The Sheikh's Secret Babies

For a split second she allowed herself to think of how that might have been and she swallowed painfully, struggling to imagine how she would’ve felt if Jaul had come back to her and if he had been with her when she’d discovered that she was pregnant. She realised that she was picturing an entirely different and infinitely happier world and fierce regret filled her, backed by a terrible anguished sense of loss because she was beginning to suspect that Jaul had been as miserable as she was when they were first separated. How could his father have believed he had the right to inflict such suffering on them both?

Hot, burning tears lashed the backs of Chrissie’s eyes in an unsettling surge. She blinked rapidly, intense mortification threatening to engulf her because she only ever cried in the strictest privacy, a discipline learned the hard way after her life had fallen apart following Jaul’s vanishing act two years earlier. She snatched in a deep, audible breath and Jaul swung away from the window, suppressing his uneasy thoughts at the prospect of confronting Yusuf, his late father’s staunchest supporter.

Yusuf would not necessarily be discreet in the aftermath of such a discussion. It was a stark moment of choice for Jaul because he had to choose between his marriage and his respect for his father’s memory. But he knew that that respect was not an excuse to avoid discovering an unpalatable truth. Yet if Chrissie was telling the truth, it would be an appalling truth that he would never be able to live with, he reflected grimly before swiftly suppressing that unproductive thought. As he had been raised to do, he would do what he knew to be his duty and act with honour, regardless of what he found out.

‘Where’s the cloakroom?’ Chrissie asked thickly, dragging his attention back to her.

When he saw the sheen in her turquoise eyes and the dampness on her cheeks, he tensed and took a sudden step forward.

‘The first door at the top of the stairs but the bedroom en suites are closer,’ Jaul volunteered, winged ebony brows pleating. ‘You’re upset...you’re crying...’

Chrissie flew upright as though she were a puppet whose strings had been jerked without warning. ‘Of course I’m not crying!’ she protested huskily. ‘It’s stupid, it’s just all this stuff about the past...it’s confusing me.’

‘I’m sorry,’ Jaul breathed in a ragged undertone as he closed his arms round her slight, trembling figure to hold her still. ‘I knew that telling you about the accident would rake it all up again, which was why I was so reluctant—’

‘But I had to know the truth,’ Chrissie told him, lifting her chin, an action that did nothing to hide the wet lustre of her eyes.

A tiny muscle pulled taut at the corner of his unsmiling mouth, his beautiful eyes flaring brilliant gold as he scored his knuckles lightly down the side of her face in a soothing gesture. ‘I hurt you.’

Chrissie looked up at him and marvelled at how stunning he was even with his blue-black hair a little messy and his strong jawline stubbled. His black lashes were luxuriant above eyes of stormy gold. Wicked anticipation slid through her to create the kind of sudden tension that made her suck in her breath. As she connected with his burnished gaze a pulse was hammering like crazy above her collarbone. She wanted him to touch her so badly that her fingernails bit into her palms as her hands fisted. He was all lean muscle and potent strength as he eased her closer and her body thrummed, her blood racing like liquid lava through her veins. His warm, demanding mouth swooped down on hers and hot, blistering pleasure shot through her with the force of a lightning bolt.

Jaul lifted her up into his arms and carried her into the bedroom next door. As he settled her down on the bed her fingers feathered through his hair and instinctively closed into the silky black strands to hold him to her. ‘Kiss me,’ she told him, desperately needing to think of something...anything other than the reality that Jaul had almost died two years earlier. Had he died she would never have seen him again, never had the chance to hold him close and never had the joy of seeing him proudly hold his son in his arms.

CHAPTER EIGHT

JAUL KISSED MUCH as he made love, melding both passion and sleek proficiency into a devastating sensual assault.