The Sheikh's Secret Babies Page 3

  Not after the way you abandoned me, but she swallowed that final assurance, too proud and too scared of losing face to risk throwing that in his teeth. But his apparent equanimity burned through her restraint like acid. It was offensive that he could approach her so casually after what he had done to her and utterly unforgivable that he should dare.

  ‘The sooner you tell me, the sooner you can leave,’ Chrissie quipped, dry-mouthed with the anger she was holding back.

  Jaul breathed in deep and slow, fighting to master the stirring ache below his belt. It had simply been too long since he had had sex. He was a normal healthy male in need of release and there was nothing strange about the reality that proximity to Chrissie should awaken old familiar impulses. Somewhat soothed by that conviction, he settled grim dark eyes on her. ‘I have only recently learned that our marriage was legal and that is why I am here.’

  So great was Chrissie’s incredulity at that news that she blinked and stumbled back against the bookcase behind her. ‘But your father said it was illegal, that it had no standing in law, that—’

  ‘My father was mistaken,’ Jaul incised in a smooth tone of finality. ‘My legal advisers insist that the ceremony was legal and, consequently, we are now in need of a divorce.’

  Chrissie was deeply shaken by that announcement and her soft pink mouth opened a mere fraction of an inch. ‘Oh, right,’ she acknowledged while she played for time and tried to absorb the immensity of what he had just said. ‘So, all this time we’ve been apart we’ve actually been legally married?’

  ‘Yes,’ Jaul conceded grudgingly.

  ‘Well, fancy that,’ Chrissie commented in apparent wonderment. ‘Two years ago I was turned away from the door of the Marwani Embassy with the assurance that I was “delusional” even though our wedding ceremony took place there. Absolutely nobody was willing to see me, talk to me or even accept a letter for you...in fact I was threatened with the police if I didn’t leave—’

  ‘What on earth are you talking about? When were you at our embassy in London?’ Jaul demanded curtly, standing straight and tall and betraying not a shade of discomfiture.

  She stared at him, treacherously ensnared by his sheer physical magnetism. Her tummy flipped and a flock of butterflies broke loose inside her. Jaul had an electrifying combination of animal sex appeal, hauteur and command that stopped women dead in their tracks. So good-looking, so very good-looking he had grabbed her attention at first glance even though she had known he was a player and not to be trusted. Yet she had resisted him month after month until he had caught her at a vulnerable moment and then, sadly, she too had found those broad shoulders and that lying, seductive tongue irresistible.

  ‘When, Chrissie?’ he repeated doggedly.

  ‘Oh, a little while after my imaginary husband disappeared into thin air,’ Chrissie supplied. ‘And then shortly after my final visit to the embassy, your father came to see me and explained and everything became clear.’

  ‘I don’t know what you hope to achieve by talking nonsense like this at a point when all either of us can want is a divorce.’

  Chrissie elevated a very fine brow. ‘I don’t know, Jaul...do you think it could be anger motivating me after what you put me through?’

  ‘Anger has no place here. We have lived apart for a long time. I want a divorce. This is a practical issue, nothing more,’ Jaul delivered crushingly.

  ‘You do know that I hate you?’ Chrissie pressed shakily, a flicker of hysteria firing her that he could stand there evidently untouched as though nothing of any great import had ever happened between them. Yet once he had pursued her relentlessly and had sworn that he loved her and that only the security of marriage would satisfy him. There was nothing deader than an old love affair, a little voice cried plaintively inside her, and the proof of that old maxim stood in front of her.

  Jaul was thinking of the woman who had left him lying unvisited in his hospital bed and he met her angry gaze with coldly contemptuous dark eyes. ‘Why would I care?’

  He didn’t feel like Jaul any more; he had changed out of all recognition, Chrissie acknowledged numbly. He wanted a divorce; he needed a divorce. But she was still struggling to get her head around the astonishing fact that they had genuinely been married for over two years. ‘Why did your father tell me that our marriage was illegal?’

  His lean, strong face tautened. ‘It was not a lie. He believed it to be illegal—’

  ‘But that’s not all he believed,’ Chrissie whispered. ‘He told me that you’d deliberately gone through that ceremony with me knowing it was illegal and that you could wriggle out of the commitment and walk away any time you wanted—’

  ‘I refuse to believe that he would ever have said or even implied anything of that nature,’ Jaul derided with an emphatic shake of his imperious dark head. ‘He was an honourable man and a caring father—’

  ‘Like hell he was!’ Chrissie slammed back at him in sudden fury, goaded by that provocative statement into losing all self-control. ‘I was thrown out of your apartment wearing only the clothes I was standing up in. I was treated like an illegal squatter and absolutely humiliated—’

  ‘These grossly disrespectful lies gain you no ground with me. I will not listen to them,’ Jaul spelt out, his beautiful, wilful mouth twisting. ‘I know you for the woman you are. My father gave you five million pounds to get out of my life and you took it and I never heard from you again—’

  ‘Well, admittedly I didn’t get very far at the Marwani Embassy where women claiming to be your wife, illegal or otherwise, are treated like lunatics,’ Chrissie parried flatly, declining to answer that accusation about the bank draft she had refused to use because it seemed Jaul wasn’t prepared to listen or believe anything she said in her own defence.

  Chrissie could never have accepted that hateful ‘blood’ money, intended to buy her discretion and silence and dissuade her from approaching the media to sell some sleazy story about her experiences with Jaul.

  Jaul set his even white teeth together. ‘I want you to leave the past where it belongs and concentrate on the important issue here...our divorce.’

  Without warning, Chrissie’s eyes sparkled like gold-dusted turquoises. ‘You want a divorce to remarry, don’t you?’

  ‘Why I want it scarcely matters this long after the event,’ Jaul fielded drily.

  ‘You need my consent to get a divorce,’ Chrissie assumed, walking past him back to the front door, thinking that this time around the ball was in her court and the power hers. Jaul expected her to be understanding and helpful and give him what he wanted. But why should she be understanding? She owed him nothing!

  ‘Naturally...if it is to go through fast it has to be uncontested—’

  ‘The answer is no,’ Chrissie delivered, far from being in a cooperative frame of mind. She was bitter about the way he had treated her and stubbornly ready to make things difficult for him. ‘If we’re truly married and you now want a divorce, you’ll have to fight me for it.’

  Jaul stilled in the lounge doorway, dark eyes flashing bright as a flame. ‘But that’s ridiculous...why would you do something that stupid?’

  ‘Because I can,’ Chrissie replied, truthful to the last word. ‘I won’t willingly do anything which suits you and I know you want to keep all this on the down-low. After all, you never did own up publicly to the shame of marrying a foreigner, did you?’

  ‘I believed the marriage was invalid!’ Jaul shot back at her, lean brown hands coiling into fists. ‘Why would I have talked about it?’

  ‘Well, most guys would at least have talked about it to the woman who believed she was married to them,’ Chrissie pointed out scornfully as she stretched out a hand to open the door. ‘But you...what did you do? Oh, yes...you ran out on me and left your daddy to clear up the mess you left behind you!’

  Sheer rage at that unjust condemnation engulfed Jaul so fast he was dizzy with it. He snapped long fingers round a slender wrist before she could open the door. Sm
ouldering dark golden eyes raked her flushed and defiant face. ‘You will not speak to me like that.’

  Suppressing a spasm of dismay, Chrissie forced herself to laugh and her eyes sparkled with challenge. ‘Message to Jaul—I can speak to you any way I like and there’s not a darned thing you can do about it! You don’t deserve anything better from me after the way you treated me...’

  With a contemptuous flick of his long fingers, Jaul relinquished his hold on her. Dark eyes still sparking like high-voltage wires, he scanned her with derision. ‘Is this your way of trying to push the price up? You want me to pay you to set me free from this marriage?’

  A genuine laugh fell from Chrissie’s taut mouth. ‘Oh, no, I’ve got plenty of money,’ she told him blithely. ‘I don’t want a penny from you. I only want to make you sweat.’

  Jaul no longer trusted his temper or his control. Nobody had spoken to him like that since he had last seen Chrissie and it was a salutary lesson. Their personalities had been on a collision course from day one. Both of them were strong-willed, obstinate and quick-tempered. They had had monumental fights and even more shattering reconciliations. In fact those reconciliations had been such sweet fantasies Jaul had never forgotten them and he got hot and hard even thinking about them, a recollection as unwelcome as it was dangerous.

  His beautifully shaped mouth flattening the sultry curl tugging at the edges, fine ebony brows drawing together in a frown of censure, he breathed curtly, ‘I can see there’s no talking to you in the mood you’re in—’

  ‘I’m not in a mood!’ Chrissie proclaimed furiously, catching an involuntary snatch of the spicy cologne he wore, her senses reeling at the sudden flood of familiarity that made her ache and hurt as if his betrayal were as recent as yesterday. It also reminded her of hot, sweaty nights and incredible passion, a thought which instantly infuriated her.

  ‘I’ll return later when you’ve had time to think over what I’ve told you,’ he informed her with typical tenacity.

  Chrissie bit back the admission that she would be staying at her sister’s home for several days. That was her business, not his, and she had no intention of telling him anything likely to lead to his discovery that he was not only married but also a father. That would be setting the cat among the pigeons with a vengeance, she conceded worriedly, and it was not something she was prepared to risk without knowing where she stood.

  The strained silence smouldered.

  ‘A divorce is the only sensible option and I don’t object to paying for the privilege,’ Jaul grated between clenched teeth, out of all patience with her reluctance to discuss the issue. ‘As my wife, estranged or otherwise, you’re naturally entitled to my financial support—’

  ‘I want nothing from you,’ Chrissie repeated doggedly. ‘Please leave.’

  Long bronzed fingers bit into the edge of the door as Jaul fought a powerful impulse to say something, anything, that would stir her into a more natural reaction. What had happened to his bright and fearless Chrissie? He glanced at her in frustration. Her eyes were blank, her delicately pointed features empty of expression. Her entire attitude spelt out the message that he was the enemy and not to be trusted.

  Without another word, Jaul walked out of the building, determined that he would not see her again. He had told her what he had to tell her. And now he would step back and let the lawyers handle the rest of it.

  * * *

  Chrissie got dressed in a feverish surge of activity. She flung clothes into a small case, carrying it and other pieces of baby paraphernalia out to the car. Her home had always been her sanctuary but now it felt violated by Jaul’s visit and she no longer felt safe there. What if he had walked in and the twins had been present? Why did she imagine that he would have instantly recognised his own children when he had no reason to even suspect their existence? She was being hysterical and foolish, she told herself shamefacedly, but even so she could barely wait to get Tarif and Soraya strapped into their car seats and drive away from the apartment.

  As she drove through the busy mid-morning traffic she had too much time to look back into the past. Memories she didn’t want bombarded her. Indeed she could never think about her years at university without thinking of Jaul because he had always been there on the outskirts of her life, long unacknowledged but always noticed and never forgotten.

  She had shared a tiny flat with another girl when in her second year at university. Nessa had been just a little man-mad, to the extent that Chrissie had tended to switch off when Nessa began talking about her latest lover. But even Nessa had gone into thrilled overdrive when she’d first met a prince. Chrissie had been less impressed, well aware that in some Eastern countries princes were ten a penny and not much more important. Jaul, however, had proved somewhat harder to overlook. He had flown Nessa to Paris in his private jet just for dinner and Nessa had been incoherent with excitement at the luxury of the experience.

  Jaul had brought Nessa home the next day and had been in the flat when Chrissie had come home from the classes that her roommate had skipped. Chrissie still remembered her first glimpse of Jaul, his gypsy-dark skin and eyes brilliant as newly minted gold in sunlight, his lean, breathtakingly handsome face intent. He had stared at Chrissie for the longest time and she hadn’t been able to breathe or look away while Nessa gabbled incoherently about Paris and limousines. Jaul had taken his leave quickly.

  ‘He was amazing in bed,’ Nessa had confided as soon as he was gone, languorously rolling her eyes and quite uninhibited about admitting that she had slept with Jaul on the first date. ‘Absolutely freakin’ amazing!’

  But for all that it had still been a one-night stand. Jaul had followed up by having flowers and a very pretty pair of diamond earrings delivered to Nessa, but he hadn’t phoned again. Nessa had been disappointed but accepting, pointing out that, with all Jaul had to offer, he was sure to want to make the most of his freedom.

  The next time Chrissie had seen Jaul she had been in the student union. She had noticed Jaul, naturally. She could scarcely have failed to notice his presence when he was surrounded by a quartet of suited sunglasses-wearing bodyguards and a crowd of giggling flirtatious blondes who, as she soon learnt, seemed to appear out of nowhere to engulf him wherever he went.

  He had startled her by springing upright as she was passing his table and had insisted on acknowledging her when she would’ve passed on by without a word. Stiff with discomfiture, Chrissie had been cool, inordinately aware of the heat in his dark gaze and the jealous scrutiny of his female companions.

  Back then Chrissie had been working two part-time jobs to survive at university because her family could not afford to help her out. One of Chrissie’s jobs during term time had been stacking shelves in the library, the other waitressing at a local restaurant, but she had still found it a major challenge to meet her bills. Her father had still been a tenant farmer, whose ill-health had forced him into retirement while her older sister, Lizzie, had worked night and day to keep the farm going, while Chrissie continued her studies, but the knowledge that, without her, her family was having an even tougher struggle to survive had filled her with guilt.

  But even as a child Chrissie had recognised that her late mother Francesca’s chaotic life might have been less dysfunctional had she had a career to fall back on when her affairs with unsuitable men fell apart. A woman needed more than a basic education to survive and Chrissie had always been determined to build her life round a career rather than a man. Her mother’s marriage to her father had been short-lived and the relationships that Francesca had got involved in afterwards had been destructive ones in which alcohol, infidelity, physical violence and other evils had prevailed. Shorn of her innocence at a very young age, Chrissie knew just how low a woman could be forced to sink to keep food on the table and it was a lesson she would never forget. No, Chrissie would never willingly put herself in a position where she had to depend on a man to keep her.

  When Jaul had approached her in the library where she was st
acking shelves one day a few weeks after their first meeting to ask for her help in finding a book, she had been polite and helpful as befitted a humble employee keen to keep her job.

  ‘I’d like to take you out to dinner some evening,’ he had murmured after she’d slotted the book into his lean brown hand.

  He had the most stunning dark eyes, pure lustrous jet enticement in his lean, darkly handsome face. In his presence her mouth had run dry and her breathing had fractured while she’d marvelled at the weird way she’d kept on wanting to look at him, an urge so powerful it had almost qualified as a need. Infuriated by the dizzy way she was reacting, she’d thought instead of how he had treated Nessa. Jaul had chased sexual conquest, nothing more complex. Once the chase was over and he had got what he wanted he’d lost interest and casual sex with young women as uninhibited and adventurous as Nessa had suited him perfectly. He hadn’t been looking for a relationship with all the limits that would have involved. He hadn’t been offering friendship or caring or fidelity.

  ‘I’m sorry, no,’ Chrissie had said woodenly.

  ‘Why not?’ Jaul had asked without hesitation.

  ‘Between my studies and my two part-time jobs, I have very little free time,’ Chrissie had told him. ‘And when I do have it, I tend to go home and visit my family.’

  ‘Lunch, then,’ Jaul had suggested smoothly. ‘Surely you could lunch with me some day?’

  ‘But I don’t want to,’ Chrissie had confessed abruptly, backing off a step, feeling cornered and slightly intimidated by the sheer height and size of him in the narrow space between the book stacks.

  A fine ebony brow had quirked. ‘I have offended you in some way?’

  ‘We just wouldn’t suit,’ Chrissie had countered between gritted teeth, her irritation rising at his refusal to simply accept her negative response.

  ‘In what way?’

  ‘You’re everything I don’t like,’ Chrissie had framed in a sudden burst of frustration. ‘You don’t study, you party. You run around with a lot of different women. I’m not your type. I don’t want to go to Paris for dinner! I don’t want diamonds! I haven’t the slightest intention of going to bed with you!’