The Sheikh's Innocent Bride

‘May I come in?’ Steven pressed when the polite small talk about her parents’ little holiday had dried up and she was rather hoping he would take the hint and leave.

‘Nicky’s still up,’ Jemima warned him.

‘How’s the little chap doing?’ Steven enquired with his widest, fakest smile.

‘Well, his father may have turned up,’ Jemima heard herself say without meaning to. That she had admitted that much to Steven was evidence of how much emotional turmoil she was in because once she had realised how much he disapproved of her taking responsibility for Julie’s son she had stopped confiding in the tall blond man.

Steven took a seat with the casual informality of a regular visitor. A handsome dentist with a lucrative line in private patients, her ex was well liked by all. Jemima, however, was rather less keen. She had believed she loved Steven for years and had fully expected to marry him before Julie came into their lives.

‘Yes, he’s good-looking and he could give me some fun but he’s your boyfriend. I’m not poaching him,’ Julie had told her squarely.

But Jemima hadn’t wanted to keep Steven by default and once she’d realised how infatuated he was with her twin she had set him free. Of course, as a couple, Steven and Julie hadn’t suited, as Jemima had suspected at the outset. Her sister and her ex had enjoyed a short-lived fling, nothing more, and Jemima genuinely did not hold Steven’s defection against him. How could she possibly blame him for having found her colourful, lively sister more attractive? No, what annoyed Jemima about Steven was that he was smugly convinced that he could talk his way back into Jemima’s affections now that Julie was gone. Steven had no sensitivity whatsoever.

‘His father?’ Steven echoed on a rising note of interest. ‘Tell me more.’

Jemima told him about her visitors but withheld the information about the stolen credit cards and the underlying threat, reluctant to give Steven another opportunity to trash her sister’s memory.

‘That’s the best news I’ve heard in weeks!’ Steven exclaimed, his bright blue eyes lingering intently on her flushed face. ‘I admire your affection for Nicky but keeping him isn’t practical in your circumstances.’

‘Sometimes feelings aren’t practical,’ Jemima countered quietly.

Steven gave her an earnest appraisal. ‘You know how I feel about you, Jem. How long is it going to take for you to forgive me? I was foolish. I made a mistake. But I learned from it.’

‘If you had really loved me, you wouldn’t have wanted Julie—’

‘It’s different for men. We are more base creatures,’ Steven told her sanctimoniously.

Jemima gritted her teeth and resisted the urge to roll her eyes. It amazed her that she had failed to appreciate how sexist and judgemental Steven could be. ‘I’ve moved on now. I’m fond of you but I’m afraid that’s all.’

‘Tell me about Nicky’s father,’ Steven urged irritably.

‘I only know his name, nothing else...’

Steven started looking up Luciano Vitale on his tablet and fired a welter of facts at her.

Luciano was an only child, the son of an infamous Mafia don. Jemima did roll her eyes at that information. He was filthy rich, which wasn’t a surprise, but much that followed did take her aback. In his early twenties Luciano had married a famous Italian movie star and had a daughter with her before tragically losing both wife and child in a helicopter crash three years earlier. Jemima was shocked, very shocked by that particular piece of news.

‘So there you have it...that’s why he wants a kid...his daughter died!’ Steven pointed out with satisfaction. ‘How can you doubt that the man will make a good parent?’

‘He’s still single. How much actual parenting is he planning to do?’ Jemima traded stubbornly. ‘And maybe Nicky’s supposed to be a replacement but he’s not a girl, he’s a boy and a child in his own right—’

Steven pontificated at length about the immorality of the surrogacy agreement and how it went against all natural laws. Jemima said nothing because she was too busy looking at photographic images of the exquisite blonde, Gigi Nocella, Luciano’s late wife and the mother of his firstborn. Luciano had matched Gigi, she reflected abstractedly, two beautiful people combined to make a perfect couple. He had already lost a child, she thought helplessly, and she was filled with guilt at her own reluctance to hand over Nicky. Who was she to interfere? Who was she to think she knew everything when she was already painfully aware that her sister had made so many bad choices in life?