‘She was my nursemaid...nanny—whatever you want to call it,’ Jai explained. ‘She is a kind and gentle woman. You need have no fear for our son’s welfare while he is with her.’
Willow didn’t want to hand over care of Hari to anyone, no matter who they were, particularly when she could not imagine that she and Jai had much to discuss. He had threatened her to make her vacate the homeless shelter and he doubtless planned to press his advantage by making her accept his financial support. Using the threat of legal action straight away had warned her that he would not listen to her protests. His bottom line, his closing argument would always zero in on what was best for Hari. And how could she argue with that sterling rule when she wanted the same thing?
Therefore, bearing in mind that she did not expect to be spending very long in Jai’s luxurious town house, she pinned a pleasant smile to her face to greet the grey-haired older woman awaiting her in a room already furnished as a nursery. She had three smiling younger women by her side, all of them dressed in brightly coloured saris, and they welcomed Hari with a sort of awed reverence that disconcerted Willow. Hari, however, did love to be admired and he beamed at all of them.
‘His Royal Highness is very confident,’ Shanaya remarked approvingly in hesitant English.
‘His Royal Highness?’ Willow hissed in disbelief as Jai whisked her back out of the room again.
‘Hari is my official heir, known as the Yuvaraja in our language. He is a very important child to my family and to our staff,’ Jai explained, ushering her downstairs and into a very traditional library lined with books and pictures and what looked like a wall of official awards. ‘This was my father’s room and, although I have certainly not kept it like a shrine, I did not have it updated after his death like the rest of the house. I still like to remember him seated here at his desk or drowsing by the fireside with his nose in a book.’
Willow had faded memories of the older man on his visits to the boarding school, which he had once attended himself. She also recalled him taking tea once in their small home with her father, the correctness of his spoken English, the warmth of his smile and the tiny brocade box filled with sweets that he had dug out of his pocket for her.
‘It means a great deal to me that you named our son after me,’ Jai admitted.
Willow went pink. ‘I wanted to acknowledge his background.’
‘Hari has been a family name for generations. My father would have rejoiced in our son’s existence.’
‘In these circumstances?’ Willow said uncomfortably. ‘I hardly think so.’
‘I assume you are referring to Hari’s illegitimate birth,’ Jai breathed in a raw undertone. ‘That problem will vanish as soon as we marry.’
Willow’s knees shook under her and she had to straighten her back to stay upright. Her incredulous gaze locked to his lean, dark features and the flaring brilliance of his pale gaze. ‘I beg your pardon?’ she murmured with a frown. ‘As soon as we...marry?’
‘Hari’s birth will be legitimised by our marriage. He cannot take his place as my heir without us getting married,’ Jai countered levelly. ‘I want us to get married as quickly as it can be arranged.’
Willow gave up the battle with her wobbly knees and dropped heavily into a comfortable armchair beside the Georgian fireplace. Slowly she shook her head. ‘Jai...men and women don’t get married any more simply because a child has been born.’
‘Perhaps not, but Hari can only claim his legal right to follow me if we are man and wife. It may seem old-fashioned to you, but it is the law and it is unlikely to be changed. My inheritance, which will one day become his, is safeguarded by strict rules. My business interests I can leave to anyone I want, but my heritage, the properties and land involved and the charitable foundation started up by my grandfather can only be bestowed on the firstborn child, whose parents must be married for him to inherit,’ Jai outlined grimly.
Disconcerted by that information, Willow snatched in a deep jagged breath. ‘But you can’t want to marry me?’
‘I don’t want to marry anyone right now,’ Jai admitted wryly.
Willow stiffened, reckoning that she had just received her answer about how best to treat his proposition. His suggestion that they should marry was sheer madness, she reasoned in astonishment. Her entire attention was now welded to him. A blue-black shadow of stubble was beginning to accentuate his wide mobile mouth and a tiny little shiver ran through her, her breasts tightening and peaking below her sweater, those little sensations arrowing down into her pelvis to awaken a hot, tense, damp feeling between her thighs. She thrust her spine rigidly into the embrace of the chair back, furious with herself but breathless and unable to drag her attention from the wild dark beauty of Jai as he paced over to the desk, his stunning eyes glittering over her with an intensity she could feel and which mesmerised her.
‘Obviously you don’t want to marry me,’ she remarked in a brittle undertone.
‘Aside of my little flirtation with the idea of marriage when I was twenty-one, I have always hoped to retain my freedom for as long as possible,’ Jai confessed with a twist of his shapely mouth as he studied her, appreciating the elegant delicacy of her tiny figure in the overly large chair, but not appreciating the way his attention instinctively lingered on the swell of her breasts below the sweater and the slender stretch of her denim-clad thighs. ‘I planned to marry in my forties, while my father was even older when he took the plunge. Hari’s birth, however, has changed everything. I cannot deny Hari his right to enjoy the same history and privileges that I had.’
‘I understand that, but—’ she began emotively.
‘No matter what you say, it will still come down to the same conclusion. Our son needs his parents to be married,’ Jai delivered with biting finality. ‘Only imagine his angry bitterness if some day he has to watch another man inherit what should have been his...because if you refuse to marry me, I will inevitably marry another woman and have children with her. It is my duty to carry on our family name and a second son born from that marriage will become my heir instead.’
The content of that last little speech shook Willow rigid because she realised that she didn’t want to imagine any of those events taking place...not Jai marrying someone else and fathering children by her and certainly not her son hurt by being nudged out of what could have been his rightful place. It was a distressing picture, but Jai was being realistic when he forced her to look at it. Sooner or later, it seemed, he had to marry and have a child and why shouldn’t his firstborn son benefit from their marriage?
‘You’re ready to bite the bullet because Hari and I would be the practical option?’ Willow suggested tightly.
‘Those are not the words I would have used,’ Jai chided. ‘This may not be what I once innocently planned, but Hari is here now and, as his parents, shouldn’t we do what we can to make amends for his current status?’
Willow stared stonily at the rug on the floor, because it was an unanswerable question. Of course, Hari should be put first, not left to reap the disadvantages his careless parents had left him facing. Would her son even want to follow in his father’s footsteps to eventually become the Maharaja of Chandrapur? She reckoned that, as an adult, her son would want that choice and wouldn’t wish to be denied it over something as arbitrary as the accident of his birth. She swallowed hard. ‘Right, so if I agree to marry you, what sort of marriage would it be?’
‘A normal one,’ Jai murmured, soft and low, a little of his tension dissipating as he grasped that she was willing to proceed. ‘Of course, if we are unhappy together we can separate and divorce but we will both make a big effort for Hari’s sake because two parents raising him together must surely be better than only one.’
Of course, neither of them knew what it would be like to grow up with two parents, Willow conceded. But she had seen that dynamic in the homes of her friends, parents
pulling and working together to look after their families. She had also visited the homes of single-parent families and had only noted there that the parent carried a much heavier burden in doing it all alone. Would she and Jai be able to provide Hari with a secure and happy home? Jai didn’t love her, while she was still insanely attracted to him, she acknowledged uneasily, lifting her head to collide with the frosty glitter of his eyes, feeling the almost painful clench of internal muscles deep down inside.
‘Do you think we could do it?’ she whispered.
‘I think we must for his benefit,’ Jai countered levelly. ‘And as soon as possible. Are we agreed?’
Almost mesmerised by the blaze of his full attention, Willow nodded very slowly. ‘Yes.’
She was going to marry Jai and the concept was surreal: Jai the playboy with his polo ponies and trophies, his heritage palaces, his long backstory of glamorous and impossibly beautiful former lovers. Yet she was so ordinary, so unexciting in comparison, she thought in dismay. Even worse, he didn’t want to marry her and he had admitted it.
But that honesty of his was good, she told herself fiercely. Should she be ashamed of the reality that the very idea of being freed from all her financial worries was a relief? Did that mean that she was greedy? Or simply that she was tired of feeling like an inadequate mother? Without Jai, she had found it impossible to give Hari the comfort and security he deserved. With Jai, everything would be different. In addition, she would have far more rights over her own son if she married Jai. In terms of custody they would be equal partners then, she reasoned, and no matter what happened between her and Jai she would have very little reason to fear losing access to her little boy.
What would it be like, though, being married to a man who didn’t love or really want her? Jai hadn’t even wanted her enough to ask to see her again, she reminded herself doggedly, reeling from the toxic bite of that fact. Yes, sure, he had tried to check up on her a couple of months afterwards, she conceded grudgingly, but by that stage only an ingrained sense of responsibility towards Brian Allerton’s daughter had been driving him, nothing more personal.