by Lynne Graham
Jai sent her an inhumanly cool and calm appraisal, the dark strength of his resolve palpable. ‘I will do what I must to put right what you have got wrong…’
Stabbed to the heart by that spontaneously offered opinion, Willow bent her head. No judgement here, she thought sarcastically, but she was so deep in shock that Jai would actually threaten her with losing custody of her child that she didn’t even know what to say back to him. She didn’t want to take the risk of being too frank, didn’t want to row in public, didn’t want to make a bad situation worse by speaking without careful forethought. She sensed that the Jai she had thought she knew to some degree was not the Jai she was currently dealing with. This was Jai being ruthless and calculating and brutally confrontational, which, logic warned her, had to be qualities he had acquired to rise so high and so fast in the business world. Unluckily for her, it was not a side of him she had seen before or had had to deal with.
‘We will not argue here in a public place,’ Jai informed her in the same very polite tone. ‘We will both ensure that the needs of our child remain our first consideration.’
‘Of course, but—’
‘No, there will be no qualification of that statement,’ Jai interposed levelly. ‘Now, please pack so that we can leave this place behind us.’
Willow leapt upright and reached down for Hari.
‘I will look after him while you pack,’ Jai spelt out as he too stood up, towering over her in her flat heels with Hari still clasped in his arms.
‘You could walk away with him while I’m upstairs,’ Willow pointed out shakily, not an ounce of colour in her taut face as she looked up at him fearfully.
‘I give you my word of honour that I will not do that. You are his mother and my son needs his mother,’ Jai murmured soft and low, the hardness of his expression softening a little. ‘Although I grew up without mine, it would never be my choice to put my son in the same position.’
Willow backed off a step, still uncertain of what she should do. ‘If I pack, where are you taking us to? A hotel?’
‘Of course not. To my home here in London,’ Jai proffered as Hari tugged cheerfully at his hair. ‘I have already had rooms prepared for your arrival.’
‘You took a lot for granted,’ Willow remarked helplessly.
‘In this situation, I can afford to do so,’ Jai told her without remorse.
And with that ringing indictment of her ability to raise their child alone, Willow headed upstairs. There wasn’t much for her to pack. She gathered up Hari’s bottles and solid food and put them into the baby bag Shelley had bought her. She settled the bin bags filled with their clothing and Hari’s toys into the battered stroller, donned her duffle coat and wheeled the stroller to the top of the stairs before stooping to lift it and battle to carry it downstairs. Halfway down the second flight one of Jai’s bodyguards met her and lifted it out of her arms.
‘Is that the lot?’ Jai asked, turning from the reception desk, Hari tucked comfortably under one arm.
‘Yes. I left stuff with Shelley.’
‘There’s a form for you to fill in. I put in the forwarding address,’ Jai advanced.
Willow was surprised that there was only one form because before she had even moved into the hostel, she’d had to fill out a thirty-page document. She signed her name at the foot, briefly scanning the address Jai had filled in, raising a brow at the exclusivity of the area. Mayfair, no less. Five minutes later, she was climbing into a limousine for the first time in her life, breathless at the unknown ahead of her.
Jai strapped Hari into the car seat awaiting him.
‘When did you learn to be so comfortable around babies?’ Willow asked tautly.
‘There are many children in my extended family. High days and holidays, they visit,’ Jai told her. ‘I was a lonely only child. Hari will never suffer from a lack of company.’
On her smoothly upholstered leather seat, Willow tensed, registering that Jai was already talking about her son visiting India. She supposed that was natural, and an expectation he would obviously have. Even so the prospect of her baby boy being so far away from her totally unnerved her, and she couldn’t help feeling overwhelmed, most especially when Jai had already threatened her with legal action.
‘Now for the question that taxes my patience the most,’ Jai breathed, his nostrils flaring with annoyance, his light eyes throwing a laser-bright challenge. ‘Why would you move into a homeless shelter rather than ask me for help?’
Willow froze. ‘There’s nothing wrong with living in a homeless shelter. They’re there for when people are desperate.’
‘But you weren’t desperate, not really. You could’ve turned to me at any time. And don’t try to misinterpret my question. I probably know a great deal more than you about the individuals who use such shelters. Some are those who have fallen on hard times through no fault of their own, others have mental health issues or are drug addicts or ex-cons. None of those elements make a homeless shelter safe or acceptable for a child,’ Jai completed harshly.
‘Nonetheless there are quite a few children living in them!’ Willow shot back at him stubbornly.
‘Why didn’t you contact me?’ Jai demanded, out of all patience with her reluctance to answer his original question. He had been denied all knowledge of his son for more than six months and that enraged him, but he was grimly aware that this was not the right time to reveal his deep anger, particularly not if he wanted her to tell him the truth.
Willow swallowed convulsively. ‘I didn’t think you’d want to know. It was my problem. He’s my child.’ She hesitated. ‘When I was pregnant, I was afraid that you would want me to have a termination and I didn’t want to be put in that position. I didn’t want to feel guilty for wanting to have my own child. It was easier to get on with it on my own and I managed fine while I was pregnant and still able to work.’
‘I would never have asked you to have a termination. Hari is my child too,’ Jai retorted crisply. ‘I would have ensured that you had somewhere decent to live and I would have supported you.’
Willow sighed. ‘Well, it’s too late now to be arguing about it.’
Jai’s eyes flashed at that assurance and he struggled to repress his anger, because her misplaced pride and lack of faith in him had ensured that his son had endured living conditions that were far less than his due.
‘So, how did you manage to conceive when you told me it would be safe for us to have sex?’ he asked next, battening down his volatile responses to concentrate on the basic facts.
Willow could feel her whole face heating up and she glanced across at Jai with noticeable reluctance. Safe to have sex? That was what he had meant that night? She shook her head slowly as clarity spilled through her brain and she squirmed in retrospect over her own stupidity. ‘I misunderstood. When you asked if it was safe, I assumed that you were asking if we would be interrupted…if I was expecting anyone,’ she admitted stiffly, her cheeks only burning more fierily at the look of incredulity that flared in his ice-blue eyes. ‘I’m sorry. I wasn’t thinking about contraception. That danger honestly didn’t cross my mind.’
And the whole mystery of how she had become pregnant was clarified there and then, Jai conceded in a kind of wonderment. She had misunderstood him, and he had been too hot for her to reflect on the risk that he had never taken with any other woman. They had had unprotected sex several times because the young woman he had slept with had still had the mentality of a guilty, self-conscious teenager, determined to hide her sex life from the critical grown-ups. He supposed then that he had got exactly what he deserved for not considering questioning the level of her sexual experience.
Or was he being very naive in accepting that explanation? Was it, indeed, possible that Willow had wanted to become pregnant by a rich man? A rich man and a baby by him could secure a woman’s comfort for a comfortable twenty years. In one calcul
ating move, such a pregnancy would have solved all Willow’s financial problems. And not contacting him and keeping him out of the picture until the child was safely born could well have been part of the same gold-digging scheme to set him up and profit from her fertility in the future.
Jai frowned, ice-blue eyes, enhanced by velvety black lashes, turning glacier cool as he surveyed her. She looked tired and tense and hadn’t made any effort to do herself up for his benefit, but then, why would she bother when she was now the mother of his son and already in an unassailable position in his life?
At the same time, he had made the first move that night after the funeral, at least, he thought he had. In truth, all he recalled was the heady taste of her lips, not how he had arrived at that point. The pulse at his groin kicked up a storm at that recollection, reminding him that he was still hungry for her. His jaw clenched. He would soon find out if she was mercenary and, really, it didn’t matter a damn, did it? After all, whatever she was, whoever she turned out to be, he had to marry her for his son’s sake…
CHAPTER FOUR
WILLOW WALKED INTO the Mayfair town house and was plunged straight into palatial contemporary décor that was breathtakingly large and impressive.
‘Come this way,’ Jai instructed, heading straight for the elegant staircase with Hari still clasped to his powerful chest. ‘My former ayah, Shanaya, arrived this morning. She has a full complement of staff with her and they will look after Hari while we talk.’
‘Ayah?’ Willow questioned with frowning eyes.
‘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.