Kitabı oku: «Indian Prince's Hidden Son / Craving His Forbidden Innocent»

CHAPTER ONE

IT WAS A dull winter day with laden grey clouds overhead. Fine for a funeral as long as the rain held off, Jai conceded grimly.

In his opinion, English rain differed from Indian rain. The monsoon season in Chandrapur brought relief from the often unbearable heat of summer, washing away the dust and the grime and regenerating the soil so that flowers sprang up everywhere. It was a cool, uplifting time of renewal and rebirth.

His bodyguards fanned out to check the immediate area before he was signalled forward to board his limousine. That further loss of time, slight though it was, irritated him because, much as he knew he needed to take security precautions, he was also uneasily aware that he would be a late arrival at the funeral. Unfortunately, it was only that morning that he had flown in from New York to find the message from Brian Allerton’s daughter awaiting him, none of his staff having appreciated that that message should have been treated as urgent.

Brian Allerton had been a Classics teacher and house master at the exclusive English boarding school that Jai had attended as a boy. For over two hundred years, Jai’s Rajput ancestors had been sending their children to England to be educated, but Jai had been horribly homesick from the moment he’d arrived in London. Brian Allerton had been kind and supportive, encouraging the young prince to play sport and focus on his studies. A friendship had been born that had crossed both age barriers and distance and had lasted even after Jai went to university and moved on to become an international businessman.

Brian’s witty letters had entertained Jai’s father, Rehan as well. A shadow crossed Jai’s lean, darkly handsome face, his ice-blue eyes, so extraordinarily noticeable against his olive skin, darkening. Because his own father had died the year before and Jai’s life had changed radically as a result, with any hope of escaping the sheer weight of his royal heritage gone.

On his father’s death he had become the Maharaja of Chandrapur, and being a hugely successful technology billionaire had had to take a back seat while he took control of one of the biggest charitable foundations in the world to continue his father’s sterling work in the same field. Jai often thought that time needed to stretch for his benefit because, even working night and day, he struggled to keep up with all his responsibilities. Suppressing that futile thought, he checked his watch and gritted his teeth because the traffic was heavy and moving slowly.

Brian’s only child, Willow, would be hit very hard by the older man’s passing, Jai reflected ruefully, for, like Jai, Willow had grown up in a single-parent family, her mother having died when she was young. Jai’s mother, however, had walked out on Jai’s father when Jai was a baby, angrily, bitterly convinced that her cross-cultural marriage and mixed-race son were adversely affecting her social standing. Jai had only seen her once after that and only for long enough to register that he was pretty much an embarrassing little secret in his mother’s life, and not one she wanted to acknowledge in public after remarrying and having another family.

It was ironic that Jai had come perilously close to repeating his father’s mistake. At twenty-one he had become engaged to an English socialite. He had been hopelessly in love with Cecilia and had lived to regret his susceptibility when she’d ditched him almost at the altar. In the eight years since then, Jai had toughened up. He was no longer naive or romantic. He didn’t do love any more. He didn’t do serious relationships. There were countless beautiful women willing to share his bed without any promise of a tomorrow and no woman ever left his bed unsatisfied. Casual, free and essentially forgettable, he had learned, met his needs best.

As the limousine drew up outside the cemetery, Jai idly wondered what Willow looked like now. Sadly, it was three years since he had last seen her father, who had turned into a recluse after his terminal illness was diagnosed. She had been away from home studying on his last visit, he recalled with an effort. He had not regretted her absence because as a teenager she had had a huge crush on him and the amount of attention she had given him had made him uncomfortable back then. She had been a tiny little thing though, with that hair of a shade that was neither blond nor red, and the languid green eyes of a cat, startling against her pale skin.

Willow stood at the graveside beside her friend, Shelley, listening to the vicar’s booming voice as he addressed the tiny group of mourners at her father’s graveside. Brian Allerton had had no relatives and, by the time of his passing, even fewer friends because as his illness had progressed he had refused all social invitations. Only a couple of old drinking mates, one of whom was a neighbour, had continued to call in to ply him with his favourite whiskey and talk endlessly about football.

A slight stir on the road beyond the low cemetery wall momentarily captured Willow’s attention and her breath locked in her throat when she realised that a limousine had drawn up. Several men talking into headsets entered the graveyard first, bodyguards spreading out in a classic formation to scan their surroundings before Jai’s tall, powerful figure, sheathed in a dark suit, appeared. Her heart clenched hard because she hadn’t been expecting him, having assumed that the message she had left at his London home would arrive too late to be of any use.

‘Who on earth is that?’ Shelley stage-whispered in her ear, earning a glance of reproof from the vicar.

But no, contrary to Willow’s expectations, Jai, technology billionaire and media darling, had contrived to attend and, even though he had missed the church service, she was impressed, hopelessly impressed, that he had actually made the effort. After all, her father had, during his illness, stopped responding to Jai’s letters and had turned down his invitations, proudly spurning every approach.

‘Wow…he’s absolutely spectacular.’ Shelley sighed, impervious to hints.

‘Talk about him later,’ Willow muttered out of the corner of her mouth, keen to silence her friend. Shelley was wonderfully kind and generous but she wasn’t discreet and she always said exactly what she was thinking.

‘He’s really hot,’ Shelley gushed in her ear. ‘And he’s so tall and built, isn’t he?’

Jai had been hugely popular at school when Willow was growing up in the little courtyard house that had gone with her father’s live-in employment. The last in a long distinguished line of Rajput rulers and warriors, Prince Jai Singh had been an outstanding sportsman and an equally brilliant scholar and Willow had often suspected that Jai had been the son her father would’ve loved to have had in place of the daughter who had, sadly, failed to live up to his exacting academic standards.

And even though it had been three years since Willow had seen Jai she still only allowed herself a fleeting glance in his direction and swiftly suppressed the shiver of awareness that gripped her with mortifying immediacy. After all, a single glance was all it took to confirm that nothing essential had changed. Jai, the son of an Indian Maharaja and an English duke’s daughter, was drop-dead gorgeous from the crown of his luxuriant blue-black hair to the toes of his very probably hand-stitched shoes. Even at a distance she had caught the glimmer of his extraordinarily light eyes against his golden skin. His eyes were the palest wolf-blue in that lean, darkly handsome face of his, a perfect complement to his superb bone structure, classic nose and perfectly sculpted mouth.

Jai, her first crush, her only infatuation, she conceded in exasperation, her flawless skin heating with the never-to-be-forgotten intense embarrassment of her teenaged years as the mourners came, one by one, to greet her and she invited them back to the house for an alcoholic drink as specified by her late parent, who had ruled against her providing traditional tea and sandwiches for the occasion. Even so, she would have to make exceptions for the vicar and for Jai.

As Jai strode towards the small group, his keen gaze widened infinitesimally, and his steps faltered as soon as he recognised Willow, a tiny fragile figure dressed in black, with an eye-catching waterfall of strawberry-blond waves tumbling round her shoulders that highlighted bright green eyes and a lush pink mouth set in a heart-shaped face. The shy, skinny and awkward teenager, he registered in surprise, had turned into a ravishing beauty. His teeth clenched as he moved forward, inwardly censuring that last observation as inappropriate in the circumstances.

A lean hand closed over hers. ‘I apologise for my late arrival. My deepest condolences for your loss,’ Jai murmured softly.

‘Hi… I’m Shelley,’ her friend interrupted with a huge smile.

‘Jai…this is my friend, Shelley,’ Willow introduced hastily.

Jai grasped Shelley’s hand and murmured something polite.

‘Come back to the house with us,’ Willow urged him stiffly. ‘My father would’ve liked that.’

‘I don’t wish to intrude,’ Jai told her.

‘Dad wouldn’t see anyone while he was ill… It wasn’t personal,’ Willow told him chokily. ‘He was a very private man.’

‘Your dad was right eccentric,’ Shelley chimed in.

‘His desire for privacy must’ve made his illness harder for you to deal with,’ Jai remarked shrewdly. ‘No support. I know you have no family.’

‘But Willow does have friends,’ Shelley cut in warmly. ‘Like me.’

‘And I am sure she is very grateful for your support at such a difficult time,’ Jai responded smoothly.

That reminder of her isolation hit Willow hard. Losing her father, who had been her only parent since her mother had died when she was six, was already proving even tougher than she had envisaged. Worse still, the reality that they were stony broke, for those last months had broken her father’s heart and hastened his end. Evidently fantasising about leaving his daughter much better off than they had been, her father had, as his life had drawn to a close, begun using his pension fund to play with stocks and shares without seeming to grasp the risk that he was taking.

Convinced that he was onto a winning strategy, Brian Allerton had been devastated when he’d lost all his savings. He had spent his last months grieving for the mistake he had made and the truth that he was leaving his daughter virtually penniless. They were fortunate indeed that her father had arranged and settled the expenses of his own funeral as soon as he had appreciated that his condition was incurable. But only their landlord’s forbearance had kept a roof over their heads as they had inevitably fallen behind with the rent, and that was a debt that Willow was determined to somehow settle.

‘I’ll get by,’ she parried with a stiff little smile. ‘Dad and I were always alone.’

‘Let me give you a lift,’ Jai urged smoothly.

‘No, thank you. Our neighbour, Charlie, is waiting outside for us,’ she responded with a rueful smile that threatened to turn into a grimace.

Shelley, proclaiming that she would’ve enjoyed the opportunity to travel in a limousine, hurried after Willow in dismay as she turned on her heel to head out to the ancient car awaiting them beyond the cemetery wall. Willow, not having noticed her friend’s disappointment, was all of a silly flutter, and furious with herself, butterflies darting and dancing in her tummy and leaving her breathless as a schoolgirl simply because she had been talking to Jai. Any normal woman would have grown out of such immature behaviour by now, she told herself in mortification. Unfortunately, through living with and caring for her father and lack of opportunity, Willow hadn’t yet managed to gain much real-world experience of the opposite sex.

Aside of a couple of summer residential stays, she had always lived at home, having studied garden design both online and through classes at the nearest college. Add in the work experience she had had to complete with a local landscape firm, the need to earn some money simply to eat while they had steadily fallen behind with the rent, the demands of her father’s illness and his many medical appointments, and there hadn’t been enough hours in the day for Willow to enjoy a social life with her friends as well. Gradually most of her friends had dropped away, but Shelley had been in her life since primary school and had continued to visit, oblivious to Brian Allerton’s cool, snobbish attitude to her.

Willow arrived back at the tiny terraced house and she put on the kettle while Shelley set out the drinks and a solitary tray of shortbread. Just as Jai arrived, the vicar anxiously asked Willow where she was planning to move to.

‘My sofa!’ Shelley revealed with a chuckle. ‘I wouldn’t leave her stuck.’

‘Yes, I’ll be fine with Shelley until I can organise something more permanent. I have to move out of here tomorrow. The landlord has been wonderfully understanding but it would be selfish of me to stay here one day longer than necessary,’ Willow explained, thinking that, tough though the last weeks had been, she had met with kindness in unexpected places.

A sofa? Willow was homeless? Expected to pack up and move in with a friend the same week that she had buried her father? Jai was appalled at that news. Honour demanded that he intervene but Willow had been raised to be proud and independent like her father and Jai would have to be sensitive in his approach. He was convinced that out of principle Willow would refuse his financial assistance.

‘Coffee, Jai?’ Willow prompted as she handed the vicar a cup of tea.

‘Thank you,’ he murmured, following her into the small kitchen to say, ‘Was your father at home at the end, or had he been moved to a hospice?’

‘It was to happen next week,’ Willow conceded tightly, throwing his tall dark figure a rueful appraisal, her heart giving a sudden thud as she collided involuntarily with ice-blue eyes enhanced by wondrously dense black lashes. ‘But he didn’t make it. His heart gave out.’

In an abrupt movement, she stepped back from him, disturbingly conscious of his height and the proximity of more masculinity than she felt able to bear. The very faint scent of some designer cologne drifted into her nostrils and she sucked in a sudden steadying breath, her level of awareness heightening exponentially to add to her discomfiture. She could feel her face heating, her knees wobbling as her tension rose even higher.

‘What are you planning to do next?’ Jai enquired, shifting his attention hurriedly from her lush pink lips and the X-rated images bombarding him while he questioned his behaviour.

Yes, she was indisputably beautiful, but he was neither a hormonal schoolboy, nor a sex-starved one, and he was challenged to explain his lack of self-discipline in her radius. She did, however, possess a quality that was exclusively her own, he acknowledged grudgingly, a slow-burning sensual appeal that tugged hard at his senses. It was there in the flicker of her languorous emerald eyes, the slight curve of her generous lower lip, the upward angle of challenge in her chin as she tilted her head back, strawberry-blond hair falling in waves tumbling across her slim shoulders like a swathe of rumpled silk.

‘I’ll be fine as soon as I find full-time work. These last weeks, I was only able to work part-time hours. Once I’ve saved up some money, I’ll move on and leave Shelley in peace.’ She opened the fridge to extract milk and Jai noticed its empty interior.

‘You have no food,’ he remarked grimly.

‘I genuinely haven’t had much of an appetite recently,’ she confided truthfully. ‘And Dad ate next to nothing, so I haven’t been cooking.’

She had removed her coat and the simple grey dress she wore hung loose on her slender body. Her cheekbones were sharp, her eyes hollow and his misgivings increased because she looked haunted and frail. Of course, common sense warned him that nursing her father would have sapped her energy and left her at a low ebb. Certainly, she was vulnerable, but she was a young and healthy woman and she would probably be fine. But probably wasn’t quite good enough to satisfy Jai. He would make his own checks and in the short term he would do what he could to make her future less insecure.

Willow watched Jai leave, a sinking tightening sensation inside her chest as it occurred to her that she would probably never see him again now that her father was gone. Why would she want to see him again anyway? she asked herself irritably. They were only casual acquaintances and calling him a friend would have been pushing that slight bond to the limits.

Shelley departed only under protest.

‘Are you sure you’re going to be OK alone here tonight?’ the brunette pressed, unconvinced. ‘I don’t feel right leaving you on your own.’

‘I’m going to have a bath and go to bed early. I’m exhausted,’ Willow told her ruefully. ‘But thanks for caring.’

The two women hugged on the doorstep and Shelley went on her way. Willow cleared away the glasses and left the kitchen immaculate before heading upstairs for her bath. First thing in the morning a local dealer was coming to clear the house contents and sell them. There wasn’t much left because almost everything that could be sold had been sold off weeks earlier. Even so, her father’s beloved books might be worth something, she thought hopefully, her teeth worrying at her lower lip as she anxiously recalled the rent still owing. It would be a weight off her mind if she could clear that debt because their landlord belonged to her church and she suspected that he had felt that he’d had no choice but to allow them to remain as tenants even though the rent was in arrears. The sooner he was reimbursed for his kindness, the happier she would be.

The bell shrilled while she was putting on her pyjamas and she groaned, snatching her robe off the back of the bathroom door to hurry barefoot down the steep stairs and answer the door.

When she saw Jai outside, she froze in disconcertion.

‘I brought dinner,’ Jai informed her as she hovered, her grip on the robe she was holding closed loosening to reveal the shorts and T-shirt she wore beneath and her long, shapely legs. He drew in a stark little breath as she stepped back and the robe shifted again to expose the tilted peaks of her small breasts. In a split second he was hard as a rock, his body impervious to his belief that he preferred curvier women.

‘D-dinner?’ she stammered in wonderment as Jai stepped back and two men with a trolley moved out from behind him and, with some difficulty, trundled the unwieldy item through the tiny hall into the cramped living room with its small table and two chairs.

Those wolf-blue eyes of his held her fast, all breathing in suspension.

‘My hotel was able to provide us with an evening meal,’ he clarified smoothly.

No takeaways for Jai, Willow registered without surprise while she wondered what on earth such an extravagant gesture could have cost him. Of course, he didn’t have to count costs, did he? It probably hadn’t even occurred to him that requesting a meal for two people that could be transported out of the hotel and served by hotel staff was an extraordinary request. Jai was simply accustomed to asking and always receiving, regardless of expense.

‘I’m not dressed,’ she said awkwardly, tightening the tie on her robe in an apologetic gesture.

‘It doesn’t bother me. We should eat now while it’s still warm,’ Jai responded as the plates were brought to the table, and she settled down opposite him, stiff with unease.

A bottle of wine was uncorked, glasses produced and set by their places.

‘I thought you didn’t drink,’ she commented in surprise as the waiters went back outside again, presumably to wait for them to finish.

‘I take wine with my meals,’ he explained. ‘It’s rare for me to drink at any other time.’

His eyes had a ring of stormy grey around the pupils, she noted absently, her throat tightening as her gaze dropped to the fullness of his sensual lower lip and she found herself wondering for the first time ever what Jai would be like in bed. She had been too shy and immature for such thoughts when she was an infatuated teenager and, now that she was an adult, her mental audacity brought a flood of mortified colour to her pale cheeks. Would he be gentle or rough? Fiery or smoothly precise? Her thoughts refused to quit.

‘Why did you feel that you had to feed me?’ she asked abruptly in an effort to deflect his attention from her hot cheeks.

‘You had no food in the kitchen. You’ve just lost your father,’ Jai parried calmly as he began to eat. ‘I didn’t like to think of you alone here.’

He had felt sorry for her. She busied herself eating the delicious food, striving not to squirm with mortification that she had impressed him as an object of pity. After all, Jai had been raised by his benevolent father to constantly consider those less fortunate and now ran a huge international charity devoted to good causes. Whether she appreciated the reality or not, looking out for the needs of the vulnerable had to come as naturally to Jai as breathing.

‘Why are you moving out of here tomorrow?’ he pressed quietly.

Willow snatched in a long steadying breath and then surrendered to the inevitable, reasoning that her father could no longer be humiliated by the truth. She explained about Brian Allerton’s unsuccessful stock-market dealing and the impoverishment that had followed. ‘I mean no disrespect,’ she completed ruefully, ‘but my father was irresponsible with money. He never saved anything—he only had his pension. All his working life he lived in accommodation provided by his employers and most of his meals and bills were also covered and it didn’t prepare him very well for retirement living in the normal world.’

‘That didn’t occur to me, but it should’ve done,’ Jai conceded. ‘He was an unworldly man.’

‘He was so ashamed of his financial losses,’ she whispered unhappily. ‘It made him feel like a failure and that’s one of the reasons he wouldn’t see people any more.’

‘I wish he had found it possible to reach out to me for assistance,’ Jai framed heavily, his lean, strong face clenched hard. ‘So, you are being forced to sell everything? I will buy his book collection.’

Willow stared across the table at him in shock. ‘Seriously?’

‘He was a lifelong book collector, as am I,’ Jai pointed out. ‘I would purchase his books because I want them and for no other reason. We will agree that tonight and hopefully that will take care of your rent arrears.’

Willow nodded slowly and then frowned. ‘Are you sure you want them?’

‘I have a library in every one of my homes. Of course, I want them.’

Willow swallowed hard. ‘How many homes do you have?’ she whispered helplessly.

‘More than I want in Chandrapur but it is my duty, as it was my father’s, to preserve our heritage properties for future generations,’ he countered levelly. ‘Now let us move on to other, more important matters. Your father was too proud to ask for my help. I hope you are a little more sensible.’

Reckoning that he was about to embarrass her by offering her further financial help, Willow pushed back her plate and stood up to forestall him. ‘I’m going upstairs to get dressed first,’ she said tightly.

Jai sipped his wine and signalled the staff to remove the dishes and the trolley. He pictured Willow sliding out of the robe, letting it fall sinuously to her feet before she took off the top and removed the shorts. His imagination went wild while he did so, his body surging with fierce hunger, and he gritted his teeth angrily, struggling to get his thoughts back in his control.

Upstairs, Willow stood immobile, reckoning that Jai taking her father’s books could well settle the rent arrears. Did he really want those books? Or was that just a ploy to give her money? And when someone was as poor as she was, could she really afford to worry about what might lie behind his generosity?

Her attention fell on a sapphire ring that lay on the tray on the dressing table. It was her grandmother’s engagement ring and it would have to be sold too, even though it was unlikely to be worth very much. Her father had refused to let her sell it while he was still alive, but it had to go now, along with everything else. She could not live with Shelley without paying her way. She would not take advantage of her friend’s kindness like that.

She spread a glance round the room, her eyes lingering on the precious childhood items that would also have to be disposed of, things like her worn teddy bear and the silver frame housing a photo of the mother she barely remembered. She couldn’t lug boxes of stuff with her to clutter up Shelley’s small studio apartment. Be practical, Willow, she scolded herself even as a sob of pain convulsed her throat.

She felt as though her whole life had tumbled into broken pieces at her feet. Her father was gone. Everything familiar was fading. And at the heart of her grief lay the inescapable truth that she had always been a serious disappointment to the father she loved. No matter how hard she had tried, no matter how many tutors her father had engaged to coach her, she had continually failed to reach the academic heights he’d craved for his only child. She wasn’t stupid, she was merely average, and to a man as clever as her father had been, a man with a string of Oxford degrees in excellence, that had been a cruel punishment…

Downstairs, enjoying a second glass of wine, Jai heard her choked sob. He squared his shoulders and breathed in deep, deeming it only natural that at some point on such a day Willow’s control would weaken and she would break down. There had been no visible tears at the funeral, no emotional conversations afterwards that he had heard. Throughout, Willow had been polite and pleasant and more considerate of other people’s feelings than her own. She had attempted to bring an upbeat note to a depressing situation, had behaved as though she had already completely accepted the changes that her father’s death would inflict on her.

When the sounds of her distress became more than he could withstand, Jai abandoned his careful scrutiny of her father’s books—several first editions, he noted with satisfaction, worthy of the fine price he would pay for them. He drained his glass and forced himself to mount the stairs to offer what comfort he could. All too well did he remember that he himself had had little support after his father’s sudden death from a massive stroke. Thousands had been devastated by the passing of so well-loved a figure and hundreds of concerned relatives had converged on Jai to share his sorrow, but Jai hadn’t been close enough to any of those individuals to find solace in their memories. In reality only he had known his father on a very personal, private level and only he could know the extent of the loss he had sustained.

Willow was lying sobbing on the bed and Jai didn’t hesitate. He sat down beside her and lifted her into his arms, reckoning that she weighed barely more than a child and instinctively treating her as such as he patted her slender spine soothingly and struggled to think of what it was best to say. ‘Remember the good times with your father,’ he urged softly.

‘There really weren’t any…’ Willow muttered chokily into his shoulder, startled to find herself in his arms but revelling in that sudden comforting closeness of another human being and no longer feeling alone and adrift. ‘I was always a serious disappointment to him.’

With a frown of disbelief, Jai held her back from him to look down into her tear-stained face. The tip of her nose was red, which was surprisingly cute. Her wide green eyes were still welling with tears and oddly defiant, as if daring him to disagree. ‘How could that possibly be true?’ he challenged.

‘I didn’t do well enough at school, didn’t get into the right schools either,’ Willow confided shakily, looking into his lean, strong face and those commanding ice-blue eyes that had once haunted her dreams. ‘Once I heard him lying to make excuses for me. He told one of his colleagues that I’d been ill when I sat my exams and it was a lie… Dad wanted a child he could brag about, an intellectual child, who passed every exam with flying colours. I had tutors in every subject and I still couldn’t do well enough to please him!’

Jai was sharply disconcerted by that emotional admission, which revealed a far less agreeable side to a man he had both liked and respected. ‘I’m sure he didn’t mean to make you feel that way,’ he began tentatively.

Willow’s fingers clenched for support into a broad shoulder that felt reassuringly solid and strong and she sucked in a shuddering breath. It was a kind lie, she conceded, liking him all the more for his compassion. Even so, she was still keen to say what she had never had the nerve to say before, because only then, in getting it off her chest, might she start to heal from the low self-esteem she had long suffered from. ‘Yes, Dad did mean it. He honestly believed that the harder he pushed me, the more chance he had of getting me to excel! He didn’t even care about which subject it might be in, he just wanted me to be especially talented at something!’

‘I’m sorry,’ Jai breathed, mesmerised by the glistening depth of her green eyes and the sheer passion with which she spoke, not to mention the unexpected pleasure of the slight trusting weight of her lying across his thighs and the evocative coconut scent of her hair. The untimely throb of arousal at his groin infuriated him and he fought it to the last ditch.

‘Dad wasn’t remotely impressed by my studying garden history and landscaping. And that’s why I’m crying, because I’m sorry too that it’s too late to change anything for the better. I had my chance with him, and I blew it!’ Willow muttered guiltily, marvelling that she was confiding in Jai, of all people. Jai, who was the cleverest of the clever. It didn’t feel real; it felt much more like something she would imagine to comfort herself and, as such, reassuringly unreal and harmless. ‘I never once managed to do anything that made Dad proud of me. My small successes were never enough to please him.’

And the sheer honesty of that confession struck Jai on a much deeper level because he wasn’t used to a woman who told it as it was and didn’t wrap up the ugly truth in a flattering guise. Yet Willow looked back at him, fearless and frank and so, so sad, and his hands slid from her back up to her face to cup her cheekbones, framing those dreamy green eyes that had so much depth and eloquence in her heart-shaped face. She looked impossibly beautiful.

He didn’t know what to say to that. He did not want to criticise her father, he did not want to hurt her more, and so he kissed her…didn’t even know he was going to do it, didn’t even have to think about it because it seemed the utterly, absolutely natural next step in their new understanding.

CHAPTER TWO

THE TASTE OF JAI, of fine wine and a faint minty after-flavour, threw Willow even deeper into the realms of fantasy.

Because fantasy was what it felt like, totally unthreatening fantasy in which Prince Jai Hari Singh, Maharaja of Chandrapur, kissed her, Willow Allerton, currently unemployed and soon to be homeless into the bargain. Being in his arms didn’t feel real but, goodness, it felt good, the delve of his tongue into the moist aperture of her mouth sending a shower of fireworks flying through her tummy, awakening a heat that surged enthusiastically into all the cold places inside her, both comforting and exhilarating all at once.

It was everything she had dreamt she might find in a man’s arms and it felt right as well as good, gloriously right as if she had been waiting her whole life for that moment and was being richly rewarded for her patience. In the dim light from the bedside lamp, Jai’s eyes glittered with the pale ice of polar stars, but the ice that powered him burned through her like a rejuvenating drug, banishing the grief and the guilt and the sadness that had filled her to overflowing. Her fingers drifted up to curve to his strong jawline.

‘I like this,’ she whispered helplessly.

‘I like it too much,’ Jai conceded in a driven undertone, lifting her off his lap to lay her down on the bed where her strawberry-blond hair shone in the lamplight, leaning over her to cover her lush mouth with his again.

‘How…too much?’ she pressed.

‘I was trying to comfort you, not—’

Featherlight fingers brushed his lips before he could complete that speech. ‘Kiss me again,’ she urged feverishly. ‘It drives everything else out of my head.’

She wanted forgetfulness, not the down-to-earth reminder that such intimacy was untimely. Jai’s stern cautious side warred with his libido, his body teeming with pent-up desire. They were alone and free-to-consent adults, not irresponsible teenagers. He gazed down at her and then wrenched at the constriction of his tie with an impatient hand, suddenly giving way to the passionate nature that he usually controlled to what he deemed an acceptable level. The allure of her pink ripe lips was more than he could withstand.

That next explosive kiss sealed Willow’s fate, for she could no more have denied the hunger coursing through her than she could have denied her own name. There was also a strong element of wonder in discovering Jai’s desire for her. That was thrillingly unexpected and wonderfully heartening, that she could have it within her to mysteriously attract a man well known for his preference for gorgeous models and Bollywood actresses, a gorgeous, incredibly sexy man, who could have had virtually any woman he wanted. It changed her view of herself as the girl next door, low on sex appeal.

‘I want you,’ Jai ground out against her reddened mouth as he shed his jacket with a lithe twist of his broad shoulders.

Only for a split second did she marvel at that and then all her insecurities surged to the fore because she was skinny and lacked the curves that were so often seen as essential to make a woman appealing to a man. But an internal voice reminded her that Jai wanted her, and she opened her mouth beneath the onslaught of his, let her tongue dart and tangle with his, feeling free, feeling daring for the first time ever.

There was intoxication in the demanding pressure of his mouth on hers and the long fingers sliding below her top to cup a small pouting breast while he toyed with the tender peak. Her body arched without her volition as that sensual caress grew more intense, tiny little arrows of heat darting down into her pelvis to make her extraordinarily aware of that area. Her hips shifted as he pulled her top off, exposing the bare swell of her breasts, bending over her to use his mouth on the plump pink nipples commanding his attention. She tingled all over, goose bumps rising on her arms as he suckled on the distended buds. Between her thighs she felt hot and damp and surprisingly impatient for what came next.

And she knew what came next, of course she did, but her friends’ bluntness on the topic had warned her not to expect triumphant bursts of classical music and glimpses of heaven in the final stages. It would be her first time and she was aware that her lack of experience would not affect his enjoyment but that it might well detract from hers. All a matter of luck, a friend had told her sagely.

Dainty fingers spearing through Jai’s silky black hair, Willow was revelling in the intimacy of being able to touch him while still marvelling over how fast things could change between two people. Yet she had no doubts and was convinced she would have no regrets either because she had already reached the conclusion that she would rather have Jai as her first lover than anyone else.

Jai dragged off his shirt, returned to kiss her again, his wide, powerful torso hard and muscular against hers. She made a little sound of appreciation deep in her throat even as her hands skated up the hot, smooth skin of his ribcage to discover the muscles that flexed with his every movement. She couldn’t think any more beyond that moment because the craving he had unleashed grew stronger with every demanding kiss and utterly controlled her, dulling her brain with an adrenalin boost that was wholly physical.

She writhed under his weight as he traced the hot, swollen centre of her, touching her where she desperately needed to be touched so that her body arched up to him, her heartbeat thundering, her entire being quivering with feverish need. A finger penetrated her slick depths and she gasped, all arousal and captive energy, wanting, wanting…

‘Is it safe?’ Jai husked, wrenching at his trousers to get them out of his path and so overexcited he barely recognised himself in his eagerness but her response, the passage of her tiny hands smoothing over his overheated body, had pushed him to the biting edge of a hunger greater than anything he had ever known before.

Safe? Safe? What was he talking about? She wasn’t expecting any more visitors; they were alone. Of course, they were safe from interruption or the potential embarrassment of discovery.

‘Of course, it is,’ Willow muttered.

Jai came down to her with a wolfish smile of relief. ‘How very fortunate… I don’t think I could stop unless you ordered me to.’

‘Not going to,’ Willow mumbled, entranced by the fierce black-fringed eyes above hers into absolute stillness.

Jai tipped her legs back and slid sinuously between them, shifting forward in a forceful surge to plunge into her. Eyes closing, Willow felt the burn of his invasion as her untried body stretched to accommodate him and then a sharp stab of pain that jolted her even as he groaned with satisfaction.

‘You’re so tight,’ he breathed appreciatively.

The pain faded and, as it had been less than she had feared, her stress level dropped, and her body relaxed to rise up against his as he withdrew and forged back into her again. Little tendrils of warming sensation gathered in her pelvis and the excitement flooded back, kicking up her heartrate simultaneously so that even breathing became a challenge. She moved against him, hot, damp with perspiration, losing control because the insidious tightening at her core stoked her hunger for him. His fluid insistent rhythm increased, and she felt frantic, pitched to an edge of need that felt unbearable. She lifted to meet his every thrust, need driving her to hasten to the finish line and then, with a swoosh of drowning sensation, the tightness transformed into an explosion of sheer pleasure unlike any she had ever envisaged and she fell back against the pillows, winded and drained, utterly incapable of even twitching a limb.

‘That was incredible,’ Jai purred like a well-fed jungle cat in her ear, long fingers tracing the relaxed pout of her mouth and trailing down to her shoulder to smooth the skin before he pressed his mouth hungrily to the slope of her neck. ‘All I really want now is to do it all over again.’

The tension of discomfiture, of not knowing how to behave, beginning to rise in Willow ebbed. He was happy, she was happy, there was nothing to fret about. Again, though? She had assumed that men were once-only creatures in need of recovery time, but Jai was already shifting sensually against her again, his renewed arousal brushing her stomach. That he could still want her that much gratified her and she smiled up at him.

That smile full of sunshine disconcerted Jai. His conscience twinged and it took him a moment to recognise the unfamiliar prompting because it was rare for him to do anything that awakened such a reaction. ‘You do realise that this…us, isn’t likely to go anywhere?’ he murmured.

‘How could it? I’m not an idiot,’ Willow parried in surprise and embarrassment that he felt the need to tell her that they had no future as a couple.

‘I didn’t want you to get the wrong impression,’ Jai told her levelly. ‘I only do casual with women and I never raise expectations I have no plans to fulfil.’

‘Neither do I,’ Willow assured him cheerfully, secure in her conviction that he had not guessed that she was inexperienced and relieved because pride demanded that he believe that he was no big deal in her life. ‘I wouldn’t want you getting the wrong idea about me either.’

Faint colour edged Jai’s high sculpted cheekbones because no woman had ever dared to tell him that he was just a casual encounter. ‘Of course not.’

‘Then we’re both content,’ Willow concluded, refusing to recognise the little pang of hurt buried deep within her…hurt that she wasn’t a little different from other women in his eyes, more special than they were, somehow less of a casual event in his life. He was telling it as it was and she should be grateful for that. This way she knew exactly where she stood and she wouldn’t be weaving fantasies around phone calls that would never come or surprise visits. After all, he didn’t have her phone number and even she didn’t know where she’d eventually be living. She and Jai really were ships that passed in the night.

‘I want to kiss you again,’ Jai breathed with a raw edge to his dark deep voice.

He had only one night with her, and he wanted to make the very most of the best sex he had ever had. He would move on; she would move on. That was the way of the world, yet a stray shard of guilt and regret still pierced him because she was so open with him, so impervious to his wealth and status. He would check that she was all right from a safe distance, stay uninvolved, he promised himself. He supposed there were ties between them that he was refusing to acknowledge lest they make him uncomfortable. He had vague memories of her as a child, could remember her shouting his name in excitement at sports events and could recall the way her eyes had once clung to him as though magnetised. But she had grown out of all that. Of course, she had.

‘I’m cold,’ Willow admitted, snaking back from him to tug the edge of the duvet up and scramble under it with a convulsive shiver.

Jai peeled off his trousers, shaken that in his haste to possess her he had not even fully undressed. Nothing cool or sophisticated about that approach, he told himself ruefully, wondering what it was about her that had made him so downright desperate to have her. For the first time with a woman sexual hunger had overwhelmed him and crowded every other consideration out. It was something more than looks, maybe that unspoiled natural quality of hers, not to mention her disconcerting honesty in assuring him that he was just a one-night stand and that she had no desire to attach strings to him. Jai didn’t think he had ever been with a woman who didn’t want those strings, no matter how coolly she was trying to play the game. He was too rich and too powerful not to inspire women with ambitious hopes and plans.

‘Let me warm you,’ Jai urged, hauling her into contact with his hot, muscular length, driving out the shivers that had been assailing her.

And it all began again and this time she was wholly free of tension and insecurity and the excitement rose even faster for her. The pleasure stole her mind from her body and left her exhausted. She dropped into sleep, still melded to Jai and still amazed by what had happened between them. At some stage of the night he kissed her awake and made love to her again, slow and sure this time, and achingly sexy. It occurred to her that Jai had made her initiation into sex wondrously sensual but, even then, she knew she ached in bone and muscle and would be wrecked the next morning.

In the dull light of dawn, she was surprised when Jai shook her awake. Dressed in his dark suit and unshaven, he stood over her, studying her with wolf pale blue eyes that burned. He yanked back the duvet, rudely exposing her, and said roughly, ‘There’s blood all over the sheet! Did I hurt you?’

Willow wanted to die of humiliation where she sat and she snatched at the duvet in desperation and covered up the offending stain, her face burning as hot as a furnace. ‘Of course, you didn’t. I didn’t realise I would bleed the first time,’ she whispered shakily. ‘I know some women do but somehow I assumed I wouldn’t…’

Slow, painful comprehension gripped Jai and rocked him to the depths of his being. He stared down at her in dawning disbelief. ‘Are you saying that you were a virgin?’

‘Well, it’s not something I can lie about now, is it?’ Willow muttered in embarrassment, her chin coming up at a defiant tilt. ‘But I don’t know why you would think that you have a right to make a production out of something that is my business and nothing to do with you.’

‘I would not have chosen to sleep with you had I known I would be your first,’ Jai framed fiercely.

‘Well, if that was a personal concern of yours, you should’ve asked in advance,’ Willow countered mutinously. ‘It’s not as if I dragged you into bed!’

‘How the hell could I have guessed that you were still a virgin at your age?’ Jai demanded.

‘I’m only twenty-one. Twenty-two in a few months,’ she added stiffly. ‘I’m sure I’m not that unusual.’

Jai was not appeased. She was years younger than the women he usually took as lovers, but he hadn’t registered that fact the night before, had been too turned on and in too much of a hurry to register anything important, he conceded, angry at his own recklessness.

‘Perhaps not, but I assumed you were experienced,’ he admitted flatly.

‘Well, now you know different. Can we drop this discussion? I want to get washed and dressed,’ Willow told him without any expression at all, her small, slight body rigid with wounded pride and resentment in the bed as she continued to hug the duvet to her. ‘You know last night was lovely…but now you’ve ruined it.’

‘I’ll see you downstairs,’ Jai countered grimly.

Willow scrambled out of bed as soon as the door closed behind him and then winced, her body letting her know that such sudden energetic movements would be punished. Just at that moment she did not want that reminder of the intimacy they had shared when Jai, so obviously, regretted it. She pulled out fresh clothing and trekked across to the small shower room. A damp towel lay on the floor and she bent to scoop it up and lift it to her nose. It smelled ever so faintly of Jai while her body smelled even more strongly of him. Shame engulfed her in a drowning flood of regret. Evidently in sleeping with him she had made the wrong decision, but surely it had been her decision to make?

Of course, there had been men who’d shown an interest in her in recent years, but none had attracted her enough for her to take matters any further. She had never been much of a fan of crowded clubs or parties and her father’s demand that she come home at a reasonable hour had proved to be a restriction that had turned her into a deadbeat companion for a night out. She had taken the easy way out when faced with her father’s domineering personality and she had spent her free evenings at home watching television and catching up with Shelley, none of which had given her any experience of how to handle Jai in a temper. But never again would she lie down to be walked over by an angry male, she told herself urgently. From now on she would stand her ground and hold her head high, even if she did have misgivings about her own behaviour.

Jai paced the small living room, feeling the claustrophobic proportions of its confines in growing frustration. Willow was twenty-one years old. Far too young for an experienced man of twenty-nine. Why hadn’t he remembered how young she was? What had he been thinking of? The answer was that he hadn’t been thinking, hadn’t stopped to think once. Everything that had happened with Willow had happened so fast and had seemed so deceptively natural that he had questioned nothing and now it was too late to change anything.

‘Last night was lovely…but now you’ve ruined it.’

That complaint, towering in its naivety, echoed in his ears and made him flinch. As a rule, he avoided starry-eyed girls and she was one he should definitely have avoided getting more deeply involved with. A woman who’d had a massive crush on him as a teenager? How much had that influenced her willingness to give him her body? He emitted a harsh groan of guilt and self-loathing.

A decent man didn’t take advantage of a vulnerable woman! And what had he done?

Within hours of her father’s funeral, when she was grieving and distressed, he had pounced like some sort of self-serving seducer. She had deserved more care and consideration than he had given her. Yet he had started out simply trying to offer both care and consideration and could not for the life of him explain how trying to comfort her had ended up with them having sex. She hadn’t flirted with him. She hadn’t encouraged him but she hadn’t said no either. Was that what he was blaming her for? No, he was blaming her for not telling him that she was a virgin, for not giving him that choice…

‘I’ll have to nip out to get something for breakfast,’ Willow told him from the doorway.

Jai swung round, his eyes a pale glittering brilliance in his lean, darkly handsome face. ‘I’ll eat back at the hotel,’ he told her drily. ‘Why didn’t you tell me that I would be the first? I wouldn’t have continued if I’d known. I feel as though I took advantage of your inexperience.’

‘It didn’t occur to me that I should tell you. I wasn’t really thinking. I don’t think either of us were. Everything happened so fast,’ Willow murmured defensively, wishing he would have given her the time to provide breakfast and sort matters out in a more civilised manner. But Jai, she was beginning to recognise, was much more volatile in nature than she had ever appreciated. Without skipping a beat, he had taken the dialogue they had abandoned in the bedroom straight back up again, which suggested that while she’d showered and dressed, he had merely continued to silently brood and seethe.

‘There’s nothing we can do about it now,’ she pointed out thinly.

Jai looked back at her, scanning her small, slight figure in jeans and a top. Even with the shadows etched below her eyes, she was still lovely, eminently touchable, he reflected as he tensed. Daylight and cold reason had not made her any less appealing. ‘No, but it was wrong.’

‘You don’t get the unilateral right to say that to me,’ Willow snapped back at him. ‘It was not wrong for me!’

‘You had a crush on me for years,’ Jai countered levelly. ‘Is that why it wasn’t wrong for you?’

Willow’s soft mouth opened and closed again as she gazed back at him in horror, hot, painful colour slowly washing up her cheeks. ‘I can’t believe you are throwing that in my face.’

‘It’s relevant to this situation,’ Jai breathed sardonically.

‘The only person making a situation out of this is you!’ Willow condemned, fighting her mortification with all her might. ‘Yes, I may have had a crush on you when I was a schoolgirl, but I grew out of that nonsense years ago!’

‘I’m not sure I can believe that some sentimental memory didn’t influence you.’

‘It didn’t. Whether you believe that or not is up to you,’ Willow replied curtly. ‘I’m all grown up now. I don’t have any romantic notions about you…and if I had, you’d have killed them stone dead.’

Her continuing refusal to be influenced by his attitude surprised Jai. He was accustomed to those he dealt with coming round to his view and supporting his opinion, but Willow was stubborn enough and independent enough not to budge an inch. Meanwhile those bright green eyes, reminiscent of fresh ferns in the shade, damned him to hell and back.

‘Then let’s get down to business,’ Jai suggested, disconcerting her when she was bracing herself for another round of the same conversation. ‘I want to buy your father’s books.’

Willow regrouped and contrived to nod. ‘I’m content with that.’

‘Is the dealer you mentioned last night a book dealer?’

‘Nothing so fancy…why?’

‘At least two of the books are quite valuable first editions and you could do better auctioning them,’ Jai warned.

‘I haven’t time for that. I didn’t know any of them would be worth anything,’ she completed stiffly.

‘I will buy them at a fair price but you may wish to take further advice.’

Willow groaned out loud. ‘Oh, Jai… I don’t think you’re likely to cheat me!’