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Jack, whom Zac had insisted must share their day with them because he wanted them to have that first memory of the four of them becoming a family. Zac had never had that family experience, although Freddie had happily enjoyed it for the first ten years of her life. Zac, however, had known only rejection from those who should have given him love and support. By the time he got to know his real father, who was a caring man, it had been a case of too little too late. Of course, Zac was damaged by such a loveless childhood but wasn’t it her role to ensure that he realised that together they could make things different for their own children? Or was that too tall an order for a new bride, who wasn’t loved, to take on? She was rather afraid that it might be...

      Her anxiety about Zac shielded her from the pressure of the church packed with rich, smartly dressed guests. Zac had many business acquaintances and his father, still keen to show off his newly discovered son, had invited his friends to share their day as well. His brothers were attending with small parties, further pushing up the numbers. Freddie, however, had only had a few friends to invite because her social life had been very much curtailed by the children.

      The priest welcomed them to the altar and gave a serious opening speech about the responsibilities of marriage. When she reached for Zac’s hand, it was ice cool in hers. She had a sudden disturbing and panic-inducing vision of him walking out on her at the last possible minute and, instinctively, she held on tight. The ceremony began and Jack escaped Claire to cling to Zac’s knees like a limpet and loudly wail in disappointment when someone lifted him away. Zac raised Freddie’s hand and slid the twisted platinum ring onto her wedding finger.

      They had picked it together but there hadn’t been much choice because her extravagant engagement ring took up so much space that there was little left to spare for the wedding ring she would wear. Zac had laughed heartily at the time, teasing her about her little hands and short fingers, and without warning tears stung her eyes at that memory. He had been so laid-back and light-hearted that day only a week earlier and his current change of mood unnerved her. He had wanted to marry her, he had asked her to marry him, she reminded herself to bolster her spirits.

      They signed the register with his brother and Claire as witnesses and by the time they walked down the aisle at speed it was obvious that Zac could not wait to get out of the church.

      On the steps, as the guests held up phones to photograph them, he expelled his breath in a hiss. ‘Meu Deus...glad that’s over!’

      Eloise clung to the foot of his jacket and Jack held out his arms, almost toppling out of Claire’s hold.

      ‘Tough, isn’t it, Jack?’ Zac derided, reaching out to take the over-eager baby into his arms, recognising that his shenanigans had taxed Claire’s low patience threshold.

      It was a challenge for Freddie to hold onto her bridal beam in Zac’s radius, particularly after she saw Angel and Vitale exchanging meaningful looks across the disenchanted bridegroom. Getting into the limousine even with the children clambering over them was a relief because at least there were no watching eyes and listening ears there.

      ‘What’s wrong, Zac?’ Freddie asked levelly.

      ‘Nothing’s wrong,’ Zac intoned. ‘I’m just not cut out for this kind of stuff.’

      ‘You insisted on this being what you called a normal wedding,’ she reminded him.

      His strong jaw line clenched and his wide sensual mouth compressed, his crystalline eyes sombre below his semi-lowered lashes. ‘We all make mistakes,’ he said very drily, thinking that he should have opted to avoid the traditional hoopla and travel a simpler route.

      Freddie froze. ‘Am I a mistake?’ she suddenly demanded loudly.

      Zac groaned long and low. ‘You know I didn’t mean it like that...inferno, I don’t know what I meant! But that priest lecturing us on our marital duties reminded me of being at school,’ he bit out impatiently.

      Freddie embraced silence all the way to The Palm Tree, where the reception was being staged. Zac had dispensed with a greeting line as being too official and instead the guests mingled over drinks when they arrived. The hotel nanny was at their disposal and the children were borne off for lunch and a nap. Zac vanished into the bar before they sat down to their meal, reappearing just in time to make a very short speech in the wake of his father’s. He ate little and drank a lot, responding to Freddie when she spoke but initiating no other conversation. He seemed bleakly set on just going through the motions and getting through what he clearly saw as an ordeal.

      Somehow it infuriated Freddie that, even in a mood, Zac should still look utterly gorgeous, dark stubble beginning to shade in the angles and hollows of his beautiful bone structure, black lashes low over his brooding glittering gaze as he lounged back with careless elegance in his seat.

      Exasperated by her susceptibility to him, Freddie tore her attention from him and went into the cloakroom to freshen up. She was grimacing at her downcast expression when a woman appeared in the mirror beside her.

      ‘I hope Zac treats you better than he treated my daughter,’ she remarked curtly.

      Blinking, Freddie turned her head to look at the ageing blonde, studying her with pursed lips. ‘Sorry?’ she said blankly.

      ‘Two years ago my daughter was working as a chalet girl in Klosters. Zac told her that she was the most beautiful girl in the world...well, actually she was a runner-up in the Miss World competition the year before,’ the woman digressed with pride. ‘Anyway. She was with him a week and then she never heard from him again. He broke her heart.’

      Freddie straightened her slight shoulders and lifted her chin. ‘And you’re telling me this because...?’

      ‘He loses interest once the chase is over. I thought I should warn you.’

      ‘Thank you,’ Freddie replied with equal insincerity, laced with a tight determined smile as she walked away.

      Merry greeted her when she returned to their table to find Zac’s chair empty.

      ‘He’s doing shots in the bar with Angel,’ Angel’s wife confided with a visible wince of embarrassment.

      The guests were waiting for the bride and groom to open the dancing. Freddie persuaded the new King and Queen of Lerovia to do the honours instead and cut the cake with her new father-in-law’s help because she was resolutely set on not chasing after Zac to nag at him to do anything he didn’t want to do. Feeling suitably martyred, she sat with Merry and Jazz and got to know the two other women better while little Elyssa, Merry’s daughter, played at their feet and Jazz shared the news that she was expecting twins, although her willowy frame showed little evidence of that reality.

      Freddie and Zac were scheduled to leave the hotel at five and as soon as the kids had had an early supper Freddie went up to the penthouse to get changed. She put on silky wide-legged trousers and a floaty top for their flight to the South of France and only then went off to locate her new husband.

      ‘Zac’s waiting in the limo. His bodyguards took him out the back entrance,’ Angel told her warily. ‘He’s drunk. Blame me.’

      ‘Oh, I’m not blaming anyone!’ Freddie said a tinge shrilly, her face as hot as hellfire.

      ‘I think...’ Charles Russell interposed anxiously, ‘Zac was celebrating too hard.’

      Freddie raised both brows, feeling like the original toxic bride with everyone trying to placate her. ‘I don’t think he was celebrating getting married. I think he was drowning his sorrows.’

      ‘Zac can be a little unpredictable,’ Angel volunteered, contriving to look both guilty and sympathetic. ‘And he doesn’t normally drink this much.’

      Freddie shone a bright smile at their anxious faces, her pride badly stung by his family’s concern on her behalf. And just behind that lurked her depressing recollection of the woman who had accosted her in the cloakroom to tell her that Zac lost interest in a woman once the chase was over. Since his dogged pursuit of her had ended in his penthouse bedroom

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