LITMIR.BIZ

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was eager for him to get dressed and leave her free to do the same.

      ‘There’s another shower off the room next door,’ Jaul remarked tautly. ‘I’ll use it.’

      ‘Your bodyguards aren’t standing outside the door, are they?’ Chrissie checked.

      ‘They’ll be downstairs.’ Jaul sent her a perceptive appraisal from grave dark eyes. ‘It is not their business to monitor or discuss my private life and they know it well.’

      Chrissie was scarlet to her hairline, could feel her very cheeks throbbing with unwelcome heat. ‘I’ll use the other shower,’ she said quietly.

      ‘We are married. There is nothing to be embarrassed about,’ Jaul murmured soothingly.

      He strode into the bathroom releasing Chrissie from paralysis and she fled from the bed, snatching up clothes, pulling them on any old way before creeping from the room and literally tiptoeing into the bathroom next door to make use of the facilities. But washing didn’t noticeably make her feel any better. She had insisted that she wanted a divorce and then fallen into bed with him again and now he thought he had her exactly where he wanted her. Was that so surprising?

      Chrissie would not have put it past Jaul to have deliberately set out to get her horizontal. He was no slowcoach with women, no fool when it came to what mattered. His passion was irresistible but he would know perfectly well that she would feel tormented by what had just happened between them and he probably felt quite self-satisfied because he had proved his point: she did still want him and crave him in the most basic of ways.

      That meant more to Jaul than it meant to her though. When she had first met Jaul he had been a sexual predator, programmed to take advantage of willing women even though he had not behaved that way with her. In fact, although they had hit astonishing highs in the lesser intimacy stakes, Jaul had married her before he actually had full sex with her, making her appreciate even back then that in some ways Jaul was much more anchored in his own culture than she had ever properly appreciated. It had also made her wonder in low moments after he had disappeared if she had won Jaul purely by saying no for so long and thereby acquiring all the glorious lustre of a challenge and a worthwhile trophy. Was that the simple explanation of why the heir to a Gulf throne had chosen to deem an ordinary Yorkshire girl special enough to marry? But then had he ever planned on it being a permanent marriage?

      But that past was long gone and she was over it, Chrissie reminded herself as she got dressed again. Just not as over him as she had thought she was, a little inner voice reminded her deflatingly. Jaul would think he had won now, would assume she would become his wife again. It probably was just that basic for him, his belief that if she had sex with him again it meant he had her back.

      And whose fault was it that he would now be thinking that? Chrissie boiled with regret inside herself. Pure naked lust had overwhelmed her. It was a fallacy to believe that only men could react like that, she ruminated unhappily, a nonsense to assume that a woman couldn’t feel the same way. She had never been with anyone other than Jaul but she had learned a lot about that side of her nature even in the short time they had actually lived together and knew that she was a passionate woman. And the only reason she hadn’t slept with anyone else since Jaul was that she had yet to meet any male who had the same highly charged sexual effect on her that he did.

      * * *

      Jaul towelled himself dry after a shower with a reflective look on his lean, strong face while he tried to work out whether he had made the right or wrong move with Chrissie. She was so stubborn, so unforgiving. Did she have genuine cause to feel that way?

      He refused to believe that his late father had lied to him, so what point was there in making enquiries at the embassy? Such an investigation into King Lut’s behaviour would be downright disloyal and it would be sure to spawn unpleasant rumours and damaging gossip. His features sombre at that prospect, Jaul cursed below his breath. He had a wife. He had two children. He might have spent two years in ignorance of those facts but the reality was that now he had to live with his wife and his children in the present and not in the past, harking back to old disruptive issues that only roused bitterness and aggression in both of them.

      She had taken the money and run. Did he continue to hate her for that even when he now knew that she had been pregnant and in dire need of financial help? She was younger than he was, less mature and all of a sudden he hadn’t been there for her. A woman of greater selfishness might have had a termination rather than raise two children she had not planned to conceive. Whether he liked it or not, fate had ensured that he had let her down by not being there for her when he had been needed.

      And on a much lighter note, he ruminated abstractedly, shapely mouth sultry with recollection, the sex was amazing. But where once it had been the icing on the cake, now it was the only glue likely to give them a future as a couple. Wasn’t that why he had swept her off to bed? That laced with unashamed desire, of course.

      Why was he even thinking like this? In the past, Chrissie had often made him think about stuff that generally struck him as not quite masculine and when they were first married he had resented that truth. He was not a knight on a white charger like some character out of the medieval romances she had once adored. He had never pretended to be perfect but he had always known that she wanted him to be that knight. Chrissie the realist was deeply intertwined with Chrissie the romantic.

      And now he was about to be the bad guy again, he acknowledged grimly. He had no choice. He had not had a choice from the moment he’d learned of his son’s existence.

      * * *

      Chrissie was brushing her hair when she heard the guest-room door open and she stiffened, leaving down the brush and walking to the bathroom door. Jaul was in jeans and a bright turquoise tee that clung to his impressive chest and if she felt lacerated by what had occurred, he looked infuriatingly energised, she reflected wretchedly.

      ‘I thought we should talk in here,’ Jaul confided.

      Less risk of being overheard by his staff, she translated. So, what was he about to tell her that she might want to shout and scream about?

      ‘I still want the divorce,’ she repeated doggedly. ‘What happened just happened but it doesn’t change my mind about anything.’

      Burnished golden eyes shaded by luxuriant black lashes surveyed her without perceptible surprise. ‘We have a link we could still build on—’

      ‘I don’t think so,’ she argued, waving a pale, slender hand in a dismissive gesture. ‘Been there, done that. I could never trust you again and let’s face it...you wanted a divorce as well until you found out about Tarif. I appreciate that Tarif’s birth changes things for you but it doesn’t change them for me.’

      ‘And that’s your final word on this subject?’ Jaul pressed with sudden severity.

      Chrissie lifted her chin, refusing to let mortification take over. She had made a mistake but that didn’t mean she had to live with it and build her entire future around it. ‘Yes, I’m sorry, but it is...’

      ‘Then perhaps you should look at this...’ Jaul slid a folded document out of his back pocket and held it out to her. ‘I didn’t want to be forced to make use of it. I had hoped to avoid it because coercing you is something I would’ve preferred not to do. But this particular document would have been produced by my lawyers had any divorce meeting taken place,’ he explained flatly. ‘However, I have cancelled that meeting.’

      ‘What on earth is it?’ Chrissie whispered anxiously.

      ‘It’s the pre-nuptial contract you signed before we got married,’ Jaul informed her levelly. ‘I don’t think you read it properly.’

      The vaguest of memories stirring, Chrissie wrenched open the sheet of paper and saw the clause marked with a helpful red asterisk in the margin. Her heart in her mouth, she read the clause relating to the custody of any children born of their marriage in which she had agreed that any child they had would live in Marwan with Jaul.

      Her mouth ran dry because she

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