Billionaire Baby Daddies: A five-book anthology

by Connelly, Clare

  “You don’t want to believe me,” he said simply, his eyes challenging. “Because I am not playing by the rules we have established. But that in no way invalidates my feelings.”

  “You’ve hardly touched me since the wedding.”

  His face showed his shock. “Of course I haven’t! Did I deserve the pleasure of your body after what I did? I lied to you! I lied about my deceased sister’s wishes, all because I couldn’t bear to lose you. What kind of amoral bastard does that make me? How could I touch you and expect you to touch me back knowing what I’d done? Knowing that you had seen the truth of my actions and found it in your heart to forgive me? Hearing you speak with such kind generosity to Leilani after her vicious attack? You are all that is good in this world and I took advantage of your kindness. How could I touch you? As though I had any right.”

  Evie squeezed her eyes shut, her desire to believe him at odds with the scepticism she’d employed as a shield for her soft heart. “Leilani told me you love her.”

  “I have never loved her,” he denied with such uncomplicated ease it surely must have been true. “But I knew she loved me and I should have ended it a long time ago.”

  “When I came here, you hardly spoke to me,” she whispered, remembering those early, grief-soaked weeks when he had been aloof and uncaring.

  “You were married!” He said with a groan. “Or, as far as I knew, you were married. I kept my distance because I was terrified of what I might say, of what I might offer, to have you leave him for me.” He shook his head with muted anger. “At the funeral, I ached for you. Can you believe that? My own sister’s funeral and all I wanted to do was take you to my bed and bury my sorrow with your pleasure.” His cheeks were highlighted by emotion. “You! A married woman, with a tear-stained face and a little boy clutched to your hip.”

  He growled with feeling. “In every way my behaviour has betrayed what I expect of myself. Even from the first, when you were in Khadir’s garden and I held you close, wanting you all to myself, I knew I should have stayed away. When I discovered your connection to my sister, I should have closed the door on the desire I felt. And yes, when you arrived, wearing a wedding ring and caring so beautifully for our nephew, I should have set aside my hopes for us. And I didn’t. I could not.”

  Evie sucked in a deep breath as his eyes seemed to flash, for the briefest of minutes, with suspicious moisture. But there was no way in hell Malakhi was crying. Was there?

  “My greatest wish, Evelyn, is that ours will become a real marriage.” He lowered his gaze, shielding his eyes from her. “Desire we have, but respect and affection take time to thrive. I accept this, so long as there is hope. So long as there is enough in your heart to one day lead to this.”

  Evie shivered and shook her head. She went to curl her leg up beneath her but winced as pain assaulted her. She put her foot back gingerly on the ground. “It’s May fourth,” she said quietly, her words curdled with sadness. “David’s birthday. I woke up with the sense that I was drowning. Or burning.” She lifted her stare to his. “You weren’t there.”

  He groaned and closed his eyes on the horrible realisation. “Of course it is.”

  “I just needed to get out. To get away.”

  “Yes, yes.” He put his arms around her and pulled her towards him but her foot gave a sharp objection. She pulled back and he mistook the vehemence of her denial for something else entirely.

  Rejection slammed against him; but had he really hoped for more? After what he’d done?

  “What do you want, Evie? Is marriage to me so disgusting?”

  Years of hiding how she felt made speech difficult. She weighed up her words, trying to think of the consequences for finally speaking the truth. But uncertainty plagued her. “You’re really saying you’re in love with me?” She asked finally.

  “And that I love you,” he agreed simply, making the important distinction between first love and lasting affection. “We lost our family, and yet not each other. You are all I have. You and Kalem. I want to make this real. I am sick of speaking to you and not being able to smile as I wish; of not being able to put my arm around you as though we are truly husband and wife. I love you, and I want to show it openly and privately. Always.”

  She expelled a breath of wonderment and nodded, her face expressing complete bemusement. She nodded slowly. “I want that too.”

  His laugh was self-deprecating. “You cannot want it simply to relieve my pain,” he said gently. “Already you have done too much forgiving and making exceptions. For me, for Leilani. For everyone. I want to know what you want now.”

  “I want you,” she said simply, honestly. “I fell in love with you years ago. You’re the reason I didn’t stay married. Not just because I desired you but because I loved you whole-heartedly. Arriving in Ishala, I wasn’t sure what to expect. But the second I saw you, I knew that my love was real, and very much as in tact as it had been back then.”

  He made a sound of triumph and again pulled her roughly to his chest but she cried out in pain. He leaned backwards, his eyes skimming her pale face. “What? What is it?” He demanded with soft urgency.

  Evie lifted the fabric of her skirt, revealing the leg that was swollen and scratched. He swore and stood instantaneously, striding to the door and wrenching it sharply inwards. “Call for a doctor,” he said in his own language before returning to his wife’s side. “What happened?”

  “I fell,” she said with a shake of her head. “I wasn’t paying attention. It’s just a sprain.”

  A muscle jerked in his cheek. “We shall let the doctor decide that.”

  “I’m fine,” she demurred, her heart swelling with wonderment at this new turn of events. A strange shyness was filling her soul. “I will be, anyway. I just need to rest it.”

  His eyes glittered as he bent down and lifted her to his chest. He held her cradled there, so that her head was filled with the strong beating of his good heart, and moved through the palace.

  Guards had returned to their usual activity now; several stood silently as Malakhi and Evie passed. What must they have thought of Malakhi carrying his Sheikha in such a fashion? Of her resting with her eyes shut, her smile serene?

  He shouldered the door to their suite open, stepping in with a sense that it was the true moment of making a commitment to one another.

  Gently, so gently, he deposited her on top of their bed, propping her foot up on a pillow. His ministrations made her throat sting with unshed tears. She watched as he left their suite and returned a moment later, Amira at his side. She hovered nervously and listened to his instructions in Ishalan then sent a bright smile towards Evie and disappeared.

  “She will bring tea and breakfast,” he said, a hand resting on her flat stomach.

  So much pain had torn through Evie in recent times that she was surprised she remembered how to feel utterly happy. But in that moment, her heart was lifting out of her chest and soaring above, high into the heavens.

  “I love you.” Wonderment and delight rang through the statement. “It feels so good to be able to say that.”

  “Believe me when I tell you it feels even better to hear it.” He leaned forward, his mouth just an inch from hers. “When you told me that ours was not a marriage of love, I felt as though you had taken a knife and driven it through me. How could I explain that to me this was the truest kind of love-match? One that was undeniable and insatiable? A love that drove me to do unconscionable things?”

  “I didn’t want you to know how I felt,” she said. “I took what Leilani had … revealed … to show that you had only practical reasons for wanting me as your wife. My pride couldn’t quite cope with you knowing what had motivated me.”

  He kissed her gently, and she tasted the apology and truth in the movement of his lips. “She told me she’d seen you yesterday.”

  Evie’s eyes fluttered closed and her cheeks flushed.

  “She seemed to think you had given your approval for her and me to become lovers again
.”

  Evie’s eyes were enormous in her face. She fidgeted with her fingers but Malakhi put his hand over them. “Not quite,” she said softly. “She said that we’re both in your life and that it would be easier if we weren’t enemies. I told her I don’t consider her my enemy, or something along those lines.”

  “She is not in my life,” he said. “And before you and your kind-heart leap to her defence and demand we start inviting her to join us for dinner, Nilam and I agree it is for her own good that she should go away a while.” A frown line formed between his eyes. “I had no consideration for her feelings. She needs time and distance to accept that you are my wife, and that there is no going back.”

  Evie, for all that she wished the other woman well, was thrilled to hear it. “Where will she go?”

  “London,” he smiled. “But that is not our concern.”

  A knock sounded at the door and Malakhi moved to it quickly.

  A man in his forties entered and inspected Evie’s foot. She had to suppress a giggle at the way Malakhi hovered, his expression such a study in concern. The doctor gave instructions to Malakhi and then smiled at Evie before leaving.

  “A sprain,” he said. “Bed rest until you improve.”

  “As I said,” she grinned.

  “You are always right, my dear Jamila.”

  Her fingers pleated the sheet and her gaze moved thoughtfully to the window. Their relationship was flashing before her like a screenplay and in each scene she was trying to detect evidence of his love.

  “Do you remember the day you propositioned me to become your mistress?”

  “With enormous shame,” he said thickly.

  “You were so angry with me.” A shiver ran down her spine as, even then, surrounded by complete faith in his affection, she recalled the way he’d made her sit naked before him, as though she was just a body to him.

  “I have never spoken to a woman – to anyone – like that.” He ran his hand over his eyes. “I was angry. I had been angry with you for years. For leaving me and marrying him. For disappearing from my life. For looking so wonderful and happy in the photographs Sabra would send. For existing and not being mine.” He shook his head ruefully. “Even as I spoke to you, I wanted to shake myself. I didn’t deserve you to agree to my plans. If it hadn’t been for Kalem, you probably would have told me to go to hell.”

  “I was hurt,” she said truthfully, recalling vividly her disbelief in how he was treating her. “But Kalem was only a small part of why I agreed to become your mistress.” She sighed, shaking her head. “We started something years ago and, like you, I’d thought of it ever since.”

  “Leilani told me what she said to you: that she knew of your innocence,” he said, coming to sit beside her once more. He placed his hand gently on her leg, his fingers stroking her through the fabric of her dress.

  “Yes.” Evie’s cheeks flushed. That night when she’d found the other woman in his room … She’d forgotten about that.

  “That night you and I were first together, I ended it with her. That’s why she was here, in this room. I didn’t tell her about your inexperience but I must have said enough. I was in a state of shock. I don’t recall what I said, to be completely honest. For almost the first time in my life I had the sense that I had broken something beautiful. I had bulldozed past your objections and I had bullied you into my bed…”

  Evie pushed forward, ignoring the sharp stab of pain from her foot as she moved. She put her hands on his shoulders, and brought her mouth to his. He closed the distance.

  “I would never have slept with you if I didn’t want to.” She kissed him, her hands soft on his shoulders, her body ever-after his. “I wanted you. I loved you. And I wanted this.”

  “When we went to the Ruins of Fash’allam, I had to fight against an instinct to tell you how I felt. I literally had to clamp my lips shut to stop the words from coming out.”

  “Why?” She asked, wonderment drifting over her.

  “Because I had already proposed and you’d seemed so nonplussed.” His smile was loaded with self-deprecation. “It was obvious that you didn’t share my feelings.”

  “Oh, but I did!” She shook her head, her mind moving back to his proposition. “But you told me nothing would change between us. The idea of being married to you and not having your affection or respect, of only being a body you sought … it terrified me.”

  “Can you really have thought that’s what you were to me?”

  Evie sent him a look of mocking derision. “Do I need to remind you of the things you said the night we became lovers?”

  “Please, never again remind me of that.” He pressed his forehead to hers. “If atonement is possible, I will spend my lifetime searching for it.”

  Evie’s eyes sparked as they met his. “A lifetime?”

  He linked his fingers with hers. “Our lifetimes. You are my other half. I believe we were created to find one another, to live together, to make a life together. I believe you were designed to sit with me here in this palace, sharing the responsibilities of ruling this country with me. I believe we were meant to live, raising Kalem together. And I believe my sister and your brother would smile to see this.”

  Tears sparkled on Evie’s eyelashes. “I think so too.”

  “When you left here, and married Nick, I knew true pain. My heart died and darkness only remained. I became a bitter man, Evie. I had known perfect love for the smallest amount of time and you had chosen not to feel it. You had walked away from me and the feelings we shared.”

  Guilt flipped her gut. “I was torn in half by the decision,” she assured him. “But it was so complicated.”

  “Of course it was,” he agreed gently. “Now that you are my wife and I know we shall be together I can be magnanimous.”

  She laughed. “It was surreal. Dressing for my wedding, knowing it was the last thing I wanted to do. But everyone else was so happy.”

  Malakhi didn’t care for the details, but curiosity led him to say: “He must have been offended that you wouldn’t sleep with him.”

  “Sleep with him? I couldn’t bear to be touched by him.” She squeezed her eyes shut with regret. “Marrying him was spectacularly unfair – to you, to me, and to him most of all.”

  “How long did it last?”

  “We honeymooned together,” she said with a wistful smile. “But I told him on the plane there that I couldn’t do it. We spent two weeks on a beautiful island, shell-shocked but remembering all the reasons we had to be friends.”

  “That sounds very mature.”

  “I think it was,” she laughed, shaking her head. “No one was happier than I when he got engaged again. It absolved me of a degree of guilt that I shall always feel.”

  “That was my fault too,” he said thickly. “When I found out you were engaged I made it impossible for you to see me as a viable option. I shut down every avenue we had for happiness again and again, and it is only through your goodness and grace that we are here now.”

  “And your courage,” she whispered. “You told me you loved me when you had no idea how I felt. I wasn’t brave enough to do that.”

  “Your love is obvious in everything you do,” he said softly. “I have never known anyone as kind and compassionate as you.”

  She bit down on her lip. “I woke up this morning so miserable and I am now almost euphorically happy. How can I feel like this? On today of all days?”

  “Perhaps your brother is pulling strings?” He said softly.

  Evie sighed. “That’s highly possible.”

  He pressed a kiss to his wife’s forehead and sighed with the relief of a man who had loved, lost and craved for a very long time. Finally, he had her, and he knew that theirs was a love that would endure all trials.

  Epilogue

  One year later, to the day

  Evie’s eyes lit up as she looked at her husband. Even in this most mundane of settings, he was so powerfully in-control.

  “She is vomiting,”
he said, as though it was not obvious to everyone in the room that the Sheikha of Ishala had just lost her lunch. Or lack thereof.

  “That’s normal, sir.”

  Evie, a little fogged by drugs, smiled at Malakhi. “You’re wearing a shower cap.”

  He laughed. “Yes. I am.”

  “Truly, sir, you’re best to sit down,” the doctor murmured, nodding towards a seat beside Evie’s head.

  He groaned and took the seat, reaching out for Evie’s hand. There were tubes and needles everywhere. The sight of her like this was almost enough to swear off sex forever.

  “How much longer?” He asked.

  “Wait,” the surgeon commanded and Malakhi’s eyebrows shot up at the curt command.

  “Relax,” Evie said, her smile not faltering.

  “Easy for you to say. You are hooked up to a virtual drug smorgasboard, Jamila.”

  There was more activity and suddenly a tiny little human was lifted from Evie’s abdomen and held above the surgical curtain that separated them from the medical team.

  “A son,” Evie said thickly, watching as a nurse wiped the infant. He began to cry, a robust sound that filled the room. Malakhi moved closer and was handed a pair of scissors with which to cut the umbilical cord. Emotions reverberated through him as he looked down on another beautiful little person to enrich their homes and their lives.

  “He’s perfect,” he said thickly, taking the baby and bringing him to Evie’s chest. She cradled him there, ignoring the rolling waves of nausea and exhaustion. “What shall we call him?”

  Malakhi kissed her forehead. “That decision is yours.” He ran a hand over the baby’s head. “But if I had a choice, I would say that a baby born on your brother’s birthday to a couple who would not have met were it not for him? Surely it has to be David.”

  “David?” Her heart turned over. Love, sorrow and completion throbbed inside of her.

  “Or the Ishalan version: Davyrd.”

  “Oh, I like that.”

  “Kalem and Davyrd,” he murmured.