The Sheikh's Secret Babies
LYNNE GRAHAM
Twin royal heirs!Prince Jaul of Marwan’s royal duty is to marry a suitable bride. But first he must divorce the woman who betrayed him. Locating his estranged wife… ? Easy. The intense passion still burning between them… ? Manageable. Discovering he has two royal heirs… ? Impossible!Chrissie Whitaker was devastated when her handsome prince deserted her, and her beautiful twin babies were the only balm to her broken heart. Now Jaul will stop at nothing to claim his legitimate heirs – but can Chrissie forget their painful past and recognise him as her husband in every sense of the word?Discover more at www.millsandboon.co.uk/lynnegraham
Chrissie extended the certificates. ‘I’m sure you’re wondering why I came here.’ Not to kiss you and dream about ripping off your clothes again, she completed inwardly, while her face burned with mortification. ‘I had to see you because I thought you should see these …’
With another frown drawing together his fine ebony brows, Jaul grasped the documents with an unhidden air of incomprehension. She hadn’t mentioned the kiss and he was grateful for that. Time had shot them both back briefly into the past and that was all. Nothing more needed to be said, he thought, while he grasped the fact that for some peculiar reason his estranged wife had given him a pair of birth certificates.
Jaul scanned the name of the mother and went cold. ‘You have children?’
‘And so do you.’
Jaul stilled and stopped breathing. He had children—a boy and a girl. The concept was so shattering that he literally could not think for several tense seconds. The woman he was planning to divorce was the mother of his children. Inwardly he reeled from that revelation, instantly grasping how that devastating truth would change everything. Everything!
Bound by Gold (#ulink_d22c984f-11ee-5b9d-9585-d419401227e4)
Captivated by passion
Lizzie and Chrissie Whitaker: two ordinary girls until they meet two extraordinary men!
But these men are renowned for getting what they want … whatever the cost!
Explosive passion and powerful men astound in Lynne Graham’s fabulous new duet!
Read Lizzie’s story in:
The Billionaire’s Bridal Bargain
April 2015
Lizzie refuses to marry Cesare Sabatino so he can get his hands on her Mediterranean island inheritance. But no one says ‘no’ to the formidable tycoon and soon Lizzie is going from ‘I don’t’ to ‘I do!’
Read Chrissie’s story in:
The Sheikh’s Secret Babies
May 2015
Chrissie has never told her sister who the father of her twin babies is. But when the Prince of Marwan storms back into her life, determined to claim his heirs, Chrissie is forced to recognise him … as her husband!
The Sheikh’s Secret Babies
Lynne Graham
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
LYNNE GRAHAM was born in Northern Ireland and has been a keen romance reader since her teens. She is very happily married, with an understanding husband who has learned to cook since she started to write! Her five children keep her on her toes. She has a very large dog, which knocks everything over, a very small terrier, which barks a lot, and two cats. When time allows, Lynne is a keen gardener.
Contents
Cover (#u08cc0de8-b1e4-5fee-a941-59804f712687)
Introduction (#ua56dd734-7f74-5651-946f-4a086d14fd88)
Bound by Gold (#u6acbf588-0f5e-5167-8cc4-22e8fbda029e)
Title Page (#udb62a12d-f8c5-53e3-be2f-c533f5de40b9)
About the Author (#u162f321c-ed1b-59bd-9d4c-98e98dff791c)
CHAPTER ONE (#ud5ec88c8-bda5-5453-96e8-97519796092d)
CHAPTER TWO (#u5ba2e8bf-4895-5333-8863-f66931f529d9)
CHAPTER THREE (#u87a79245-27df-5745-8596-f6d3594f9600)
CHAPTER FOUR (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER FIVE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER SIX (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER SEVEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER EIGHT (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER NINE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TEN (#litres_trial_promo)
Extract (#litres_trial_promo)
Copyright (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER ONE (#ulink_2dd82c05-bdbd-5ecf-86c0-d6ed763221a8)
KING JAUL, WHO HAD recently acceded to the throne of Marwan on the death of his father, Lut, glanced across the date-palm-filled courtyard beyond his office. A beautiful brunette was playing ball there with her niece and nephew. Her name was Zaliha. Educated, elegant and as sweet-natured as she was well-born, she would make a wonderful queen, he knew. So why hadn’t he broached the subject yet? he asked himself grimly.
Marwan was a Gulf state, small but oil-rich and deeply conservative. A single king was not expected to remain single for long. Government officials had made no secret of their eagerness for him to take a bride. A royal dynasty was not seen as secure until there was another heir in the offing and Jaul was an only child, the son of a man who had been an only child.
The newspapers were full of constant speculation. He could not be seen even talking to a young woman without rousing suspicions. His wide, sensual mouth compressed, uneasy memories surfacing of the wilder and more hot-headed young male he had once been. If he was honest with himself, he knew exactly why he was being indecisive about getting married. Moreover he was well aware that beautiful though Zaliha was, there was not the smallest spark of chemistry between them. But shouldn’t that be what he wanted now? A marriage shorn of the wild attraction and excitement that had once led to his downfall?
A measured knock sounded on the door heralding the arrival of Bandar, who served as the royal family’s senior legal adviser.
‘My apologies if I’m a little early,’ the little man with the balding head said earnestly, bowing with solemn dignity.
Jaul invited him to sit down and lounged back against his desk, restless at the prospect of an in-depth discussion of some obscure piece of constitutional law, which fascinated Bandar much more than it fascinated anyone else.
‘This is a very delicate matter,’ Bandar informed him uneasily. ‘But it is my duty as your adviser to broach it with you.’
Wondering what on earth the older man could be referring to, Jaul studied him with unsullied assurance. ‘There is nothing we cannot discuss—’
‘Yet this is a matter which I first raised eighteen months ago with my predecessor, Yusuf, and he instructed me never to mention it again lest I caused offence,’ Bandar told him awkwardly. ‘If that is the case, please accept my apologies in advance.’
Yusuf had been his father’s adviser and had retired after King Lut’s passing, allowing Bandar to step into his place. Jaul’s fine black brows were now drawing together while a mixture of curiosity and dismay assailed him as he wondered what murky, dark secret of his father’s was about to be unleashed on him. What else could this very delicate matter concern?
‘I am not easily offended and your role is to protect me from legal issues,’ Jaul responded. ‘Naturally I respect that responsibility.’
‘Then I will begin,’ Bandar murmured ruefully. ‘Two years ago, you married a young Englishwoman and, although that fact is known to very few people, it is surely past time that that situation is dealt with in the appropriate manner.’
It took a lot to silence Jaul, whose stubborn, passionate and outspoken nature was well known within palace circles, but that little speech seriously shook him. ‘But there was no actual marriage,’ Jaul countered tautly. ‘I was informed that the ceremony was illegal because I did not obtain my father’s permission beforehand.’
‘I’m afraid that was a case of wishful thinking on your father’s part. He wished the marriage to be illegal and Yusuf did not have the courage to tell him that it was legal...’
Jaul had lost colour beneath his healthy olive-tinted complexion, his very dark, long-lashed eyes telegraphing his astonishment at that revelation. ‘It was a legal marriage?’ he repeated in disbelief.
‘There is nothing in our constitutional law which prohibits a Marwani Crown Prince from marrying his own choice of bride. You were twenty-six years old, scarcely a teenager and that marriage still stands because you have done nothing since to sever that tie.’
Wide, strong shoulders now rigid beneath the long cream linen thobe he wore, Jaul frowned, trying to calculate the sheer immensity of the wrecking ball that had suddenly crashed into his marital plans. He was already a married man. Indeed he was still a married man. As he had only lived with his bride for a few weeks before parting from her, what Bandar was now telling him naturally came as a severe shock. ‘I did nothing to sever the tie because I was informed that the marriage itself was illegal and, therefore, void. Like a bad contract,’ he admitted.
‘Unhappily that is not the case.’ Bandar sighed. ‘To be free of the marriage you require a divorce under UK law and Marwani law.’
Jaul stalked over to the window beyond which Zaliha could still be seen entertaining her niece and nephew, but he was no longer remotely conscious of that view. ‘I had no suspicion of this. I should have been informed of this situation months ago—’
‘As I mentioned, Yusuf was my superior and he refused to allow me to raise the subject—’
‘It is three months since my father passed away,’ Jaul reminded him stiffly.
‘I had to ensure my facts were correct before I could raise this matter with you. I have now discovered that in spite of your separation your wife has not sought a divorce either—’
Jaul froze, his lean, darkly handsome features clenching hard. ‘Please do not refer to her as my wife,’ he murmured flatly.
‘Should I refer to the lady concerned as your queen?’ Bandar pressed with even less tact. ‘Because that is what Chrissie Whitaker is, whether she knows it or not. The wife of the King of Marwan is always granted the status of Queen.’
Jaul snatched in a ragged breath of restraint, lean brown hands closing slowly into fists of innate aggression. He had made one serious mistake in his life and it had come back to haunt him in the worst possible way at the worst possible time. He had married a gold-digger who had deserted him the first chance she got in return for cold, hard cash.
‘Naturally I respect the fact that your father did not approve of the young woman but perhaps now—’
‘No, my father was correct in his assessment of her character. She was unsuitable to be either my wife or my queen,’ Jaul acknowledged grittily, a faint flare of colour accentuating the line of his spectacular high cheekbones as he forced out the lowering admission that stung his pride. ‘I was a rebellious son, Bandar...but I learnt my lesson.’
‘The lessons of youth are often hard,’ Bandar commented quietly, relieved that the current king was unlike his late parent, who had raged and taken umbrage at anyone who told him anything he did not want to hear.
Jaul was barely listening. In fact he was being bombarded by unwelcome memories that had escaped from the burial ground at the back of his mind where he kept such unsettling reminders firmly repressed. In his mind’s eye he was seeing Chrissie walk away from him, her glorious silver-blonde hair blowing back in the breeze, her long, shapely legs fluid and graceful as a gazelle’s.
But she had always been walking away from him, he recalled with cool cynicism. Right from the start, Chrissie had played a cool, clever, long-term game of seduction. Hot-blooded as he was and never before refused by a woman as he had been, she had challenged his ego with her much-vaunted indifference. It had taken a two-year-plus campaign for him to win her and she had only truly become his when he had surrendered and given her a wedding ring. Unsurprisingly during that long period of celibacy and frustration, Chrissie Whitaker had become a sexual obsession whose allure Jaul had not been able to withstand.
The payback for his weakness had not been long in coming. They had had a flaming row when he’d left Oxford to fly back to Marwan without her and, extraordinarily, he had never seen her again after that day. At that point and perhaps most fortunately for him, fate had intervened to cut him free of his fixation with her. Following a serious accident, Jaul had surfaced in a hospital bed to find his father seated like a sentry beside him, his aged features heavy with grief and apprehension.
Before he had broken the bad news, King Lut had reached for his son’s hand in a clumsy gesture of comfort for the first time in his life. Chrissie, Lut had then confided heavily, would not be coming to visit Jaul during his recovery. His marriage, Lut had declared, was illegal and Chrissie had accepted a financial pay-off as the price of forgetting that Jaul had ever figured in her life. King Lut had purchased her silence and discretion with a large sum of money that had evidently compensated her for her supposed loss of a husband while providing her with support for the future.
For a split second, Jaul recalled one of the most insane fantasies that had gripped him while he lay helpless in that hospital bed. Aware of his diplomatic immunity within the UK, he had actually dreamt about kidnapping Chrissie. Now in the present he shook his proud dark head slowly, utterly astonished at the tricks his mind had played on him while he had struggled to come to terms with the daunting fact that, not only was his wife not his wife, but also that given generous enough financial compensation she had no longer wanted to be his wife. Chrissie had been quite happy to ditch her Arab prince once she’d had the means to be rich without him. Only angry, bitter and vengeful thoughts had driven Jaul while he’d fought his injuries to get back on his feet.
‘I need to know how you want this matter to be handled,’ Bandar told him, shooting Jaul back to the present. ‘With the assistance of our ambassador in London I have engaged the services of a highly placed legal firm to have divorce papers drawn up. After so long a separation they assure me that the divorce will be a mere formality. May I instruct the firm to make immediate contact with Chrissie Whitaker?’
‘No...’ Without warning, Jaul swung round, his lean bronzed features taut and forbidding. ‘If she is not yet aware that we remain man and wife a third party should not be dealing with it. Informing her of that fact should be my responsibility.’
Bandar frowned, taken aback by that assurance. ‘But, sir—’
‘I owe her that much. After all, it was my father who misled her as to the legality of our marriage. Chrissie has a hot temper. I think a personal approach is more likely to lead to a speedy and successful conclusion. I will present her with the divorce papers.’
‘I understand.’ Bandar was nodding now, having followed his royal employer’s reasoning. ‘A diplomatic and discreet approach.’
‘As you say,’ Jaul conceded, marvelling at the tingle of the illicit thrill assailing him at the very thought of seeing Chrissie again. It felt neither diplomatic nor discreet. But then no woman had ever excited Jaul to that extent, either before or since. Of course now that he knew how mercenary and hard-hearted she was, that attraction would be absent, he reflected confidently. He was an intelligent man and no longer at the mercy of his hormones.
He had cracked down hard on that side of his nature as soon as he’d understood just how badly his libido could betray him. There had been a lesson writ large in that experience with Chrissie, a lesson Jaul had been quick to learn and put into practice. Never again would he place himself in a vulnerable position with a woman. This was the main reason he had decided to stop avoiding matrimony and take a wife as soon as possible.
His mood sobered by that acknowledgement and the impossibility of currently following through on that ambition, his lean dark features stiffened and his wide, sensual mouth curled with sudden distaste at the prospect of being forced to deal with Chrissie in a civilised manner. There was nothing remotely civilised about the way Chrissie made him feel... There never had been...
* * *
Her arms full of gifts and cards, Chrissie shouldered her way out of the front doors of the primary school where she taught the nursery class and walked to her car.
‘Here, let me give you a hand...’ A tall, well-built young man with brown hair and a ready smile moved to intercept her, lifting some of the presents from her arms to enable her to unlock her car. ‘My word, you’re popular with your class!’
‘Didn’t you get a load of stuff too?’ Chrissie asked Danny, who taught Year Six and was in charge of games.
‘Yes. Bottles of wine, designer cologne,’ he proffered with amusement, flipping open her car boot so that she could pile the gifts in. ‘Here in this privileged corner of middle-class London, the last day of term is like winning in a game show.’
Involuntarily, Chrissie smiled, her lovely face full of animation, turquoise-blue eyes alight with answering laughter. ‘The gift-giving has got out of hand,’ she agreed ruefully. ‘The parents spend far too much money.’
Danny slammed shut the boot lid and leant back against it. ‘So, what are your plans for the rest of the summer?’
‘I’ll be staying with my sister...doing a bit of travelling,’ she confided a shade awkwardly.
‘That’s the sister who’s married to the rich Italian?’ Danny checked.
‘I only have the one sibling,’ Chrissie admitted, shaking her car keys in the hope he would take the hint and move out of her way.
Danny frowned. ‘You know, you’re only young once. Don’t you ever want to take a break from your family and do something more daring on your own?’
With difficulty, Chrissie kept her smile in place. Two years earlier, she had gone down the daring route and what a disaster that had turned out to be! Now she played safe, stayed sensible and worked to eradicate the damage she had done to her relationship with her sister. She adored Lizzie, the sister five years her senior, and when Chrissie’s life had gone wrong, Lizzie’s disappointment, Lizzie’s conviction that somehow she was responsible for the poor decisions Chrissie had made, had filled Chrissie with a guilt she had never quite managed to shake off.
‘Lizzie loves you...she only wants to see you happy,’ her brother-in-law, Cesare, had said to her once. ‘If you would just trust her enough to tell her the whole story it would make her feel better.’
But Chrissie had never told anyone the whole story of her downfall. It had been a stupid short-sighted decision she had made and which she was still paying for. It was bad enough living with her mistakes but it would be even worse if she had to share the truth of them with others and see their opinion of her intelligence dive-bomb.
‘Obviously, I’ll be in Cornwall,’ Danny reminded her as if she didn’t already know. Everyone in the staffroom had been listening to Danny talk about his summer surfing plans for months.
‘I hope you have a great time.’ Chrissie eased past him to open her car door.
Danny closed his hand round her slender wrist to hold her back and looked down at her ruefully. ‘I would have a better time if you agreed to come with me,’ he admitted. ‘Just mates, no need to lay anything else on the line. Last chance, Chrissie. Why not live a little and give it a go?’
Blue eyes flaring with pained annoyance, Chrissie jerked her wrist free. ‘As I said, I’ve other plans—’
‘Some guy did a right number on you, didn’t he?’ Danny remarked, his face red with discomfiture as he moved away a step and thrust his hands into his pockets. ‘But all cats are not grey in the dark, Chrissie. If you still want a life, you have to reach out and take it.’
Breathing fast, Chrissie slid into the driver’s seat of her car and closed the door. She had wanted a life, an entirely different life from the one she now had. She had dreamt of climbing the academic ranks by pursuing a doctorate and of the freedom that would be hers once she was fully qualified. But life, Chrissie had discovered, had a habit of stabbing you in the back when you least expected it, of forcing a sudden rethink just when you were on the apparent brink of success. Now she was in no position to reach out and take anything because she had responsibilities that restricted her independence and her liberty. To her way of thinking the most shameful aspect was that she couldn’t get by without taking advantage of her sister’s generosity. Yet it could all have been so very different, had she only made the right decisions...
* * *
Long before Chrissie had met Jaul, Lizzie and Chrissie had inherited a tiny Greek island from their late mother. Lizzie’s husband, Cesare, had bought Lionos from the sisters for a small fortune. The sale of the island had taken place before Chrissie’s twins were even conceived and so Chrissie had opted to put the majority of her share of the money into a trust that she could not access until her twenty-fifth birthday. At the time she had thought that that was a sensible idea—the amount of money involved had made her head spin and Chrissie had a secret fear that she might have inherited her mother’s spendthrift ways. Francesca Whitaker had been extravagant and irresponsible with cash and Chrissie had wanted to carefully conserve her windfall for what she had assumed would be a more settled time in her life.
Now here she was, twenty-four years of age, and for the past year she had had to acknowledge that had she had the ability to use that money she had put away, she could, at least, have been financially independent. Instead, to enable her to follow a teaching career she’d had to share her sister’s nanny, Sally, to look after her own children—affording Sally’s services solely on her earnings as a teacher would have been impossible.
On the other hand, by following Cesare’s advice, she had made one good decision when she had used some of the money to purchase a two-bedroom apartment before she put the rest of it away where it couldn’t be touched. Furthermore she had bought the apartment outright, which meant she could afford to run a small car and at least contribute a healthy amount towards Sally’s salary. Of course to hear Lizzie tell it, Chrissie was doing Cesare and Lizzie a favour by keeping Sally gainfully employed while they were abroad. In the same way, when her sister and her brother-in-law and their children flew into London for one of their frequent visits, Chrissie moved into their town house with them and stayed until they departed again because it was more convenient for everyone that way.
Now, laden with her carrier bags of gifts and cards, Chrissie unlocked the door of her ground-floor apartment.
Sally appeared in the kitchen doorway. ‘Cup of tea?’ she asked, a curvy brunette with a wide smile.
‘I’d love one. No night out this evening?’ Chrissie teased, for Sally had a very healthy social life and was usually rushing back to Lizzie’s town house to dress up.
‘Not tonight...not unless I want to go into an overdraft!’ she joked, pulling a face.
Chrissie set her bags down and walked into the lounge. Two babies were playing with plastic bricks in the centre of the carpet. Both had a shock of blue-black curls and eyes so dark they were almost black. Tarif dropped his brick, crowed with delight and started to crawl eagerly towards her. Soraya laughed and, rarely as energetic as her brother, she lifted her arms high to be lifted.
‘Hello, my darlings,’ Chrissie said warmly, her face softening as she dropped to her knees to gather up Tarif before freeing up an arm to pull his sister close.
‘Mum-mum,’ Soraya said solemnly, a plump little hand touching her mother’s cheek gently.
Tarif tugged her hair and planted a big, sloppy kiss on her cheek, nestling as close as he could get. And all the worries and little annoyances of the day fell from Chrissie in the same moment. Her twins had owned her heart from the day of their birth. She had been so worried that she wouldn’t be able to cope with two babies but Lizzie had taken her home to the town house and showed her all the basics.
‘You’ll muddle through...we all do,’ Lizzie had assured her.
But nobody had warned Chrissie that when she looked at her children she would be overwhelmed by her love for them. While she was pregnant she had tried to think of them as Jaul’s children and she had deeply resented the position he had put her in. She hadn’t felt ready to be a mother and had shrunk from the challenge of becoming a single parent. But once the twins were born, she had only cared that her babies thrived and were happy.
‘I took them to the park this afternoon. Tarif threw a real tantrum when I took him off the swings,’ Sally confided. ‘He was throwing himself about so much I had to lay him down until he got it out of his system. I was really surprised.’
‘In the wrong mood, he’s challenging,’ Chrissie acknowledged ruefully. ‘But Soraya’s the exact same if you cross her. They like to test you out. They’re quite volatile.’
Very much like their father, Chrissie reflected helplessly. An image of Jaul flashed into her head, long blue-black hair loose on his broad shoulders, brilliant dark eyes shimmering with anger. Hotter than hot, she thought numbly. Hot-tempered, hot-blooded, hot in bed, hot in every way there was. A snaking quiver of forbidden heat washed through her taut length. But Jaul had also been incredibly stubborn, impulsive and unpredictable.
‘Are you feeling all right?’ Sally asked, plucking the twins worriedly from their mother’s loosened grasp. ‘Sorry, you looked a bit pale and spaced out there for a moment.’
‘I’m fine.’ Chrissie flushed to the roots of her pale hair, scrambled up and hurried into the tiny kitchen to make the tea in Sally’s place.
Sometimes the past just leapt up and smacked her in the face without warning. A memory would dart through her and time would freeze, catapulting her backwards. A stray word or a familiar smell or piece of music could rip her apart in the space of seconds, leaving her no hiding place from the backwash of old pain. If she hadn’t loved Jaul, she would have got over him much more easily. But then she told herself that for the sake of her children she was glad that she had loved Jaul even if it hadn’t lasted, even though he had used her and lied to her and probably cheated on her as well.
The money his father had offered her had been the bottom line, telling her everything she needed to know about the rogue male, who had told her they were married and would be together for ever. Jaul thought that money was the perfect solution to every problem, magically soothing hurt feelings and disappointed hopes. His immense wealth had provided him with a smooth escape route from all such tiresome complications. ‘Together for ever’ had come with a hidden qualification; ‘together for ever’ had only lasted until Jaul had become bored. Unhappily, it had never occurred to Chrissie when she was with him that one day she would be a tiresome complication in his life too.
‘People expect me to be generous,’ he had told her once.
‘Just because you have it doesn’t mean you have to splash it around,’ Chrissie had countered. ‘That’s extravagant and wasteful and it looks like you’re showing off.’
Jaul had sent her an outraged glance. ‘I do not show off!’
Of course he had never had to show off to command attention. He was breathtakingly good-looking and guaranteed to turn female heads wherever he went and, if his looks didn’t do it for him, his flash sports cars, phalanx of bodyguards and luxury lifestyle had made their own very effective impression.
Chrissie passed a mug of tea to Sally, who had settled the twins back on the floor to play.
‘I’ve packed all their favourite toys and put them in my car. That’ll be one less thing for you to worry about when you’re packing up tomorrow,’ Sally told her.
Slamming a door shut on the memories attacking her, Chrissie smiled at the brunette. ‘Thanks but I’ve come to stay at the town house so often now that I reckon I could pack in my sleep. I can’t wait to see Lizzie and the kids,’ she confided.
‘Max and Giana will be fascinated by the twins now they’re more active,’ Sally confided.
‘Giana will be disgusted that they no longer stay where you put them.’ Chrissie laughed, picturing her bossy little toddler niece, who treated Tarif and Soraya like large dolls and held tea parties for them. ‘Or keep their hands off her toys.’
When Sally had gone, Chrissie fed the twins and put them in the bath before settling them into their cots for the night. While she read their nightly story to them, she was wondering where or indeed if she would have a job when the summer was over. She had only been teaching on a temporary contract, covering maternity leave, and permanent jobs were as scarce as hens’ teeth. That concern still in mind, she went to bed early and slept fitfully.
The next day Chrissie got up on automatic pilot to feed and dress the twins before putting them down for their nap so that they would be fresh when they arrived with her sister and her family. She was running round tidying up, still clad in her comfortable sleep shorts and a tee, when the doorbell buzzed.
Curiosity had taken Jaul straight from the airport to the address Bandar had given him. Chrissie lived in an apartment block in an expensive residential area. His beautifully shaped mouth took on a sardonic slant. He might not have paid alimony to his estranged wife but the cash his father had given her had evidently ensured that she did not starve. Not that he would’ve wanted her to starve, he told himself piously, unsettled by the vengeful thoughts and raw reactions suddenly skimming through him at lightning speed. Two years ago, lying helpless in his hospital bed, when he’d thought of her turning to other men for amusement, he had burned with merciless, bitter aggression. But that time was past, he assured himself circumspectly. Now all he sought was to draw a quiet final line below the entire messy business of a marriage that should never have taken place.
Chrissie glanced through the peephole in her door and frowned. A tall dark-haired man was on the doorstep, his back turned to the door so that she couldn’t see his face. She slipped on the security chain and opened the door. ‘Yes?’
‘Open the door,’ he urged. ‘It’s Jaul.’
Her eyes flew wide in disbelief and she flung her head back, turquoise eyes frantically peering through the crack. She caught a glimpse of his gypsy-gold skin, a hard male jawline and then her gaze moved up to impatient dark eyes surrounded by lashes thick and dark enough to resemble eye liner and long enough to inspire feminine resentment. Unforgettable, he was unforgettable and her heart started thumping in the region of her throat, making it impossible for her to breathe or vocalise. In a flash, gut reaction took over and she snapped the front door firmly closed again, spinning round in shock to rest back against it because her legs were wobbling.
Jaul swore and hit the bell again twice in an impatient buzz.
Chrissie slid down the back of the door until she was in a heap at the foot of it and hugged her knees. It was Jaul...two years too late, it was Jaul. Anguish flooded her, a sharp, sharp pain of loss and grief that she had buried long ago in the need to move on and survive his betrayal. She couldn’t believe that Jaul would just turn up like that, without any warning. But then he had disappeared without any warning, she reminded herself darkly.
The bell went again as though someone had a finger stuck to it and she flinched. Jaul was very impatient. She breathed in deep and slow, struggling to calm herself. What on earth was he doing here in London? How had he even found out her current address? And why would he come to see her after all this time? Had it anything to do with the fact that his father had died recently and he had inherited the throne? After his father’s visit Chrissie had refused to allow herself to succumb to the morbid interest of checking out Jaul on the Internet. She had closed the door very firmly on that kind of curiosity but she had, quite accidentally in early spring, read a few lines in a newspaper about his father’s sudden death.
‘Chrissie...’ he grated behind the door and his voice washed over her, accented and deep, unleashing a tide of memories she didn’t want to relive.
She squashed those memories so fast that her head literally hurt as she sprang upright. No way was she hiding behind a door from the male who had torn her life apart!
CHAPTER TWO (#ulink_675c65b4-20f8-5108-8d24-3108060f94e8)
CHRISSIE PEERED OUT from behind the curtain. Jaul was stationed on the pavement, his back turned to her again. Several men in dark suits, undoubtedly his protection unit, surrounded him. Her heart was still hammering so feverishly that her chest felt tight.
She had shut the door in Jaul’s face, not the sort of welcome he was accustomed to receiving. He would be angry and when Jaul was angry he was dangerously unpredictable. Refusing to open the door had possibly not been her wisest move, Chrissie reasoned worriedly. As his imperious dark head began to turn she hid back behind the curtains and, second-guessing his next move, she returned to the front door and squared her slim shoulders. Loosening the chain she opened the door.
Jaul ground to a sudden halt with his hand still reaching out for the bell. Chrissie appeared in the doorway and he snatched in a ragged breath at the sight of the shorts and T-shirt that exposed every line of her long, slender legs and the sleek, pert curves of her breasts. Lashes swiftly veiling his gaze, he compressed his wide, sensual mouth. ‘Chrissie...’
‘What are you doing here?’ Chrissie asked woodenly, inwardly amazed at how much the passage of time altered situations. Two years ago, had he finally shown up, she would have snatched him in and covered him with grateful, loving kisses. But that time was long gone. He had broken her heart, left her to sink or swim and had never once contacted her with an explanation or even an apology. That wounding silence had spoken the loudest truth of all: Jaul had never loved her, indeed could never have really cared for her in any genuine way. If he had he couldn’t have walked away without once enquiring as to how she was.
‘May I come in? I have to speak to you,’ Jaul imparted in his rich velvety drawl.
‘If you must.’ Rigid-backed, Chrissie stepped aside. She was fighting not to look at him, not to personalise his appearance in any way. It was a mark of strength on her terms that she would see him again, deal with him and let him leave without any feelings whatsoever getting involved.
He was dressed much as she remembered in a soft leather jacket and jeans, casual and effortlessly elegant, his every physical movement a study of languorous grace. He stood six feet four inches in his sock soles, a fitting match for a girl of five feet nine, who liked high heels. Broad of shoulder, slim of hip, he had the long, powerful thighs of a horseman and the flat washboard stomach of a very fit and healthy male. Luxuriant blue-black hair brushed his shoulders, framing a lean-featured and wildly eye-catching face with a classic nose, high cheekbones and a shapely, sensual mouth. But it was his beautiful dark deep-set eyes that you noticed first and remembered longest, Chrissie reckoned, black as jet in some lights, bright as stars in a dark sky in others and pure tiger-gold enticement in the sun. Something pulled taut at the apex of her thighs, leaving a melting sensation in its wake.
Chrissie only realised how much shock she was in when she saw the children’s toys littering the lounge floor and realised in amazement that it had not once occurred to her that Jaul might be visiting to ask about the children. But how would he ever have found out about the twins when he had deserted her long before she’d even discovered that she was pregnant? And why would he show the slightest interest in the existence of illegitimate children by an ex-girlfriend? That was all she was now to him—an ex-girlfriend! He wouldn’t want to know she had fallen pregnant. He wouldn’t want to open up that can of worms, would he? Of course not. Her lush, full lips curled with scorn. Marwan wasn’t the sort of country that would turn a comfortable blind eye to the immoral doings of its king. Of course, very possibly, his relationship with Chrissie might well fall into the forgivable ‘youthful sowing of wild oats’ category, she reasoned darkly.
Without a word, Chrissie bent down to scoop up the abandoned toys and toss them into the basket by the wall.
‘You have children now?’ Jaul prompted, watching her beautiful platinum-blonde hair slide like a veil of polished silk off her shoulder to screen her profile as she bent down. His riveted gaze rested on the gleaming curve of an upturned hip, a slender section of spine and the long, taut stretch of a svelte porcelain-pale thigh.
Slender thighs that he had parted, lain between, revelled between, night after night. He had never got enough of her. His muscles pulled taut to the point of rigidity, savage sexual heat zinging through him at speed and setting up a pounding pulse at his groin. His strong white teeth ground together, rage at his lack of control gaining on him.
Chrissie thought fast while she snatched up the last brick, grateful he couldn’t see her face. It was a relief that he didn’t know about the twins, a huge relief, she conceded, but it felt unreal for Jaul to ask whether or not she had children as though they were complete strangers.
‘I’ve been babysitting...for a friend,’ she lied as lightly as she could. ‘Now, what can I help you with?’
Jaul picked up on the insolent note of that question immediately. That supposed politeness was pure honeyed Chrissie scorn and he knew it. A faint line of colour accentuated his exotic cheekbones while his dark eyes flashed as golden as the sun at midday. ‘I have something to tell you that may come as a shock...’
Chrissie tilted her head to one side, eyes bright as a turquoise sea and luminous below soft brown lashes. ‘I lived with you, Jaul. Nothing you do or say could shock me.’
Not after the way you abandoned me, but she swallowed that final assurance, too proud and too scared of losing face to risk throwing that in his teeth. But his apparent equanimity burned through her restraint like acid. It was offensive that he could approach her so casually after what he had done to her and utterly unforgivable that he should dare.
‘The sooner you tell me, the sooner you can leave,’ Chrissie quipped, dry-mouthed with the anger she was holding back.
Jaul breathed in deep and slow, fighting to master the stirring ache below his belt. It had simply been too long since he had had sex. He was a normal healthy male in need of release and there was nothing strange about the reality that proximity to Chrissie should awaken old familiar impulses. Somewhat soothed by that conviction, he settled grim dark eyes on her. ‘I have only recently learned that our marriage was legal and that is why I am here.’
So great was Chrissie’s incredulity at that news that she blinked and stumbled back against the bookcase behind her. ‘But your father said it was illegal, that it had no standing in law, that—’
‘My father was mistaken,’ Jaul incised in a smooth tone of finality. ‘My legal advisers insist that the ceremony was legal and, consequently, we are now in need of a divorce.’
Chrissie was deeply shaken by that announcement and her soft pink mouth opened a mere fraction of an inch. ‘Oh, right,’ she acknowledged while she played for time and tried to absorb the immensity of what he had just said. ‘So, all this time we’ve been apart we’ve actually been legally married?’
‘Yes,’ Jaul conceded grudgingly.
‘Well, fancy that,’ Chrissie commented in apparent wonderment. ‘Two years ago I was turned away from the door of the Marwani Embassy with the assurance that I was “delusional” even though our wedding ceremony took place there. Absolutely nobody was willing to see me, talk to me or even accept a letter for you...in fact I was threatened with the police if I didn’t leave—’
‘What on earth are you talking about? When were you at our embassy in London?’ Jaul demanded curtly, standing straight and tall and betraying not a shade of discomfiture.
She stared at him, treacherously ensnared by his sheer physical magnetism. Her tummy flipped and a flock of butterflies broke loose inside her. Jaul had an electrifying combination of animal sex appeal, hauteur and command that stopped women dead in their tracks. So good-looking, so very good-looking he had grabbed her attention at first glance even though she had known he was a player and not to be trusted. Yet she had resisted him month after month until he had caught her at a vulnerable moment and then, sadly, she too had found those broad shoulders and that lying, seductive tongue irresistible.
‘When, Chrissie?’ he repeated doggedly.
‘Oh, a little while after my imaginary husband disappeared into thin air,’ Chrissie supplied. ‘And then shortly after my final visit to the embassy, your father came to see me and explained and everything became clear.’
‘I don’t know what you hope to achieve by talking nonsense like this at a point when all either of us can want is a divorce.’
Chrissie elevated a very fine brow. ‘I don’t know, Jaul...do you think it could be anger motivating me after what you put me through?’
‘Anger has no place here. We have lived apart for a long time. I want a divorce. This is a practical issue, nothing more,’ Jaul delivered crushingly.
‘You do know that I hate you?’ Chrissie pressed shakily, a flicker of hysteria firing her that he could stand there evidently untouched as though nothing of any great import had ever happened between them. Yet once he had pursued her relentlessly and had sworn that he loved her and that only the security of marriage would satisfy him. There was nothing deader than an old love affair, a little voice cried plaintively inside her, and the proof of that old maxim stood in front of her.
Jaul was thinking of the woman who had left him lying unvisited in his hospital bed and he met her angry gaze with coldly contemptuous dark eyes. ‘Why would I care?’
He didn’t feel like Jaul any more; he had changed out of all recognition, Chrissie acknowledged numbly. He wanted a divorce; he needed a divorce. But she was still struggling to get her head around the astonishing fact that they had genuinely been married for over two years. ‘Why did your father tell me that our marriage was illegal?’
His lean, strong face tautened. ‘It was not a lie. He believed it to be illegal—’
‘But that’s not all he believed,’ Chrissie whispered. ‘He told me that you’d deliberately gone through that ceremony with me knowing it was illegal and that you could wriggle out of the commitment and walk away any time you wanted—’
‘I refuse to believe that he would ever have said or even implied anything of that nature,’ Jaul derided with an emphatic shake of his imperious dark head. ‘He was an honourable man and a caring father—’
‘Like hell he was!’ Chrissie slammed back at him in sudden fury, goaded by that provocative statement into losing all self-control. ‘I was thrown out of your apartment wearing only the clothes I was standing up in. I was treated like an illegal squatter and absolutely humiliated—’
‘These grossly disrespectful lies gain you no ground with me. I will not listen to them,’ Jaul spelt out, his beautiful, wilful mouth twisting. ‘I know you for the woman you are. My father gave you five million pounds to get out of my life and you took it and I never heard from you again—’
‘Well, admittedly I didn’t get very far at the Marwani Embassy where women claiming to be your wife, illegal or otherwise, are treated like lunatics,’ Chrissie parried flatly, declining to answer that accusation about the bank draft she had refused to use because it seemed Jaul wasn’t prepared to listen or believe anything she said in her own defence.
Chrissie could never have accepted that hateful ‘blood’ money, intended to buy her discretion and silence and dissuade her from approaching the media to sell some sleazy story about her experiences with Jaul.
Jaul set his even white teeth together. ‘I want you to leave the past where it belongs and concentrate on the important issue here...our divorce.’
Without warning, Chrissie’s eyes sparkled like gold-dusted turquoises. ‘You want a divorce to remarry, don’t you?’
‘Why I want it scarcely matters this long after the event,’ Jaul fielded drily.
‘You need my consent to get a divorce,’ Chrissie assumed, walking past him back to the front door, thinking that this time around the ball was in her court and the power hers. Jaul expected her to be understanding and helpful and give him what he wanted. But why should she be understanding? She owed him nothing!
‘Naturally...if it is to go through fast it has to be uncontested—’
‘The answer is no,’ Chrissie delivered, far from being in a cooperative frame of mind. She was bitter about the way he had treated her and stubbornly ready to make things difficult for him. ‘If we’re truly married and you now want a divorce, you’ll have to fight me for it.’
Jaul stilled in the lounge doorway, dark eyes flashing bright as a flame. ‘But that’s ridiculous...why would you do something that stupid?’
‘Because I can,’ Chrissie replied, truthful to the last word. ‘I won’t willingly do anything which suits you and I know you want to keep all this on the down-low. After all, you never did own up publicly to the shame of marrying a foreigner, did you?’
‘I believed the marriage was invalid!’ Jaul shot back at her, lean brown hands coiling into fists. ‘Why would I have talked about it?’
‘Well, most guys would at least have talked about it to the woman who believed she was married to them,’ Chrissie pointed out scornfully as she stretched out a hand to open the door. ‘But you...what did you do? Oh, yes...you ran out on me and left your daddy to clear up the mess you left behind you!’
Sheer rage at that unjust condemnation engulfed Jaul so fast he was dizzy with it. He snapped long fingers round a slender wrist before she could open the door. Smouldering dark golden eyes raked her flushed and defiant face. ‘You will not speak to me like that.’
Suppressing a spasm of dismay, Chrissie forced herself to laugh and her eyes sparkled with challenge. ‘Message to Jaul—I can speak to you any way I like and there’s not a darned thing you can do about it! You don’t deserve anything better from me after the way you treated me...’
With a contemptuous flick of his long fingers, Jaul relinquished his hold on her. Dark eyes still sparking like high-voltage wires, he scanned her with derision. ‘Is this your way of trying to push the price up? You want me to pay you to set me free from this marriage?’
A genuine laugh fell from Chrissie’s taut mouth. ‘Oh, no, I’ve got plenty of money,’ she told him blithely. ‘I don’t want a penny from you. I only want to make you sweat.’
Jaul no longer trusted his temper or his control. Nobody had spoken to him like that since he had last seen Chrissie and it was a salutary lesson. Their personalities had been on a collision course from day one. Both of them were strong-willed, obstinate and quick-tempered. They had had monumental fights and even more shattering reconciliations. In fact those reconciliations had been such sweet fantasies Jaul had never forgotten them and he got hot and hard even thinking about them, a recollection as unwelcome as it was dangerous.
His beautifully shaped mouth flattening the sultry curl tugging at the edges, fine ebony brows drawing together in a frown of censure, he breathed curtly, ‘I can see there’s no talking to you in the mood you’re in—’
‘I’m not in a mood!’ Chrissie proclaimed furiously, catching an involuntary snatch of the spicy cologne he wore, her senses reeling at the sudden flood of familiarity that made her ache and hurt as if his betrayal were as recent as yesterday. It also reminded her of hot, sweaty nights and incredible passion, a thought which instantly infuriated her.
‘I’ll return later when you’ve had time to think over what I’ve told you,’ he informed her with typical tenacity.
Chrissie bit back the admission that she would be staying at her sister’s home for several days. That was her business, not his, and she had no intention of telling him anything likely to lead to his discovery that he was not only married but also a father. That would be setting the cat among the pigeons with a vengeance, she conceded worriedly, and it was not something she was prepared to risk without knowing where she stood.
The strained silence smouldered.
‘A divorce is the only sensible option and I don’t object to paying for the privilege,’ Jaul grated between clenched teeth, out of all patience with her reluctance to discuss the issue. ‘As my wife, estranged or otherwise, you’re naturally entitled to my financial support—’
‘I want nothing from you,’ Chrissie repeated doggedly. ‘Please leave.’
Long bronzed fingers bit into the edge of the door as Jaul fought a powerful impulse to say something, anything, that would stir her into a more natural reaction. What had happened to his bright and fearless Chrissie? He glanced at her in frustration. Her eyes were blank, her delicately pointed features empty of expression. Her entire attitude spelt out the message that he was the enemy and not to be trusted.
Without another word, Jaul walked out of the building, determined that he would not see her again. He had told her what he had to tell her. And now he would step back and let the lawyers handle the rest of it.
* * *
Chrissie got dressed in a feverish surge of activity. She flung clothes into a small case, carrying it and other pieces of baby paraphernalia out to the car. Her home had always been her sanctuary but now it felt violated by Jaul’s visit and she no longer felt safe there. What if he had walked in and the twins had been present? Why did she imagine that he would have instantly recognised his own children when he had no reason to even suspect their existence? She was being hysterical and foolish, she told herself shamefacedly, but even so she could barely wait to get Tarif and Soraya strapped into their car seats and drive away from the apartment.
As she drove through the busy mid-morning traffic she had too much time to look back into the past. Memories she didn’t want bombarded her. Indeed she could never think about her years at university without thinking of Jaul because he had always been there on the outskirts of her life, long unacknowledged but always noticed and never forgotten.
She had shared a tiny flat with another girl when in her second year at university. Nessa had been just a little man-mad, to the extent that Chrissie had tended to switch off when Nessa began talking about her latest lover. But even Nessa had gone into thrilled overdrive when she’d first met a prince. Chrissie had been less impressed, well aware that in some Eastern countries princes were ten a penny and not much more important. Jaul, however, had proved somewhat harder to overlook. He had flown Nessa to Paris in his private jet just for dinner and Nessa had been incoherent with excitement at the luxury of the experience.
Jaul had brought Nessa home the next day and had been in the flat when Chrissie had come home from the classes that her roommate had skipped. Chrissie still remembered her first glimpse of Jaul, his gypsy-dark skin and eyes brilliant as newly minted gold in sunlight, his lean, breathtakingly handsome face intent. He had stared at Chrissie for the longest time and she hadn’t been able to breathe or look away while Nessa gabbled incoherently about Paris and limousines. Jaul had taken his leave quickly.
‘He was amazing in bed,’ Nessa had confided as soon as he was gone, languorously rolling her eyes and quite uninhibited about admitting that she had slept with Jaul on the first date. ‘Absolutely freakin’ amazing!’
But for all that it had still been a one-night stand. Jaul had followed up by having flowers and a very pretty pair of diamond earrings delivered to Nessa, but he hadn’t phoned again. Nessa had been disappointed but accepting, pointing out that, with all Jaul had to offer, he was sure to want to make the most of his freedom.
The next time Chrissie had seen Jaul she had been in the student union. She had noticed Jaul, naturally. She could scarcely have failed to notice his presence when he was surrounded by a quartet of suited sunglasses-wearing bodyguards and a crowd of giggling flirtatious blondes who, as she soon learnt, seemed to appear out of nowhere to engulf him wherever he went.
He had startled her by springing upright as she was passing his table and had insisted on acknowledging her when she would’ve passed on by without a word. Stiff with discomfiture, Chrissie had been cool, inordinately aware of the heat in his dark gaze and the jealous scrutiny of his female companions.
Back then Chrissie had been working two part-time jobs to survive at university because her family could not afford to help her out. One of Chrissie’s jobs during term time had been stacking shelves in the library, the other waitressing at a local restaurant, but she had still found it a major challenge to meet her bills. Her father had still been a tenant farmer, whose ill-health had forced him into retirement while her older sister, Lizzie, had worked night and day to keep the farm going, while Chrissie continued her studies, but the knowledge that, without her, her family was having an even tougher struggle to survive had filled her with guilt.
But even as a child Chrissie had recognised that her late mother Francesca’s chaotic life might have been less dysfunctional had she had a career to fall back on when her affairs with unsuitable men fell apart. A woman needed more than a basic education to survive and Chrissie had always been determined to build her life round a career rather than a man. Her mother’s marriage to her father had been short-lived and the relationships that Francesca had got involved in afterwards had been destructive ones in which alcohol, infidelity, physical violence and other evils had prevailed. Shorn of her innocence at a very young age, Chrissie knew just how low a woman could be forced to sink to keep food on the table and it was a lesson she would never forget. No, Chrissie would never willingly put herself in a position where she had to depend on a man to keep her.
When Jaul had approached her in the library where she was stacking shelves one day a few weeks after their first meeting to ask for her help in finding a book, she had been polite and helpful as befitted a humble employee keen to keep her job.
‘I’d like to take you out to dinner some evening,’ he had murmured after she’d slotted the book into his lean brown hand.
He had the most stunning dark eyes, pure lustrous jet enticement in his lean, darkly handsome face. In his presence her mouth had run dry and her breathing had fractured while she’d marvelled at the weird way she’d kept on wanting to look at him, an urge so powerful it had almost qualified as a need. Infuriated by the dizzy way she was reacting, she’d thought instead of how he had treated Nessa. Jaul had chased sexual conquest, nothing more complex. Once the chase was over and he had got what he wanted he’d lost interest and casual sex with young women as uninhibited and adventurous as Nessa had suited him perfectly. He hadn’t been looking for a relationship with all the limits that would have involved. He hadn’t been offering friendship or caring or fidelity.
‘I’m sorry, no,’ Chrissie had said woodenly.
‘Why not?’ Jaul had asked without hesitation.
‘Between my studies and my two part-time jobs, I have very little free time,’ Chrissie had told him. ‘And when I do have it, I tend to go home and visit my family.’
‘Lunch, then,’ Jaul had suggested smoothly. ‘Surely you could lunch with me some day?’
‘But I don’t want to,’ Chrissie had confessed abruptly, backing off a step, feeling cornered and slightly intimidated by the sheer height and size of him in the narrow space between the book stacks.
A fine ebony brow had quirked. ‘I have offended you in some way?’
‘We just wouldn’t suit,’ Chrissie had countered between gritted teeth, her irritation rising at his refusal to simply accept her negative response.
‘In what way?’
‘You’re everything I don’t like,’ Chrissie had framed in a sudden burst of frustration. ‘You don’t study, you party. You run around with a lot of different women. I’m not your type. I don’t want to go to Paris for dinner! I don’t want diamonds! I haven’t the slightest intention of going to bed with you!’
‘And if I didn’t offer you Paris, diamonds or sex?’
‘I’d probably end up trying to kill you because you’re so blasted full of yourself!’ Chrissie had shot at him in a rage. ‘Why can’t you just take no for an answer?’
Jaul had suddenly grinned, a shockingly charismatic grin that had made her tummy somersault. ‘I wasn’t brought up to take no for an answer.’
‘With me, no means no!’ Chrissie had told him angrily. ‘Persistence only annoys me—’
‘And I am very persistent as well as full of myself,’ Jaul had acknowledged softly. ‘It seems we are at an impasse—’
Chrissie had stabbed a finger to indicate the directional arrow pointing down to the nearest study area. ‘You have your book—go study.’
And without another word she had walked away with her trolley, heading for the lift that would let her escape to the floor above.
CHAPTER THREE (#ulink_f29c17a5-bd26-57e1-9357-66f05cab90a9)
CARRYING A TWIN in each arm, Chrissie was greeted by Sally at the front door of Cesare and Lizzie’s home. Her nephew and niece, Max and Giana, clustered round the two women eager to see their cousins. Tarif whooped with excitement when he saw Max and opened his arms to the older boy.
‘He knows me!’ Max carolled in amazement.
‘Once Tarif’s walking, he’ll plague the life out of you,’ Chrissie quipped, passing over Tarif while Sally took charge of Soraya because Giana was too young to manage her.
An elegant and visibly pregnant blonde with green eyes and a ready smile came out of one of the rooms leading off the spacious hall. ‘Chrissie...lovely. I wasn’t expecting you until later,’ Lizzie confided warmly.
The tears still burning behind Chrissie’s eyes suddenly spilled over without warning. As she saw her big sister look at her in astonishment Chrissie swallowed back a sob and blundered into her sibling’s outspread arms. ‘Sorry.’
‘You don’t need to apologise if something’s upset you,’ Lizzie insisted. ‘What on earth has happened? You never cry—’
Fortunately Lizzie had not been exposed to Chrissie’s grief two years earlier once it had finally dawned on her that Jaul was not returning to the UK. It had been a matter of pride to Chrissie that she should not distress her otherwise happy sister with the sad tale of how she had screwed up her own life. She had put a brave face on her abandonment and subsequent pregnancy, talking lightly and always unemotionally of a relationship that had broken down and a young man unwilling to acknowledge responsibility for the babies she’d carried.
‘You don’t need the creep...you don’t need anyone but Cesare and me!’ Lizzie had told her comfortingly and she had asked no further questions.
Now as Chrissie bit back the sobs clogging her throat she was faced with the reality that as she had never told her sister about Jaul, she had to do it now. Emotional turmoil had been building up inside her from the very moment Jaul had appeared at her front door. Her past had pierced the present and most painfully, for all the gloriously happy and agonisingly sad memories of Jaul she had packed away were now flooding through the gap in her defences and hurting her all over again.
‘For goodness’ sake,’ Lizzie exclaimed, banding an arm round her taller sister to urge her into the drawing room with its comfortable blue sofas and sleek pale contemporary furniture.
Cesare was talking on his mobile by the window and he concluded the call, frowning with concern when he registered the tear-stained distress stamped on his sister-in-law’s face.
‘I was just about to tell you that my sisters are arriving this evening and expecting you to go out clubbing with them tomorrow night—’
Chrissie tried to force a smile because she got on like a house on fire with Cesare’s younger sisters, Sofia and Maurizia, and the three women always went out together when they visited London. ‘I might not be good company—’
Lizzie pressed her gently down onto a sofa. ‘Tell me what’s wrong—’
Chrissie groaned. ‘I can’t. I’ve been such an idiot otherwise I would’ve told you years ago. You won’t believe how stupid I’ve been and now I don’t know what to do—’
‘Starting at the beginning usually helps,’ Cesare incised.
‘The twins’ father has turned up,’ Chrissie revealed tautly. ‘And he says we need a divorce, which doesn’t make sense after what his father—’
Cesare stopped dead to skim her an incredulous glance. ‘You were married to the twins’ father?’
‘My goodness, I certainly didn’t see that coming! Married!’ Lizzie admitted in shock, sinking down on an ottoman near her sister. Chrissie felt guiltier than ever, looking back over the years to acknowledge that Lizzie had been a better mother to her than their own mother, even though Lizzie was only five years older than Chrissie.
‘Right, the beginning,’ Chrissie reminded herself in receipt of a wry appraisal from Cesare. ‘Or you won’t know what I’m talking about.’
And Chrissie tried with some difficulty to put into words how long she had known Jaul without ever getting to know him properly.
‘But you never ever mentioned him,’ Lizzie commented in a continuing tone of disbelief. ‘You knew him all the time you were at uni and yet you never told me about him!’
Chrissie reddened fiercely, quite unable to describe how much of a silent role Jaul had played in her life long before she’d ever actually got involved with him. She had seen him on campus most days, occasionally speaking to him, occasionally avoiding him if he had been more than usually keen to press his interest in her. What she had never ever contrived to be with Jaul was indifferent. When he wasn’t there, she had found herself looking for him. If a couple of days had gone by without a glimpse of him, she would be like someone starved of food and craving it and when he had reappeared she would study him with helpless intensity as if looking alone could revive her energies.
In many ways Jaul had been her most secret and private fantasy. She could never ever have explained their relationship to her sister without feeling mortified and she had been even more grateful that she had kept him quiet when, instead of getting to bring Jaul home to show him off along with her wedding ring, she had ended up coming home dumped and pregnant. Lizzie had been very hurt on Chrissie’s behalf when their father had said he didn’t want his unmarried pregnant daughter to visit, but Chrissie had felt much guiltier about upsetting and disappointing the sister she had always idolised, the big sister who had made so many sacrifices on her behalf. Having left school at sixteen to work on their father’s farm, Lizzie had never got a further education or the chance to be young and carefree for even a few years.
‘There was no need to mention Jaul. It was only during our last year at uni that we actually got involved,’ Chrissie pointed out ruefully.
‘And yet you still didn’t mention him,’ Cesare reminded her drily.
‘I honestly assumed we wouldn’t last. I thought we would be over and done again in five minutes. It was all so unexpected. I didn’t think Jaul did serious and then everything somehow changed and I changed too...that’s the only way I can describe it,’ she mumbled uncomfortably.
‘You fell in love with him,’ Lizzie interpreted.
‘Truly, madly and deeply and all that,’ Chrissie joked heavily. ‘We got married at the Marwani Embassy here and we had a civil ceremony as well.’
‘But why such secrecy?’ Cesare enquired.
‘Jaul didn’t want anyone knowing we had got married until he had had the chance to tell his father about us...which I don’t think he was in any hurry to do.’ Chrissie hesitated and then mentioned the argument that had taken place when a few weeks after the wedding Jaul had announced his intention of returning to Marwan alone without any reference to when he planned to return. ‘I felt rejected.’
‘Of course you did,’ Lizzie said warmly, squeezing Chrissie’s hand gently.
Chrissie told them about her fruitless visits to the Marwani Embassy and then the visit from Jaul’s father, King Lut, that had followed. When she then repeated what the older man had told her, Cesare became undeniably angry.
‘That was when you should’ve come to us for support and advice!’
‘I still thought Jaul would come back to me. I didn’t instantly accept everything that his father told me and I hadn’t given up hope.’
‘And then you discovered that you were pregnant,’ Lizzie guessed.
‘A couple of months had passed by then and I couldn’t excuse Jaul’s silence any longer. I realised that his father must have been telling me the truth.’
‘But evidently he wasn’t,’ Cesare cut in, already thinking ahead. ‘Does Jaul know about the twins?’
‘No. I didn’t tell him. And I told him I wouldn’t give him a divorce just to annoy him,’ Chrissie confided uncomfortably. ‘That was pretty childish of me, wasn’t it?’
‘I’ll put my lawyers on this,’ Cesare informed her, compressing his well-shaped mouth. ‘Jaul needs to be told about the twins asap. A man has the right to know his own children—’
‘Even if he deserts his wife and never gets back in touch?’ Lizzie protested emotively.
‘Sì, even then,’ Cesare murmured ruefully.
Chrissie told Cesare and Lizzie about her repeated visits to the Marwani Embassy and her continued and equally fruitless attempts to contact Jaul by phone. ‘So, you see, I did try very hard to track him down.’
‘But you still need to take a long-term view of this situation, Chrissie. Set aside the hostility. Concentrate on the children and the future and you won’t go far wrong.’
‘And you do owe Jaul one favour,’ Lizzie said ruefully, startling Chrissie, who was dabbing her face dry and grateful the tear overflow had run its course. ‘You have to go and see him and tell him about the twins before you bring in the lawyers—’
‘For goodness’ sake, I don’t even know where he’s staying!’ Chrissie parried, aghast at that suggestion. ‘In fact he might only have been passing through London.’
‘Why does Chrissie owe Jaul another meeting?’ Cesare enquired of his wife, equally in the dark on that score.
‘He at least had the decency to tell her that they were still married himself, rather than from his lawyers,’ Lizzie pointed out.’ I don’t think you owe him anything more, Chrissie, but I do think he deserves the chance to learn that he’s a father from you and nobody else and in private.’
‘I don’t want to see him...don’t even know if he’s still here in London... I’ve got nothing to wear either!’ Chrissie argued in an unashamed surge of protest, but behind it she knew she was caught because, like her older sister, she also had a sense of fair play.
Jaul had not been comfortable visiting her but, even so, he had done it because he knew it was the right thing to do. How could she be seen to do less?
* * *
Chrissie climbed out of the taxi that Lizzie had insisted she needed, pointing out that searching for a parking space while trying to identify the correct house was the last thing her sister needed in the mood she was in.
Not that finding the house where Jaul was staying had proved a problem, Chrissie acknowledged ruefully, shooting the vast monolith of a building in the most exclusive part of London a wry glance. Cesare’s staff had come up with all the required information. With the kind of high-powered connections her brother-in-law enjoyed, tracking down Jaul had not proved that big a challenge while it had also provided her with extraneous information she had not required. For instance, the huge town house had formerly been an entire crescent of smaller dwellings and it had been purchased in the nineteen thirties and turned into a single dwelling by Jaul’s grandfather to house the Marwani royal family and their numerous staff whenever they came to visit London. Apparently the family had made ridiculously few visits in the many years that had passed since then.
It had been an education for Chrissie to discover that this was one more fact she hadn’t known about the man she had loved and married. Although they had visited London together, he had never once mentioned that his family owned a house there. In much the same way he had never mentioned that he was an only child destined to become a king. His Marwani background had always been a closed book to her from which he had offered her a glimpse of very few pages. In short she knew he had grown up without a mother, had attended a military school and had trained as a soldier in Saudi Arabia. When he’d signed up to study politics at Oxford University it had been his very first visit to the UK.
It shook Chrissie now to accept that Jaul was the sole ruler of his immensely rich country in the Arabian Gulf. She finally understood the arrogance and the authority that had often set her teeth on edge. Jaul had never been in any doubt of who he was and where he was going to end up. No doubt his marriage to Chrissie had just been a brief fun stop on his upwardly mobile royal life curve and had never ever been intended to last.
‘Proceed with great caution,’ Cesare had warned Chrissie once he had established the exact identity of the man whom she had married in such secrecy two years earlier.
That recollection had made Chrissie’s skin turn clammy beneath the sleek turquoise shift dress she had borrowed from her sister’s pre-pregnancy wardrobe. Her shrewd brother-in-law had pointed out that Jaul would have diplomatic immunity, that he was firm friends with several influential members of the British government and that he would have much greater power than most foreign non-resident husbands and fathers might have if it came to a custody battle. Custody battle—the very phrase struck terror into Chrissie’s bones. Cesare assumed that Tarif—all adorable fourteen plump and energetic months of him—would now be heir to the throne of Marwan, which would make him a hugely important child on his father’s terms. As Chrissie’s fear grew in direct proportion to her anxious thoughts, her spine stiffened and her skin grew even chillier. On some craven, very basic level she didn’t want to even try to be civilised; she simply wanted to snatch her kids from Lizzie’s luxurious nursery and flee somewhere where Jaul couldn’t ever find them again.
Instead, however, Chrissie reminded herself that she was supposed to be an adult and able to handle life’s more difficult challenges. She mounted the front steps of the monstrous building with its imposing columns, portico and innumerable windows and pressed the doorbell.
Jaul was lunching in a dining room decorated in high ‘desert’ style circa nineteen thirty by his English grandmother and marvelling at her sheer lack of good taste. He didn’t want to pretend he was in the desert and sit cross-legged like a sheep herder in front of a fake fire; he wanted a table and a chair. Mercifully his personal chef and other staff had travelled with him and the service and the food were exemplary. It didn’t quite make up though for having to sleep in a bedroom decorated like a tent on a ginormous bed made of rough bamboo poles literally lashed together with ropes. Of course, he conceded wryly, the distractions of the extraordinary décor of the royal home in London served to keep his thoughts away from how Chrissie had looked in shorts with those impossibly long and perfect legs on full display.
Ghaffar, Jaul’s PA, appeared in the doorway and bowed. ‘A visitor has arrived to see you without an appointment—’
Jaul suppressed a groan and waved a dismissive hand. He was in London on a private visit and had no desire to make it anything else. ‘Please make my apologies. I will see no one.’
‘The woman’s name is Whitaker—’
Jaul sprang upright with amazing alacrity. ‘She is the single exception to the rule,’ he incised.
Chrissie tapped her heels on the marble floor of the giant echoing hall full of what looked like a display of actual mummy cases from an Egyptian tomb. It was creepy and the lack of light made it even creepier. Staring at a two-headed god statue did nothing for her nervous tension, only ratcheting it up a degree or two and making the events of the past twenty-four hours all the more challenging to bear, never mind accept.
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