deception.’
She grabbed his hand then and placed it over her small belly. He could feel her trembling.
‘The truth is that I fell in love with you, Zac, and I don’t regret for a second that we’re having this baby, no matter how it came about, because for me this baby will be born out of love.’
* * *
This baby will be born out of love.
For a second Zac’s chest swelled with something that felt scarily euphoric. And then he remembered... No matter what she said, this baby had been conceived in deception. And treachery. The fact was that she was pregnant, so she could say what she liked. She had him trapped.
A memory surfaced of how reverent he’d felt when he’d touched Rose that afternoon she’d come back to his apartment. It had been like nothing he’d ever experienced before. How awed he’d been by her apparent honesty...
But she hadn’t been remotely honest... She’d known exactly what she was doing. And at no point had she attempted to come clean.
Rose had had the last week to think things through, and Zac had to concede that she was nothing if not enterprising. He took his hand from under hers and ignored the way that small hard swell had evoked a need in him to protect. It was a need to protect his unborn child from her.
Coolly, he said, ‘I don’t appreciate this public stunt.’
Rose frowned. ‘It’s not a stunt.’
Zac lifted a hand. ‘Please—I don’t want to hear it.’
She took a step back and looked at him. ‘You still don’t trust me.’
He emitted a half-laugh. ‘Trust? You think a public declaration of love and remorse will convince me to take leave of my senses altogether?’ He shook his head. ‘You really don’t have to do this, you know. It’s overkill. Once you sign the contract put together by my legal team I’ll make sure you’re comfortable for the rest of your life. You’ve realised that as the baby’s father I was always going to win in any battle against my grandmother and you’re just switching your allegiance. I get it. I recognise someone bent on survival because I’ve been there too.’
Rose just looked at him. He could see the light in her eyes dimming. The light of hope, it occurred to him, bizarrely, and for a moment he almost forgot and reached out to grab her. She’d gone so pale...
But then she took another step back and smiled woodenly. ‘You have to admit it was worth a try,’ she said.
It felt as if something was cracking in Zac’s chest. Something that had no right to exist. Because it meant that on some level he still had a fatal weakness for this woman and that a part of him had wanted those words to be true.
Ridiculous.
As a five-year-old boy Zac had impulsively hugged his grandmother one day, only to have her push him away so hard he’d fallen and hit his head on a table.
She’d stood over him and said, ‘Don’t ever touch me like that again—do you hear?’
He had to force a smile now, because it didn’t come easily. ‘It’s always worth a try, Rose.’
And then he turned and walked back into the crowd, and hated that it was the hardest thing in the world not to look back and see her face.
When he finally returned to the group he’d been with before and did look back, she was gone.
* * *
As Rose packed her things a short while later, in the apartment beside Zac’s, she was still in a state of something like stoical numbness. The fact that she’d gone there in that dress, in public, and had all but prostrated herself at his feet had meant nothing. Changed nothing.
She’d told him how she felt and it had been like a scene in a sci-fi movie, with bullets bouncing off an invisible membrane, uselessly.