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‘I’m willing to make the effort.’ His beautiful dark eyes wandered over her at a leisurely pace and lingered on her soft pink mouth and the ripe pout of her breasts until her face burned and she shifted in her chair. ‘I find you very attractive. That’s a healthy foundation.’
Elinor knew that, with the smallest encouragement, he would scoop her up and take her back to bed to sate the hunger he made no attempt to hide. Her nipples were tightening and the familiar hollow ache was awakening between her thighs. But she felt too vulnerable to give him that signal. She wanted to be more than the woman who satisfied his sexual needs. But even though she wanted more she knew that she was still prepared to marry him on the practical and unemotional basis that he had outlined. If he was ready to give her his full support, she was willing to do whatever it took to ensure a more secure and happy future for her baby.
‘I’ll marry you, then,’ she told him gruffly.
Jasim almost laughed out loud at the idea that he might have required that confirmation. Of course she was going to marry him and snatch at the chance to live in luxury for the rest of her days! Not for one moment had he doubted that fact. ‘I’ll make the arrangements. Please don’t share our plans with anyone for the moment. We need to keep this a secret if we want to keep the tabloid press out of the picture.’
Jasim retreated back to the doorway. Dark-driven anger was stirring out of the ashes of his shock. He had known that he was dealing with a devious and mercenary young woman, who was willing to encourage a married man’s pursuit to feather her nest. Yet, even armed with that awareness, he too had fallen for her wiles and straight into a sexual honey-trap refined by the guilt-inducing gift of her virginity. He had played into her scheming hands as easily as a testosterone-driven teenager. Elinor Tempest had simply traded her body to the highest and most available bidder and the pay-off promised to be huge on her terms. Marriage into the Rais ruling family would reward her with immense wealth and status and that unhappy truth galled him.
Her face full of uncertainty, Elinor hovered by the bed. His beautiful golden gaze was cold as charity and she flushed. ‘Are you leaving?’
‘I have work to do,’ Jasim delivered curtly. ‘I’ll be in touch.’
On the day of the wedding, Elinor was torn in two with indecision. She had barely laid eyes on Jasim since the day she told him she was pregnant. He had personally accompanied her to the office of a gynaecologist in private practice, who had confirmed her pregnancy. She rather suspected that Jasim had regretted doing so when a well-dressed lady in the waiting room had recognised him and begun chattering away to him. Since then, though she had given up her temping work, he had not visited the apartment again or accompanied her anywhere and they had communicated only by phone. In every way possible he had distanced himself from her, retreating behind a smooth, polite façade that she could not penetrate.
She had fallen crazily in love with a guy who didn’t return her feelings, Elinor conceded wretchedly. Would he ever love her back? Or did the very fact that he felt he had to marry her for the sake of their child mean that she would never, ever inspire him to any warmer emotions? Those were the questions that Elinor struggled to find a fair answer to while she prepared all on her own for what she had once thought would be the happiest day of her life.
Too insecure to purchase the white wedding gown of her dreams and wear it, Elinor made do with a cream lace suit composed of a jacket and a slim skirt that came to just below her knees. None of the romantic frills that most women craved seemed appropriate. Jasim sent a car to collect her and she was ushered into the register office where the civil ceremony was to take place. A limp flower arrangement was the dusty room’s only claim to glamour. But her attention zeroed straight in on Jasim, dramatically handsome in a dark suit teamed with a gold silk tie, his bronzed angel face grave and oddly forbidding.
Her tummy flipped with nerves rather than excitement because her bridegroom looked more as though he were attending a funeral. Give him the option of walking away, a little voice in her head urged her. ‘Could I have a word with you in private?’ Elinor enquired tautly.
Jasim detached himself from the company of the two aides flanking him and approached her. ‘What is it? We haven’t much time.’
‘There is no obligation on you to do this. If you don’t want to marry me, just walk away now. I won’t hold it against you. I won’t stop you seeing the baby either,’ she whispered frantically. ‘Just don’t marry me because you feel you have to, because it’ll cause us both nothing but unhappiness.’
Jasim dealt her a raw appraisal that warned her that he was seething with emotion beneath the cool front. ‘We have a future together with our child. I cannot walk away from either of you.’
‘But I don’t want a noble, self-sacrificing hero of a husband,’ Elinor declared, even as he turned away from her.
Jasim closed a hand over hers and walked her back with him to where the registrar was standing. ‘We haven’t got time for this nonsense.’
The ceremony was brief and over with very quickly. A shiny new ring on her wedding finger, Elinor got into a limousine that wafted them back through the busy city streets to a hugely impressive Georgian town house set in a dignified square with a lush garden at its centre. Jasim spent the entire journey on his cell phone, which, Elinor acknowledged bitterly, at least saved him from the challenge of having to chat to her. She wondered how he would manage without it in bed, or even if he ever planned to make physical contact with her again. I’ve made a mistake, she thought fearfully. I’ve made a terrible, terrible mistake marrying him and now it’s too late to do anything about it!
‘We’ll have lunch now,’ Jasim murmured, guiding her up the steps of the town house and into a spacious hall hung with beautiful oil paintings. ‘Why are you so quiet?’
Elinor almost lost her temper with him there and then, almost told him what a horrible wedding it had been and how she had given him the opportunity to back out and that, if he hadn’t taken it, the least he could have done was make the effort to ensure that it was a pleasant occasion! But, conscious that his bodyguards and the housekeeper were hovering, she bit back her ire. ‘I suppose I’m just tired.’
‘You should lie down for an hour.’ Jasim signalled the housekeeper and she was escorted upstairs to a beautiful bedroom.
Angry tears in her eyes at the ease with which he had dismissed her from his presence, Elinor soon decided that she should go back downstairs and tell Jasim exactly what she thought of the wedding he had put her through. Maintaining a stiff upper lip was unlikely to improve the atmosphere between them, but maybe an argument would, she reasoned in desperation. After all, if he didn’t know how she was feeling, how could he make things better? But what if he didn’t care enough to even want to make things better? That was her biggest fear.
From the window she saw a limo draw up outside. She frowned when she saw Murad’s wife, Yaminah, scrambling out, for it had not escaped her notice that no member of his family had attended their wedding. She left the bedroom and headed for the stairs.
The sound of a shrill, raised, female voice greeted Elinor even before she reached the hall. It was Yaminah and she was ranting in French.
‘It’s my fault you got involved with the girl … didn’t I beg you to show an interest in her so that she would lose interest in my husband and pay him no heed?’ the older woman cried feverishly. ‘Now I’ve ruined your life! I can’t believe what you’ve done. You didn’t even get your father’s permission to marry her!’
The deep steady tones of Jasim’s rich drawl interposed, ‘The King would never have given his permission—’
‘Then it’s not too late. The marriage can be invalidated,’ Yaminah exclaimed. ‘It doesn’t matter that she’s pregnant, that can be hushed up. Pay her off, do whatever you have to do, anything other than sacrifice your happiness with this mockery of a marriage!’
Listening to that uniquely revealing dialogue, Elinor felt much as if she were being eviscerated with a knife. Perspiration beading her upper lip, she hurried back to the bedroom and straight into the adjoining bathroom where she was horribly sick. All of a sudden, she was realising what a total idiot she had been not to question why a spectacularly handsome prince would start showing a pronounced interest in her. Yaminah had asked him to. Murad’s wife had feared that her husband was at risk of being led astray by the nanny and had persuaded her brother-in-law to present himself as an alternative option. Goodness, had they really feared that she might have an affair with a married man as old as Murad? Jasim had been a dazzling success when it came to seduction and too virile for his own good, Elinor conceded painfully. No wonder the complication of a pregnancy had hit him hard! Jasim had never really wanted her at all and even less must he have wanted to marry her.
Elinor freshened up and pressed trembling hands to her damp cheeks. She would do Jasim one last favour: for the benefit of them both she would leave him. There was no true marriage to work at, no future to weave dreams around and clearly no togetherness or mutual passion to retrieve. Their whole relationship from start to finish had been a lie, a big fat fakery, to ensnare her and draw her in. She had been more than a little desperate to believe that he could find her irresistible—even though no other man ever had—and now all she was conscious of was a deeply painful sense of shame and humiliation. What a pushover and a patsy she had been!
She rooted through her luggage, which had been brought up, extracting jewellery, keepsakes, important documentation and a few necessities to keep her clothed until she had time to go shopping. She didn’t care about abandoning the rest—indeed her entire being was bent on leaving the town house just as fast as she possibly could. She piled everything she was taking with her into a smaller bag and changed into a more practical outfit of jeans and a jacket.
She yanked off her wedding ring and left it on the dressing table. Instantly she felt better about herself. He was gorgeous, rich and royal, but he had taken her for a cruelly manipulative ride that she would never forget. How naïve and immature she had been to give her trust so easily! A woman needed a man like a fish needed a bicycle, she quoted to herself, because her heart felt as if it were being pounded into pieces inside her. She didn’t need him when she had herself to depend on, a willingness to work and a comfortable savings account. She and her baby would get by just fine without him.
Even so, tears dampened her face as she crept through the hall and slid like an eel out the front door with barely a sound. She walked briskly down the street and she didn’t once look back. She was already making plans to ensure that even though he looked for her he would find it very difficult to find her again.
CHAPTER FOUR
‘ALL right, so he’s not there right now,’ Alissa conceded grudgingly, lodged at the front window and scanning the pavement opposite for the young man she had noticed earlier. ‘But I swear he was out there looking up at this apartment most of the day.’
Lindy, a curvaceous brunette, groaned out loud and rolled her eyes at Elinor. ‘We haven’t got a boyfriend between us but we’ve attracted a stalker? We don’t have a lot of luck, do we?’
Elinor didn’t laugh. Anything out of the ordinary tended to make her tense. She was always a little on her guard. Eighteen months had passed since she had set out to make a new life and preserve her independence by cutting all ties with the old. Kneeling, she bent over Sami, slotting her baby son into a stretchy sleep-suit covered with pictures of toy racing cars. He thought it was a game and continually tried to roll away out of reach. She closed a hand round a chubby ankle to hold him steady.
‘Sami … stay still,’ she scolded, trying to be stern.
Enormous brown eyes surrounded by black lashes as long as fly swats danced with mischief. He rolled again. At ten months old, Sami had buckets of charm and a huge amount of personality. He was a fearless extrovert to his fingertips. When life went his way he was all sunny smiles and chuckles, but when it went wrong he seethed with melodrama and sobbed up a heartbreaking storm.
‘It’s bedtime,’ Elinor told the little boy, tenderly hugging him close, revelling in his squirming warmth and cuddliness and the sweet familiar scent of his skin.
She usually kept Sami up quite late in the evenings because he was cared for in a crèche during the day while she worked full time. Every morning when she left him there she felt guilty, and evenings, weekends and holidays revolved exclusively around ensuring that Sami had lots of fun and got all her attention.
‘Night, Sami.’ Lindy patted his little curly dark head fondly as she moved past Elinor to head into the kitchen. ‘Fancy a cup of tea before bed?’
‘I’d love one,’ Elinor admitted wearily.
‘Nighty-night,’ Alissa said to Sami, tugging Elinor down onto the arm of the sofa so that she could kiss the little boy’s cheek.
Elinor tucked her son into his cot beside her bed. His eyes sparkled and he kicked while she went through their usual bedtime ritual, winding up the music box to play its customary lullaby and tucking his toy lamb in beside him. She read his favourite story, showing him the pictures through the bars of the cot. Slowly Sami wound down, lowering his eyelids until his thick ebony lashes fringed his olive-toned baby cheeks. Content to watch him, Elinor got ready for bed and stayed until he was fast asleep.
‘You’ve let the tea get cold,’ Lindy sighed when she emerged.
‘I’m used to cold tea.’
Alissa had already retired for the night. Lindy was frowning at Elinor. ‘You looked really worried when Alissa mentioned that she thought that guy had been watching the apartment. Did you think it might be Sami’s dad? Was he violent?’
Elinor froze and gave her flatmate a shocked look. ‘My goodness, no, nothing like that!’
‘I couldn’t help wondering and I felt I had to ask just in case someone turns up asking for you.’ Lindy watched Elinor pale at the idea. ‘What are you scared of, then?’
If Elinor had not been so accustomed to sidestepping all such questions to conceal her past history she might have weakened and told all. Lindy and Alissa were more than just flatmates. They were true friends, who had stuck by her throughout her pregnancy and done their utmost to be supportive.
‘Not violence but … maybe losing custody of Sami,’ she confided, finally voicing her deepest fear.
‘I don’t know what you’re worried about. Single mothers outrank single fathers in the custody stakes.’
Elinor shrugged, reluctant to admit that she had married her child’s father, although she was pretty sure that the marriage would have since been dissolved. For what reason would Jasim have retained that bond with an unwanted wife, who had vanished on their wedding day? But she was always afraid that he might still be looking for them because she had kept his child from him. And she felt amazingly bad about that sometimes. However, she didn’t feel she could trust a man who had done what Jasim had done to her. It was Jasim who had taught her how devious, cruel and cold-blooded he could be. He might have married her, but he hadn’t cared about her or even respected her, so how likely was it that he would be happy to share Sami with her? Sami was far too precious to be put at risk.
The following morning, Elinor checked Sami into the workplace crèche that made her daily life so much simpler than it might otherwise have been. The crèche was brand new and state-of-the-art and it was the main reason why Elinor had been overjoyed when she got a job at Havertons. Having passed a year-long business course with flying colours after Sami’s birth, she was now happily employed in a position with the company. Indeed there was only one cloud in Elinor’s sky. At the start of the month, finding it difficult to negotiate the uncertainties of the financial markets, Havertons had changed hands, swallowed up by a much larger player in the insurance hierarchy. Ever since then office tensions had risen. Everyone was worried that jobs would be shed and Elinor was equally afraid that the new ownership would close the crèche as a cost-cutting measure.
When Elinor arrived at her desk, the buzz in the accounts department was unusually loud. ‘What’s all the racket about?’ she asked her neighbour.
‘The CEO of RS Industries is paying us a personal visit today. The big bosses are hyper at only getting a few hours’ notice.’
Just over an hour later Elinor was summoned to her manager’s office and she was only a little anxious as to the cause.
‘Miss Leslie,’ Daniel Harper greeted her with a frown, using the surname she had assumed when she’d left Jasim. ‘You’re to go up to the top floor immediately and present yourself at Executive Reception.’
Elinor looped a straying auburn curl back behind a delicate ear and murmured uncertainly, ‘Am I allowed to ask why?’
Daniel sighed. ‘You can ask but I can’t answer you. Your presence has been requested upstairs and I’m afraid that’s all I know about the matter.’
Made uneasy by his perplexity and concerned that somehow she had got into trouble, for she had never before been on the executive floor, Elinor headed for the lift. As she was whirred up several floors she reminded herself that her recent appraisal had rated her well for her diligence. She studied her reflection in the shiny stainless-steel wall, wondering if she should have taken a moment to tidy her hair, for her rebellious curls were always trying to escape confinement. Her calf-length grey skirt and white ruffled blouse were unexciting, but when she had begun putting together an office wardrobe she had found it easiest to ring the changes by sticking to plain base colours.
In the act of walking towards the reception area she centred her attention on the group of men already standing there. She recognised the MD of Havertons first, a tall toothy man with thinning hair and an anxious expression. Only as she drew closer did she recognise the bold classic profile of the even taller male to one side of the MD and her footsteps faltered. Shock washed over her like a drowning tidal wave. Her skin turned clammy and broke out in goose bumps. It was Jasim! Yet she fought the conviction, reasoning that such a coincidence was so unlikely that she had to be mistaken.
But when he turned his arrogant dark head in her direction there could no longer be any room for doubt. Her heart started to thump frighteningly fast, adrenalin pumping up her responses as apprehension threatened to overwhelm her. Sheathed in a faultlessly cut black business suit that was the last word in tailored sophistication, Jasim looked spectacularly handsome and stylish. For a split second, Elinor collided with deep-set dark golden eyes that glittered like fire in the impassive planes of his bronzed face. Her throat closed over. Yet, even on edge with stress and trepidation, she could not suppress the leap of her senses in response to his presence. Although she hated him she could not be impervious to his charisma or the simple fact that, from the crown of his proud dark head to the soles of his almost certainly handmade shoes, he was still indisputably the most gorgeous guy she had ever seen in human form.
‘Miss Leslie?’ The MD addressed her as affably as though they were friends instead of complete strangers. ‘I believe you have a child in the crèche here. His Royal Highness, Prince Jasim, the CEO of our parent company, has requested a tour of the crèche facility in your company.’
So determined was Elinor not to betray her nervous tension that she automatically half extended a hand in polite greeting and then let it drop back to her side again as Jasim’s stunning eyes smouldered like punitive flames over her. She sensed the anger restrained by his fierce self-discipline and, since she considered herself to be just as much an injured party as he evidently did, she lifted her head high and thrust up her chin in challenge.
Jasim was inflamed by that defiant look in her bright green eyes. After what she had done, how dared she challenge him? How dared she masquerade under a name that was not hers and stroll up to him without so much as a womanly blush on her cheeks? What a performer she was! A woman without a drop of shame over her conduct, he reflected bitterly, repressing his bitter anger with difficulty, for she had run away with his son and kept him apart from him.
‘Miss Leslie,’ he breathed in gritty acknowledgement, his veiled gaze scanning her flawless features and lingering for several taut seconds before lowering to the cushioned swell of her full lower lip. His memory of the taste of her sent a current of electrifying erotic intent straight to his groin and he set his teeth together, infuriated by that unruly physical reaction.
An aide already had the lift waiting for them. Elinor stepped in again, her mind a hive of bemused activity. ‘CEO of our parent company,’ the managing director had said. Jasim? Did that mean that his was the visit that had got everyone in such a tizzy? And that he was the new owner of Havertons and also the CEO of RS Industries? And if it did, did that mean he had accidentally contrived to take over the company that employed her? Elinor did not believe in ridiculous coincidences. In her opinion if something looked suspicious, it probably was. The silence sizzled with undertones. Her tummy sank like a stone while the lift travelled downward. Sami was surely the only reason that would lead Jasim into professing an interest in seeing the crèche, she reasoned fearfully. He had to know that their son was there … he wanted to see Sami.
‘I wasn’t expecting our next meeting to happen in a public place,’ Elinor remarked, only recalling the two bulky bodyguards occupying the lift with them after she had spoken.
‘Be grateful for it,’ Jasim breathed with roughened bite.
The raw anger in his hard gaze sent a spooky chill down her taut spinal cord. Even so, Elinor could not resist shrugging a slim shoulder in dismissal of that masculine warning. ‘We have nothing to say to each other.’
‘On the contrary,’ Jasim contradicted icily. ‘I have a great deal to say to you.’
Infuriated by his patronising tone of address, Elinor breathed in deep, because while she could easily have matched that assurance she was not looking forward to the inevitable confrontation. He was a rat, a dangerously clever, unfeeling and unscrupulous rat, who had brazenly played on her trust and naivety to get her into bed. Her face burned at the humiliating recollection of what an easy touch she had proved to be. At the same time, however, there was one subject that she felt she had to tackle.
‘I was very sorry to hear of your brother’s death,’ she remarked stiffly, recollecting how shocked and upset she had been to read about Prince Murad’s sudden death from a heart attack the previous year.
‘We were all shocked. Murad had a health check every few months but nothing irregular was ever identified,’ Jasim proffered grimly. ‘He was a bitter loss.’
Elinor had felt sad when she had read about the older man’s demise and then rather guilty when, soon afterwards, she had gone out and sold the diamond engagement ring she had inherited from her mother, Rose. The eye-watering value of the ring had astonished her and she had used the proceeds to buy the flat she currently shared with her friends. The security of a decent roof over her head had made single parenthood seem less intimidating.
She entered the crèche at a smart pace. The manageress, Olivia, had been pre-warned and was waiting at the entrance for them. Jasim was quick to engage her in well-bred conversation.