An Arabian Marriage

Where the hell had his attention been on his previous visit? he asked himself with stark incredulity. Her eyes were the aqua colour of the sea, that curious blending of blue and jade and turquoise that changed according to the light. And she had the kind of hair mermaids had in fairy tales, a wild golden mane that fell round her shoulders in glorious, rippling abundance. But no legendary sea creature could have competed with the luscious swell of her creamy breasts above the towel or that glorious hourglass shape. Even as he hardened in hot-blooded male response to that sensual vision, Jaspar was shifting cool mental gears, knowing that he had severely underestimated the opposition and that was a rare error for him. He wanted to rip the towel off, propel her back against the wall and sink deep into her, lose himself in the kind of raw, urgent sex he hadn’t fantasised about since he was a teenager. And maybe he would, once he had got what he wanted.

‘P-pizza,’ Freddy stammered like a belated echo, dazed by the throbbing silence, the almost painful tension and heat inside her, the sheer terrifying emptiness of her own mind.

‘Are you planning to take the towel off?’ Jaspar enquired silkily. ‘Or are you just a tease?’

Slow burning colour flushed her throat in a wave and climbed up into her cheeks as she tore her dilated gaze from his intent scrutiny and glanced down at herself in dismay, absorbing the fact that she truly was still hovering a few feet from him clad only in a towel. With a stifled moan of embarrassment, she blundered into sudden movement in the direction of the cloakroom.

Afterwards, she could never work out how it happened, but as she accidentally brushed against him he caught her to him, one lean brown hand anchoring into her hair, the other splaying to her hip. Her startled aqua eyes flared into mesmeric gold and it was as if fireworks were flaring inside her, setting every inch of her ablaze.

‘The stammer was overkill…’ he told her huskily, white, even teeth flashing as he slanted a mocking smile down at her, ‘but the welcome invitation was ace—’

‘You’ve got the wrong idea!’ Freddy gasped, all composure crumbling.

‘I don’t think so… I hate to sound like a jerk, but women have been throwing themselves at me since I was a teenager.’

And before Freddy could even absorb that unashamed assurance that wickedly sensual mouth had descended with devouring heat down onto hers. Intense excitement surged up inside her in a sheet of multicoloured flame. Reaching out blindly, she gripped his arm to stay upright. She felt as if she were falling, falling so fast and furiously that she would burn up before she reached solid earth again. And nothing mattered, nothing mattered but that that connection with him remained. She was in a wonderland of sensual discovery, gasping at the plundering invasion of his tongue inside the tender interior of her mouth, shivering violently, desperately longing for him to pull her close and crush her up against him.

She heard the doorbell buzz with a kind of delayed recognition only as he tensed and then pulled back from her.

‘Oh…crumbs…’she framed, blinking rapidly and then shooting into the cloakroom behind him like a scalded cat.

Thrusting home the bolt on the door, Freddy flung herself back against it, shaking like a leaf in a gale. The mirror surrounded with lights opposite confronted her with her own image. Literally cringing with mortification, she studied her swollen mouth, her dilated pupils and the expression of shock and bewilderment still etched there. How are you ever going to go out there again and act as if nothing happened? screamed the first thought to emerge from her reawakening brain.

He thought she had deliberately flaunted herself in the towel too. True brazen hussy stuff. At that realisation, she writhed in even greater embarrassment, but over and above that discomfiture lurked an entire new level of self-knowledge. She honestly hadn’t known that a man could make her feel like that. There was a sort of shameless fascination still gripping her: that one smouldering kiss could make her forget everything. Who she was, who he was, everything. It also seemed especially cruel that she should have made that discovery with Jaspar al-Husayn. In fact, could there be anything more infuriating? All this time she had wondered why most women’s magazines raved about sex as though it was a truly exciting pursuit when her own slender experience had taught her otherwise.

And then this guy she hated like poison grabbed her and showed her that the excitement might actually not be a giant con practised on the female sex. How dared he have done that to her? What was the point of finding out that a Crown Prince had more than a fighting chance of persuading her out of celibacy? A blasted Crown Prince, she thought afresh, eyes scorching with sudden tears.

He had come to talk about Ben, she reminded herself. Paling, she forced herself to move and unlocked the door sneakily and silently, before pressing down the handle equally quietly and peering out into the hall through a gap barely an inch wide. The coast seemed clear. Had he left? She crept out and then fled down the corridor to her bedroom faster than the speed of light to find some clothes.

Pulling on an oversized T-shirt and a jersey skirt which fell almost to her ankles, she dug her feet into clumpy shoes. The whole time she was dressing, she was rationalising what had happened between them. He had taken her by surprise. She had been temporarily deprived of her wits by the simple fact that he was so gorgeous. But he only had to speak and his mythical attraction vanished, so really she was quite safe from making an even bigger ass of herself. So women were forever throwing themselves at him…oh, the poor love, how did he bear the torment of being so unbearably fanciable? He had the most gigantic ego and she would have done anything to puncture it.

She trudged back down to the main reception rooms, very much hoping he wouldn’t be waiting for her. But the guy had no tact, no shame and the kind of self-assurance that would have ensured that the Titanic sank the iceberg instead of the other way round. There he was, large as life and twice as bold in the drawing-room, which she had barely entered since Erica’s death. But then he had found his natural milieu, hadn’t he? He looked more at home there against the elaborate furniture and the curtaining weighed down with excessive swagging, fringing and tassels.

‘Your pizza…’ Indicating the shallow box parked on the coffee-table, Jaspar al-Husayn sent her a slow, slashing smile that made her heart skip a beat and told her too many things that she didn’t want to know.

‘Look, I don’t fancy you!’ Freddy heard herself state with shocking baldness before she could think better of it. ‘So you can stop looking so pleased with yourself because what happened out in that hall was just one of those stupid things and there is not the smallest danger that I am going to be tempted to throw myself at you! Not unless I get a brain transplant.’

He said nothing. In the silence that dragged even in the first second, and which was working like a shriek alarm on her nerves by the tenth second, Jaspar gazed back at her with measuring cool.

Freddy could feel her face burning up like a bonfire. While those ten seconds limped past, she went from defensive defiance to shrinking chagrin. What on earth had come over her? Instead of ignoring what had happened, she had dredged it back up again and attacked him like a teenager desperate to save face.

‘Let’s discuss my nephew,’ he finally murmured in his rich, dark drawl. ‘Feel free to enjoy your pizza.’

Freddy pictured an imaginary headline: ‘Crown Prince battered to death by pizza box’. She hated him, oh, boy, did she hate him. Every time he opened his mouth, he put her down, and only a minute ago he had proved that he didn’t even have to speak to achieve that feat. Freddy plonked herself down on an overstuffed sofa. Her tummy gurgled and she stiffened with embarrassment and stared a hole in the pizza box. She had a healthy appetite and she was starving, but she was convinced that if she started eating he would take one scornful look at her and think, No wonder she’s that size!

Mind you, he had kissed her, hadn’t he? Her downbent head came up a notch. Obviously he hadn’t found her that unattractive. There must have been some spark on his side of the fence. Maybe he liked women who weren’t skin and bone. It was such a seductive thought that Freddy had an instant vision of herself lying in a desert tent being stuffed with sweets by an adoring male, who would die if she mentioned going on a diet. What was the matter with her? For goodness’ sake, this was probably the most important discussion she would ever hold in her whole life, for Ben was her life, and yet her mind was filled with nothing but nonsense!

‘I understood that you employed a nanny for my nephew,’ Jaspar remarked without warning. ‘Where is she?’

Wondering how on earth he could seem to know so much about Erica’s life and yet not know that her cousin was no longer alive, Freddy stiffened and then forced herself to look at him. ‘She has a family emergency to deal with right now. Look… you said you wanted to take charge of Ben. I’d like to know why.’

Jaspar al-Husayn surveyed her with narrowed golden eyes. ‘He is my nephew.’

‘But your brother wanted Ben’s existence kept a secret. He didn’t seem to want anything further to do with him either.’ Freddy was choosing her words carefully.

‘I will not comment on my late brother’s decisions,’ Jaspar murmured, his strong jawline clenching. ‘It would be inappropriate.’

‘But I don’t think it’s unreasonable of me to ask why you have this sudden desire to give Ben a home,’ Freddy persisted.

‘I have in my possession a recent investigation report into your lifestyle.’

Instinctively resenting that superior tone as much as she disliked the news that a private detective had been snooping into Erica’s life without her late cousin’s knowledge, Freddy tilted her chin and said with helpless defiance, ‘Bully for you!’

Jaspar dealt her a grim appraisal. ‘The report made it clear that you are a neglectful mother. You have continually left my nephew to the sole care of an employee, sometimes for periods of six weeks at a time. When you are at home, you throw wild parties for your drunken friends. The police have been called on more than one occasion to settle violent disputes at this address.’

Freddy reddened with sudden shame because it was all true and she turned her head away for a moment, no longer able to meet his challenging gaze. She could still recall lying nervously awake behind a locked door with Ben on the night that Erica had staged her first party since her son’s birth. Neighbours had complained to the police about the excessive noise and offensive behaviour of the guests. When, on a subsequent evening, someone had tried to force their way into the bedroom, Freddy had been really scared. After that experience, whenever Erica had decided to throw a party, Freddy had simply taken Ben over to Ruth’s and spent the night there with him in peace.

‘I…’ She swallowed hard, wondering what on earth she could say in her cousin’s defence, but on the score of her constant absences and those rowdy parties there was little she could say. ‘I can see that it looks bad—’

‘It looks worse than bad,’ Jaspar interposed with cutting contempt. ‘It’s obvious that you have no taste for being a mother and even less concern for your child’s welfare. Adil’s son is an al-Husayn. Honour demands that we now acknowledge our responsibility towards him.’

‘And who does “we” cover?’ Freddy prompted, because she knew he was single after looking at that website. In fact there had been some emphasis on the subject of the current heir to the throne of Quamar still being unmarried. Maybe they were subtly advertising him as being up for grabs, hoping that some veiled Middle Eastern princess of unimpeachable virtue and blue-blooded lineage would apply for the privilege of becoming a queen-in-waiting.

‘My family,’ Jaspar enunciated with pride.

‘But you’re single and a young child needs a mother figure,’ Freddy pointed out with some satisfaction.

His fabulous bone structure tightened. ‘I have many relatives within the extended family circle. I hope that some one of them will offer my nephew a caring home.’

‘But not you,’ Freddy noted, angry at the concept of Ben being casually rehomed with the first party willing to take him in.

‘As I am unmarried, it would look very suspicious were I suddenly to produce a child out of nowhere and announce that I intended to bring him up. I am not in a position to even consider that possibility.’ Jaspar dealt her a look of flaring impatience, his firm mouth compressing. ‘Had I had a wife and had she been willing to enter such a pretence, we might have been able to pass him off as an orphaned relative of hers. But, right now, it is not an option.’

So, although he was Ben’s uncle, he would not be person-

ally involved in his nephew’s future. Freddy was dismayed. Such a proposition was hardly what she had imagined.

‘You must understand that our society is not liberal and discretion is a necessity. My nephew’s parentage must be concealed for his own sake. Illegitimacy is still a mark of shame in Quamar,’ Jaspar al-Husayn continued with gravity. ‘Naturally we also wish to avoid creating a scandal which would cause severe embarrassment to Adil’s family.’

From beneath her lashes, she noted the brooding tension of his stance. ‘You resent me asking questions…but I love Ben very much and all I want is what is best for him.’

‘In the light of what I know about you, I find that claim difficult to credit.’ His lean, strong face set hard. ‘You have valued your son not for himself but only for his worth in financial terms. I have little taste for this dialogue with you, so let me assure you that your current income will continue at its present level if you give your son into my care.’

‘Whatever you think of me, money does not come into this,’ Freddy breathed tightly, her tummy giving a sick little somersault at the idea. ‘Ben needs to be loved. All children need to be loved and he’s an affectionate child. You talk about honour and responsibility but I’m talking about daily love and support—’

‘You have no right to question me in this way. Whatever we offer will be immensely superior to the level of care that Ben currently receives,’ Jaspar stated with hard finality.

Freddy snatched in a ragged breath. ‘But it will take time for Ben to adapt to a new home and new people.’

‘I don’t have time to waste. My father is at present ill and most eager to meet his grandson. I would like to fly back to Quamar with my nephew tomorrow.’

‘Tomorrow?’ Freddy was aghast. ‘Ben hasn’t even met you yet and you know nothing about him. He’s not a parcel you can just lift and toss onto a plane!’

‘I have highly qualified nursery staff waiting to take charge of him.’

Freddy shook her blonde head slowly and looked at him with shaken aquamarine eyes. ‘You really don’t know anything at all about young children, do you?’

‘He is still only a baby and he will soon adapt to a new life with caring people,’ Jaspar delivered.

‘He would be traumatised if he was suddenly taken away from me. He needs to be eased into that transition,’ Freddy told him with spirit. ‘It can’t be done overnight—’

‘If the break must be made, it should be quick and clean. I cannot accept that his attachment to you or your attachment to him is of any true consequence,’ Jaspar countered with perceptible derision. ‘After all, you have spent most of his short life sunning yourself on tropical shores and partying without him!’

Freddy was thinking frantically fast and she came up with what seemed like a solution on the spur of the moment. ‘I’d be willing to come out to Quamar with him and stay in a guesthouse or something until he was able to manage without me for longer periods—’

Brilliant golden eyes shimmered over her. ‘You’re talking nonsense. This is the same child who had to get by without you for weeks on end, and I have no hesitation in telling you that you won’t be welcome in Quamar at any time now or in the future.’

He was a bone-deep stubborn male, Freddy registered, her anxiety on Ben’s behalf steadily mounting. He had not a clue about children but it was quite beneath him to admit it. He did indeed believe that he could remove Ben from everything familiar without causing him distress. For the first time, it occurred to her that she had made a cardinal error in allowing Jaspar al-Husayn to continue believing that she was Erica. He was all too well acquainted with her cousin’s poor record as a parent and it was hardly surprising that he was impervious to her arguments. So did she now tell him the truth?

If she confessed that she was only his nephew’s nanny, he would be outraged. He did not strike her as a forgiving type of male. He might feel that she had tried to make a fool of him. He would be furious that he had discussed what he clearly regarded as very private family matters with a humble employee. Worst of all, he would immediately realise that she had no power to prevent him from removing Ben from her care. He might walk straight into Ben’s bedroom and just lift him out of his cot without any further discussion, she thought fearfully.

‘Tomorrow morning, I will send the nanny here to collect my nephew so that she can spend the day with him and get to know him. Will that satisfy you?’ Jaspar asked drily.

Freddy saw that she was fighting a losing battle. She remembered the solicitor who had suggested that she was taking too much on her own shoulders in seeking to interfere and she lost colour at that recollection. How much was she truly thinking of Ben? And how much was her judgement being influenced by her own wants and wishes? After all, she did not want to give Ben up and wasn’t that very selfish of her?

‘Will Ben have proper parents in Quamar?’ she whispered shakily.

‘Of course. There is more than one childless couple in the family.’

Freddy hung her head, shame enclosing her. Had there ever been grounds for her to suspect his motives in seeking to change his late brother’s arrangements for Ben? Wouldn’t it have been much more simple for the al-Husayn family to leave those discreet arrangements in place? Even the investigation report that he had mentioned suggested that his family’s most driving concern had been for Ben’s welfare.

‘If it suits,’ Freddy muttered tautly as she stood up, ‘I’d like to speak to you again tomorrow evening.’

In the hall, Jaspar al-Husayn gave her a keen appraisal. Perhaps she felt that she had to go through the concerned maternal motions, he reflected. Perhaps she couldn’t help herself; perhaps, as was often the case, she could not see herself as the appalling parent that she in fact was. But he had won and he knew it. She would give up her rights to her son on his next visit. He was surprised to feel a faint pang of compassion as he scanned her strained face and the tense down-curve of her ripe mouth.

As the apartment door closed behind him a painful shuddering sob broke from Freddy. Ben was as good as gone. When she admitted that she was merely his nanny, who knew what Jaspar al-Husayn would do? He would certainly never accept the strength of the bond between her and Ben. ‘If the break must be made, it should be quick and clean.’ No, had she confessed her true identity, Ben might have been removed from her care even sooner.

CHAPTER THREE

AFTER a sleepless night, Freddy rose early the next morning.

Every last minute she had to spend with Ben now seemed so impossibly precious. She sat watching him eat his favourite breakfast of a boiled egg with toast soldiers for dipping and her throat closed up so much, it physically hurt. She studied his rounded little face below his dark fluffy curls, the twin crescents of his long lashes, the smooth baby skin still flushed from sleep, and she honestly thought that her heart was going to break.

The night before, she had let herself get all worked up about a stupid kiss probably because it had been easier to concentrate on that foolishness than to face and deal with the loss of the child she loved. But Ben wasn’t hers and he never would be hers and somehow she had to learn to accept that and step back. The pain she was feeling now was entirely her own fault. During her training, she had been warned not to make the mistake of forgetting that the child in her care had a mother and that she was only a temporary carer who would inevitably move on to another family. But she had not been able to abide by that rule. Ben had looked to her for love and she had given it to him, rationalising that in Erica’s absence, Erica’s very unwillingness to make that commitment, someone had to compensate Ben and give him what he needed to thrive.

It had been Freddy who had sat by Ben’s incubator hour after hour during the first worrying weeks of his life, Freddy who had ultimately named him after their paternal grandfather when Erica had said she couldn’t care less what her son was called. Eyes watering as she forced a smile for Ben’s benefit and washed his face and hands, she found herself thinking back to her earliest memories of Erica.

When her widowed father had taken her orphaned cousin into their home, Freddy had been a lonely eight year old. Even then, Erica had been an incredibly pretty girl with an elfin face, catlike eyes and silky dark brown hair. She had had enormous charm as well. She had had the power to make Freddy’s dour father laugh and had been wonderful at teasing him out of his bad moods. Admiring Erica for her vivacity and confidence, Freddy had been happy to take a back seat. She had had to get much older before she’d appreciated that, beneath all that superficial sparkle, Erica was quite incapable of being happy for more than a couple of hours or of ever feeling truly secure.

Seven years later, there had been a huge scandal when Erica had run away with a neighbour’s husband. Freddy’s father had raged at the embarrassment of it all for days on end. Only weeks later, the erring husband had slunk back home again and Erica had attempted the same feat, only to have the door slammed in her face by her uncle. Freddy had been heartbroken that awful night. She had seen the shock and disbelief on Erica’s face, Erica who had never ever thought of consequences or of how her actions might have impacted on other lives.

But the following year, Erica had come to see them again. Looking very glamorous and impossibly penitent, she had soon won her uncle’s forgiveness and had told them stories about her exciting life as a successful model in London. Stories full of whopping fibs, Freddy had later appreciated, for the truth that Erica had depended on her lovers to keep her would scarcely have been acceptable.

At nineteen, Freddy had gone to college to train as a nanny and, for some time afterwards, contact with her cousin had dwindled to the occasional phone call. However, when Freddy’s father had died, Erica had come to the funeral, wan and pregnant and indeed looking anything but well. The cousins had had an emotional reunion and Erica had asked Freddy to come and live with her in London and help her get through the remainder of her pregnancy.

Freddy had not had to think twice about that decision. At the time she had just completed her first job as a nanny and, in the wake of her father’s death, she had been ready for a change. Erica had been genuinely ill, suffering from continual nausea and the constant threat of a miscarriage. Her cousin had spent the last weeks preceding her son’s birth lying flat on her back in a hospital bed, her only visitor, Freddy.

So, to some degree, Freddy had understood Erica’s refusal to relate to her tiny child in his incubator. In so many ways, Erica had never really grown up. Like a kid just let loose from school, Erica’s only thought after her delivery had been to regain her figure and reward herself for all those months of sick and joyless boredom. In her mind, Ben had already had too big a slice of her life.