The Sheikh's Secret Babies

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.