Читать книгу Modern Romance May 2015 Books 1-8 - Кейт Хьюит - Страница 11
ОглавлениеSOMEONE KNOCKED ON the door and Jaul froze, literally froze as if someone had hit an alarm bell. He pushed her back from him, dark eyes glittering tiger gold and a ferocious frown on his lean, darkly handsome face.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said flatly. ‘That was a mistake.’
Chrissie was unable to pull herself together quite so quickly and as he released her she pivoted away from him towards the windows. As she raised trembling hands to press to her suddenly clammy cheeks, she was sick with self-loathing and shock and only dimly aware that someone was speaking to Jaul in his own language at the door. Feeling shaky, she sat down on a horrendous carved wooden sofa without even a cushion to soften its hard, unyielding seat.
A mistake? How demeaning to be told that! Only a kiss, only a stupid kiss, she was reasoning with herself in a daze of shame and denial. But how could she have let that happen, particularly when she had visited him to discuss the infinitely more important reality of the twins’ very existence? It was as though something had momentarily stolen her wits, overpowering all memory and rationality in the same moment. Well, what was done was done and he had been equally guilty of inappropriate behaviour, she reminded herself in consolation. Of course, she had once been accustomed to Jaul’s distinctly carnal can’t-keep-my-hands-off-you nature, had indeed at one stage gloried in her apparent power to attract him, innocently assuming that it meant more than it did. It seemed in that line though he hadn’t changed a bit.
Jaul was receiving a lengthy message from his PA. He was taken aback to be invited to a legal meeting the following morning between the legal firm chosen by Bandar and the lawyers who would apparently be arriving to represent Chrissie’s interests. After her attitude to the divorce issue the night before he was disconcerted but less surprised by her unexpected visit. Had she already thought better of her behaviour? Evidently she could muster a crack divorce team virtually overnight. Perhaps she had also mulled over the financial advantages of giving him the divorce he wanted, he reasoned sardonically. When had money come to mean so much to her?
It was a question he had asked himself repeatedly two years earlier when she had accepted his father’s pay-off to turn her back on their relationship and walk away. How had he missed out on that devious, greedy streak in her make-up? At the time he would have described her as the least mercenary woman he had ever met. Had she cunningly concealed her avaricious side from him in an effort to impress him? When they had been together she had gone to great lengths to prove that his wealth meant little to her. And if he was honest, he had been impressed because by that stage he had become bored with women who valued him for what he was worth rather than for the man he was.
Yet the woman he had valued beyond all others had proved to be the greediest of all. That was a lowering truth he hated to recall for it exposed his poor judgement when he was at the mercy of his libido. A reminder he evidently needed, he conceded darkly, acknowledging without much surprise that one look at Chrissie’s beautiful face and slender but shapely proportions could still arouse him.
Chrissie was finally wondering how on earth she could broach the subject of Jaul being a father and increasingly it was sinking in for her that it would come as an enormous shock to him. Her fingers dug into the clutch bag Lizzie had pressed on her and in a sudden movement she bent her pale head and snapped it open to withdraw the birth certificates. Those documents were self-explanatory and there was really no need at all for her to start stumbling into an awkward announcement.
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 first...’
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, well aware of Chrissie’s ability to throw a three-act drama over what he viewed as trivia. Time had shot them both back briefly into the past and that was all. Nothing more need be said, he was thinking while he grasped the fact that for some peculiar reason his estranged wife had given him a pair of birth certificates.
‘What are these?’ Jaul scanned the name of the mother and went cold. ‘You have children?’
‘And so do you,’ Chrissie advised thinly. ‘You got me pregnant, Jaul.’
Jaul stilled and stopped breathing. Pregnant? The word screamed at him. It was not possible in his mind to credit it at that first moment, but now his quick and clever brain was checking dates, making calculations, recognising that whether he liked it or not it was a possibility. A possibility he didn’t want to think about though. 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!
But why was he only learning about something as incredibly important as the news that he was a father over a year after the event of their birth? Jaul was not accustomed to receiving the kind of shock that rocked his world on its axis. Momentarily he closed his eyes before opening them to stare at Chrissie...beautiful, deceptive Chrissie, who had hit him with an own goal of mammoth proportions.
‘If this is true...and I assume that it is,’ Jaul framed with the greatest difficulty he had ever had in controlling both his temper and his tone, ‘why am I only being told about the existence of my son and daughter now?’
Of all the reactions he might have had and she had envisaged while the taxi ferried her across London, that particular one had not featured. It was a Eureka moment for Chrissie and she didn’t need to leap out of a bath to be galvanised into instantaneous rage and jump to her feet. ‘Is that all you’ve got to say to me?’ she shouted at him full force.
Innumerable generations of royal ice stiffened Jaul’s spine, for no male had been more minutely trained from childhood than he had been to deal with a sudden crisis without any show of unseemly emotion or ill-judged vocal exclamations. ‘What were you expecting me to say?’ he enquired.
The door burst open and all four of his bodyguards rushed in to stare at Chrissie in disbelief. As collected as ever, indeed as if such interruptions were part of his normal life, Jaul sent them into retreat with the instruction that on no account was he to be disturbed again. He knew what had happened: his highly anxious protection squad had heard her shout when nobody shouted at him and had feared that some sort of a dangerous incident was developing. But they were nervous and on edge, having never been abroad before and London was a very scary place as far as they were concerned.
Turquoise eyes glittering with rage, Chrissie knotted her fingers into fists. ‘Well, maybe I expected something a little more human and you asked me a very, very stupid question!’
Jaul gritted his strong white teeth. ‘Stupid how?’
‘You asked me why you’re only finding out about Tarif and Soraya now and I want to ask you...is that a joke?’
‘No. It was not a joke,’ Jaul responded with perfect diction, studying her with assessing dark eyes. ‘Why would I joke about it? Try to calm down and think about what you’re saying. This is a very serious matter.’
And that was the moment when Chrissie lost even the slight hold she still retained on her temper. The father of her children was poised there like a granite pillar and acting as coolly and politely as though they were discussing the weather. It was too much, too great an insult after that offensive question to be borne in silence. How dared he ask her to calm down? How dared he talk down to her when he had just about wrecked her life and abandoned her to sink or swim?
‘You complete bastard,’ she breathed in a raw undertone, barely able to get the harsh syllables past her parted lips. ‘Why weren’t you told? You deserted me—’
‘I did not—’
‘You went back to Marwan and you never returned to me—that’s desertion. You didn’t answer your phone. You didn’t call, email, write, even text...I never heard another word from you!’ Chrissie slashed back at him shakily, bitter wounding memories surfacing inside her head to power her on. ‘You left me no way of contacting you. Of course I appreciate now that that was deliberate because you knew before you left that you weren’t coming back—’
‘That is untrue—’
‘Shut up!’ Chrissie practically screamed at him, her sense of injustice and furious hurt too great to be silenced now that she finally had Jaul in front of her. ‘Don’t lie to me! At least be honest...what could you possibly have to lose now?’
His lean, devastatingly handsome features clenched hard. ‘I have never lied to you—’
‘Well, the “love you for ever” bit was certainly a lie! Telling me that the Oxford apartment was our home when your father could throw me out of it at a moment’s notice was a lie! And according to him even our marriage was a lie!’ she reminded him, half an octave higher, and it did not help her mood when Jaul visibly winced. In punishment, she snatched up a sugar bowl and flung it at him, sugar cubes flying like tiny missiles as the china bowl shattered on the edge of a small table.
Jaul was right in the middle of the three-act drama he had hoped to avoid. Urging calm wasn’t working, listening quietly wasn’t working either. But then all that had ever worked with Chrissie when she was angry was dragging her off to bed until they were both thoroughly satisfied. That was a totally inappropriate thought, he admitted, struggling to concentrate on what mattered most: the children. But how could children he had never heard of until this day or even seen seem real to him?
‘Thanks to your father’s little “mistake”, Jaul, my children are listed as illegitimate and without a father!’ Chrissie ranted, almost running out of breath but quickly powering up for the next. ‘Now my family may not be from a culturally conservative place as sensitive as Marwan but my father didn’t speak to me for over six months once he realised that I was pregnant and unmarried because he was ashamed and embarrassed—’
If possible Jaul froze to an even greater extent.
Having been convinced by King Lut that she was not a married woman, Chrissie had not had the power to put Jaul’s name on the birth certificates as to do so he would have had to accompany her to the register of births to register their birth or have made a statutory declaration that he was the twins’ father. Chrissie had also been afraid to mention a marriage that she had already been told was illegal, fearful that in some way she might have accidentally broken the law by going through with such a ceremony. She had also been very much afraid of the risk of attracting embarrassing publicity should the royal status of her children’s father ever become public knowledge. Anonymity and silence all round had seemed the safest option after her fruitless visits to the Marwani Embassy.
‘In fact if it hadn’t been for my sister and her husband, I would’ve been in even more serious trouble than I already was. So don’t you dare ask me why you weren’t told that you were a father when you were such a very lousy husband or non-husband or whatever you were!’ Chrissie slung tempestuously.
‘Is that it?’ he enquired, dark eyes glittering bright as a starry night. ‘Are you finished hurling abuse?’
‘That was not abuse...that was what happened!’ Chrissie raved back at him, undaunted. ‘Do you know what your problem is?’
Jaul knew he was about to find out.
‘People don’t stand up to you, don’t expect you to account for the wrong you do because you’re this super rich, powerful guy who’s spoilt. I hate you. I absolutely hate you!’ Chrissie shouted at him, punctuating the assurance with the milk jug that had accompanied the sugar bowl. ‘You’re a horrible, seducing, selfish, womanising rat!’
‘I think you should go home and lie down for a while. I’ll phone you later when you’ve calmed down a little,’ Jaul murmured without any expression at all and it just made her want to scream until she was carried off and locked away as the madwoman the Marwani Embassy staff had once treated her as.
Chrissie was rigid with fury: Jaul had no idea what hell she had gone through, probably even less interest, and she very much doubted that he had absorbed what she had told him.
Pregnant, Jaul was still thinking in a daze, trying and failing to imagine Chrissie’s slender figure swollen with his children, Chrissie going through the pregnancy alone while rejected in disgrace by her father as a single parent. For the very first time he was glad she had had the money his father had given her, even relieved by the idea because she would have needed financial support. Children, he thought again, unable to imagine them, a baby boy and a baby girl, the first twins in the royal family since his grandfather and great-uncle’s birth. Dimly, he realised that he was in such deep shock that he was in an abnormal state of disorientation and detachment, completely divorced from his usual cool, rational mind.
‘Just you try lying down for a while when you have two babies of only fourteen months old to look after!’ Chrissie hurled as a last-ditch put-down, stalking out of the door. She ignored the fact that his bunch of bodyguards were pacing the hall like worried parents having heard the noise of shouting and breaking crockery. They rushed past her to check that their precious charge, the King, was unharmed. King indeed, she thought incredulously, for that Jaul had become a king had just never seemed real to Chrissie.
A servant rushed to open the front door to her, visibly eager to see her off the premises. If they mentioned her name at the Marwani Embassy they would all be able to get together and talk about what a raving nut job she was, the crazy Englishwoman who wept and shouted and begged. Well, that wasn’t her any more because she had soon got over loving Jaul. When a man ditched you as cruelly as Jaul had ditched her, there was no coming back from such an experience. Nothing had ever hurt so much... She flung a disgusted glance back at all the shining windows of that weird mansion and if she had had a brick in her hand she would have thrown that as well.
Jaul was frozen in the doorway, only marginally conscious of his large staff now grouped in the hall to study him in consternation, desperate to know what had caused such a fracas in his deeply traditional household.
And what Jaul did next would very much have stunned Chrissie.
‘Miss Whitaker is my wife...my Queen,’ he announced with quiet dignity in his own language, ignoring entirely the utter shock spreading across every face turned towards him.
* * *
Chrissie went back to her sister’s home and cried again, tears dripping down her face as Tarif looked up at her with his father’s eyes and smiled.
Lizzie hovered, understandably unsure of what to say. ‘It can’t have gone that badly,’ she insisted. ‘Did he insist there would have to be DNA tests and stuff like that to prove the twins are his?’
‘No, nothing like that. I shouted at him and threw things at him while he stood there like a stone statue,’ Chrissie recounted bitterly. ‘There was no satisfaction to be had out of it at all. I wanted to kill him.’
Lizzie had paled. ‘I’m sure relations between you will settle down eventually. Right now, Jaul’s probably in shock—’
‘What’s he got to be in shock about?’ her sibling asked thinly.
‘Discovering that he’s a father—’
‘I hate him. I’m going to go out tonight and have fun with Sofia and Maurizia,’ Chrissie swore, springing upright and dashing the tears from her eyes. ‘Jaul stole all that away from me!’
Lizzie knew that was true but she deemed it wiser to say nothing. Chrissie had had a very hard time while she was carrying the twins because it had not been an easy pregnancy and all the pastimes of youth had been lost to her. Her little sister had had to grow up too soon and face heartbreak and betrayal at a time when all women were very vulnerable but that she had done so without a single whine of self-pity and had gone on to establish a career in teaching had made Lizzie feel incredibly proud.
* * *
It would have been a challenge to know which of the parties was the most surprised when Jaul showed up at Lizzie and Cesare’s home that evening.
Lizzie hovered and hurriedly called her husband, feeling that Cesare would be politer and more diplomatic than she could be when forced to deal with the detestable man who had married her sister and let her down so badly.
‘I would like to see Chrissie...’ Jaul announced without a shade of discomfiture.
‘Unfortunately that’s not possible,’ Cesare declared smooth as butter. ‘She’s out—’
‘Out?’ Jaul repeated in apparent surprise.
‘Clubbing,’ Lizzie supplied with pleasure.
‘Then I would like to see the twins,’ Jaul advanced grimly and Lizzie enjoyed a first-hand experience of the stone-statue image Chrissie had employed.
Cesare sighed. ‘I’m afraid that’s not possible either. I couldn’t let you see the children without their mother’s permission—’
Jaul’s gaze flamed bright gold. ‘They are my children—’
‘But it doesn’t say so on their birth certificates, does it?’ Lizzie cut in with unashamed satisfaction. ‘You’ll have to come back tomorrow when Chrissie is here—’
‘Where has she gone...clubbing?’ Jaul asked with distaste.
And to Lizzie’s annoyance, Cesare gave Jaul information that she would have withheld.
‘Why on earth did you tell him?’ she demanded when Jaul had driven off again in his glossy limousine adorned with official Marwani flags.
Cesare shot her a sudden unreadable look that disconcerted her. ‘He’s Chrissie’s husband.’
‘But she hates him!’
‘It’s not our place to interfere. Making an enemy of him isn’t likely to help anyone and least of all their children, cara mia,’ he reasoned.
* * *
Escorted into the plush VIP area of the exclusive club, Jaul was restless. His bodyguards had perked up though, he noted with a sudden amusement that pierced his exasperated mood. His protection team was overjoyed to be in what his father would have described as a ‘Western den of iniquity’. He stood on the balcony overlooking the dance floor packed with scantily clad girls below but his thoughts were far removed from the sight.
Chrissie’s family disliked and distrusted him and in the wake of the chaos his father had created that was hardly surprising, Jaul conceded grudgingly. Even so, such a poor reception struck at his pride and his sense of honour for in twenty-eight years of life he had never once shirked his responsibilities. With the exception of Chrissie, he acknowledged bitterly, running through all the reasons why that had happened. He cursed his own pride and vanity for not finding some way to make enquiries of his own and check out what his father had told him.
Yet such misgivings about his only parent would never have occurred to Jaul before. Jaul had been very close to his father and positively coddled. A man who had virtually panicked whenever his only child succumbed to common childhood illnesses was not a man to inspire distrust. Jaul tucked the memories away hastily, working through the bitter bite of his lingering grief for the older man while feeling disloyal about the vague doubts that Chrissie’s condemnations had stirred up.
Instead Jaul found himself wondering how often Chrissie came to such clubs. He told himself that in the circumstances that was none of his business. Unhappily, traits stronger than reason and a bred-in-the-bone possessiveness for what was his quarrelled with that rational conviction. He was hoping that she had more clothes on than women normally wore in such places. He was also already questioning the wisdom of having followed her to such a venue. He had acted on an angry impulse, an urge that rarely led to a satisfactory conclusion. And in the same second that he was about to leave the club he saw her, a bright figure in a short fuchsia-pink dress accompanied by two other young women. She was laughing, smiling, clearly not in turmoil, he noted, gritting his teeth at the sight. He wondered why he was agonising when she, so patently, was not.
Blessing her foresight in their exchange of numbers, he texted her, watched from above as she literally froze, full pouty pink mouth down-curving, shoulders tensing. Annoyance licked through Jaul’s long, lean frame at the clear message that his presence was as welcome in the club to her as a marauding gorilla’s. He summoned the waiter to order champagne and snacks.
* * *
Rage crackled through Chrissie when she read the text.
Please join me in the VIP section
Her one night out on the town in months and Jaul had to ruin it by reminding her that she was not as free as the other young women around her. Suddenly she wished she had a man in tow, rather than being with Cesare’s sisters, who were simply excited to death to be invited to the VIP section. But no, whether she liked it or not she was Jaul’s wife and the mother of his children and telling him to get lost wouldn’t work because Jaul was relentless about getting his own way.
Once she had believed that Jaul was incredibly solid and trustworthy and honourable. She had virtually worshipped the ground he walked on and remembering that now made her feel nauseous. But then, to be fair, the night their relationship had at last changed into something more at university, Jaul had played a blinder, she recalled numbly.
She had finally started dating someone while still suppressing her attraction to Jaul with all her might. Adrian had been blond, blue-eyed and sporty and as different from Jaul as day was from night. She had gone out with Adrian several times, enjoying casual dates in cinemas and cafés and telling him no when he got too pushy about sex. Back then she’d had a complex about sex and hadn’t known or much cared whether she would ever get over it because it had stemmed from something sordid that had frightened her when she was still a child. And she had never told anyone, not even Lizzie, about that sleazy secret.
Adrian and his mates had taken her to a party in a big house and at some stage of the evening her memory had shut down. She suspected Adrian had put something in her soft drink and it had been Jaul who had found her slumped by Adrian’s side and clearly out of it. He had stepped in to rescue her because he had known that, like him, she didn’t touch alcohol. Jaul had punched Adrian when he’d tried to object and had carried her out of the party. She had no recollection of the rest of the night, only of waking up the next morning to find herself safe in Jaul’s apartment. For the first time she had seen another side to Jaul. He hadn’t taken advantage of her. He had stepped in to look after her when she’d needed help, had protected her from what could have been a very nasty scenario, making her suddenly painfully aware that he was miles more mature and decent than many of the young men she met. All her prejudices against him had crumbled that same day.
‘I would never hurt you,’ he had murmured.
But that had proved the biggest lie of all. She was so angry with him, still so angry with him, she acknowledged ruefully, but what was the point of all that aggression so long after the event? Their marriage was dead and gone—that was the end result. Let it all go, put it away, she urged herself wryly, let him have his divorce and move on to a better, happier future. Their lawyers would be meeting tomorrow: the divorce would soon be rushed through for Jaul’s benefit.
Chrissie sank into the designated comfortable seat right in front of Jaul and wondered why his bodyguards were bowing in her direction as if she were a real somebody. She looked amongst them for two familiar faces, but the men who had once protected Jaul in his university days were not there. Turning back to Jaul, she noticed that he was casually dressed, had actually got in wearing jeans and an open-necked white shirt, proving the point that entry to such exclusive clubs depended more on who you were than what you wore. The white of his shirt against his golden skin tone was eye-catching and a deeply unsettling tingle quivered through her slender body when she connected with his brilliant dark golden eyes surrounded by lashes longer and more luxuriant than her own. He was gorgeous, no point denying that, she allowed, her keen gaze tracking the lean, strong lines of his masculine features while she tried not to wonder who he was planning to marry next...
Chrissie wasn’t stupid. After all, that was obviously why Jaul was in London in the first place talking about needing a divorce and fast. While he was planning to marry wife number two, he had discovered he was still married to wife number one. How very inconvenient, she thought bitchily while Sofia and Maurizia stared goggle-eyed at Jaul and sat down at a table across the way to happily tuck into the champagne and snacks laid out for them.
‘I hope my arrival has not disrupted your evening,’ Jaul remarked stiffly, striving not to react to his ringside-seat view of her long, perfect legs crossed, little feet he had kissed shod in glittery pink high heels. With difficulty he dragged his attention up to linger on the lovely face he knew so well, willing back the almost instantaneous surge of blood to his groin with an actual prayer for self-control.
‘Of course not,’ Chrissie lied, angling her pale head back, shimmering hair swishing across her shoulders like silk as she strove to be gracious for the sake of peace. ‘I assume you wanted to see me about something?’
Jaul confided that he had gone to her brother-in-law’s home in the hope of seeing the twins.
Chrissie was disconcerted. ‘You want to see Tarif and Soraya?’
Jaul elevated a fine ebony brow. ‘And that surprises you?’
Chrissie reddened in sudden severe mortification. She had told him he was a father and obviously he was curious. To have assumed that he would simply accept that news and walk away again had been sheer folly, she conceded ruefully. ‘I could bring them on a visit tomorrow morning,’ she suggested, prepared to show willing in the civilised stakes. ‘Before the lawyers kick in—’
‘The lawyers?’ Jaul repeated as if he didn’t know what she was talking about.
‘The divorce meeting,’ Chrissie leant forward and whispered, endeavouring to be tactful in the presence of the bodyguards who, it seemed, had not taken their eyes off either her or Jaul since the moment she’d sat down.
Jaul recognised the restrictions of the meeting place he had chosen and cursed his inability to speak freely. He expelled his breath on a slow hiss. At least she was speaking to him again, at least she wasn’t shouting, he reasoned grimly.
‘Cesare’s legal team will soon get it all sorted out,’ Chrissie told him on an upbeat note intended to offer comfort. ‘He says they’ve dealt with much more complex stuff than this.’
Jaul’s veiled dark gaze glittered and dropped down to the bareness of her left hand. ‘What did you do with the rings I gave you?’ he asked softly.
‘They’re in Cesare’s safe. I was keeping them for Soraya,’ Chrissie responded, wanting to let him know that she had not retained them for any sentimental reason.
‘They have Arabic names—’
‘A nod to their heritage,’ Chrissie cut in carelessly.
‘My grandfather was called Tarif—’
‘It’s pure coincidence,’ Chrissie declared deflatingly, lying through her teeth because she had named her son after his grandfather, reasoning that her baby had the right to use a name from the royal family tree. ‘I never would have dreamt of naming them after anyone in your family.’
In receipt of that snub, Jaul wanted to punch the wall and shout, but he mastered the surge of anger with a silent, strong self-discipline honed by long months in a hospital bed and even longer months of painfully slow rehabilitation. She hated him; his wife hated him. He could sense the animosity still bubbling away below her newly calm surface, could see the sharp evasiveness in her beautiful eyes.
He had brought this hellish situation down on himself, he decided harshly. Two years ago he had still been immature and impatient and reckless. He had taken what he’d wanted without hesitation and without thought of the risk he could be running...
