Читать книгу Modern Romance May 2015 Books 1-8 - Кейт Хьюит - Страница 14
ОглавлениеCHRISSIE SAT ON Jaul’s private jet during the flight to Marwan like a small grave statue, slender body straight-backed and rigid, hands circumspectly folded on her lap, eyes veiled.
Jaul compressed his sensual lips and grimly returned his attention to his laptop. What had he expected? A relaxed and happy travelling companion? It was wiser to concentrate on the positives: Chrissie was on board with his children and, even better, was considerately wearing the sort of outfit for her first public appearance that would impress his people. The simple blue shift dress enhanced the slender grace of her figure. In the sunlight coming through the porthole behind her, she looked incredibly beautiful with her hair gleaming like a liquid fall of bright reflective silver. That same exacting light accentuated her almost transparent porcelain skin and the lush perfection of her soft pink lips.
All too fast and predictably, Jaul recalled the silky brush of her hair across his thigh and the hot, erotic grip of her mouth. Long brown fingers braced on the table edge in front of him as arousal coursed through him with the force of a volcanic flow of lava, leaving him hot and hard and throbbing with need. Gritting his teeth, he concentrated instead on thinking about how she would react to the special request he had to make of her. He compressed his wide, sensual mouth, resolving to approach the topic with tact.
Chrissie’s stillness cloaked her inner turmoil. She wanted to scream and shout with angry frustration. Jaul had, quite literally, hunted her down and trapped her like prey. Two years too late she was taking up the role of being his wife and the mother of his children, a role that she would once, most ironically, have eagerly embraced. A trickle of perspiration beaded her short upper lip as she recalled the incredible crush of paparazzi fighting to photograph the Marwani royal party at the airport and the sheer wall of security men it had taken to hold them back. It had not occurred to her that their marriage would so quickly incite that amount of attention. Jaul had taken it in his stride but Chrissie had been unnerved by that level of public exposure.
But then, in truth, the past twenty-four hours had been equally unsettling. Cesare and Lizzie had reacted to her announcement that she was returning to Marwan with Jaul with far less surprise than Chrissie had naively expected. Her sister and brother-in-law had assumed that Jaul and Chrissie were making an effort to rebuild their marriage for the sake of their two young children.
‘And if it doesn’t work out, at least you know you tried and you can come home again,’ Lizzie had proclaimed in her innocence of the fact that ‘coming home’ was an option that Chrissie had legally surrendered two years earlier. To come home, she would have to be willing to leave her children behind her and that was not an option she could ever imagine choosing.
That same day, Chrissie had boxed up her possessions for storage and had put her apartment in the hands of a rental agency. For what had remained of her meagre twenty-four hours of freedom, she had gone shopping with her sister for a more suitable wardrobe of formal clothing. In the evening her father had arrived in London for a visit and Jaul had joined them for dinner. Jaul had dealt calmly with her father’s often barbed comments and he had laughed when Chrissie had remarked on his discretion before his departure.
‘When it comes to temperament, your father is a walk in the park. My father lost his head in rage at least once a week. There was no reasoning with him and he would often say offensive things. Of course, he was very much indulged growing up and because he saw himself as an all-powerful ruler he never studied to control his temper,’ he had confided, startling her with his candour. ‘It was a good learning experience for me.’
That glimpse into Jaul’s background had sharply disconcerted Chrissie because to her it had sounded less like a learning experience and rather more like living with a tyrant. Recalling the raging man she had once briefly met, Chrissie had made no comment as she suppressed an inner shiver while contemplating the possibility that, with such an intolerant and inflexible parent, Jaul’s childhood could not possibly have been as secure and privileged as she had always assumed.
Before boarding the flight, Chrissie had gone to a beauty salon to have her hair trimmed and her nails painted, small measures to enable her to present herself as the well-groomed royal wife people would be expecting to see by Jaul’s side. Royal? That very word made her roll her eyes. The only royal thing about her was that she had allowed Jaul to royally shaft her in every sense of the word, she thought with rebellious bitterness.
She had agreed to return to a husband who had once abandoned her and who had yet to explain himself on that score. How on earth had she allowed him to get away with that? How had she let that huge question get buried beneath her terror of losing custody of the twins? And what the heck was Jaul still hiding from her?
He was probably only trying to hide the unlovely truth from her, Chrissie reasoned with scorn. But she wasn’t stupid and she could work out the most likely scenario for herself. Obviously Jaul had never loved her; all he had ever felt for her was lust, a lust honed to a fine sharp edge by the length of time he’d had to wait to get her into bed. Had he realised soon after their marriage that he had made a dreadful mistake and that she was not at all what he wanted in a wife?
Had he then confessed all to his father? Why else would Jaul have never returned from Marwan? Was he now ashamed of having once treated her so cruelly? Of the fact that he had dumped her without even having the guts to tell her he was done with her? Of the fact he had had his father pay her off as though she were some sort of slutty gold-digger? Was that why Jaul had still to explain his own behaviour?
From below her lashes, Chrissie studied her husband with simmering intensity. Whether she liked it or not, dressed in a charcoal-grey suit stamped with the flawless cut and fit of handmade designer elegance, Jaul looked absolutely gorgeous. One look at him with his strong jawline already shadowed by faint black stubble and his guarded dark eyes pinned to her below the heavy black fringe of his lashes and her pulses hammered. She had a sudden devastating image of his lithe, sleek body sinking down over hers and, even in the mood she was in, her breathing constricted and her heart pounded like crazy. Jolted by that response, her chest tightened in a stress reaction even as she felt her nipples prickle and swell below her clothing.
In Jaul’s magnetic presence those reactions came as naturally as breathing to her. Her carefully constructed barrier of scorn was already being burned off by the pool of heat spreading like liquid honey at the heart of her. It was desire, the very same lust she had mentally slated Jaul for, and it was a terrifyingly strong hunger, she acknowledged grudgingly, and unfortunately not a stimulus that died down at her bidding. If she didn’t watch out and stay on her guard, he would hook her in again like a stupid fish.
But why on earth did she feel so cringe-makingly needy? She had lived perfectly well without sex until Jaul came back into her life and now it was as though he had lit a fire inside her that she couldn’t put out. That burning hunger unsettled her and flung her back in time to the days when just being near Jaul had swept her up to an adrenaline-charged high where desire and emotion combined in an intoxicating rush. And no way was she planning to let herself sink back to that level, she swore inwardly.
By the time the jet was circling and getting ready to land, Chrissie’s tension was on a high. She was apprehensive about the new life ahead of her in Marwan. Naturally she was. A different culture, a language she didn’t speak and suddenly she was royal, an actual queen? Of course she was nervous about the mistakes she would undoubtedly make.
Furthermore in her head where it mattered she still saw herself as a Yorkshire farmer’s daughter, born in poverty and raised by a troubled mother. She had made it to university and trained as a teacher but it had never once crossed her mind that one day she would be the wife of a king. Even when she had married Jaul she had failed to look ahead to that future because it had seemed so far away and unreal. She had not been aware at the time that, although seemingly in the best of health and looking much younger than his years, King Lut had already been in his seventies. The older man had suffered a massive heart attack and had died without the smallest warning.
‘I should tell you that within Marwan the news of our marriage has been received very positively,’ Jaul informed her soothingly as the jet engines whined into a turn. ‘The palace has been flooded with congratulations, bouquets and gifts for our children.’
Chrissie was pleasantly surprised. ‘But surely your people think it’s very odd that it took until now for you to admit that you are married?’
‘My father’s prejudices against Western women and his rages were legendary and people have proved to be remarkably understanding of my reticence,’ Jaul confided wryly.
Jane, their new nanny, joined them with the stewardess, the twins clad in white broderie anglaise playsuits for their first public airing. Silence fell as everyone buckled up. Chrissie breathed in slow and deep and resolved to make the best of her new future. A future from which she excluded all thought of Jaul. She didn’t have to stay married to him for ever, she reminded herself doggedly. Once they were able to separate, she wouldn’t even need to live below the same roof with him, she reflected, studying his bold bronzed profile and wondering why that particular thought was signally failing to lift her spirits.
When it was time to disembark, Jaul lifted Tarif out of Jane’s arms. ‘I want to show him off.’
‘But you wouldn’t let anyone photograph the twins in London,’ Chrissie remarked in surprise.
‘That was London. This is Marwan. Our people have the right to see this little boy in the flesh first,’ he decreed without hesitation. ‘He is my heir and one day he will be King.’
They disembarked and the line of people waiting to greet them outside began to move closer. Jaul’s bodyguards fanned round them lest a crush develop. Somewhere a military brass band was playing and Chrissie was disconcerted to see television cameras set up below the bright blue sky. The heat was intense and it was much hotter than Chrissie had innocently expected it to be. The advance party of VIPs engaged Jaul in conversation and a smiling older woman approached Chrissie, bobbed a curtsy and told her in excellent English that Soraya was adorable. Cameras were clicking and flashing all around them and Chrissie found it stressful to keep on talking and smiling as though nothing were happening. Painfully slowly the royal party and the interested crowd surrounding them made their way into the airport building, which was mercifully air-conditioned.
That coolness was welcome to Chrissie while even more photos were being taken of them indoors. Being the centre of so much attention with the twins was a shock to her system but she was enjoyably surprised by the mood of genuine friendliness at their arrival and the number of people who spoke her own language. When Tarif began to get restive in his arms, Jaul recognised that it was time to move on and within minutes they were ensconced in a limousine, travelling down a wide boulevard. Her eyes widened when she registered the crowds of waving well-wishers. Jaul was evidently a popular ruler. Gripped by curiosity, she gazed out at streets lined with the sort of ultra-modern buildings that might have featured in any city, although the occasional glimpses of elaborate minarets and men in robes added a touch of exotica to the urban landscape.
‘What’s the palace like?’ she asked in the rushing silence.
‘It’s old-fashioned,’ Jaul warned her. ‘Everything’s as old as Queen Victoria aside of the bathrooms, kitchens and IT connections. It’s been generations since the palace had a queen to take an interest in it.’
‘I’d forgotten that.’
‘You can change anything you like. I’m pretty much indifferent to my surroundings...unless it’s completely weird and uncomfortable like the mansion in London,’ he conceded wryly.
The limo had left the city streets behind and rocky plains of sand bounded the desert highway. Dusk was falling. Away in the distance Chrissie could see the looming heights of giant rolling sand dunes coloured every tawny shade from ochre to orange by the setting sun. Giant gates dissecting very high turreted walls appeared a hundred yards ahead and Chrissie sat forward with a look of bemusement. ‘Is that the palace? My goodness, it’s the size of a city and it looks like a Crusader castle!’
‘The front part of the original fortress was built by the Crusaders before we threw them out,’ Jaul volunteered with amusement. ‘For hundreds of years as fashion changed every generation added new buildings. Even I haven’t been in all of them. The family was once much larger and in those days my ancestors lived with a vast retinue of servants and soldiers, who all had to be housed.’
The guards patrolling the walls were waving their guns and roaring a welcome as the limo purred through the automatic gates.
‘So, who’s in charge of everything here at the palace?’ Chrissie asked curiously as their vehicle passed through glorious landscaped gardens before gliding to a stately halt in front of the ancient main building with its huge domed entrance porch.
‘Bandar, my principal aide, is the nominal head because he is in charge of domestic finance but my cousin, Zaliha, actively runs the royal household. Her sister is married to Bandar, who lives here on site with most of my personal staff.’
A smiling finely built brunette with sloe-dark eyes appeared in the doorway and performed a respectful dip of acknowledgement. She introduced herself as Zaliha in perfect English, tendered her good wishes and begged to hold Soraya all in the space of one breath. The welcome cool of air-conditioning engulfing her overheated skin, Chrissie walked into an amazing circular hallway with walls studded with mother of pearl. ‘Shells...seashells,’ she remarked in disconcertion. ‘It’s beautiful.’
‘There’s quite a bit that isn’t quite so lovely,’ the brunette warned her ruefully.
‘Don’t give my wife the wrong impression,’ Jaul urged lightly.
‘You speak incredibly good English,’ Chrissie told her companion.
‘My father was on the embassy staff in London and I went to school there,’ Zaliha told her.
‘Oh, my word...’ Chrissie was staring into the cluttered rooms they were passing, rooms bulging at the seams with antique furniture, some of which appeared to be centuries old. ‘It’s worse than Victorian,’ she told Jaul helplessly. ‘It’s more like...medieval.’
‘And ripe for renovation,’ Zaliha told her cheerfully.
‘We will go straight to our rooms now,’ Jaul countered before the brunette could involve Chrissie in such a discussion and he curved lean fingers round Chrissie’s elbow.
‘Yes, sir.’ Zaliha bobbed another curtsy and went straight about her business.
‘I was planning to explore a little,’ Chrissie protested in a perturbed undertone as Jaul urged her round a corner and up a stone staircase.
‘Later, perhaps. Right now I have something important to discuss with you,’ he proffered with unexpected gravity. ‘This wing of the palace is entirely ours and private,’ Jaul announced as they reached the second floor.
As he opened the door into a clearly newly furnished and decorated nursery, their nanny stepped forward and grinned with pleasure at her surroundings. Two young women hurried towards them to offer their assistance with the twins.
‘You and Jane will have to beat off helpers with a stick in the palace. It has been too many years since there were royal children below this roof,’ Jaul commented, entwining Chrissie’s fingers in his to guide her further down the wide corridor. She was relieved to see that contemporary furnishings featured in the large rooms she passed. Time might have stopped dead downstairs in what she deemed to be public rooms, but in Jaul’s part of the palace time had mercifully moved on.
He swung open a door into an elegant reception room furnished in fresh shades of smoky blue and cream and stood back for her to precede him. She slid past him, taut with curiosity while the scent of him flared her nostrils, clean warm male laced with an evocative hint of the spicy cologne that was so uniquely him it made her tummy flip like a silly schoolgirl. Her cheeks burnished with colour at the reflection, Chrissie moved away from him as he doffed his jacket and loosened his tie.
‘You said we had something to discuss,’ she prompted with determined cool.
‘My advisers have asked us to consider staging a traditional Marwani wedding to allow our people to celebrate our marriage with us,’ Jaul informed her, knocking Chrissie wildly off balance with that suggestion. ‘There would be a public holiday declared. The ceremony itself would be private...as is our way...but we would release photos of the occasion—’
‘You’re asking me to marry you a-again?’ Chrissie stammered in shock.
‘Yes. I suppose that is what I’m asking.’ Lustrous dark eyes flaring gold and then veiling below black curling lashes, Jaul levelled his gaze on her.
Her frown deepened. ‘You want us to remarry even though we’ve agreed only to stay together until you feel a divorce would be acceptable to your people?’
His stunning bone structure tightened, brilliant eyes narrowing. ‘I don’t want a divorce. I haven’t wanted a divorce from the moment I learned that we had two children.’
Shaken by his proposition, Chrissie sank down onto a sofa before steeling herself to say rather woodenly, ‘I don’t care about what you want. I only care about what you agreed. And you agreed that I could have a divorce if I wanted one.’
‘But our children need both of us. I grew up without a mother—she died the day I was born. Children need mothers and fathers. I want this to be a real marriage and not a pretence,’ he countered without apology.
Chrissie sprang out of her seat, revitalised by that admission. ‘So, you lied to me in London. You just said what you had to say to persuade me to return to Marwan with you but clearly you never had any intention of giving me a divorce.’
Jaul stood his ground, wide shoulders rigid, lean, powerful body tense as he watched her pace. ‘I did not lie. I merely hoped that you would eventually change your mind about wanting a divorce. Hoping is not a lie, nor is it a sin,’ he assured her drily.
A bitter little laugh erupted from Chrissie at that exercise in semantics. ‘But you’re way too good at fooling me, Jaul. You did it two years ago when I first married you and I trusted you then and we both know how that turned out. Doesn’t it occur to you that I could never want to stay with a husband I can’t trust? And that going through a second wedding ceremony would only make a mockery of my feelings of betrayal?’ she demanded emotively, struggling to rein back her agitated emotions. ‘After all, you still haven’t explained why you left me two years ago and never got in touch again...’
Jaul was frowning and he lifted an expressive hand to silence her. ‘Chrissie, listen to—’
‘No.’ Her luminous turquoise eyes were bright with challenge and she lifted her chin, daring Jaul to deny her the explanation she deserved. ‘No more evasions between us, no more unanswered questions,’ she spelt out tautly. ‘You have nothing left to lose and you can finally be honest. Two years ago in spite of all your claims of love and for ever, you broke up with me, you dumped me... It is what it is.’
‘But that isn’t what happened...’ In a gesture of growing frustration as the tension rose, Jaul raked long brown fingers through his luxuriant black hair. ‘And what is the point of discussing this so long after the event? I want a fresh start in the present—’
‘What happened back then is still very important to me,’ Chrissie stressed, determined not to back down. ‘I think you realised that our marriage was a mistake and you couldn’t face telling me that to my face—’
‘No, that wasn’t what happened,’ Jaul broke in with sudden biting harshness. ‘When I left you in Oxford I had every intention of coming back to you. My father had asked for my help and I couldn’t refuse it. A civil war had broken out in Dheya, the country on our eastern boundary, and thousands of refugees were pouring over the border. The camps were in chaos and I was needed to co-ordinate the humanitarian effort—’
‘For goodness’ sake, you didn’t even tell me that much two years ago!’ Chrissie complained, her resentment unconcealed. ‘Did you think that I was too much of an airhead to understand that that was your duty?’
‘No, I didn’t want you asking me how long I’d be away because when I flew out I really had no idea,’ Jaul admitted with wry honesty. ‘I travelled down to the border in a convoy filled with medical personnel and soldiers. A missile fired by one of the factions fighting in Dheya went astray and crossed the border into Marwan. Our convoy suffered a direct hit...’
Chrissie was so utterly shaken by that explanation that she collapsed back down onto the sofa , her legs weak and her heart suddenly thumping very hard inside her chest. ‘Are you telling me that you got...hurt?’
‘I was the lucky one.’ Jaul grimaced. ‘I survived while everyone with me was killed. I was thrown clear of the wreckage but I suffered serious head and spinal injuries and I was in a coma for months.’
In the early days of his vanishing act, Chrissie had feared that Jaul had met with an accident, only to discount that as virtual wishful thinking when time had worn on and there had still been no word from him. Nausea now shimmied sickly through her stomach and she felt almost light-headed at the shock of what he had just told her.
‘But nobody told me anything. Nobody even contacted me. Why did nobody tell me what had happened to you?’ she asked weakly, struggling to comprehend such an inexcusable omission.
‘Very few people knew. My father put a news blackout on my condition. He was afraid that my injuries would provoke a popular backlash against Dheya and the refugees. In reality what happened to me was a horrible accident and not an uncommon event on the edge of a war zone,’ he pointed out with a sardonic twist of his lips. ‘I was still in a coma when my father came to see you in Oxford—’
‘You were hurt, you needed me...and yet your father didn’t tell me!’ Chrissie registered with rising incredulity and anger. ‘Obviously he didn’t want me to know what had happened to you but I was your wife! I had every right to be with you.’
‘Don’t forget that my father didn’t accept that we were legally married. I had only informed him of our marriage the night before my trip to the camps and he was very angry with both of us.’
‘But you were still in a coma when he came to see me,’ she reminded him, her eyes darkening with disgust when she considered that aspect. ‘Your father actually took advantage of the fact that you were unconscious. How low can a man sink?’
Lean dark, startlingly handsome features grim, his dark eyes sparking gold at that challenge, Jaul breathed curtly, ‘He was trying to protect me, but I do not and never will condone his interference.’
‘Oh, that’s good to know!’ Chrissie countered with biting sarcasm. ‘He kept your wife away from you when you needed her—very protective, I don’t think!’
Jaul was tempted to remind her that his father had offered her money to walk away from their relationship and forget she had ever known him and that after that meeting with his father she had agreed to do exactly that. But now that he knew that she had been pregnant and had given birth to his children, he saw the past in a very different light. She would very much have needed that money to survive as a single parent and he could no longer condemn the choice she had made.
‘So, you were in a coma,’ Chrissie recounted stiffly, mastering her raging rancour over his father’s behaviour with the greatest of difficulty because she knew that insulting the older man would only cloud and confuse more important issues. ‘When did you come out of it?’
‘Only after three months when they had almost given up hope. I didn’t remember you at first. I didn’t remember much of anything,’ Jaul admitted heavily. ‘I’d had a serious head injury and I was in a very confused state of mind with only fragments of memory all jumbled up inside my head. My memories returned slowly. My father told me that he had seen you and given you the money. He also reiterated his belief that our marriage was invalid and informed me that you would not be coming to visit me.’
Chrissie had turned pale as white paper because rage was storming through her in an almost uncontrollable surge. Had she known that Jaul was in hospital, nothing would have kept her from his side! But while he had lain in that hospital bed, his father had manipulated the situation and played on her ignorance of the accident to destroy a marriage he had abhorred. How could even the most loving son deem that a ‘protective’ act? King Lut’s interference had been wicked, indefensible and cruelly selfish. The effort of restraining the hot temper and hostility mounting inside her made Chrissie feel sick.
‘I hate your father for what he did to us!’ she snapped back at Jaul in a small, tight explosion of raw emotion that could not be suppressed. ‘He intentionally wrecked our marriage and yet you still can’t find the words to condemn him. There you were...needing me and he made sure that I was put out of the picture. How can you forgive that?’
Jaul swung impatiently away from her, his fierce loyalty to his late father strained by her candour. ‘I must be honest with you. At that point in my recovery I didn’t want to see you either. I did initially intend to visit you when I was stronger but by the time I was fit to see you so much time had passed that it seemed like a pointless exercise,’ he divulged, tight-mouthed with restraint.
Inwardly Chrissie reeled as though he had struck her because that admission, that very dismissive terminology, was a body blow beyond her comprehension. ‘I don’t understand how you can say that it would have been pointless. How much time passed after the accident before you were fit to travel?’ she demanded, folding her arms defensively as if she could hold in the emotions still churning inside her. His self-command, his granite-hard hold on control maddened her.
‘It took well over a year for me even to get back on my feet again.’ His lean dark features were taut and pale with the strain of being forced to recall that traumatic period of his life. ‘My spine was damaged. It took further surgery and weeks of recovery before my doctors were able to estimate whether or not I could hope to walk again.’
In point of fact at a time when his whole world seemed to have fallen apart and he was confined to a hospital bed unable to move and requiring help for every little thing, Jaul had felt quite ridiculously unsurprised by the announcement that his new bride had run out on him as well. In truth he had been seriously depressed back then and traumatised by survivor’s guilt because military friends and bodyguards he had known since childhood had died instantaneously in the same accident.
In addition to his deeply troubled state of mind and his belief that his father had bought Chrissie’s loyalty off, he had been painfully aware that he and Chrissie had parted on very bad terms in Oxford. She’d been angry with him for leaving her behind. In so many ways back then Chrissie had been an idealistic dreamer and, while he had loved those traits so very different from his own, he had also seen them as a potential weakness should life ever become tough. What could be tougher for a youthful bride than a husband suddenly sentenced to a wheelchair? Ultimately, his conviction that their marriage was invalid as his father had asserted had played the biggest role in his lack of action. After all, if Chrissie wasn’t even his wife what possible claim could he have on her?
‘But surely by that stage you must’ve had access to a phone and to visitors and you could have contacted me yourself?’ Chrissie pressed accusingly.
Jaul’s broad shoulders went rigid, his jawline squaring at an aggressive slant. ‘I was in a wheelchair...what would I have said to you? I will be frank—I did not want to approach you as a disabled man. You had accepted a five-million-pound settlement from my father and I assumed that money was all you had ever really wanted from me.’
Chrissie was outraged that Jaul had believed that she had taken his father’s money and run. Without a doubt he had found that easier than confronting her with his disability and the risk that he might not regain the use of his legs. Jaul, the original action man and macho to the core, was very physical in his tastes. Deprived of his freedom of movement, forced to accept such bodily weakness and restriction, how must he have felt? But Chrissie suppressed that more empathetic thought and tried to concentrate purely on facts. Jaul, she realised with a sinking heart, had put his wretched pride first when he’d chosen not to approach her in a wheelchair and that truth hurt her more than anything else.
‘But I didn’t actually accept the money,’ she whispered almost absently, so deep was her sense of rejection that he had found it impossible to reach out to her even when he was injured.
‘You did.’
‘No, I didn’t. Your father left a bank draft for a ludicrous five million pounds on the table but I never cashed it.’
‘But you said you had plenty of money when I first saw you again and naturally I assumed—’
‘Only I wasn’t referring to your father’s bank draft,’ Chrissie cut in ruefully. ‘Cesare bought the Greek island which my sister and I had inherited from our mother. My share of the purchase price was very generous. I bought my apartment with some of it and put the rest into trust until my twenty-fifth birthday next year. That’s what I meant about having plenty of money. I didn’t touch a penny of your father’s cash. I left that bank draft lying on the table.’
Jaul was transfixed by that claim. His keen gaze lowered, ebony brows drawing together in a frown. Five million pounds had impressed even him as an enormous sum to offer as a bribe to a young woman from an impoverished background. People lied, cheated and killed for far less money than Chrissie had been given. That was the main reason why he had never questioned his father’s story but now he was determined to check out her story for himself. Could it be true that she had not claimed that money?
‘When did my father’s visit take place?’ Jaul asked abruptly.
‘About two months after you left and he was in a rage when I met him. You once told me he spoke English but he didn’t use any within my hearing. His companion had to translate everything he said.’
‘He had someone with him...aside of his bodyguards?’ Jaul shot the question at her in frowning surprise. ‘Describe him.’
‘Small, sixtyish, goatee beard and spectacles.’
Jaul fell very still as soon as he realised that there was a living witness to his father’s meeting with his wife. ‘My father’s adviser, Yusuf,’ he identified without hesitation, reflecting that Yusuf would be receiving a visit from him in the near future. Chrissie’s allegations demanded and deserved closer scrutiny. If she hadn’t taken the money, what had happened to it and why hadn’t he been told? Keeping him unaware of the fact that his wife hadn’t used the bank draft had ensured that he would misjudge her. It wasn’t a thought that Jaul wanted to have but he knew that his father must’ve been informed that that bank draft had not been cashed.
Slowly, Chrissie settled down onto the sofa again, letting the fierce tension leach out of her spine. Her brain felt dazed as though she had gone ten punishing rounds with a boxer. Shock at what she had learned from Jaul was still passing through her in waves. Her bitterness and antagonism had been wrenched from her while she’d listened to the true story of what had separated them two years earlier. Jaul had not ditched her. Jaul had not voluntarily or cruelly chosen to desert her. In fact he had planned to return to her and, had fate not intervened with that accident and the lies his father had told to both of them, Jaul would almost certainly have returned to her.
For a split second she allowed herself to think of how that might have been and she swallowed painfully, struggling to imagine how she would’ve felt if Jaul had come back to her and if he had been with her when she’d discovered that she was pregnant. She realised that she was picturing an entirely different and infinitely happier world and fierce regret filled her, backed by a terrible anguished sense of loss because she was beginning to suspect that Jaul had been as miserable as she was when they were first separated. How could his father have believed he had the right to inflict such suffering on them both?
Hot, burning tears lashed the backs of Chrissie’s eyes in an unsettling surge. She blinked rapidly, intense mortification threatening to engulf her because she only ever cried in the strictest privacy, a discipline learned the hard way after her life had fallen apart following Jaul’s vanishing act two years earlier. She snatched in a deep, audible breath and Jaul swung away from the window, suppressing his uneasy thoughts at the prospect of confronting Yusuf, his late father’s staunchest supporter.
Yusuf would not necessarily be discreet in the aftermath of such a discussion. It was a stark moment of choice for Jaul because he had to choose between his marriage and his respect for his father’s memory. But he knew that that respect was not an excuse to avoid discovering an unpalatable truth. Yet if Chrissie was telling the truth, it would be an appalling truth that he would never be able to live with, he reflected grimly before swiftly suppressing that unproductive thought. As he had been raised to do, he would do what he knew to be his duty and act with honour, regardless of what he found out.
‘Where’s the cloakroom?’ Chrissie asked thickly, dragging his attention back to her.
When he saw the sheen in her turquoise eyes and the dampness on her cheeks, he tensed and took a sudden step forward.
‘The first door at the top of the stairs but the bedroom en suites are closer,’ Jaul volunteered, winged ebony brows pleating. ‘You’re upset...you’re crying...’
Chrissie flew upright as though she were a puppet whose strings had been jerked without warning. ‘Of course I’m not crying!’ she protested huskily. ‘It’s stupid, it’s just all this stuff about the past...it’s confusing me.’
‘I’m sorry,’ Jaul breathed in a ragged undertone as he closed his arms round her slight, trembling figure to hold her still. ‘I knew that telling you about the accident would rake it all up again, which was why I was so reluctant—’
‘But I had to know the truth,’ Chrissie told him, lifting her chin, an action that did nothing to hide the wet lustre of her eyes.
A tiny muscle pulled taut at the corner of his unsmiling mouth, his beautiful eyes flaring brilliant gold as he scored his knuckles lightly down the side of her face in a soothing gesture. ‘I hurt you.’
Chrissie looked up at him and marvelled at how stunning he was even with his blue-black hair a little messy and his strong jawline stubbled. His black lashes were luxuriant above eyes of stormy gold. Wicked anticipation slid through her to create the kind of sudden tension that made her suck in her breath. As she connected with his burnished gaze a pulse was hammering like crazy above her collarbone. She wanted him to touch her so badly that her fingernails bit into her palms as her hands fisted. He was all lean muscle and potent strength as he eased her closer and her body thrummed, her blood racing like liquid lava through her veins. His warm, demanding mouth swooped down on hers and hot, blistering pleasure shot through her with the force of a lightning bolt.
Jaul lifted her up into his arms and carried her into the bedroom next door. As he settled her down on the bed her fingers feathered through his hair and instinctively closed into the silky black strands to hold him to her. ‘Kiss me,’ she told him, desperately needing to think of something...anything other than the reality that Jaul had almost died two years earlier. Had he died she would never have seen him again, never had the chance to hold him close and never had the joy of seeing him proudly hold his son in his arms.
