Читать книгу Modern Romance February 2020 Books 1-4 - Линн Грэхем, Louise Fuller - Страница 17

A WEEK AFTER Jai reached that decision, and unhappily warding off her low spirits as a result of that decision, Willow was dealing with the post her social secretary had gathered for her to peruse.

Yes, she was tickled pink by the idea that she could possibly require a social secretary. Only after she had seen the pile of invitations, congratulatory letters and wedding gifts in Samaira’s small office had she realised that she had been ridiculously naive not to appreciate that Jai’s position with an international charity foundation, his local role as a former ruler and his recent marriage would not also make demands on her.

‘And there was this,’ the tiny, beautiful Samaira finally declared, sliding a sheet of paper across the desk and rising at the same time to leave the library. ‘It’s an email that arrived on the Maharaja’s historical website and I was given it by his PA, Mitul. He took the liberty of printing it out, which I hope was correct,’ she added hopefully. ‘We felt that the enquiry was for you and best given to you.’

Surprised by that seemingly unnecessarily detailed explanation, Willow frowned and glanced down at the paper, looking first at the signature. Milly St John, a name that meant nothing whatsoever to her. She studied the couple of lines in the message before comprehension gripped her with sudden dismay.

As you have recently married my son and are the mother of my grandson, I would be very grateful if you would agree to meet with me alone and in private at my hotel in Chandrapur on the seventeenth.’

Willow paled, because it was an extraordinary request from a woman that Jai would not even discuss. It was also a hot potato that had passed quickly from hand to hand, the staff probably striving to work out the best way to deal with it since Jai’s aversion to anything relating to his mother was clearly well known. And Samaira was right, it was an invitation for Willow but undoubtedly not one of which Jai would approve.

‘Thank you,’ Willow said quietly, keen not to embellish the staff grapevine by commenting on an email that had very probably already caused a wave of gossip and speculation.

And while she was pondering that problem and what to do about it, she too left the library and wandered down to the far end of the palace in the direction of the suite of offices that had been neatly tailored from what had once been staff quarters. There she hesitated, uncertain that she even wanted to raise such a prickly topic, for in recent days Jai had become progressively more elusive. Yes, she had accepted that he would have to return to work, but she had not appreciated quite how much business would occupy his time. He usually joined her for dinner but rarely for breakfast or lunch, invariably rising before her and retiring after she had. She was relieved, however, that in spite of that relentless schedule he had still made time for their son, even if any notion of making time for her seemed to have died a total death after that first glorious week together.

Willow understood, however, that he was very busy, and she wasn’t the clingy type. She didn’t need him to fill the daylight hours when she had Hari to occupy her, a beautiful garden and an entire library of books, but she couldn’t help thinking that Jai was treating her rather like a new and shiny novelty whose initial lustre had quickly worn off and ended up boring him instead. On that note, she turned her steps in another direction and decided to ask him what she felt she needed to ask him over dinner instead.

Later, Jai strolled out to the big domed terrace that was shaded throughout the day and cool. Willow sipped her wine and savoured his long-legged grace and sheer bronzed beauty with his black-lashed arctic-blue eyes glittering. A little quiver ran through her slender length, her breasts peaking almost painfully below the bodice of the sundress she wore, a clenching sensation tightening deep in her pelvis so that colour flared up in her cheeks. ‘Hello, stranger,’ she heard herself say even though she had not intended to make any comment on his recent inaccessibility.

Jai lifted a black brow in query, as if that greeting had totally taken him aback.

‘I haven’t seen you since I woke to see you walking out of our bedroom yesterday morning,’ Willow pointed out, watching the faint rise of colour that scored his exotic cheekbones with curiosity. ‘Hey, I’m not complaining. I’m just pointing it out.’

Disconcerted by that statement, Jai breathed. ‘Has it really been that long? I’m sorry but I had to attend a board meeting for the foundation last night. It ran late and I didn’t want to disturb you, so I used another room.’

‘I think you need to learn to delegate more,’ Willow responded with determined lightness. ‘It’s not healthy for anyone to be working twenty-four-seven.’

Jai gritted his teeth, belatedly recognising in that moment that he had gone to quite absurd lengths to avoid his wife for the sin of attracting him too strongly. He dimly wondered if there was a streak of insanity somewhere in his family genes. What had seemed like such a good idea a week earlier had now blurred and become questionable. In the midst of scanning her tiny slender figure in a sunflower-yellow dress, which accentuated the strawberry-blond waves curling round her piquant face and framed her catlike green eyes, he reckoned that no normal man would have behaved as he had done: resisting his beautiful wife’s allure as though she were both toxic and dangerous.

He could only assume that the literal act of getting married had afflicted him with some very weird and deferred form of cold feet. All to prove some kind of point to himself? That he was in control? And able to wreck his marriage before it even got off the ground? He breathed in deeply, recognising in bewilderment that his usual rational outlook inexplicably seemed to always send him in the wrong direction with Willow.

‘Even with the party scheduled, next week won’t be half as frantic for me,’ Jai assured her hurriedly as Ranjit poured the wine and retreated.

‘Good,’ Willow replied with a smile that lit up her face like sunshine. ‘But the party event has also given me some questions I feel I have to ask you about your background.’

Jai tensed. ‘My…background?’

‘I feel awkward about asking but I feel I should know the basic facts, because I will be mixing with your relatives, who presumably already know those facts, and I don’t want to trip up in my ignorance and say anything that sounds stupid,’ Willow outlined, trotting out the excuse she had prepared and reddening hotly because simply telling him the truth would have come much more naturally to her.

Yet in her heart of hearts she had already guessed that Jai would absolutely forbid her to have anything to do with his mother, but Lady Milly was her mother-in-law and Hari’s grandmother and, although she was a stranger, Willow still felt that she surely ought to have the right to form her own opinion.

‘Facts about what?’ Jai prompted.

‘About why your parents broke up, about why your mother left you behind,’ she murmured tightly, guilt still jolting through her in waves.

‘My mother is the daughter of an English duke, which is still virtually all I know about her. The marriage didn’t last long and ended in divorce…’ Jai compressed his sensual mouth into a flat bitter line ‘…because apparently she believed that her alliance with an Indian and the birth of a mixed-race child were adversely affecting her social status.’

‘That’s weird… I mean, if she believed that why would she have married your father in the first place?’ Willow pressed with a furrowed brow.

‘I have never had a conversation with her, consequently I don’t know,’ Jai admitted flatly.

‘You’ve never even met her?’ Willow exclaimed in disbelief.

‘I don’t think you could call it a meeting… I did run into her once quite unexpectedly at a public event and she pretty much cut me dead. Her second husband and children were with her,’ Jai explained, and his strong bone structure might have been formed with steel beneath his olive skin, his forbidding cast of features as revealing of his feelings on that occasion as the ice in his gaze.

‘That was unforgivable,’ Willow conceded, shocked and unhappy on his behalf.

Jai frowned. ‘Of course, she did attempt to come back from that very low point. Shortly afterwards, she came to my London home in an attempt to see me, but I had her turned away. In fact, there were several attempts, but I have no desire to either see or speak to her. She sent letters as well, which I returned unopened. At this stage in my life and with my father dead, I see no reason to waste time on her.’

Willow, however, saw with great clarity that Jai had been cruelly hurt by his mother’s twin rejections and that, no matter what he said in that measured and cool voice of his, he was still scarred by the damage his mother’s abandonment had inflicted. And so stubborn too, so set in his views that he had completely rejected the olive branch and the explanations that the woman had tried to offer. Of course, in such circumstances that was his right, she accepted ruefully, resolving in that moment not to interfere on behalf of a woman who, it seemed, was a most undeserving cause. She herself would sooner have cut off her arm than walk away from Hari.

‘I’m sorry I asked,’ she told him truthfully. ‘I can’t blame you for feeling the way you do about her.’

And she decided not to mention the personal approach that had been made to her by his mother, which would undoubtedly only annoy Jai and where was the point in that? It would be yet another wounding reminder of the wretched woman that he didn’t need. No, she would stay safely uninvolved in a matter that was none of her business and ignore that email.

Jai strolled round the courtyard garden with her after dinner, but Willow was quiet and withdrawn in receipt of that unexpected attention. After all, she really didn’t know where she stood with Jai any more. Her first week with him had been magical and then he had virtually vanished, and with that vanishing act all her insecurities had been revived. Why would he want to spend time with her when he had never really wanted to marry her in the first place? How could she feel neglected when she had known beforehand that she was entering a marriage without love? How could she even complain?

‘I screwed up this week,’ Jai declared, in a driven undertone.

In silence, Willow shrugged a stiff shoulder and hovered below the ancient banyan tree in the centre of the garden, which sheltered a sacred shrine much revered by the staff. ‘I didn’t complain about anything,’ she reminded him with pride, studying him with clear green eyes.

Her problem, though, was that Jai was gorgeous, in whatever light and in whatever clothing. Nothing detracted from his sheer magnificence: the luxuriant black hair, the chiselled cheekbones and flawless skin, the stunning ice-blue eyes and the dramatic lashes that surrounded them, and he had an equally beautiful body, she allowed, her face warming at that unarguable acknowledgement. Unfortunately for her, on every physical plane, Jai drew her like a magnet. One certain look, one smile and she was all over him like a stupid rash and that both infuriated her and made her feel weak and foolish. After the week she had endured of being ignored in and out of bed, she knew that in reality she meant very little to Jai and it felt degrading to still be attracted to a man who could simply switch off and forget her very existence.

The real source of Willow’s frustration, however, was, undeniably, that she had no idea what was going on inside his head. She was beginning to wonder if it was possible that, aside of sex, Jai hadn’t a clue how to behave in the sort of relationship that a marriage required. The first week with him had been heavenly and she had been so happy with him that she had practically floated, but the past week of being ignored had been a sobering wake-up call that hurt her self-esteem. One minute she had seemed as necessary to him as the air he needed to breathe, the next she had become the invisible woman.

‘I will spend more time with you from now on,’ Jai intoned with deadly seriousness.

Willow paled and walked on down the path. ‘Don’t push yourself,’ she heard herself say curtly, the colour of embarrassment stinging her cheeks.

‘It’s not like that,’ Jai assured her levelly, lifting a long-fingered brown hand to rest on her shoulder with an intimacy she resented because it reminded her too much of those carnal, expert hands sliding over her body.

‘Well, going by the past week, it is like that,’ Willow replied, squaring her slight shoulders and stepping away to break that physical connection. ‘You don’t know what you want from me…apart from the obvious…sex,’ she condemned between gritted teeth. ‘And this past week, not even that. You married me and I don’t think you know what to do with me now that you’ve got what you said you wanted!’

Evidently stunned by that disconcerting burst of frankness, Jai briefly froze, his darkly handsome features taut.

‘Goodnight, Jai,’ Willow murmured quietly and walked back indoors, for once proud of herself for not succumbing to the sexual infatuation that had entrapped her into something that felt disturbingly like an obsession.

Why was she feeling like that? Even not seeing Jai hurt, never mind not being touched by him or talking to him. Somehow, he had sparked off a hunger inside her that tugged at her through every hour of the day and she resented him for reducing her to that needy level. He should’ve started their marriage on cooler, more detached terms if that was how he intended it to be. Instead he had given her deceptive false messages and had shaken her up from the inside out.

Well, she was not some pushover for him to lift and literally lay whenever he fancied, she was strong, independent and nobody’s fool, she reminded herself doggedly. She might not have been her father or Jai’s intellectual equal, but had always been shrewd when it came to people and the often confusing difference between what they said and what they actually did. She knew how to look after herself even if she had once been foolish enough to succumb to a one-night stand with Jai.

Tense from that encounter in the garden, she went upstairs to look in on Hari as he slept, safe and smiling in the baby equivalent of the Land of Nod, probably dreaming of being rocked in a silver swing by devoted handmaidens while being fed ambrosia. If only life were so simple for her, she thought wryly. Lifting her head high, she scolded herself for that downbeat thought. She had Hari and life was very good for him. She had health and security too. There was no excuse for feeling that her life lacked anything. In that mood, she scooped up silk pyjamas from her cavernous collection of lingerie and went for a bath.

She was lying back on her padded bath pillow engaged in aggressively counting the many blessings she had to be grateful for when, with a slight knock and only a momentary hesitation, the door opened to frame Jai on the threshold, tall and lean, dark and hazardous, pale eyes glittering like stars framed by black velvet. Willow jerked up in surprise and hugged her knees with defensive hands, feeling invaded. ‘I didn’t ask you to come in.’

Jai tilted his dark head back, a dangerous glint in his bright gaze. ‘What makes you think I need permission to speak to my wife?’

Willow lifted a pale brow. ‘Courtesy?’

Jai closed the door and sank down on the edge of the bath, deliberately entering her safe space. ‘Courtesy won’t get us anywhere we want to travel right now.’

Willow lifted her chin. ‘Then get out of here…now!’ she challenged.

Disturbingly, Jai laughed and trailed a forefinger through the rose petals swirling round her knees. ‘I don’t think so. I am where I want to be. If you can be direct, so can I. I want you.’

At the sound of that declaration the blood drummed up through Willow’s body like an adrenalin boost. ‘Since…when?’ she mocked.

‘I can’t switch it off. With you, it’s a primal and very basic urge and it hurts to deny it.’ Jai’s fingertip glided up out of the water to slowly stroke the soft underside of her full lower lip and her heart hammered at an insane rate.

‘So, why did you?’ she whispered unevenly.

‘I thought I should. I don’t know why. I don’t like feeling out of control,’ Jai admitted thickly, his mesmeric gaze holding hers with sheer force of will. ‘And you often make me feel out of control…’

And a huge wave of heat that had nothing to do with the temperature of the water shot up through Willow. Her brain was blurring as though it had been enveloped in fog. She could feel her own heart thrumming inside her chest, the tautness of her pointed nipples, the pool of liquefying warmth at her core, but she couldn’t think straight and when he angled his mouth down to hers, her mouth opened, only anticipation guiding her. His mouth on hers was like paraffin thrown on a bonfire, shooting multicoloured sparks of heat through every fibre, and only a slight gasp escaped her throat when he lifted her, dripping, out of the water and melded his lips to hers again with all the urgency she had dreamt of.

‘I’m soaking wet! This wasn’t supposed to happ—’ she began, common sense struggling to get a look-in as he laid her down on the bed and arranged her like some ancient sacrifice on an altar.

‘Shush, soniyaa,’ Jai breathed hungrily against her mouth and she was vaguely aware of him peeling off his clothes in the midst of kissing her, but she was too connected to the sheer power surge of his urgency to make even the smallest complaint.

He ran his palms slowly down over her smooth body as if reacquainting himself with her slender contours and she shivered, every skin cell primed for more, her breath trapped in her throat as if breathing might prevent the excitement already licking through her. He slid down the length of her, all lithe bronzed grace and tenacity, his skin hot where it brushed hers, his bold arousal brushing her stomach, filling her with heat and the kind of wanting that burned. He tipped her thighs back, settled his lips to the most sensitive part of her quivering body and slowly, surely, with his mouth and his wickedly knowing fingers, proceeded to drive her out of her mind with throbbing waves of pleasure. She squirmed and then she writhed, unable to stay in control and flying involuntarily into an intense climax, with his name breaking from her tongue and then the taste of herself on her lips as he kissed her with ferocious demand and settled over her.

From that shattering point on, it was as it always was between them: wild. He plunged into her with a growl of satisfaction and she gasped in delight from the first thrust, the delicious stretching of her tingling body, the sleek hardness of his body driving over and in hers and the raw sexual connection that destroyed her every inhibition. He flipped her over onto her hands and knees, pressing her down, entering her powerfully and deeply again, making every sense sing in high-voltage response. Sobs of excitement were wrenched from her convulsing throat as another climax seized hold of her and shock-waved through her with an intensity that wiped her out. She flopped flat on the bed like a puppet who’d had her strings cut, smiling dizzily into the silk bed cover at his shout of completion, knowing that never in her life before had she dreamt of that much excitement and that much drowning pleasure.

‘No more starting work at dawn, no more late nights,’ Jai breathed with ragged resolution as he turned her limp length over and back into contact with the hot, damp heat of his body, sealing her there with both arms, his hands smoothing her slender back in a soothing motion.

‘You’re going to delegate?’ she whispered with effort because it was a challenge to kick her brain into gear again.

‘With the foundation, yes. My life has changed now that I have you and Hari and I need to adapt,’ he murmured, setting the edge of his teeth into the exact spot on the slope of her neck that drove her crazy and making her jerk against him. ‘In many ways.’

And Willow was satisfied by those assurances. He was making a major effort. He hadn’t approached her simply for sex. No, he had recognised that change would be required from both of them if their marriage was to survive and that was good, wasn’t it? She shouldn’t still want more, should she? She couldn’t understand the lingering hollow sensation in her chest, particularly when her body was already warming up again to the stimulation of his.

Of course, he wasn’t going to start talking about emotions—that was a female thing, wasn’t it? Concentrate on the positives, she told herself sternly. Both of them were finding their way in a new and very different situation as parents and partners. Of course, there would be misunderstandings and clashes along the way. All that should really matter was that Jai cared enough to put in the work to keep their relationship ticking over.

Obviously, he was unlikely to ever give her the kind of rapturous reception he gave Hari every time he lifted his son into his arms. She had seen that look, that intense emotion he hid around her and, if she was honest, had envied her son, who had inspired love in his father practically at first sight. But she was only human and it was normal to make comparisons, even if they were unwise comparisons, because love and devotion had featured nowhere in their agreement. Even worse, logic warned her that Jai, a tough businessman to his fingertips, would stick exactly to the deal he had made with her.

She didn’t have what it took to inspire Jai with romantic feelings. That had been made clear to her the morning after their first night together. Yes, he had visited to check on her a couple of months later but that had only been a knee-jerk sense of responsibility she owed to his friendship with her late father. It had not related to her personally. Her main attraction for Jai was self-evidently the passion that virtually set fire to their bedsheets and she was beginning to recognise that she ought not to be turning her nose up at that rather lowering truth when it might well prove to be the glue that kept their marriage afloat in the future.

Or would familiarity breed contempt? She shivered, wondering why her thoughts continually took a negative direction around Jai. What was the matter with her? Why couldn’t she simply be content with what they had? Why was she always seeking…more?