Читать книгу Modern Romance February 2020 Books 1-4 - Линн Грэхем, Louise Fuller - Страница 13

WILLOW SAT ON the side of the bath and waited for the wand to give her a result while Shelley sidled round the door, too impatient to wait outside. ‘Well?’ she pressed excitedly.

‘Another thirty seconds,’ Willow muttered wearily.

‘I love babies.’ Shelley sighed dreamily.

‘So do I… I just thought it would be years before I had one. And maybe it will be,’ Willow contended, trying not to be too pessimistic.

After all, skipping a period wasn’t always a sign of pregnancy even in a woman with a regular cycle. But then there was also the soreness of her breasts, the occasional light-headed sensation and her sudden sensitivity to smells and tastes that had never bothered her before. Yet Willow still couldn’t credit that an unplanned pregnancy could happen to her. Surely Jai had used condoms? She hadn’t thought to check or ask him, had simply not even considered the danger of conception, which had been exceedingly foolish when it was she who would fall pregnant if anything went amiss. Maybe a condom had failed, maybe during the night he had forgotten to use one, maybe she was just one of the unfortunate few who conceived regardless of the contraception used.

‘Congratulations!’ Shelley carolled irrepressibly and grabbed her into an enthusiastic hug. ‘You’re pregnant.’

Willow paled. ‘Are you sure?’ she gasped, peering down at the wand for herself, and there it was: the line for a positive result.

‘You’ll have to go to the doctor ASAP,’ Shelley warned her. ‘I mean…you must be at least eight weeks along now and you should be taking vitamins and stuff.’

In no hurry to approach a doctor for confirmation, Willow wandered back out to the very comfortable sofa she slept on and sank heavily down. Pregnant! Just when her life was slowly beginning to settle again into a new routine, fate had thrown her onto a roller coaster of a ride that would destroy all her self-improvement plans. Of course, there were options other than keeping the baby to raise, she reminded herself doggedly, even while she knew that neither termination nor adoption had any appeal for her.

But how on earth would she manage? Currently she was waitressing in the bar that Shelley managed. The tips were good, particularly at weekends, and in another couple of months she would have saved up enough for a deposit for a little place of her own. After making that move, she had planned to polish up her CV and start trying to find work in the landscaping field that would pay enough for her to live on. She had her qualification now and even the most junior position would be a good start to a decent career and perhaps, ultimately, her own business. Throw a baby into the midst of those plans, however, and it blew them all to smithereens!

And yet the prospect of having Jai’s baby was already beginning to warm her at some deep level, although she felt guilty about feeling that way. He mightn’t have wanted her, but he couldn’t prevent her from having his child and she did love babies, and the thought of one of her own pleased and frightened her in equal parts. She didn’t have a single relative left alive, but her baby could be the foundation of a new family, she reflected lovingly.

She had lain awake on the sofa many nights reliving that night with Jai, wishing she didn’t feel like such an immature idiot for having slept with him in the first place and wishing that she didn’t miss him now that he was gone again. She wasn’t kidding herself that she was in love with him or anything like that, but she could not deny that Jai, the Maharaja of Chandrapur, had always fascinated her and that he had attracted her more powerfully than anyone else ever had. Those were the facts and she tried not to dress them up. She felt that she should’ve called a halt to their intimacy, but she hadn’t and the coolness of his departure had been her punishment. He had hurt her, but she tried not to dwell on those wounded feelings because what would be the point in indulging herself in such sad thoughts?

‘I’ll help you every step of the way,’ Shelley told her, sitting down beside her to grip her hand comfortingly. ‘We’ll get through it together…and at least you won’t have to worry about money, not with the father being rich.’

‘I’m not going to tell Jai!’ Willow exclaimed in dismay. ‘He didn’t want me so he’s even less likely to want a baby with me!’

‘It takes two to tango.’

‘And one to have common sense, and neither of us had any that night.’ Willow sighed and then groaned out loud. ‘Why should I make him suffer too? It would be so humiliating as well. I can’t face that on top of everything else.’

Shelley’s freckled face and bright blue eyes were troubled below her mop of brown curls. ‘Well, then, what are you planning to do?’

‘I don’t want to tell Jai… To be frank, I don’t want anything more to do with him,’ Willow admitted unhappily. ‘I’ll work this out without bothering him for help. Somehow I’ll work it out even if it means living on welfare benefits to survive.’

Two weeks later, while Willow was at work, Shelley had to deal with the surprise of Jai himself turning up on the doorstep asking after Willow because he hadn’t heard from her. Aware that her friend wanted no further contact with him, Shelley lied and said that Willow had moved out and hadn’t yet sent her a forwarding address. Jai left his mobile number with her.

Thirteen months later, the private investigation agency Jai had hired to find Willow finally tracked her down and, in the midst of his working day in his London office, Jai immediately settled down with a sense of urgency to flick open the ominously slim file.

The first fact he learned was that the investigation team had only contrived to find Willow by covertly watching and following her friend, Shelley. Jai was disconcerted to learn that Willow’s friend had lied to him when he had only had Willow’s best interests in mind. He would have been satisfied with the assurance that she was safe and well. He assumed that Willow had confided in her friend and it was conceivable that that night he had spent with her had muddied the water in her friend’s eyes and made his motivations seem more questionable, he conceded grudgingly.

After all, what could Willow possibly have to hide from him? Why would she get lost and neglect to get in touch with him when he had been so specific on that point? Had he offended her to such an extent?

He knew he had not been tactful. He had been too outspoken. He had embarrassed her, hurt her, he recalled unhappily. But he had been very shocked to realise that he had taken advantage of her innocence and his self-loathing on that score had still to fade, as had his recollections of that night. It seemed even worse to him that the memories of her still remained so fresh. Averse as he now was to any kind of casual encounter, he had not been with a woman since then. He had broken his own code of honour unforgettably with Willow and had buried himself in work while struggling to come to terms with that depressing truth.

Her disappearance and continuing silence had seriously worried him and had only made him even more determined to locate her.

The bald facts of what came next in the file shook Jai to his essentially conservative core and he was instantly grateful that he had refused to give up on his search for her because she was in trouble. Willow had had a child and was now living in a hostel for the homeless, waiting for the local council to find her more suitable accommodation. A child? How was that possible in so short a time frame? Had she turned to some other man for comfort after he had left her? He focussed back on the printed page and his blood ran cold in his veins when he saw the birthdate of the child and then, startlingly, his own middle name… Hari.

Far across London, Willow knelt on the floorboards while Hari sat on his little blanket and mouthed the plastic ball he was playing with. Everything went into his mouth and she had to watch him like a hawk. He was almost seven months old and, although he couldn’t yet crawl, he had discovered that he could get around very nicely just by rolling over and over so that he could get his little chubby hands on anything that attracted his attention. And everything attracted Hari’s attention, which meant that she needed eyes in the back of her head to keep him safe.

She had not known that it was possible to love anyone as much as she loved Hari. Her love for the father she had continually failed to please paled in comparison. From the moment Hari had arrived he had become her world and she was painfully conscious that as a mother she had nothing to offer in material terms. Sadly, moving into the hostel had been a necessity to get on the housing list. Shelley hadn’t wanted them to move out of her apartment but staying any longer hadn’t been an option in the chaos that she and Hari had brought to her friend’s life. So she might be, for the moment, a less than stellar mother to her son, but in time she would get better and provide him with a decent home where their life would improve.

The knock that sounded on the door made her jump and she peered through the peephole to identify another resident, the woman from the room next to hers, before she undid the lock.

‘Reception asked me to tell you that you have a visitor waiting down in the basement,’ the woman told her.

Willow suppressed a sigh and bundled Hari, his blanket and a couple of toys up into her arms. Visitors weren’t allowed to enter the rooms in the hostel, but the basement was available for necessary meetings with housing officials, social workers and counsellors. Willow hadn’t been expecting anyone, but the number of people now involved in checking up on her and Hari and asking her to fill in forms seemed never-ending.

My goodness, maybe somewhere had finally been found for her and Hari to live, she thought optimistically as she walked down the steps to the basement to enter a large grey-painted room furnished mainly with small tables and chairs, few of which were occupied. She hovered in the doorway and then froze when she saw Jai standing by the barred window that overlooked a dark alleyway.

Jai looked so incredibly out of place against such a backdrop that she could not quite believe her eyes and she blinked rapidly. Clad in a black pinstriped suit teamed with a white shirt and gold tie, he looked incredibly intimidating. But he also looked impossibly exclusive and gorgeous with that suit sharply tailored to a perfect fit over his tall, powerful frame. The stark lighting above, which flattered no one, somehow still contrived to flatter Jai, enhancing the golden glow of his skin and the blue-black luxuriance of his hair and accentuating the proud sculpted lines and hollows of his superb bone structure. He was stunning as he stood there, absolutely stunning, his light eyes glittering in his lean, strong face, and she swallowed convulsively, wondering how he had found her, what he wanted with her and how on earth she could possibly hide Hari from him when she was holding him in her arms.

Jai noticed Willow at almost the same moment, lodged across the room, a tiny frail figure dressed in jeans and an oversized sweater, against which she held a child. And he stared at the child in her arms with helpless intensity and, even at that distance, he recognised his son in the baby’s olive-toned skin and black hair. His son… Jai could not work out how that was possible unless Willow had lied to him about it being safe for them to make love without him taking additional precautions. But just at that moment the how seemed less significant than the overpowering and breathtaking sense of recognition that gripped him when he glimpsed his infant son for the first time.

Willow walked towards him and he strode forward to greet her, noticing that she was struggling to carry the child along with the other things she held. Without hesitation, Jai extended his hands and lifted the baby right out of her arms.

Hari chortled and smiled up at him. Evidently, he was a happy baby, who delighted in new faces. Jai looked into eyes as pale a blue as his own, his sole inheritance from his British mother, and knew then without a shadow of doubt that, hard as he found it to credit, this child had to be his son, his child, his responsibility. He moved away again, and Willow hovered, feeling entirely surplus to requirements, until one of the four bodyguards seated at a nearby table surged forward to pull out chairs at another table and Jai took a seat with Hari carefully cradled in his arms.

Willow dropped into the seat beside Jai’s and Hari grinned at her while he tugged at Jai’s tie. ‘How did you find me?’ she whispered.

‘A private detective agency. They’ve been trying to trace you for months,’ Jai imparted, his wide, sensual mouth compressing at that unfortunate fact. ‘I only wish I’d found you sooner.’

‘I can’t imagine why you’ve been trying to find me,’ she confided.

‘But isn’t it fortunate that I did?’ Jai traded smoothly as he stroked a gentle finger through the spill of Hari’s black hair. ‘You must realise that you cannot stay in such a place with my son.’

Paper pale at that quiet declaration, Willow gazed back at him. ‘Your…son?’ she almost whispered, shaken by the certainty with which he made that claim.

‘He is my image. Who else’s son could he be?’ Jai parried very drily as if daring her to disagree or throw doubt on the question of his child’s parentage. ‘And as this is not somewhere that we can talk freely, I would like you to go back to your room right now and pack up all your belongings to leave.’

‘I can’t do that. I’m here waiting to get a place on a council housing list and if I leave, I’ll lose my place in the queue,’ she protested in a low intent voice.

Jai settled Hari more securely on his lap. ‘Either you do as I ask…or I will seek an emergency court order to take immediate custody of Hari as he is at risk in such an environment. That is unacceptable. Be warned that I hold diplomatic status in the UK and the authorities will act quickly on my behalf if I lodge a complaint on behalf of my heir. The usual laws do not apply to diplomats.’

In sheer shock at that menacing information, Willow went rigid, her blood chilling in her veins. ‘You’re threatening me with…legal action?’ she gasped in astonishment, barely able to believe her ears. ‘Already?’

Jai sent her an inhumanly cool and calm appraisal, the dark strength of his resolve palpable. ‘I will do what I must to put right what you have got wrong…’

Stabbed to the heart by that spontaneously offered opinion, Willow bent her head. No judgement here, she thought sarcastically, but she was so deep in shock that Jai would actually threaten her with losing custody of her child that she didn’t even know what to say back to him. She didn’t want to take the risk of being too frank, didn’t want to row in public, didn’t want to make a bad situation worse by speaking without careful forethought. She sensed that the Jai she had thought she knew to some degree was not the Jai she was currently dealing with. This was Jai being ruthless and calculating and brutally confrontational, which, logic warned her, had to be qualities he had acquired to rise so high and so fast in the business world. Unluckily for her, it was not a side of him she had seen before or had had to deal with.

‘We will not argue here in a public place,’ Jai informed her in the same very polite tone. ‘We will both ensure that the needs of our child remain our first consideration.’

‘Of course, but—’

‘No, there will be no qualification of that statement,’ Jai interposed levelly. ‘Now, please pack so that we can leave this place behind us.’

Willow leapt upright and reached down for Hari.

‘I will look after him while you pack,’ Jai spelt out as he too stood up, towering over her in her flat heels with Hari still clasped in his arms.

‘You could walk away with him while I’m upstairs,’ Willow pointed out shakily, not an ounce of colour in her taut face as she looked up at him fearfully.

‘I give you my word of honour that I will not do that. You are his mother and my son needs his mother,’ Jai murmured soft and low, the hardness of his expression softening a little. ‘Although I grew up without mine, it would never be my choice to put my son in the same position.’

Willow backed off a step, still uncertain of what she should do. ‘If I pack, where are you taking us to? A hotel?’

‘Of course not. To my home here in London,’ Jai proffered as Hari tugged cheerfully at his hair. ‘I have already had rooms prepared for your arrival.’

‘You took a lot for granted,’ Willow remarked helplessly.

‘In this situation, I can afford to do so,’ Jai told her without remorse.

And with that ringing indictment of her ability to raise their child alone, Willow headed upstairs. There wasn’t much for her to pack. She gathered up Hari’s bottles and solid food and put them into the baby bag Shelley had bought her. She settled the bin bags filled with their clothing and Hari’s toys into the battered stroller, donned her duffle coat and wheeled the stroller to the top of the stairs before stooping to lift it and battle to carry it downstairs. Halfway down the second flight one of Jai’s bodyguards met her and lifted it out of her arms.

‘Is that the lot?’ Jai asked, turning from the reception desk, Hari tucked comfortably under one arm.

‘Yes. I left stuff with Shelley.’

‘There’s a form for you to fill in. I put in the forwarding address,’ Jai advanced.

Willow was surprised that there was only one form because before she had even moved into the hostel, she’d had to fill out a thirty-page document. She signed her name at the foot, briefly scanning the address Jai had filled in, raising a brow at the exclusivity of the area. Mayfair, no less. Five minutes later, she was climbing into a limousine for the first time in her life, breathless at the unknown ahead of her.

Jai strapped Hari into the car seat awaiting him.

‘When did you learn to be so comfortable around babies?’ Willow asked tautly.

‘There are many children in my extended family. High days and holidays, they visit,’ Jai told her. ‘I was a lonely only child. Hari will never suffer from a lack of company.’

On her smoothly upholstered leather seat, Willow tensed, registering that Jai was already talking about her son visiting India. She supposed that was natural, and an expectation he would obviously have. Even so the prospect of her baby boy being so far away from her totally unnerved her, and she couldn’t help feeling overwhelmed, most especially when Jai had already threatened her with legal action.

‘Now for the question that taxes my patience the most,’ Jai breathed, his nostrils flaring with annoyance, his light eyes throwing a laser-bright challenge. ‘Why would you move into a homeless shelter rather than ask me for help?’

Willow froze. ‘There’s nothing wrong with living in a homeless shelter. They’re there for when people are desperate.’

‘But you weren’t desperate, not really. You could’ve turned to me at any time. And don’t try to misinterpret my question. I probably know a great deal more than you about the individuals who use such shelters. Some are those who have fallen on hard times through no fault of their own, others have mental health issues or are drug addicts or ex-cons. None of those elements make a homeless shelter safe or acceptable for a child,’ Jai completed harshly.

‘Nonetheless there are quite a few children living in them!’ Willow shot back at him stubbornly.

‘Why didn’t you contact me?’ Jai demanded, out of all patience with her reluctance to answer his original question. He had been denied all knowledge of his son for more than six months and that enraged him, but he was grimly aware that this was not the right time to reveal his deep anger, particularly not if he wanted her to tell him the truth.

Willow swallowed convulsively. ‘I didn’t think you’d want to know. It was my problem. He’s my child.’ She hesitated. ‘When I was pregnant, I was afraid that you would want me to have a termination and I didn’t want to be put in that position. I didn’t want to feel guilty for wanting to have my own child. It was easier to get on with it on my own and I managed fine while I was pregnant and still able to work.’

‘I would never have asked you to have a termination. Hari is my child too,’ Jai retorted crisply. ‘I would have ensured that you had somewhere decent to live and I would have supported you.’

Willow sighed. ‘Well, it’s too late now to be arguing about it.’

Jai’s eyes flashed at that assurance and he struggled to repress his anger, because her misplaced pride and lack of faith in him had ensured that his son had endured living conditions that were far less than his due.

‘So, how did you manage to conceive when you told me it would be safe for us to have sex?’ he asked next, battening down his volatile responses to concentrate on the basic facts.

Willow could feel her whole face heating up and she glanced across at Jai with noticeable reluctance. Safe to have sex? That was what he had meant that night? She shook her head slowly as clarity spilled through her brain and she squirmed in retrospect over her own stupidity. ‘I misunderstood. When you asked if it was safe, I assumed that you were asking if we would be interrupted…if I was expecting anyone,’ she admitted stiffly, her cheeks only burning more fierily at the look of incredulity that flared in his ice-blue eyes. ‘I’m sorry. I wasn’t thinking about contraception. That danger honestly didn’t cross my mind.’

And the whole mystery of how she had become pregnant was clarified there and then, Jai conceded in a kind of wonderment. She had misunderstood him, and he had been too hot for her to reflect on the risk that he had never taken with any other woman. They had had unprotected sex several times because the young woman he had slept with had still had the mentality of a guilty, self-conscious teenager, determined to hide her sex life from the critical grown-ups. He supposed then that he had got exactly what he deserved for not considering questioning the level of her sexual experience.

Or was he being very naive in accepting that explanation? Was it, indeed, possible that Willow had wanted to become pregnant by a rich man? A rich man and a baby by him could secure a woman’s comfort for a comfortable twenty years. In one calculating move, such a pregnancy would have solved all Willow’s financial problems. And not contacting him and keeping him out of the picture until the child was safely born could well have been part of the same gold-digging scheme to set him up and profit from her fertility in the future.

Jai frowned, ice-blue eyes, enhanced by velvety black lashes, turning glacier cool as he surveyed her. She looked tired and tense and hadn’t made any effort to do herself up for his benefit, but then, why would she bother when she was now the mother of his son and already in an unassailable position in his life?

At the same time, he had made the first move that night after the funeral, at least, he thought he had. In truth, all he recalled was the heady taste of her lips, not how he had arrived at that point. The pulse at his groin kicked up a storm at that recollection, reminding him that he was still hungry for her. His jaw clenched. He would soon find out if she was mercenary and, really, it didn’t matter a damn, did it? After all, whatever she was, whoever she turned out to be, he had to marry her for his son’s sake…