The Sheikh's Secret Babies

by Lynne Graham

  Candles were burning everywhere she looked, glowing in the dark to cast leaping shadows across the soaring domed ceiling and elaborate mosaic-tiled walls and ensuring that the water droplets cascading from the fountains sparkled like diamonds. It was beautiful, incredibly beautiful, and Chrissie knew instinctively that Jaul had done it for her. Her bright eyes stung painfully and she had to blink when the man himself appeared from behind a pillar about thirty feet from her. In contrast to their highly exotic surroundings Jaul sported faded jeans and a partially unbuttoned white shirt, the pale fabric accentuating his bronzed skin and the blackness of his unruly hair. For a split second she felt as though time itself had slipped for this was Jaul as she remembered him as a student, shorn of every atom of his forbidding reserve.

  ‘Where on earth are we?’ Chrissie asked.

  ‘In the heart of the al-Zahid family’s shadiest secret,’ Jaul proffered wryly. ‘The harem that even I didn’t know still existed until this evening. Of course, I knew there would have been one at some stage but, taking into account my father’s delicate sensibilities, I assumed it was long gone.’

  Chrissie gazed past him at the giant bed. ‘That looks like a bed people would throw an orgy on,’ she said before she could think better of it. ‘Not that I know anything about...er...orgies—’

  ‘Look at the walls,’ Jaul invited.

  In the flickering shadows she saw the murals and the naked male and female figures engaged in flagrant sexual play and a hot flush lit her cheeks. ‘My goodness...’

  ‘I’m amazed that my father didn’t have this place razed to the ground, but he idolised my grandfather.’ Jaul sighed. ‘How he retained that respectful attitude when confronted with the reality that Tarif was a man with licentious habits, I cannot begin to imagine.’

  ‘Nor can I,’ she whispered, beginning to understand why he had brought her to the harem. He had found out the truth and immediately acted with the open-minded candour she had always loved him for. When Jaul was in the wrong he never tried to cover it up or excuse himself.

  ‘I’ve phoned Sophie’s daughter, Rose, and apologised through her for taking so long to make an approach to my grandmother.’

  ‘You phoned Rose...already?’ Chrissie exclaimed.

  ‘There were concubines here well into the last century. My grandmother wasn’t lying,’ Jaul confirmed with a sardonic twist of his lips. ‘But I only learned the truth this afternoon from Yusuf. He knows all the family secrets and learning about how cruelly my grandmother was treated was only the first of several shocks I received after I questioned him.’

  A frown dividing her brows, Chrissie made an instinctive move forward and rested her hand soothingly on his forearm, feeling the muscles that were pulled whipcord tight with fierce tension. ‘I’m sorry, Jaul.’

  As if he found her touch unbearable, Jaul shifted back a defensive step. ‘For what are you sorry? That I was too much of a fool to appreciate that my father would say or do anything to wreck my marriage?’ he framed with unleashed bitterness. ‘Chrissie, I would’ve trusted him with my life! He was a difficult man and very controlling but in many of the ways that mattered he was a good father.’

  Discomfited by his rejection of her sympathy, Chrissie stiffened. ‘And you loved him, of course you did. I loved my mother when I was a child even though I had a pretty miserable childhood. Parents don’t have to be perfect to be loved. But I still don’t understand why your father stayed so dead set against his own mother and me when he knew your grandfather was the one at fault.’

  ‘My father chose the easy way out. He was never going to admit the embarrassing truth. If he laid the blame of cultural differences at his mother’s door, he could continue to idolise his father and believe that he was right to protect me from all Western influences.’ Jaul’s brilliant dark eyes veiled. ‘Apparently he was afraid that I may have inherited Tarif’s fatal weakness for women. I was finally able to understand why I had to rebel against him to gain the right to study in the UK.’

  Chrissie was listening closely. ‘You had to...rebel? You never told me that before.’

  ‘I was ashamed of it. I was raised to believe that a decent son always respects a parent’s greater maturity and wisdom,’ Jaul admitted grudgingly. ‘After the experience of a military boarding school followed by army life, I longed for the freedom to make my own choices.’

  ‘Of course you did,’ she whispered feelingly, newly aware of what a domineering old tyrant his late father had been. ‘And I respect you more for having taken a stand and it’s hardly surprising that you went a little wild when you first started university. I never appreciated how restricted your life had been before you came to the UK.’

  Jaul studied her lovely face fixedly, the turquoise eyes soft with compassion. He was shaken that she was still trying to comfort him when he didn’t deserve comfort because he had let her down worst of all. ‘But that period of going wild almost cost me you,’ he pointed out. ‘It gave you the wrong impression.’

  Tears stung her eyes and she blinked them back in desperation as she sat down on the flat tiled edge of a fountain. ‘There was no way I was going to resist you for ever...the attraction was too strong.’

  ‘I have never wanted any woman as much as I wanted you,’ Jaul admitted in a raw undertone and he bent over the tray stationed on a table by a pillar to fill a glass and extend it to her. ‘I have never loved any woman but you...’

  At that statement, her hand shook a little as she accepted the glass, hastily sipping the cool sweetness of fruit juice. He had never loved anyone else, she was thinking, that surely had to be a point in her favour.

  His lean, darkly handsome features were grim and taut with tension. In a restive, uncertain gesture he raked long, elegant fingers through his luxuriant hair, tousling it. ‘I loved you yet I let you down. You were alone and pregnant and I wasn’t with you. I accepted my father’s lies.’

  Chrissie’s heart was thumping very hard. ‘Jaul—what’s brought all this on tonight?’

  ‘Yusuf was with my father when he visited you in Oxford. His conscience was uneasy and he was eager to clear it,’ Jaul recounted flatly. ‘I was appalled when Yusuf described what happened that day. It shames me that my father could have treated my wife in such a way and that I was unable to prevent it from happening.’

  The backs of her eyes were gritty with tears because she was remembering what had been one of the worst days of her life. Confronted by King Lut, she had felt alone and helpless, not to mention devastated by her father-in-law’s complete rejection of her as his son’s wife. ‘You were in hospital,’ she reminded him shakily. ‘There was nothing you could have done.’

  ‘Yusuf told me the truth.’ Jaul was ashen below his dark skin, his brilliant eyes tortured as he gazed at her. ‘But let us be honest here—Yusuf told me truths which I should’ve accepted when you spoke them.’

  ‘Yes,’ Chrissie cut in to confirm without hesitation. ‘I have never lied to you...’ A split second of silence fell before she coloured and added, ‘Well, only once and I’ll sort that out later.’

  ‘I swallowed my father’s lies about you and in my bitterness and hurt I learned to distrust my every memory of you. When I came back to find you last month, I should have listened more, thought deeper.’

  ‘Naturally you trusted your father’s word when he told you that I’d taken the money and run.’

  ‘How was it natural?’ His tone derisive in emphasis, Jaul set down her glass with a definite crack. Dark eyes flaming gold, he studied her, nostrils flaring, beautiful stubborn mouth tight at the corners with strain. ‘You were my life. You were my wife. My first loyalty should always have been to you. Will you please stop trying to make excuses for my failure to support you when you most needed me?’ he demanded hoarsely. ‘I let you down in every way possible—’

  ‘Your father did this to us. He separated us, lied to us both and hurt us both,’ Chrissie responded shakily. ‘Put the blame where it belongs, Jaul. You
were in a coma and then you had surgery and were struggling to recuperate. You weren’t in any condition to fight my corner or yours. When your father lied to you then, you were very vulnerable—’

  ‘I’m trying to say sorry, trying to grovel but you won’t let me,’ Jaul muttered unevenly, his eyes suspiciously bright.

  ‘I don’t want you grovelling. I don’t want your guilt—’

  ‘This is not guilt, this is...shame,’ he labelled roughly. ‘You are my wife and I let you down and I don’t want to lose you. There’s nothing I won’t do or say to keep you as my wife!’

  Recognising his increasingly emotional frame of mind, Chrissie almost smiled. ‘Oh, I think I worked that out straight after that pre-nuptial agreement was stuffed beneath my nose when I looked as though I might be ready to walk away from you,’ she confided.

  ‘It was an empty threat,’ Jaul confessed grittily. ‘A pre-nup has no standing as yet in a British court of law. In addition you signed it without the benefit of independent legal advice and you were very young at the time. I knew that the pre-nup wasn’t worth the paper it was written on.’

  It was Chrissie’s turn to be taken aback. As she had listened her eyes had widened and her soft mouth had hardened. ‘I should’ve called your bluff. But maybe I didn’t fight more because I didn’t want to. Has that occurred to you?’

  His lush black lashes swept up and down over his frowning eyes. ‘But why would you have behaved that way?’

  Chrissie stiffened, reluctant to give him the words of love that were as effective as chains in binding her to both him and the twins. He knew the truth now about his father, her pride and her sense of justice finally satisfied. He knew what she had endured and he knew that she had not accepted a financial settlement in lieu of their supposedly invalid marriage. Keen to change the subject of why she was being so tolerant of his stubborn misjudgements, she said with forced lightness of tone, ‘Who on earth lit all these candles?’

  ‘Zaliha supplied the candles and the snacks. I lit them. The fountains have been kept in good working order and only had to be switched on. I couldn’t allow any other female staff in here because they would have been very much shocked by the murals.’

  Chrissie scanned the hundreds of candles and hid a smile, touched by the effort he had made on her behalf. ‘The murals may be shocking but this place is beautiful all lit up like this.’

  The beginnings of the smile that had relaxed her full pink mouth filled Jaul with a craving for the softness of her, the warmth and the strength that ran like a core of inner steel through her seemingly fragile body. He had never appreciated how strong she truly was until he’d learnt what she had had to withstand at his father’s hands. His lean brown hands snapped into fists, anger stirring afresh because he had been incapable of protecting her. The guilt, which he was struggling to master, felt insurmountable.

  ‘I should’ve contacted you as soon as I was mobile again,’ he stated with savage regret, the hard, sculpted planes of his darkly handsome face stark with strain in the flickering light. ‘But I couldn’t face seeing you again knowing that I had lost you... It is hard for me to admit that but it is, at least, the truth of my feelings back then. Seeing you again, being in your presence when you were no longer mine, would have hurt too much.’

  ‘It still mattered that much to you?’ Chrissie pressed in surprise.

  Jaul shot her an incredulous look. ‘I loved you. I loved you with all my heart! But I lost faith in you while I lay alone in hospital.’

  Pained regret slivered through Chrissie. She was furious that his father had subjected him to that ordeal of believing that she no longer cared about him. I loved you with all my heart. It hurt Chrissie to hear that. ‘I would’ve been there with you if I’d known—’

  ‘I know that now...that’s what killing me!’ he bit out, swinging defensively away from her, broad shoulders bunched with tension below his thin shirt.

  ‘But it’s pointless wasting all this energy on a past that’s gone, done and dusted,’ she declared, tilting her chin. ‘We have to move on from it—’

  ‘How can I do that when my father’s lies cost us so much?’ Jaul framed emotively, turning back to her. ‘Once you were mine, completely, utterly mine and it is my dream that some day you will feel like that again. But, sensible and fair as I have tried to be, I still find myself thinking wholly unjust thoughts about the fact that—’ His hands fisted again and he turned away again. ‘No, I won’t say it...such jealousy and possessiveness are wrong!’

  Chrissie was frowning. ‘What the heck are you talking about?’ she prompted uncertainly.

  ‘It is a topic better not discussed. What has happened has happened and we will not allow it to spoil what we do have,’ Jaul declared, still restively pacing the tiled floor.

  Jealousy? Possessiveness? Abruptly she grasped his meaning and she reddened, cheeks heating fierily. ‘Are you talking about the fact that I said I was with other men while we were apart?’

  His lustrous gaze narrowed. ‘It’s not something we need to discuss,’ he told her hastily. ‘You believed you were single and quite naturally...’

  ‘Well, maybe it would’ve been natural but I didn’t sleep with anyone else,’ Chrissie told him in a rush. ‘I said I did but it was a lie. I don’t know how you thought I could have found the time for another man when I was pregnant most of the first year you were gone and saddled with two newborns and working the second year.’

  Jaul was studying her with fixed attention. ‘You...lied?’ he queried in disbelief. ‘About such an important issue?’

  Chrissie winced. ‘It was a weapon and I used it. It’s the one and only lie I have told you. Obviously I assumed that you—’

  Jaul stalked closer and gripped her forearms to hold her still. ‘No. No concubines, no girlfriends, no one-night stands. Nothing...zilch.’

  Her eyes opened very wide in surprise. ‘But...er, why?’

  ‘When I finally got out of that wheelchair I decided that since I had got myself in such a mess with you it would be safer to avoid another liaison and instead get married.’

  The tension in Chrissie’s slight shoulders relaxed and then reached full strength again because, while she was relieved he had not had any other women and his clear gaze convinced her that the once bitten, twice shy adage had worked a blinder on him, she still wanted to know who he had planned to marry. ‘So, who was picked to replace me?’

  Jaul flushed. ‘I didn’t have anyone picked but I knew my people were waiting for me to do the picking.’ He brushed a gentle finger beneath her down-curved chin to raise it. ‘In truth, Chrissie, I have never cared for any woman the way I care for you. I don’t deserve you but you have always owned my heart—from the first moment to the last moment. I was depressed for a long time after I believed I had lost you and I was afraid of ever feeling for another woman what I felt for you.’

  She lifted her hands to frame his proud cheekbones with tender fingers, emotion bright in her eyes as she gazed up into the scorching heat of his. ‘And I’m afraid that I’m always going to love you,’ she told him ruefully. ‘When you first came back I honestly did think I hated you but I never did get over losing you either.’

  ‘Chrissie—’

  ‘Shush,’ she hushed him tenderly. ‘Nobody else compared, nobody else can make me feel what you do and I do believe that you love me too.’

  ‘I do. I love you very deeply, habibti.’ Jaul planted a kiss against her caressing fingers, his black lashes low over golden eyes shimmering with a happiness Chrissie could not mistake. ‘The day I threatened you with the pre-nup was the day I understood that I still loved you because I have never done anything so dishonest in my whole life. And I wasn’t even ashamed. There was literally nothing I wouldn’t do to get a second chance with you and our children.’

  Chrissie wrapped her arms round his neck. ‘Ruthlessness in pursuit of the right goal is acceptable.’

  All her tension evaporated while he held her close an
d heat of a different ilk warmed at her feminine core.

  ‘But...who is to say...what the right goal is?’ Jaul quipped, running down the zip on her dress to ease it off her shoulders.

  As the dress dropped to her feet, exposing the frilly silky lingerie he loved to see her in, he made a sound of appreciation low in his throat and carried her over to the orgy-sized bed to settle her down on the white linen sheet.

  ‘My only goal,’ he proffered softly, ‘is to keep you as my wife and the mother of my children for ever and make you so happy that you eventually forget our separation.’

  Chrissie plucked at his collar. ‘I think that’s a terrific motivation,’ she told him sassily, her bright eyes dancing as he ripped off his shirt with more haste than cool. ‘Particularly since you’ve been so very separate from me in bed this past week...and I haven’t been at all happy.’

  Jaul dealt her a troubled glance. ‘I burned for you but once I received Yusuf’s note...’

  ‘What note?’

  Jaul explained the note. ‘And in the same moment I read it I knew I had got everything wrong with you. I couldn’t afford to take anything for granted.’

  His wife ran worshipping fingers idly along the rippling muscles of his abdomen. ‘I thought you’d lost interest.’

  ‘You must be joking!’ Jaul exclaimed, rolling her back to come down over her, his taut lower body hard with an arousal she could feel. ‘I always want you. I just knew I didn’t deserve you.’

  Chrissie ran an appreciative hand down over a lean, powerful thigh. ‘Love makes people more forgiving and I love you an awful lot.’

  His kiss was hot, hungry and wildly exciting and her heart pounded and her pulses raced. Happiness was spinning and dancing inside her like a sudden burst of golden sunshine.

  ‘And I love you,’ he confessed with a flashing grin that tugged at her heart because the twins so strongly resembled him. ‘I love you more than I ever thought I could love anyone and I always will.’

  * * *

  Three years after that incredibly romantic reconciliation in the former harem, Chrissie watched the twins squabble over a ride-on plastic car they were playing with in a shaded courtyard. At four years old, Tarif and Soraya were lively and opinionated and in need of firm handling from both their parents. Rising, Chrissie uttered a sharp word to break up the quarrel, threatening to remove the car entirely if the children refused to share it peaceably. It was interesting to sit back down again and watch her children negotiate a compromise.