Читать книгу Modern Romance March 2019 Books 1-4 - Кэтти Уильямс, Julia James, Cathy Williams - Страница 16

JASMINE FIRST REALISED something was wrong when she got a call to her mobile phone from an unlisted number. Deciding it was probably a sales call, she nonetheless picked it up, mainly because it had been ages since anyone had rung her.

‘Hello?’ she said cautiously.

‘Is that Miss Jones? Miss Jasmine Jones?’ The caller’s voice was female, smoky and very confident.

‘Speaking.’

‘Just a couple of questions for you, Miss Jones. Is it true that you’re the mother of the Sheikh of Razrastan’s baby?’

Jasmine nearly dropped the phone. ‘Who is this, please?’

‘My name is Rebecca Starr from the Daily View,’ said the voice. ‘And I notice you’re not issuing a denial to my question.’

Jasmine cut the connection with shaking fingers, wondering how the smoky-voiced Rebecca Starr had got hold of her number and wondering how best to respond. She swallowed. If in doubt, do nothing—wasn’t that what people always said? She certainly wasn’t going to bother Zuhal with it—not when he had stormed out in such a bad mood yesterday after that incident in the park with Carrie and her hot pants.

The phone rang again and Jasmine snatched it up, afraid that the shrill ringtone would wake her sleeping baby.

‘Miss Jones? It’s Rebecca Starr again. Do you have any immediate plans to marry Sheikh Zuhal Al Haidar of Razrastan?’

‘Where did you get this number from?’ Jasmine demanded uselessly.

‘Because we understand there is a vacant role for a new royal Sheikha,’ continued the journalist smoothly. ‘Now that Zuhal is to be crowned King.’

With an angry squeak, Jasmine cut the connection, resisting the temptation to hurl the phone against one of the velvet cushions which were lined up neatly on the nearby sofa, knowing that if she did someone would just put them right back again. That was the trouble with having a fleet of cleaners at your disposal, she thought—there was never any mindless domestic work with which to displace your angry thoughts. No floors to clean or cobwebs to flick away from the ceiling.

She tried to convince herself that the press would soon lose interest if she didn’t fan the flames of their story but she still felt faintly uneasy as she went about her normal routine. When he woke from his nap, she took Darius out for a stroll in his buggy and the warm sun beat down on the bare skin of her upper arms. Trying to ignore the discreet presence of the accompanying bodyguards, she found herself hoping she wouldn’t bump into Carrie again, dreading having to bat away a stream of curious questions about Zuhal. But sooner or later she was going to have to see her, wasn’t she? And what then? She couldn’t pretend he didn’t exist and she couldn’t spend the rest of her life avoiding questions because she wasn’t sure how to answer them.

She was just rounding the path to skirt the edge of the glittering lake when she sensed movement nearby and, glancing up, saw a blinding flash. Blinking, she watched as the black blur of one of the bodyguards hurtled towards a copse of trees while three others hurried forward to surround her.

‘What’s going on?’ she questioned.

‘Paparazzi,’ one of them answered succinctly.

‘What do they want?’

‘Photos of you. And of the royal Prince. We need to leave, Miss Jones.’

‘But—’

‘Right now, Miss Jones,’ he interrupted.

Jasmine forced herself to stay positive as she was practically marched back to the apartment—because having a baby meant you couldn’t afford to indulge in introspective gloom—but she was glad when Rania stepped in to take Darius for her. And once she was on her own, reaction set in and Jasmine could do nothing to stop the jittery feelings which flooded over her. Her skin felt cold. Her hands were shaking and her heart was racing like a train. She wondered if this was how the future was going to look, with her locked away in her luxury apartment, hiding from anonymous people who took photos of her baby son without anyone’s permission.

She wanted to pace the room. To talk to someone, but mostly she wanted to talk to Zuhal—and that surprised her. Maybe it was because he was the only person who would understand. The only person who could understand, because Darius was his son too. She went into her bedroom—with its pristine bed and neatly folded nightdress on the pillow. The framed photos of Darius and the portrait study of her mother taken before disillusionment had set in were the sole signs that this room actually belonged to anyone. A single woman’s bedroom, she thought, as she scrabbled around in one of the drawers for the phone number Zuhal had given her.

With fingers which were still shaking, she keyed in the numbers and Zuhal’s almost instant pick-up brought her up with a start, because for some reason it hadn’t occurred to her that he might give her his direct line. She pulled a face at her pale reflection in the mirror.

Did she really think so little of herself?

And why wouldn’t she, when she had been cut so comprehensively from his life once before?

‘Zuhal?’

‘What’s happening?’ he demanded, his voice underpinned by something she’d never heard there before. ‘Are you okay?’

‘Yes. But I’ve been…been…’ The words trembled on her lips and she found herself unable to say them.

‘Ambushed by paparazzi?’ he provided harshly.

She sucked in an audible breath. ‘So your spies have already got back to you, have they?’

Amid the opulent surroundings of an aircraft which was more like a flying palace, Zuhal scowled. ‘Of course they have,’ he bit out. ‘What do you think I pay my staff to do, Jazz? They are guarding my son. It’s their duty to tell me exactly what’s happening in his life at any given time and I gather someone was photographing you in the park.’ Silently, he cursed the distance between them and her stubbornness in not having let him bring up Darius in a country where people would not have access to focus their long-range lens on an innocent little prince. And then he realised that she was ringing him and that was something new. Fear coursed through him in a way it had never done before. ‘Has something else happened?’ he demanded as dread rippled down his spine. ‘Is Darius okay?’

‘Darius is fine, but I…’ He could hear her swallow. Could hear her try to piece her words together, even though her voice was shaking. ‘I had a phone call from a journalist.’

He froze. ‘Saying what?’

‘Asking if I was the mother. Asking if…’

‘If what, Jazz?’

He could hear the embarrassment in her voice. Or was it distaste? he wondered bitterly.

‘If I was planning to marry you.’

Zuhal closed his eyes and allowed the prolonged silence to send its noiseless scream down the international phone line before hearing her cough.

‘Zuhal? Are you still there?’

‘Yes, I’m right here—but don’t worry, I’ll be with you very soon.’

‘With me?’ He could hear the confusion in her voice. ‘But you told me you were going back to Razrastan.’

‘I was,’ he agreed grimly. ‘But the moment I heard about the incident in the park, I had my jet made ready. I’m on my way back to London.’

‘You’re on your way back to London,’ she repeated dully. ‘And just what is that supposed to achieve?’

‘I don’t intend discussing it with you now, Jazz,’ he snapped. ‘I’ve always found the phone a particularly unsatisfactory form of communication.’

‘Which is presumably why you avoided it in the past,’ she said waspishly.

He scowled, but he wasn’t going to get into an argument with her now. Especially not about things which had happened between them in the past. It was the future which needed addressing now, he thought grimly. ‘Expect me in around three hours’ time,’ he said briefly, and cut the call.

* * *

Jasmine couldn’t settle to anything as she waited for Zuhal to arrive. He didn’t bother to ring the doorbell, he just let himself into the apartment—in a cruel parody of a husband returning home from work.

For a split second she almost didn’t recognise him because for once he was wearing traditional robes and she’d only ever seen him dressed that way in photos. Her heart clenched in her chest and she felt a moment of aching awareness as she acknowledged his powerful and almost primitively alpha presence in the pristine apartment. His black hair was completely covered by a white silk headdress, knotted with a circlet of scarlet. The stark lines made his hawkish profile appear more autocratic than usual, just as the flowing robes emphasised the hardness of his body, rather than disguising it with its swishing folds. Maybe it was because she was all too aware of what lay beneath—all that muscular physique honed by years of riding.

He flicked her an unfathomable look as he strode towards the sitting room and what choice did she have but to follow him? But Jasmine was aware of a new tension about him and something indefinable glittering from his black eyes.

‘Is this what you wanted all along?’ he queried silkily.

She blinked at him in confusion. ‘What are you talking about?’

‘I’m talking about the sudden press interest, which seems to have come out of nowhere.’

‘And I’m supposed to have provoked it, is that it?’

He shrugged. ‘You were the one who wanted to walk in the park yesterday, remember?’

‘Only because I was feeling positively claustrophobic stuck in here with you!’

His eyes grew hard. ‘Did you set it all up so that we’d bump into that woman Carrie—who has clearly run straight to the newspapers about us?’

‘How could I do that when I had no idea that you were going to take a walk with me?’

Zuhal sliced the condemnatory palm of his hand through the air. ‘You could have phoned her when you were putting on your hat!’

‘Well, I didn’t!’ she flared. ‘I can’t believe you’d think me even capable of such a thing—of putting my son at risk like that. How dare you?’

Zuhal was so taken aback by the fury in her voice that he let his hand fall to his side. And the crazy thing was that all he wanted to do was to kiss her—long and hard and deep. He wanted to take her in his arms and strip them both bare and lose all this anger and these recriminations. He scowled, because now was not the time to be distracted by the lure of sex, no matter how much he ached to be inside her again. The whole situation had got completely out of hand and it was now time for him to rein it all in, using the most effective means at his disposal.

He was going to have to do what he should have done the moment he found out about his son.

‘You will have to come back to Razrastan with me,’ he said.

‘I beg your pardon?’

His mouth twisted. ‘I don’t think my statement requires any clarification.’

‘You don’t think your statement requires any clarification?’ she repeated. ‘Well, I do! What happened to keeping me here, with Darius as your insurance-policy heir, while you went out seeking a suitable bride?’

‘I’ll tell you exactly what happened,’ he gritted out. ‘My son has been discovered by the press. It hasn’t hit the newspapers yet because my lawyers currently have an injunction out—but it will, because the courts will probably throw it out on the grounds that it’s in the public interest to announce that Razrastan has a new heir. Even if they don’t you can’t keep something like this quiet for ever. Which is why the best kind of damage limitation is for you to agree to return to the guaranteed safety of my homeland.’

She shook her head. ‘I can’t do that, Zuhal,’ she whispered.

Beneath his silken robes, Zuhal’s body stiffened. Was she really refusing the gift he could offer her—a place of sanctuary while he worked out some kind of future for them all, even though he didn’t yet know what that future could possibly be? She was a mass of contradictions, he conceded unwillingly—a woman who continually perplexed him. Who kept him at arm’s length with a determination which was in itself a turn-on.

Yet he found himself remembering that moment in the park when he’d touched her and had seen her whole demeanour soften. Her green eyes had blazed with something passionate and unspoken. If that woman—Carrie—had not burst in on them, might he not have taken Jazz into his arms and kissed her? Brought her back here and spent the rest of the day having sex with her, so that once again she would become his compliant lover of old, eager to agree with whatever he suggested? When, instead, she was returning his gaze with a cool confidence which was making him seethe. So how best to proceed? He couldn’t exactly drag her kicking and screaming back to Razrastan, could he? No matter how vivid that particular fantasy was turning out to be!

‘You must realise that now I have discovered the existence of my son, nothing can ever be the same, Jazz.’

‘You didn’t discover him,’ she answered. ‘You came across him by chance.’

‘However you care to define it,’ he iced out, ‘the facts remain the same. You are the mother of the Sheikh’s son and you both remaining here in England is no longer a satisfactory option. You have no experience of press harassment but I do. You will be given no space until you provide them what they want, which is a story.’

She tipped her head back, her green eyes on a collision course with his. ‘You really think I’d sell a story to the papers?’

‘Actually, no. I don’t.’ He shook his head. ‘But the story won’t go away and in the meantime rumours will abound.’

‘Rumours?’ she questioned wryly. ‘Or the truth?’

‘The fact of our son is undeniable.’ He gave a heavy sigh. ‘I just need to figure out the best way to present it to my people and I can’t do that if I’m constantly worried about you being besieged by all and sundry.’

‘I don’t know,’ she hedged.

Sensing weakness, he swooped. ‘Come back to Razrastan with me, Jazz,’ he urged. ‘Which will at least give us the space to think about the future.’

Jasmine turned away, touching her tongue to her dust-dry lips, her heart pounding as she acknowledged his words. He was promising nothing—certainly not on the emotional front. He’d spoken as if she were a plant he was eager to pluck from her native soil, to transplant her in his own, but with no assurances that she could thrive there. He wanted her to go to his palace and his country—where he literally ruled the roost. She would have absolutely no power there, and very little say in matters. And all this was complicated by her feelings for him, which wouldn’t seem to go away. Because she still wanted him. Not just her body, but her heart, too. She wanted him in a way which was never going to happen and she knew that to go to his desert home would be to make herself vulnerable.

But what alternative did she have? Staying here and playing a constant cat-and-mouse game with the press? Continuing to obsess about him finding himself a suitable wife—a scenario which made her want to batter her fists against the walls of this elegant apartment which still didn’t feel like home.

Would the royal palace feel any different?

She bit her lip.

The chances were that it wouldn’t but, for her son’s sake, shouldn’t she give it a try? To see if Zuhal’s suggestion was in any way workable, even if she had no real faith in the idea?

‘Very well,’ she said slowly. ‘I will bring Darius to Razrastan and we will consider our options.’

Zuhal nodded, but there was no sense of triumph or satisfaction in his heart at having won round one of what he suspected was going to be a difficult battle. Was he going to have to make Jazz his bride in order to get her to comply with his wishes?

His mouth hardened. She was not the kind of woman he had ever imagined marrying and he did not know if his people would accept her—but Razrastan required an heir, just as it required a king.

His country had never needed him before but it seemed that, suddenly, it did now.