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‘Good morning,’ she whispered, looking all shy and flushed and utterly adorable.
Unlike his unlamented Sophia, Elinor had been a virgin, Jasim registered in substantial shock. Yet he had taken her with all the finesse of a stallion covering a mare. A virgin: quite a statement for a young woman of twenty-one in a world where casual sex was commonplace. A twinge of rare guilt pierced Jasim; he would never have chosen to seduce a virgin. But even had he known beforehand, would he have left her untouched while he was aware that Murad would have found such purity a mouth-watering temptation? He had now contrived to smash the possibility of a relationship that could well have driven his brother into setting Yaminah aside and replacing her with Elinor as a second wife. For all his extra-marital affairs, Murad was a staunchly traditional man and Jasim was convinced that, had Elinor slept with Murad, his brother would have offered her marriage. Well, at least that disaster could not be enacted now.
Jasim reached for Elinor and pulled her into his arms. ‘Good morning,’ he husked, cupping her pouting breasts and gently teasing the swollen pink buds that crowned them.
Elinor was very tense. ‘I need to go back to my room—’
‘One of the servants will bring you clothes and pack for you,’ Jasim intoned, arranging her against the tumbled pillows and letting his tousled dark head swoop down to capture a straining nipple. One more time, he was thinking, just to get him through the day ahead.
Elinor went from being all soft and purring and quivering with response to sudden rigidity. ‘Pack … for me?’
Jasim wished he had taken more thorough advantage of her before he broke that news. He lifted his handsome dark head and met the anxious questions clouding her green eyes. ‘You can no longer stay at Woodrow Court.’
‘What are you talking about?’ Elinor gasped in bewilderment, pulling away from him and yanking the duvet up over breasts that suddenly felt indecently bare.
Jasim released his breath on a slow hiss of impatience. ‘Of course you can’t stay here now that we have shared a bed. It would be most inappropriate for you to continue caring for my niece.’
Elinor was so shocked by that announcement that she felt the blood drain from her face and leave her pale. ‘You mean that having sex with you is grounds for giving me the sack?’
‘I wouldn’t put it quite as crudely as that.’
Elinor hugged the duvet to her with furious defensive hands, her eyes prickling with stinging tears. She could not credit what he was telling her, or that he could say such offensive things in that smooth low-key style, as though he were merely making polite conversation. ‘Then how would you put it?’
‘Our relationship will enter another phase,’ he drawled, smooth as polished glass and with a decided hint of warning ice in his tone.
Deaf to that loaded hint of icy withdrawal, Elinor stared straight ahead and worried at her full lower lip with her teeth. ‘What sort of a phase?’
‘I want you to move to London so that we can see more of each other.’
Now horribly conscious of her nudity below the bedding, Elinor flung him as frozen a look as she could contrive. ‘But I like working here. I love looking after Zahrah.’
‘It’s unfortunate but it can no longer continue. I cannot conduct an affair with you in the presence of my family.’
‘Because you’re ashamed of your association with me!’ Elinor condemned, and she flung herself out of bed in a passion of self-loathing regret and snatched up the towelling robe.
‘No, it would be indiscreet and unacceptable behaviour on my part. In London I can do as I like and what I would like is to see more of you,’ Jasim declared, brilliant dark eyes welded to her angry bemused face as he willed her to accept the change in her status. ‘We can’t turn back the clock on our intimacy. You must trust me. Say your goodbyes to Zahrah and I will have you out of here by lunchtime.’
Elinor snatched up her discarded swimsuit with a shaking hand. She was in shock and deeply confused. Throughout the night hours he had been the passionate lover of her dreams but, all of a sudden, he was laying down the law and making non-negotiable demands that threatened to tear apart her entire life. ‘And if I was to say, no, I’m not going anywhere and let’s forget we ever crossed the boundaries?’
‘I believe you are too sensible to challenge me.’
This time around she felt the distinct chill in the air and it raised goosebumps on her exposed skin. His dark gaze was black and cold. For the very first time, she sensed the steel of him, the fierce ruthless purpose that powered him beneath the charisma. The discovery of what lay at the core of him unnerved her. He was determined that she leave Woodrow Court and if that was how strongly he felt, she did not see how she could remain and live in constant fear of her wanton behaviour being exposed. ‘I wish I had known what I was getting into,’ she breathed starkly.
‘You do now,’ Jasim pointed out silkily.
Elinor wanted to shout, but she was too shaken by what had happened to let go of her temper until she knew exactly where she stood. In her own heart she was committed to him but she did not like the way he was treating her. What were the chances that a royal prince would treat her with respect? Or come to truly care for her as anything other than a sexual partner? She realised that she had thrown the dice in a game without knowing what she was really playing for and now it was too late to go back and argue about the rules. As long as she could get a reference she would soon get another job in London. Whatever, it seemed she had thoroughly burned her boats at Woodrow Court.
She managed to return to her room, mercifully without running into anyone. She stood in the shower with tears running down her taut cheeks, trying to overcome the suspicion that in sleeping with Jasim she might well have made the biggest mistake of her life. He was turning her life upside down but she wasn’t ready yet to give up hope of a better future and walk away. As soon as she was dressed she sought out Zahrah and told the little girl that she had to leave to go and see her family. She hated telling a lie and Zahrah was quite tearful until her beloved nurse took her off for breakfast. Elinor knew her charge would be fine without her. Zahrah’s main source of security was the elderly nurse who had always been with her.
She skipped breakfast and packed. A manservant came to the door for her luggage and Jasim called her on the house phone at noon. ‘I’ll see you in London,’ he told her. ‘I’m grateful that you’re being sensible about this. I couldn’t hide our relationship and I don’t intend to.’
Strengthened by what felt like a far-reaching pledge of faith on her terms, Elinor got into the car waiting outside for her and it was only then that she marvelled at her failure to demand to know exactly where she was being taken. Mid-afternoon, she preceded her driver into a lift in a tall block of luxury flats. He had not a word of English so she couldn’t question him and she wondered as she was shown into an apartment if it was where Jasim lived when he was in the city. Was he moving her in with him? Surely not? She reminded herself that she had a healthy bank account and was far from powerless when it came to looking out for her own best interests. But, even so, the sudden changes had cost her dear; she had a cautious personality and her strong attachment to him added entire layers of complexity that made her feel out of control.
An hour later, Jasim strode through the front door. He hauled her straight into his arms and kissed her as if he was set on reminding her of his power over her. Pink lit her cheeks and butterflies fluttered inside her. Everything, she promised herself as she gazed up into his breathtakingly handsome face, was going to be fine. She just had to give them both a little time and space.
But time, she soon learned, was at premium.
‘This evening I’m flying to New York for two weeks,’ Jasim imparted with a casualness that made her vulnerable heart sink like a stone. ‘That’s why I had you brought here. I own this apartment and you’ll be comfortable here while I’m abroad.’
‘I can afford my own accommodation, although I may not need it for long. Most nanny jobs are live-in and if you can sort out a reference for me, I’ll have another job by the time you get back—’
Jasim studied her in wonderment. Unable to believe that she could possibly be serious in her desire to be self-sufficient, he released a slightly harsh laugh. ‘There’s no need for you to look for another position. Nannies must work hellish hours—how would I ever see you? Don’t you understand what I’m offering you?’
Elinor stood there very still and straight-backed and increasingly pale. ‘No, I must be incredibly thick because I haven’t quite worked out yet what you’re offering me …’
His charismatic smile slashed his lean dark visage and he took a measured step forward. ‘Naturally, I want to take care of you …’
‘No, thanks.’ Elinor forced a smile that felt rigid on her tense mouth and mentally willed him not to demean her with some sordid proposition. ‘The only man who will ever take care of me with my agreement will be my husband. I’m willing to wait for you to come back but I’m not willing to be kept by you. I’m a very independent woman and what I give, I give freely.’
Jasim frowned. ‘You make it all sound so serious.’
‘What happened between us last night drove a coach and horses through my life and left pure chaos in its wake,’ she reminded him gently, a slender hand resting on the lapel of his pinstripe suit jacket. ‘Right now, I don’t know whether I’m on my head or my heels. I’ll stay for a while because I have nowhere else to go in the short term, but I need to fall back to Planet Earth again so maybe it’s good that you’ll be away for a while.’
Jasim pulled out his wallet to extract a card. ‘My private number,’ he told her, presenting her with it as though it was a precious gift—which indeed it was. Many women would have done just about anything to gain access to that direct hotline to him, but his staff guarded his privacy with scrupulous care.
Before he could close the wallet, his thumb brushed over the condom packet slotted into it and his blood ran cold in his veins in a deeply disturbing wake-up call. He realised that in his excitement the evening before he had neglected to use contraception with Elinor. Consternation rolled through him. How could he have made such a serious oversight? Although he was usually very careful, they had shared numerous encounters of unprotected sex during the night. What if he had got her pregnant? He reminded himself that, according to Murad, a woman didn’t fall pregnant that easily. Certainly, Yaminah had been most unfortunate in that regard. He thought of all that he had read about ‘morning-after pills’, but he had too much respect for the gift of new life to persuade a woman into taking that option as a preventative measure. He decided that he could more easily live with hoping for the best. Yet, he knew that an unplanned pregnancy would engulf his life like an avalanche, crush his freedom and suffocate him. He barely stilled a shudder at the threat of such an outcome and thought how ironic it was that what his older brother had longed and prayed for to secure the line to the throne should strike Jasim as an absolute disaster.
Within twenty-four hours of Jasim’s departure, Elinor quietly signed up with an agency as a relief nanny and found herself plunged straight back into regular, reasonably well-paid employment. Going from one family to the next and staying only a few days in each household was surprisingly enjoyable and kept her too busy to brood. She knew she wouldn’t like dealing with a merry-go-round of change for ever but, just then, the freedom from having to forge new meaningful relationships felt like what she most needed. Every night she returned to the luxurious but anonymous comfort of the apartment and fell asleep within minutes of getting into bed.
Jasim phoned her almost every day. The conversations were curiously impersonal and unsatisfying and only made her feel more insecure. The only information he gave about himself was superficial. He never mentioned the future, or that he was missing her. Her period was due at the end of that first week and when it didn’t arrive as expected she tried not to worry. She started to feel that she had been very foolish once she acknowledged that she had no memory of Jasim taking precautions that night at Woodrow Court. Had he falsely assumed that she was taking contraceptive pills as so many women did? How could she have been so dense? When her nerves could stand the waiting game no longer, she bought a pregnancy test. The test was guaranteed to give an accurate result within days of a malfunctioning menstrual cycle, so she made immediate use of it.
The positive result stunned Elinor. Somehow she hadn’t really believed that she could have conceived; somehow such a development hadn’t really seemed possible to her. Now she learned that she was very much mistaken. She was expecting a baby, a real, live little baby. In the space of one wildly reckless night Jasim had contrived to get her pregnant.
That same evening she received an unexpected visitor. The doorbell buzzed and when she addressed the caller through the intercom, it was Prince Murad’s voice that answered her. Elinor was appalled by his arrival and would have done just about anything to avoid the humiliation of answering the door and actually having to deal with her former employer. Unfortunately there was no decent way of avoiding the issue.
‘May I come in and speak with you?’ the older man asked politely.
‘Of course.’ In the elegant living room, Elinor linked her hands tightly together. ‘You must be wondering why I left Woodrow so suddenly—’
‘Elinor … let me be frank. I know that this apartment block belongs to my brother,’ the prince admitted, his expression grave and concerned. ‘I am sorry that you have left my employment and I would rather that it had been for any other reason than this. I had a great affection for your mother and I feel responsible for you as her daughter. You have chosen to take a most ill-advised step.’
Her strained face flamed with colour. ‘I know you mean well, but I’m an adult and I’m here of my own free will, Your Highness.’
‘Jasim has had many women in his life, Elinor. He cherishes none of them, and he will not marry any woman who has already lived with him.’
Elinor’s hands twisted. Confronted by such cruel candour, she felt as if her heart were being ripped out at the seams. ‘I’m not looking for marriage—’
‘But you deserve better than this tawdry arrangement,’ Murad pronounced with an angry wave of dismissal that encompassed their surroundings. A small and portly but still dignified figure, he sighed. ‘I loved and respected your mother. I would never have asked her to be my mistress. You must value yourself more. Surely this cannot be the future that you wanted?’
Although it was still only early evening, when Murad left Elinor went to bed and cried. Seeing how she had sunk in the older man’s estimation had upset her. But, at the same time, she knew that there was no way that she was prepared to become Jasim’s mistress! Apart from anything else, her pregnancy would alter everything, she reasoned wretchedly. When he had carted her off to bed in an excess of lusty passion, conceiving a child with her would have been the very last thing on his mind. How was he likely to react to such a shattering development?
Jasim had returned from New York a day early. Warned by his security team that his brother had visited Elinor, he arrived at the apartment a couple of hours later. Murad’s seeking out of Elinor had confirmed his every suspicion about the nature of their relationship and he was angry and full of distrust. Never before had his older sibling sought to interfere in his private life! So what kind of a hold did Elinor have over Murad that he had felt the need to come up to London specifically to confront her?
‘Jasim …’ Elinor sat up in bed with a start as the overhead light went on. ‘I had no idea you were coming back tonight!’
Sheathed in a charcoal grey business suit that was beautifully tailored to fit his lean, tautly muscled physique, he looked spectacular. Deprived of the sight of him for almost two weeks, she couldn’t help staring and drinking in every tiny detail of his appearance.
In his turn, Jasim was studying the tumbled bed, questioning why she was in it at barely past eight o’clock and asking himself if his own brother could have shared it with her earlier that evening. Her nose was pink and her eyelids reddened and swollen, making it clear that she had been upset and that she had cried. Fierce anger and disgust filled him. ‘Evidently …’
‘What’s that supposed to mean?’ she questioned in bewilderment.
‘Did you entertain my brother in that bed as well?’
Her eyes widened in shock at that question. ‘That’s a horrible thing to ask me—’
‘But an even more disgusting thing to have to suspect,’ Jasim countered rawly, dark eyes glittering like golden diamonds of derision over her. He strode round to the side of the bed, closed a hand round her arm and tugged her upright to face him without ceremony. ‘Answer me.’
‘Why? Do you and your brother make a habit of sharing women?’ Elinor demanded shakily, her outrage threatening to strangle her voice. ‘I slept with you so, for that reason, you assume I’m just some slut who would be quite happy to sleep with your brother as well?’
The level of her incredulity cooled Jasim’s temper and sharpened his wits. He registered that he had come within an ace of revealing too much knowledge. He had given her no reason to suspect his motives in pursuing her and if Murad was still chasing after her, it would be unwise to either alienate her or turn her loose.
Deeply wounded by his lack of faith in her, Elinor stared at him in angry reproach. What had happened to the guy who had sworn he wanted to see more of her? He pushed a hand through the black hair on his brow and raked it back in a gesture of frustration. She noticed that his hand wasn’t quite steady and registered that he was a great deal more disturbed than he was prepared to show. On the outside he seemed so cool and controlled, but inside he seethed with anger, outrage and passion. Suddenly she believed she understood what was wrong. Evidently, the reverse side of that passion was a jealous, suspicious streak a mile wide. On the balance side, however, when she had challenged him he had backed off, presumably appreciating that his suspicions were ridiculously irrational. She wondered if the behaviour of some other woman had taught him to distrust her sex.
‘How did you know your brother came to see me?’
‘My security team have been keeping an eye on this apartment.’
Wondering if she was supposed to be flattered that he should consider she required that protection, Elinor nodded and began to pull clean clothes out of the drawers in the cabinet by the bed. ‘I’ll get dressed. We have to talk.’
Jasim tensed. The idea of further discussion was the sort of womanly threat he avoided like the plague. He would much have preferred joining her in bed. Sex would have released his tension and buried the argument much more effectively than a verbal post-mortem.
Stiff and self-conscious now in his presence, Elinor went into the en-suite bathroom to dress, pulling on the jeans and the T-shirt she had chosen at speed. She wished she had had some warning that he would be returning early, for she would have liked the chance to dress up. Glancing in the mirror, she groaned, convinced that she looked horribly plain with her pink-rimmed eyes and weary pallor. When she re-entered the bedroom, Jasim was standing by the window in the living room. He still looked unrelentingly severe and he swung round, saying flatly, ‘What did my brother want with you?’
An uneasy flush warmed her cheeks and she wished she could have been more frank with him about her late mother’s relationship with Murad. But, on her first day of employment, the older man had made her promise never to divulge that connection to anyone, for he had feared that the truth would be misinterpreted and would cause them both embarrassment. Since her friend, Louise, had already made seedy insinuations about the same issue, Elinor had decided that Prince Murad had been more astute than she in foreseeing what others might make of the story and she had no intention of being equally frank with anyone else. ‘The prince thought that I was making a mistake leaving my job and getting involved with you. He said that he felt responsible for me.’
Jasim’s superb bone structure set hard as granite beneath his bronzed skin. Well, that was certainly telling him the lie of the land! Murad had been sufficiently angry to follow her to London and question her current circumstances. Jasim studied her exquisite face and the tumble of Titian curls that were so bright against her creamy skin. He wondered how he had ever deemed that hair unattractive. How had he also failed to appreciate the obvious fact that so beautiful a woman might also have the power to set brother against brother? He was stunned that he had contrived to overlook that obvious angle and it was now too late to redress the balance. Wasn’t it? He was outraged that Murad had even dared to approach her, crossing boundaries that Jasim had assumed would be respected. She was his now.
Elinor sank down in a leather armchair and straightened her slight shoulders. ‘I have something to tell you.’ Having breathed in deep, she mustered the strength not to make a theatrical production out of her news. ‘I’m pregnant.’
However, her quiet low-pitched admission had the same effect on Jasim as a sudden devastatingly loud clap of thunder. He went very still. His expressive eyes hooded over and his aggressive jaw line clenched hard. His sins, it seemed, had truly come home to roost and the minute she spoke he saw his well-organised life spinning out of control. ‘It’s my fault,’ he acknowledged flatly. ‘When we spent the night together I didn’t use protection.’
A little less defensive once he assumed the lion’s share of the blame for her condition, Elinor released her pent-up breath.
‘I deserve to pay the price for this,’ Jasim said heavily, his classic profile as grim as his tone of voice.
‘The price? There is no price—’
‘You’re wrong. Either we pay the price, or our child will. If you give birth to a boy he will be an heir to the throne of Quaram, but he can only assume that status if we marry and he is born within wedlock. If he is not, my family will never recognise him.’
‘An heir to the throne—would he be…. honestly?’ Elinor exclaimed in astonishment. ‘Marry?’
‘I don’t think that we have a choice. As soon as you’ve had your pregnancy confirmed by a doctor, I have to marry you. I refuse to embarrass my family with a scandal and it is imperative that our child is born legitimate.’
Elinor realised that his decisions were based on a different set of parameters from hers but she was impressed by his willingness to stand by their child and look into the future. ‘I could have a little girl.’
‘She, too, would be denied her inheritance if she is not born within marriage. The birth of an illegitimate child is still a very serious matter in my country.’
‘You’re prepared to marry me to stop that happening?’ Elinor prompted, because she just couldn’t accept that he was prepared to go to such lengths.
‘I am. Isn’t securing our child’s future the most important issue at stake here?’
‘But we hardly know each other.’ Elinor dealt him a pained glance of shame as she forced out that admission. ‘I’m only a nanny … you’re a prince.’
‘Our child won’t care who or what we are as long as we love him … or her,’ he responded wryly.
She was touched by that assurance and the thought that had gone into it. He was so responsible and he would make a good father; he was already worrying about what was best for their child. All right, she had eyes in her head and she could see that he wasn’t exactly celebrating at the prospect of marrying her, but neither was he thinking of leaving her to deal alone with her pregnancy. ‘Do you think we could make a marriage work?’ she murmured half under her breath.