Indian Prince's Hidden Son (Mills & Boon Modern)

by Lynne Graham

  A couple of hours later, Willow walked into the Royal Chandrapur, an exclusive boutique establishment on the other side of the city. From reception, she wheeled Hari’s buggy into the tiny lift and breathed in deep.

  The first surprise was that the small blond woman who opened the door to her appeared to be much younger than she had expected. Well-preserved, she assumed, meeting eyes of the same startling pale blue as her husband’s and taking in the huge smile on the other woman’s face.

  ‘I didn’t think you’d come,’ she said frankly.

  Willow winced. ‘I almost didn’t. Jai doesn’t know I’m here,’ she admitted guiltily.

  ‘And this is…little Hari?’

  As the door closed behind them, Jai’s mother knelt down by the side of the buggy and studied Willow’s son in fascination. ‘He is spookily like Jai was at the same age,’ she whispered appreciatively. ‘Just a little older than Jai was when I left India.’

  Willow breathed in deep and settled into the seat the other woman indicated with a casual hand. ‘What I don’t understand is, if you wanted contact with Jai why did you virtually cut him dead when you did finally meet him as an adult?’

  ‘Let me start at the beginning and then perhaps you’ll understand better. If you don’t, that’s fine too. I’m grateful you came here. First of all, I am Milly…and you are… Willow, I gather?’

  Willow harnessed the very rude impatience tugging at her and nodded with a smile.

  ‘Would you like tea?’

  ‘No, thanks. Being here with you makes me a little nervous. Let’s talk about whatever we have to talk about,’ Willow urged.

  ‘A little background first, then,’ Milly decided, seemingly magnetised by the tiny fingers Hari was stretching out to her. ‘May I lift him?’ she asked hopefully.

  Leaning down, Willow detached the harness and watched her son being scooped gently into his grandmother’s arms.

  ‘Where do I start?’ Milly sighed then. ‘I was twenty and Jai’s father was fifty when we married. My family were against it from the start because of the age gap but I was madly in love and I thought I knew it all.’

  ‘I didn’t know that there was such a big age gap between you,’ Willow admitted.

  ‘The marriage didn’t work from the start. Rehan wanted a quiet little wife, who stayed at home, and I was very independent. He was insanely jealous and controlling but the assaults didn’t begin until after Jai was born,’ Milly murmured flatly.

  Willow’s clear gaze widened in dismay. ‘He hit you?’ she exclaimed.

  Milly nodded. ‘We had terrible rows and he couldn’t control his temper. But I’m talking about slaps and kicks, not severe beatings.’

  ‘Abuse is abuse,’ Willow opined.

  ‘When my mother was dying, I had to return to England to be with her and, before I left, I made the mistake of telling Rehan that I believed we should separate. My biggest mistake, though, was agreeing to leave Jai behind until I came back. I was only away for two weeks,’ Milly proffered. ‘Rehan attended my mother’s funeral and brought what he said were divorce papers for me to sign but they were all in Hindi. I was so relieved that he was willing to let me go without a fuss that I signed… I hadn’t the smallest suspicion that I was surrendering my right to have custody of my son or access to him and by the time I realised that it was too late.’

  ‘Jai’s father tricked you?’ Willow was appalled.

  Milly lifted a thick file on the small table between them and extended it. ‘If you can do nothing else, give this to Jai. It’s the proof of all the years I fought through the courts to try and regain access to him. I failed.’

  ‘But why, if you wanted to see him, did you deny him or whatever it was you did when you did see him?’ Willow demanded bluntly.

  ‘My husband and stepchildren didn’t know Jai existed at that stage,’ Milly volunteered shamefacedly. ‘Steven, my second husband, knew about my marriage to Rehan but I didn’t tell him that I’d had a child. My battle to see Jai consumed a decade and a half of my life and I got nowhere in all that time. I needed to move on to retain my sanity and make a fresh start. But I will admit that I was fearful of telling Steven that I had been deprived of my right to see my own child because, with three kids of his own, it might have made him doubt the wisdom of marrying me.’

  The picture Willow was forming became a little clearer in receipt of that frank admission. ‘Steven had three children? They’re not yours?’ she prompted.

  ‘He was a widower with a young family when we met. I did hope to have another child, but I was almost forty by the time we married and it didn’t happen. It was only a few months afterwards that I ran into Jai in the flesh,’ his mother confided with tears in her eyes. ‘Someone actually introduced me to him… I was floored—there he was in front of me with his face stiffening as he realised who I was and I had been too scared to tell Steven about him! I walked away because I didn’t know what else to do with other people all around us. I wasn’t prepared.’

  ‘And then you tried to see Jai afterwards to explain,’ Willow filled in with a grimace. ‘And it was too late. The damage was done.’

  Milly’s regret was palpable as she rocked Hari, who was curled up in her arms, perfectly content. ‘If only people stayed this innocent.’ She sighed. ‘I left a baby behind and now he’s a man and they’re much more complicated.’

  Tell me about it, Willow ruminated uneasily, wondering whether she should go straight back to the Lake Palace and tell Jai who she had been with, or whether to go shopping instead in an effort to make her cover-up lie the truth, which would give her time to choose the optimum moment for such a revelation. But would there ever be a right moment to tackle so very personal and controversial a subject?

  Deepening the deception she was already engaged in, however, felt even more wrong to her. Indeed, even being with Milly without her son’s knowledge felt wrong to Willow at that moment. But good intentions had to count for something, didn’t they? She argued with herself as she lifted the file and told Milly that she needed to get home but hoped to see her again. The older woman’s answering smile was sad, as if she seriously doubted the likelihood of them ever having a second meeting, and she thanked Willow heartily again for being willing to see her and giving her the chance to meet her grandson. When Willow mentioned Jivika’s input, Milly simply rolled her eyes, unimpressed.

  ‘Jivika is sincere,’ Willow insisted defensively.

  ‘But nothing’s changed. My ex-husband and, by the sound of it, now Jai as well have too much influence, too much status to be treated like ordinary people.’ Milly studied her with embittered eyes. ‘They may not rule any more but they’re still royal in the eyes of thousands. That’s why I never had a hope of fighting Rehan and winning. It was never an equal playing field. There were witnesses, who could’ve supported me but who were unwilling to expose their Maharaja for the man he really was.’

  ‘I’m truly sorry,’ Willow muttered uncomfortably. ‘I can’t promise anything, but I will try to talk to Jai some time soon.’

  Even if it cost her her marriage? she asked herself worriedly as the limo drove back to the palace with Hari dozing contentedly in his child seat. Or was that an exaggerated fear? Who could tell how badly Jai would react? No, it wasn’t her place to act as a persuader, she reasoned uneasily. She would admit to meeting up with his mother and give him the file and leave it at that. She had interfered enough. He would make up his own mind about what, if anything, he wanted to do with what he learned.

  When Jai went in search of Willow mid-morning he assumed she had gone to see Sher until he recalled that his friend had mentioned a trip to Mumbai that day, and he phoned her driver instead to discover where she had gone. A hotel? A moment later he rang the hotel and without hesitation requested a list of the British guests staying there. Only a few minutes beyond that he knew the only possible reason for his wif
e’s visit to the Royal Chandrapur and he could not credit that, after what he had told her, she could have gone to meet his mother. It outraged him and it didn’t make sense to him. Even so, by the time acceptance of that unwelcome fact had set in, his outrage had settled into a far more dangerous sense of betrayal.

  When Willow climbed out of the limo carrying her sleeping son, eager hands were extended to take him back to the nursery and his lunch. Straightening, she headed up the shallow marble steps and saw Jai poised in the empty hall. One glance at the narrowed chilling glitter of his eyes and the forbidding coolness of his lean, strong features and her stomach dropped as though the ground beneath her feet had suddenly vanished. Her mouth ran dry and she swallowed painfully.

  CHAPTER TEN

  ‘YOU KNOW WHERE I’ve been,’ Willow guessed, her fingers biting into the heavy file she clasped in one hand. ‘Let me explain.’

  ‘Let me make it clear from the start—there is no acceptable explanation,’ Jai asserted, his shadowed, well-defined jaw line clenching hard as he strode into the library.

  He leant back against the desk in the centre of the room, tall and lean and bronzed and beautiful, and her heart clenched because there was a look in his eyes that she had never seen before and it frightened her. He looked detached, wholly in control and calm but utterly distant, as if she were a stranger.

  ‘How did my mother contact you?’ Jai shot the question at her.

  ‘By email. One of your staff gave it to me.’ Willow shrugged awkwardly. ‘I suppose they didn’t want to give it to you. I wasn’t even going to mention it to you after what you’d told me about her, but then I had a conversation with…er…someone at the party that made me realise that there are two sides to every story.’

  Jai elevated an eloquent black brow. ‘Someone?’

  Stiff as a board, Willow angled an uneasy hand in dismissal. ‘I’m not going to name names. I don’t want you dragging anyone else into this mess. I don’t want you to be angry with anyone but me.’

  ‘I’m not angry. I am stunned by your intrusion into a matter that is confidential. But I am repelled by what can only be your insatiable curiosity and your complete lack of sensitivity!’ Jai enumerated in a voice that shook slightly, belying his contention that he was not angry.

  Willow’s tummy turned over sickly and her natural colour ebbed. ‘I intended to tell you.’

  ‘But you still went to see her,’ Jai condemned harshly. ‘You knew how I would feel about that and yet still you went to see her—to do what? To discuss long-past events that are none of your business? To listen to her lies?’

  ‘It’s not rational for you to place a complete block on her side of the story or to assume that she’s lying without hearing the facts,’ Willow dared, but then fear of the trouble she had already caused between them punctured her bravado. ‘But I am very sorry that I’ve upset you.’

  Jai raked long brown fingers through his luxuriant black hair. ‘You let me down. You deceived me.’

  ‘I didn’t deceive you!’ she gasped in dismay.

  ‘Not telling me that you were planning to meet her was a deception, an unforgivable deception!’ Jai ground out in a raw undertone. ‘You quite deliberately went behind my back to do something which you knew went against my principles.’

  ‘But I had good intentions,’ Willow muttered frantically, her chest tightening at the bite of that threatening word, ‘unforgivable,’ being attached to anything she had done. ‘Feelings always win out over principles with me.’

  ‘I trusted you.’

  ‘No, you’ve never trusted me. You don’t even trust me with your best friend,’ Willow reminded him helplessly.

  A tinge of dark colour edged Jai’s high cheekbones and he studied her grimly. ‘I got over that. I worked it out for myself. I was jealous of the bond you seem to have forged with Sher and it unsettled me,’ he admitted flatly. ‘I wasn’t thinking logically when I spoke to you yesterday and the issue would’ve been cleared up last night had you not taken Hari to bed with you. I didn’t want to disturb you.’

  ‘You mean…you came to see me later on?’ Willow prompted in surprise.

  Jai jerked his arrogant dark head in confirmation.

  ‘Thank you for that,’ Willow acknowledged tautly, conceding that at least that issue now seemed to have been laid to rest, but not comforted by that knowledge when a bigger abyss seemed to have opened up between them. A gulf she was wholly responsible for creating, she conceded wretchedly.

  And she wasn’t surprised by that, not now, when she could see the very real damage that she had done with her foolish attempt at undercover sleuthing on his behalf. Jai still emanated tension and the raw glitter of his pale eyes and the compression of his lips remained unchanged. He was convinced that she had betrayed his trust. She had hurt him, and she hadn’t meant to, but that wasn’t much consolation for her at that moment. Hurting Jai when she had intended only to help him was a real slap in the face.

  But then what had she thought she could possibly accomplish when the subject of his estranged mother was still so raw with him that he didn’t even like to discuss it? Trying to play God usually got people into trouble, she reflected unhappily. Her handling of the issue had been downright clumsy and poorly thought through. Her hand ached with the tight grip she still had on the file in her hand and she settled it down heavily on the desk.

  ‘Your mother gave this to me.’

  ‘I don’t want it…whatever it is,’ Jai bit out.

  ‘It’s a record of all the legal action she took while you were still a child when she was fighting to gain access to you. Solicitor’s letters, family court decisions. It’s all there in black and white. I can explain why she couldn’t face speaking to you in public as well.’

  ‘I’m not interested.’

  ‘Well, that’s your decision,’ Willow agreed tightly. ‘But if you want my opinion—’

  ‘I don’t,’ Jai sliced in curtly as he swept up the file in one powerful hand. ‘I will ensure that this is returned to her.’

  ‘All right.’ Willow raised her hands in a semi-soothing gesture as she stepped back from the desk. ‘I won’t say any more. I may have blundered in where angels fear to tread but I didn’t mean to cause this much trouble or harm anyone.’

  Jai stared at her with unnerving intensity. ‘Why did you do it?’

  Willow could feel the blood in her face draining away with the stress of that simple acerbic question. ‘I thought I could help. I suppose that was pretty naive of me.’

  ‘Who did you wish to help?’ Jai demanded in a savage undertone of condemnation. ‘I’m a grown man, Willow. My father is dead, and I grew up without a mother. I didn’t miss my mother because I never knew her. I am more concerned by the damage you have done to us.’

  ‘Us?’ she repeated uncertainly.

  His lean, darkly handsome features hardened, his eyes chilling to polar ice. ‘How do you think that we—our marriage—can possibly come back from this betrayal?’ he slung at her rawly.

  Willow stared back at him in shock at that stinging question. Was he saying that he truly could not forgive her for what she had done? Perspiration broke out on her brow. Suddenly she felt sick, shaky with fear.

  Jai paced angrily away from her as though he could not bear to be too close to her. ‘You keep secrets from me,’ he condemned harshly, his distaste unhidden. ‘You kept your pregnancy and the birth of my son a secret. You kept my mother’s email a secret and you intended to keep your visit to her a secret as well for who knows how long!’

  ‘Only because I wanted to meet her and give her a chance!’ Willow argued in desperation.

  ‘You said I lacked trust and understanding but have you considered your own flaws?’ Jai asked with cruel clarity. ‘What do I care about a woman who walked away from me thirty years ago? You and Hari are supposed to be my family now and the only
family I need. But when I look at the deceit and disloyalty you are capable of, I feel like a fool and I cannot see a future for us!’

  Frozen to the beautiful Persian rug, Willow watched Jai walk back out of the library again while her heart plummeted to basement level. Shattered, she just stood there. If he couldn’t see a future for them, where did that leave her? Did that mean he was thinking about a divorce? Truly? Was their marriage over now because she had angered and disappointed him? But Jai believed that she had betrayed him and that went deep.

  When she walked through the hall, Ranjit reminded her that lunch was ready. Although she had absolutely no appetite, she struggled to behave normally, to behave as though her life hadn’t just fallen apart in front of her, and she headed out to the coolness of the terrace with a heavy heart, praying that Jai would join her and give her the chance to reason with him.

  There, however, she sat in solitary splendour, striving to act as though nothing had happened while pushing food round her plate. She had messed up. Correction, she had messed up spectacularly. Jai had moved on from his dysfunctional beginnings. He might still be sensitive about his mother’s apparent desertion, but he had learned to live with it, and he hadn’t needed her stirring up those muddy waters again.

  More tellingly, Jai was much more disturbed by the truth that she had kept secrets from him and acted without his knowledge. Her heart sank because she was guilty of making those mistakes and had little defence to offer on that score.

  She hadn’t known Jai when she’d conceived a child with him. She hadn’t known how straight and blunt and honest he was or how much he valued those traits. Loving him, however, she had blundered in, convinced she could act as a peacemaker between him and his estranged mother. How on earth had she been so stupid that she had gone digging into his past, believing that she could somehow heal old wounds and make him happy? Nothing was ever that simple and adults were much more multifaceted than children. As he had reminded her, he was an adult now with a different outlook and values and he was infinitely more disturbed by the reality that the wife he had just begun to trust had let him down than by old history.