Читать книгу Modern Romance February 2020 Books 1-4 - Линн Грэхем, Louise Fuller - Страница 18

JAI LOOKED MAGNIFICENT.

Indeed, Willow was flooded by distinctly sensual and, admittedly, superficial impressions of Jai garbed in traditional Maharaja dress in readiness for the party that would introduce her as his wife to his family and friends. In the black and silver frogged silk tunic and pants, he took her breath away. In fact, virtually everything about the pomp and ceremony of the occasion and their surroundings was having the same effect on her. His grandfather’s art deco palace was a sumptuous building with soaring marble columns and ceilings, glittering Venetian glass chandeliers and intricately designed marble floors and even the furniture and the grounds around the building matched that splendid classic elegance, but Jai had been quite correct: it was too grand a place for mere comfort.

As soon as they had arrived in their finery and in advance of the party, official photographs had been taken in the Greek-style marble temple in the centre of the lawns. They had leant against pillars, posed on the layers of steps, looked pensively into each other’s eyes until she’d succumbed to an uncontrollable bout of giggles and then she had twirled in her gown for the photographer to show off the full skirt of her gorgeous dress.

She had felt remarkably like a Bollywood movie actress and Jai had told her that all photos taken for special occasions had a dash of that spirit in India. When she had asked Jai if she should don a sari to blend in better at the party, Jai had only laughed before informing her that many of their guests would be European and that some of his countrywomen would dress traditionally while others would wear the latest Western fashion, that, in actuality, however she chose to dress would be acceptable.

Willow had picked a spectacular ball gown out of her crammed wardrobe, a brilliant cerise-pink shade much favoured by Rajasthani women. The finest lace covered her shoulders and upper arms, the style closely tailored to her slender figure down to the hip and then flaring out in volume into the beaded silk skirt. It was one of those ridiculously beautiful fairy-tale dresses that made a woman feel like a million dollars and to complement it she had worn very high heels. In addition, Jai had brought her a glorious emerald and diamond necklace and earrings, which had belonged to his grandmother, as well as having gifted her a diamond bracelet and a gold and diamond watch that very same week. It was little wonder that she kept on wanting to pinch herself to see if she was still living in the real world because, only weeks earlier, she could never have dreamt that such incredible luxury would ever feature in her life.

In the echoing marble hall, there was a huge display of wedding gifts and they wandered around examining them. Willow was disconcerted by the large amount of jewellery she had been given, gleaming gold necklaces and armbands and earrings, and there were even some pieces for Jai, which he assured her with a groan that he would never wear. She strolled up to him when he was holding something in his hand and signalling his hovering PA, Mitul, to ask him a question.

With an exclamation in his own language he set the ornate little box down again in haste, his sensual mouth compressing. Curious, Willow scooped it up. ‘What is it?’ she asked.

‘An eighteenth-century inro—an ornamental box in which Japanese men used to carry seals or medicine. I collect them,’ he told her in a curt undertone.

‘A very good friend must’ve given it,’ Willow assumed, because everything on the tables struck her as valuable. ‘But why are you annoyed? Was it an unsuitable gift from the friend concerned?’

‘In my opinion, yes,’ Jai conceded crisply. ‘The giver is my ex-fiancée, Cecilia.’

‘The one that ditched you?’ Willow gasped in surprise.

All of a sudden, Jai grinned, the tension in his lean, handsome features evaporating again. ‘You’re no diplomat, are you, jaani?’

Willow reddened because she knew that she hadn’t been tactful. ‘I know nothing about her…but what upsets you about the present?’

‘That I have only just learned that she and her husband have been invited to the party. Odds are that she won’t come. But if she does, it’s entirely my fault that she received an invite,’ he acknowledged in exasperation. ‘I told Mitul to use the same guest list for my friends that was used ten years ago at a party I held here. But he didn’t work for me back then and he wouldn’t have recognised the significance of her name. Of course, I should’ve checked the list myself.’

‘It’s a very big party,’ she reminded him. ‘Will it really matter if she turns up?’

Jai shrugged, a brooding expression etched to his flawless features, his wolf eyes veiled by his lashes. ‘Her presence would be inappropriate at a reception being staged for my bride’s introduction.’

‘Well, if she turns up, I’m not bothered,’ Willow confided, reckoning that she only had curiosity to be satisfied in such a scenario. ‘It must be almost ten years since you were with her. I have the vaguest memory of Dad mentioning your wedding being cancelled and I was so young back then that it feels like a very, very long time ago.’

‘You have a wonderfully welcome ability to ignore developments or mistakes that would enrage and distress other women I have known,’ Jai remarked, his pale glittering gaze fully focussed on her as he smiled down at her appreciatively.

Her heartbeat sped up so much she almost clamped her hand to her chest, and she swallowed back the dryness in her throat. ‘But that doesn’t mean that I’m not nosy,’ she told him playfully, fighting her susceptibility to that smile with all her might, for he might have the power of command over her every sense but she didn’t want him influencing her brain into the bargain. ‘Tell me about her…’

‘Some other time,’ Jai parried, closing down that informational avenue without hesitation, the hand he had braced lightly against her spine urging her forward to greet the couple who had entered. ‘Our first arrivals…congratulations, Jivika! How did you get your husband out the door this early?’ he asked with a grin, clearly on warm, relaxed terms with the older couple.

‘I thought your bride might enjoy some support at a family event like this and, like most men, I doubt it even occurred to you that this is a rather intimidating event for a newcomer,’ the older woman said drily to Jai as she walked towards Willow and extended her hand. ‘I’m Jai’s aunt, Jivika, his father’s sister. I’ll give you the lowdown on the family members to avoid and those you can afford to encourage,’ she promised with a surprisingly warm smile lighting up her rather stern features.

‘Jivika!’ her husband scolded.

Jai just laughed. ‘I could put my wife in no safer hands. Willow, be warned… Jivika was a leading barrister in London and retirement is challenging for her.’

‘Only during Indian winters,’ his aunt corrected. ‘The rest of the year we live in London.’

Willow was grateful for the older woman’s assistance as a slow steady flood of guests flowed through the giant doors and drinks were served in the vast drawing room. ‘Grandad was so pretentious,’ Jivika said of her surroundings.

And her commentaries on various relatives were equally entertaining. Willow got used to asking Jai’s aunt to identify guests and when she saw her husband deeply engaged in conversation with a tall, shapely blonde, beautiful enough to pass as a supermodel, she couldn’t resist asking who she was.

‘Cecilia Montmorency. What’s she doing here?’ Jivika asked bluntly in turn.

Jolted by that name, Willow explained the mistake on the guest list while becoming disconcerted that Cecilia was constantly touching Jai’s arm and laughing up into his face in a very intimate manner. She registered that she was not quite as safe from jealous possessiveness as she had cheerfully assumed. But then how could she be? Jai must have loved Cecilia to want to marry at the age of twenty-one, and love was a binding emotion that people didn’t tend to forget, not to mention a deeper layer of commitment that Willow had lacked in her marriage from the outset.

‘You’re seeing a not-so-merry divorcee on the prowl for her next meal ticket,’ Jivika commented. ‘It must be galling to know that she once dumped one of the richest men in the world.’

It was Willow’s turn to stare and exclaim, ‘Jai’s…?’

His aunt smiled. ‘I like that you didn’t know but you can bet your favourite shoes that Cecilia knows what he’s worth down to the last decimal point.’

Willow guiltily cherished the older woman’s take on Jai’s ex as a gold-digger and, relaxing more and more in her company, she became more daring and asked about Jai’s mother, asking what sort of woman she had been that she could walk away from her child.

‘Been listening to Jai’s version of reality, I assume?’ Jivika shot her a wry glance. ‘Jai was indoctrinated by my brother from an early age. Milly didn’t walk away from her son by choice. My brother, Rehan, fought her through the courts for years and succeeded in denying her access to her son, even in the UK while Jai was at school there. In the end she gave up—the woman really didn’t have much choice after the legal system in both countries had repeatedly failed her.’

Stunned by that very different version of events, Willow studied the other woman in disbelief. ‘Why didn’t you tell Jai?’

Jivika spread her hands and sighed, ‘At first, loyalty to my much-loved but misguided brother and, since his death, no desire to raise sleeping dogs and upset Jai. He’s astute. He’s capable of making his own decisions. It’s not my place to interfere and he could hate me for it.’

Willow swallowed hard, thinking of the judgements she had made about Jai’s mother simply by listening to his opinion of his mother’s behaviour. That he might not know the truth had not once occurred to her. Now she was barely able to imagine what it would be like for him to learn that the father he had loved and respected had lied to him for years on the same subject and she fully understood his aunt’s unwillingness to intervene. Jai deserved to know the truth and yet who would want to be the one to tell him? she thought ruefully.

Sher joined them and was about to move on when a question from Jivika revealed that Willow had trained as a garden designer. His handsome features sparked with sudden interest and he turned back to say, ‘I’ll call over in a few days and put a project in front of you…if you’re interested? I have a garden to restore.’

‘I’d be happy to offer advice but I haven’t had a huge amount of working experience,’ Willow admitted ruefully, because Hari’s impending birth and her need to earn money had forced her to put her potential career on a back burner.

‘Good enough for me,’ Sher told her reassuringly. ‘What counts is not the number of projects you have completed but whether or not you have the eye and the skill and can interpret my preferences.’

‘I’ll let you decide that,’ Willow said, colouring a little with relief, encountering Jai’s bright shrewd gaze as he joined them and swept her onto the dance floor with the quite unnecessary explanation that it was expected of them.

‘You seem to have managed beautifully without me by your side,’ Jai observed.

Willow looked up at him, wondering why she couldn’t decide whether that statement was supposed to be a positive or negative comment. Her nose wrinkled and she smiled. ‘Having your aunt by my side was like having an entire army backing me,’ she confided with helpless honesty.

Jai laughed out loud. ‘I’m very fond of Jivika,’ he admitted. ‘She was particularly stellar when I was homesick in London as a child. Of course, she and my father were very close.’

Not quite as close as they could’ve been, Willow reflected, thinking of that exchange relating to Jai’s mother, before conceding that the Singh family dynamic was vastly different from anything she had ever seen before, because even his family treated Jai with the reverence his status as Maharaja commanded, a bred-in-the-bone awe that his father must have enjoyed as well. Such men might not have the right to rule any longer in a republic, but the people still viewed them as being very special and unquestionably royal. Every month Jai held an audience at which any of his father’s former subjects could approach him for advice or assistance of any kind and he still saw it as his duty to give that attention to those in need.

‘So, my family and friends haven’t been as intimidating for you as Jivika feared?’ Ice-blue eyes inspected her face with unmistakeable concern.

Touched by that consideration, Willow shifted a little closer to him and his arms tightened round her before his hands smoothed down to the gentle curve of her hips. ‘No, everyone’s been wonderfully welcoming. How was Cecilia?’ she dared.

The faintest colour fired the exotic slant of Jai’s hard cheekbones. ‘Unchanged. She has one of those amazingly bubbly personalities that always charms, even though she’s been through what sounds like a pretty brutal divorce. I was surprised that her arrival and her approach didn’t annoy me more…but then we broke up a long time ago and, looking back, I’m prepared to admit that at that age I was more of a boy than a man. It’s time to forgive and forget.’

Willow hadn’t been prepared to detect quite that much enthusiasm on the topic of the ex who had jilted him. Dimly, she supposed it was healthier that Jai wasn’t bitter and had clearly long since moved on from that period of his life.

‘She’ll probably visit us. She’s gasping to meet Hari,’ Jai added lightly.

‘Why on earth would she want to meet Hari?’ Willow demanded with an astonishment she wasn’t quick enough to hide.

‘Because he’s my son and possibly because she can’t have children of her own,’ Jai proffered, his intonation cool and on the edge of critical, his far too clever ice-blue eyes locking to her flushed face, his lean, strong length stiffening a little against her as he moved her expertly around the floor. ‘That’s why her husband divorced her. Apparently, he’s desperate for a son and heir.’

Willow’s brain kicked into gear again. ‘How very sad,’ she remarked, literally stooping to the level of forcing fake sympathy into her voice. ‘But I thought she had come only for the wedding.’

‘No, seems she’s doing a tour of Rajasthan while she’s here,’ Jai interposed, the tension in his lean, powerful frame dissipating again. ‘I said I’d draw up a list of sites she shouldn’t miss…’

As if there weren’t at least a thousand tour guides for hire in Chandrapur alone, Willow thought sourly, because tourism was a huge source of income in the Golden Triangle, as the area was often described.

‘I’m sure she would find that very helpful,’ Willow commented blithely, annoyance with him, even greater annoyance with Cecilia and a tumble of confusing emotions raining down on her from all sides. Jai was teaching her to lie like a trooper, as the saying went, she conceded guiltily, but nowhere in their relationship was there any given right for her to make a fuss on such a score as a too-friendly ex-girlfriend. They had a marriage of convenience, not a love match, such as he had once almost achieved with Cecilia.

There was no avoiding the obvious: she was jealous and possessive of the man she had married. Disquiet gripped her. When had that happened? How had she failed to notice such responses creeping up on her? In the midst of her turmoil, Jai kissed her, one hand on her shoulder, one framing her face, and she fell into that kiss like a drowning swimmer plunged fathoms deep without warning. Her body lit up like a firework display, nipples tightening, pelvis clenching as if he had done something much more intimate than press his sensual mouth to hers. But then Jai had a way with a kiss that could burn through her like a flame. Like honey being heated, she was warming, melting, pressing closer to the allure of his hard, muscular physique, no detail of him concealed by the fine silk he wore. An arrow of satisfaction pierced Willow then, for Jai might have talked fondly about his ex but it was still his wife who turned him on.

‘We’ll have to stay on the floor,’ Jai growled in her ear. ‘I’m not presentable right now.’

Willow chuckled, her cheeks colouring, for over the past week she had learned that she and Jai always seemed to scorch each other when they touched. She wanted to reach up and kiss him again, more deeply and for longer, but she resisted the urge, reminding herself that they were surrounded by people.

Later, Jivika and her husband were leaving when the older woman signalled her, and Willow walked over to her with a wide smile. ‘It occurs to me that a wife who is loved could tackle that difficult subject we discussed earlier,’ she murmured sibilantly. ‘If you break the ice, I will be happy to share all that I know with my nephew.’

Willow maintained her smile with difficulty, but she could feel the blood draining from her face because she was not a loved wife, not even close to it, she acknowledged painfully, utterly convinced that her strongest bond with Jai was sexual rather than emotional. And that awareness stabbed through her in an almost physical pain, she registered then in dismay. Of course, she had kind of known from the start that she wanted more than sex from Jai, but somehow it hadn’t crossed her mind that she was already much more deeply involved in their relationship than he was.

There was no denying it: she had fallen hopelessly in love with the man who had married her only to legitimise his son’s birth. It had started way back that first night when she had fallen into bed with him and Hari had been conceived in the flare-up of passion between them…and if she was honest with herself, even though she didn’t feel she could be that honest with Jai, it was an attraction that Jai had always held for her.

That long-ago adolescent crush had only been the first indication that she was intensely susceptible to Jai and exposed to him as an adult, the remnants of that crush had simply morphed that first week they were married into something much more powerful. She loved him. That was why she was constantly insecure and prickly and, now, possessive of him. If she hadn’t been in love with him, she would have been much less anxious and hurt when he’d chosen to step back from her during the second week they had been together.

And nothing was likely to change, she reflected, deciding to tuck away all her anxiety and bury it, because there was nothing she could do to change either Jai’s feelings or her own. It was what it was, and she had to live with it. Certainly, interfering on his mother’s behalf, as even his aunt had feared to do, was out of the question.

Even so, she did feel that she should meet Lady Milly discreetly and discover the facts for some future date when hopefully she and Jai would have been married long enough for her to trust that they had a stable relationship. After all, it seemed wrong that she, as Jai’s wife, should also stand back and do nothing while the poor woman suffered for sins she hadn’t committed. It might not be her business in many ways, but Willow had a strong sense of justice. It would do no harm for her to at least listen to the woman while simultaneously introducing her to her grandson, she told herself squarely.

Furthermore, Jai still had the time to mend his relationship with his mother, who clearly loved him. His mother had to love him, for why else would she have fought for years to see him again? Her persistence was self-explanatory. What was more, Milly was family and surely everyone was willing to go that extra mile for a family member? Jai now had a chance that Willow had never had with her own father. She had failed to win her father’s love time and time again because really the only thing he had appreciated in a child was the ability to achieve top academic results. But Jai’s mother was offering love even after multiple rejections. Unfortunately past hurt and pride would prevent Jai from giving his mother the chance to redeem herself, but what if Willow could take that chance for him and use it?

Cecilia arrived at the Lake Palace for a visit the following afternoon and caught Willow unprepared. She was down on her knees playing with Hari in the nursery with tumbled hair and not a scrap of make-up on when Jai strolled in with Cecilia in tow and not the smallest warning. In that moment, Willow genuinely wanted to kill Jai. She sat up with a feverishly flushed face and struggled to smile politely as Cecilia dropped gracefully down beside her and exclaimed over the resemblance between Hari and Jai.

‘He’s got your eyes, Jai!’ Cecilia crooned in delight, smoothing a hand over Hari’s curls. ‘He is adorable.’

‘Yes, he is,’ Willow conceded fondly, stifling her irritation with difficulty.

‘Do you remember your father taking us on a tour of the desert that first summer?’ Cecilia asked Jai.

And that was the start of the ‘do you remember?’ game that stretched throughout coffee downstairs as Cecilia encouraged Jai to reminisce about friends from their university days and brought him up to speed on the activities of those he had lost touch with. Willow might as well have been a painting on the wall for all the share she got of the conversation, while Cecilia became more and more animated at the attention she was receiving. It was a total surprise to Willow when Jai smoothly mentioned that they were going out to lunch, an arrangement that was news to her, and moments later Cecilia began making visibly reluctant departure moves.

‘So, when was this lunch with Sher arranged?’ Willow enquired curiously on the steps of the palace as the blonde was driven off by her driver in an SUV.

‘Oh, that’s tomorrow,’ Jai admitted with a tiny smile of superiority as he absorbed her surprise. ‘It was time for Cecilia to leave.’

Disconcerted, Willow turned back to him. ‘You mean—?’

‘I lied? Yes,’ Jai interposed with dancing eyes of amusement at her astonishment. ‘I will always be polite to Cecilia but I have no wish to socialise with her. Yesterday I was curious, today I was bored with her.’

Relief sank through Willow in a blinding wave. ‘But I thought—’

‘That I am still naive enough to be duped by a woman who chose to welcome a richer man into her bed?’ Jai said, sliding an arm round her slender spine. ‘No, I’m not.’

‘A richer man?’ Willow queried, recalling his aunt’s opinion of the beautiful blonde.

‘Within a month of breaking off our engagement, Cecilia was married to the owner of a private bank. Her affair with him began while she was still with me,’ Jai breathed with sardonic bite. ‘Shortly before her change of heart, she had learned that my sole wealth at that point was based on my share of the family trust, and at the time my business was only in its infancy. She went for a more promising option—a much older man with a pile of capital.’

Still frowning, Willow glanced up at him. ‘But when it happened you must have been devastated.’

‘Not so devastated that I didn’t eventually recognise that I’d had a narrow escape,’ Jai quipped with raw-edged amusement. ‘Her marriage to a man old enough to be her father was the first evidence of her true nature. My mother made the same move,’ he extended in a rare casual reference to his parents’ marriage. ‘Money must’ve been her main objective too. I can’t believe she ever loved my father.’

Willow set her teeth together and said nothing, thinking that his father really had done a number on him, leaving him not one shred of faith in the woman who had brought him into the world and, by achieving that, had ensured that Jai never became curious enough to meet the woman and decide for himself.

Jai came to bed late that night because he had been working. He was a tall sliver of lean, supple beauty in the moonlight, sliding in beside her and reaching for her in almost the same movement.

‘You can’t,’ she told him, feeling awkward because it was that time of the month.

‘You mean—?’

‘Yes,’ she confirmed drowsily.

‘Doesn’t mean I can’t hold you, doesn’t mean I can’t kiss you,’ Jai teased, folding her into his arms regardless. ‘This is the very first time I’ve met with that restriction since my engagement.’

Thinking of all the years he had been free and single, Willow said, ‘How can it be?’

‘After Cecilia the longest I stayed with a woman was a weekend. It was a practical choice for me, selfish too, I’ll admit, but I didn’t want anything deeper or more lasting.’

‘Oh, dear, and here I am planning to last and last and last,’ she whispered playfully. ‘Maybe you’ll eventually love me too because you’re stuck with me.’

His lean, strong physique tensed. ‘No, the love trail isn’t for me. That would be excess, and we don’t need it to be happy or raise Hari together. Be practical, soniyaa. What we’ve got is much more realistic.’

A hollow sensation spread inside Willow’s chest along with a very strong urge to kick the love of her life out of bed. It was early days, though, she reminded herself, and she was being greedy and impatient. In a year’s time she might have grown on him to such an extent that he did love her. Or was that simply a fantasy? If he hadn’t been bowled over by her from the outset, she was unlikely ever to become the sole and most important focus of his wants, logic warned her. Unfortunately for her, her heart didn’t jump at the words, ‘practical’ or ‘realistic.’