Magnates: Desert Prince, Bride of Innocence

Elinor, however, was in panic mode. Spotting Sami reclining in a baby seat and playing with a brightly coloured toy, Elinor went straight to her son and released his safety belt to lift him. Sami chortled with pleasure and opened his arms wide. Anxious tears prickled the back of Elinor’s eyes as her arms closed round his precious weight and warmth.

‘Elinor …’ Olivia called. ‘You can go into my office if you like.’

The older woman’s eyes were bright with curiosity. Elinor evaded them, pacing back towards Jasim’s tall, darkly handsome figure with extreme reluctance. But he wasn’t looking at her. His entire attention was welded to the little boy she held and when she got close he startled her by reaching out. ‘Let me hold my son,’ he urged with unconcealed impatience.

Elinor saw comprehension fly into Olivia’s face, only to unleash an even more avid expression of curiosity. Although she had no desire to let go of Sami, she did not want to risk a scene that might upset her child. And Jasim, she registered as she clashed with his expectant dark eyes, was very likely to fight hard for what he wanted. She waited until she was inside the older woman’s office before handing Sami over. Jasim’s hand inadvertently brushed her arm and she was so aware of him that she was vaguely surprised not to see fingerprints left behind on her skin. Jasim clasped the little boy with care and held him out to examine, keenly scrutinising every inch of Sami’s fearless little face. There was a quality of bemusement and wonder in Jasim’s stern gaze that unsettled Elinor and made her feel very uncomfortable. Brown eyes sparkling, Sami smiled at Jasim and made no objection when Jasim brought him closer. His father’s confident handling made it clear that he was no stranger to young children.

‘He is the only boy born in my family for many years,’ Jasim said gravely. ‘It is a crime that we have been unable to celebrate his birth.’

A … crime? Well, that was certainly letting her know how he felt and more than hinted at the weight of blame he intended to foist on her. Resentment stirred like a knife twisting inside her and her soft mouth compressed into a mutinous line. ‘If Sami wasn’t present, I would tell you exactly how I feel about you—’

Jasim elevated a sardonic ebony brow, for he was astonished by the attack. ‘Do you think I am interested in such a dialogue after you walked out on our marriage?’

An involuntary sour laugh fell from Elinor’s lips. ‘Marriage?’ she repeated drily. ‘What marriage? It was as much of a fake and an insult as your supposed interest in m—’

‘Meaning?’ Jasim queried, angling his handsome head back as Sami sank an inquisitive little hand into his father’s luxuriant cropped black hair and yanked hard.

‘Sami, stop that …’ Elinor instructed, leaning forward to detach Sami’s grasping fingers from his father’s hair.

‘He can do as he likes with me,’ Jasim countered squarely.

Elinor slung her child’s father a look of flagrant loathing.

‘Like you do? Your brother’s wife comes to you with some absurd tale of her husband being led astray by the nanny and you leap right in and seduce me to order? Were you proud of the lines you spun me to get me into bed?’ she condemned in a voice that was starting to shake with betraying emotion. ‘What sort of a real man uses a woman like that? How could you sink that low?’

The healthy glow of his complexion had receded while his fabulous bone structure clenched taut. His dark deep set eyes flared bright as flames and he did not back down an inch. ‘You eavesdropped on Yaminah that day. She was hysterical. I did wonder if you had overheard something—’

‘I wasn’t going to stay with you anyway,’ Elinor told him vehemently. ‘Not with the way you were treating me! I’ve got more pride than that, pregnant or otherwise, Your Royal Highness, and the last thing I needed was a reluctant liar of a bridegroom!’

‘Silence!’ Jasim bit out with ferocious disdain, every inch of his rigid bearing telegraphing his outrage at the abuse she was unleashing on him. ‘I will not tolerate being spoken to like that!’

In the smouldering silence that stretched, Sami suddenly burst into noisy tears and stretched his little arms out pathetically to Elinor for comfort.

‘Now look what you’ve done!’ Elinor shot at Jasim furiously as she summarily snatched her son from his grasp. ‘You’ve frightened him.’

‘Your lack of control and manners did that,’ Jasim contradicted without hesitation.

‘Manners?’ Elinor gasped. ‘You can talk about manners after what you did to me?’

‘Enough,’ Jasim told her with icy restraint. ‘I’ll see you at the town house at seven this evening. I’ll send a car for you.’

Elinor banded both arms round Sami in a protective gesture as she recognised in dismay that he clearly already knew where she lived. ‘Don’t bother. I won’t come.’

‘You’re my wife,’ Jasim breathed in a low-pitched growl.

Elinor spun away from him over to the window. ‘We’re still married?’ she prompted tightly.

‘Of course we are still married.’ A lean hand curved to her slim shoulder to turn her back to him. Brilliant dark eyes assailed hers with cool purpose while the achingly familiar scent of his citrus-based cologne drifted into her nostrils. ‘And I want my wife and my child back.’

‘That’s out of the question.’ Elinor rested her chin on Sami’s fluffy black curls and studied Jasim wide-eyed over her child’s head because she didn’t understand where he was coming from. Why would he say such a thing? He could only be saying it because he wanted Sami. As the silence deepened his shrewd gaze looked directly into hers.

Her mouth ran dry and her heart rate speeded up. Images of the night they had shared infiltrated her mind. Instantly she relived the feel of his lean, bronzed, perfect body, hot and urgent against hers, and the insatiable need he had roused and then satisfied over and over again. Her cheeks burned as her nipples tingled and lengthened beneath her clothing and a sensation like warm honey flowed between her thighs.

The atmosphere was thick with sensual tension. Jasim was rigid and strenuously resisting a powerful urge to touch her. ‘I believe I will also enjoy the wedding night you denied me,’ he murmured huskily.

Elinor shut him out by the simple dint of closing her eyes. She was so hot inside her clothes she felt as if she were burning up, but shame that she could be so wanton followed closely in the wake of her body’s treacherous responses to him. ‘It’s not going to happen,’ she told him flatly.

Jasim vented an unappreciative laugh and at the sound of it her eyes flew open. ‘You’re my wife,’ he said again, as if that very fact outranked everything else and rendered even her hostility meaningless.

‘Hopefully not for much longer,’ Elinor traded on the way back into the nursery.

A brooding presence, Jasim watched Elinor tuck Sami back into a baby seat and was then distracted by a nursery assistant while his mother made good her escape.

On the way back to her desk, Elinor was taken aback by the tumult of emotions swamping her and bringing overwrought moisture to her eyes. Dimly she acknowledged that she was very much in shock at Jasim’s descent and what it might mean to her and Sami. She had few illusions about the challenge she faced. Jasim was a Crown Prince with friends and contacts in government circles and big business and he enjoyed unlimited wealth and power. He could easily afford to hire top lawyers and launch a custody battle. Whether she liked it or not, she was going to have to share Sami with him.

It was not a compromise she found it easy to even consider, for she hated Jasim bin Hamid al Rais. She had believed herself to be strong and he had made her weak. It was degrading to acknowledge that she could have fallen in love as easily as a daydreaming teenager. But, worst of all, Jasim had cruelly misjudged her moral fibre when he’d given credence to Yaminah’s fears that her husband was paying too much attention to the nanny. That was all such ridiculous nonsense, Elinor reflected bitterly. With the exception of their first meeting and their final one at Jasim’s apartment, Elinor had never been alone on any other occasion with Prince Murad. Their few conversations had taken place in either his daughter’s presence or that of other staff. Nothing said during those brief harmless dialogues had been in any way improper or even mildly flirtatious. Her pride and her principles revolted against the knowledge that Jasim and goodness knew who else had chosen to believe she could be capable of any other kind of behaviour.

But consternation swept away her angry thoughts when she picked up her son at the end of the day. Two bulky bodyguards were now stationed outside the nursery.

Olivia advanced towards Elinor uncomfortably. ‘The prince insisted there must be a security presence to watch over his son while he is in our care. He also asked me not to mention their relationship to anyone else. Naturally I’m not going to breathe a word to anyone. I want to keep my job.’

‘I’m sure this is just a temporary arrangement,’ Elinor declared with more confidence than she felt, particularly when the same men followed her from the nursery and the older one informed her that a car was waiting to take them home. Rather than get involved in a dispute, Elinor acquiesced, but when she finally reached her apartment she was deep in troubled thoughts that were laced with a dangerous urge to simply pull up sticks and flee before Jasim sought to impose any more rules and restrictions.

‘My goodness, you’re back early,’ Alissa commented when she entered the apartment.

And Elinor shocked them both by bursting into floods of tears. She hadn’t let herself cry when she’d walked out on her sham of a marriage or during the unhappy aftermath while she struggled to build a new life rather than wallow in pointless regrets and self-pity. She hadn’t even let herself cry when she’d given birth to Sami alone. But Jasim had taken her by surprise and all of a sudden and without the slightest warning the world had become an intensely threatening place.

‘What on earth has happened? This is not like you at all,’ Alissa muttered in dismay just as Lindy came through the front door and demanded to know what was going on.

There and then, Elinor let down her barriers and told the truth about Sami’s conception and the secret marriage that had broken her heart and smashed her self-esteem.

‘Sami’s father is your husband? And a prince? Does that mean Sami is a prince as well?’ Alissa enquired in a daze.

‘I haven’t a clue.’ Elinor blew her nose and lifted her head again. ‘About the only thing I do know is that I couldn’t face going on the run with Sami—it wouldn’t be fair to him.’

‘Of course, you’re not going to do anything daft like that,’ Lindy interposed. ‘That’s only your panic talking.’

‘I want a divorce. I assumed that Jasim would already have taken care of that!’ Elinor erupted in a helpless surge of resentment over that fact.

‘You can discuss that with him tonight,’ Lindy replied.

Alissa frowned. ‘Shouldn’t you at least try being married for Sami’s sake? I mean, what was the point of getting married in the first place?’

Elinor paled before that uncompromisingly direct enquiry. ‘Everything changed the minute I heard Jasim talking to Yaminah—’

‘Basically I think you only really heard Yaminah raving and what she said could well be hogwash,’ Lindy commented. ‘Anyway, don’t you think that the idea that Jasim deliberately set out to seduce you is a bit, well … improbable?’

Alissa nodded quiet agreement with the other woman’s assessment. ‘You’re a very beautiful girl, Elinor. It’s more likely that Jasim was simply attracted to you and the relationship was ruined by you falling pregnant when you had had virtually no time together as a couple. So dealing with the pregnancy took centre stage. Whatever you say about Jasim, he was very keen to stand by you and support you.’

Elinor groaned out loud and raked a frustrated hand through the auburn curls on her brow, her green eyes clouded by the growing confusion that had replaced her earlier certainty. ‘You two have a totally different take on the whole situation.’

Lindy laughed. ‘Of course we do. We’re not personally involved and we’re being wise after the fact, which is always easier. But I do think Jasim sounds like the sort of guy who might have deserved more of a chance than you were willing to give him.’

Elinor didn’t want to hear assurances of that nature, particularly from Lindy, who always saw the best in people and invariably argued on the side of kindness and common sense.

‘I also think …’ the more shy and less outspoken Alissa ventured, ‘that you need to make allowances for the fact that you didn’t marry into an ordinary family—’

‘Yes,’ Lindy chipped in with her agreement. ‘They’re fabulously wealthy and royal, and Sami isn’t just an ordinary little boy either if he’s in the line of accession to the throne. So how can you possibly expect to keep him to yourself?’

After that conversation Elinor had plenty to think about. She was in shock at an unbiased view of events that was very much different from her own. She wondered if she had been guilty of licking her wounds in silence for too long and if, during that process, her decisions had been unduly influenced by her bitterness, hurt and resentment. Had she overreacted on her wedding day? Should she have confronted Jasim there and then?

Those were the questions Elinor was tormenting herself with while she showered and changed. Shortly after she had bathed and fed Sami and left him in Alissa’s care for the evening, the car arrived to collect her. Casually and comfortably dressed in black leggings and a colourful purple top that finished mid-thigh, she climbed into the limo and breathed in deep. One way or another she would sort everything out and without getting upset. After all, it was eighteen months since their disastrous wedding and it was time she rose above resentment and wounded pride and moved on, she told herself squarely.

CHAPTER FIVE

JASIM, on the other hand, was not in the mood to move on anywhere. The past still had too strong a hold on him and his estranged wife’s dismissive approach to him earlier that day had outraged him. He would not have cared to relive the eighteen months of hell that her disappearance had put him through. A male who had long prided himself on his discipline and equanimity, Jasim could not comprehend why he was suddenly suffering from fierce surges of pure caustic rage.

When Elinor walked into the drawing room at the town house, Jasim was immediately struck by only one fact. ‘Where is my son?’ he demanded.

‘I didn’t bring Sami. I left him with my flatmate.’

‘Didn’t it occur to you that I would want to see him again?’ The lean bronzed angel’s face that had so often haunted her dreams was taut with annoyance. Jasim settled censorious dark eyes on her slender figure. She was dressed like a teenager, he thought impatiently, his attention lingering on the skin-tight leggings that defined her long coltish legs, shapely knees and slim supple thighs and the bright top that revealed the tantalising valley between her high, full breasts. Perfect breasts, he recalled, and his mind was suddenly awash with detailed erotic images, which had a predictable effect on his libido and only contrived to set his temper even more on edge.

Immediately on the defensive and responding to the smouldering atmosphere, Elinor blanked out his tall, powerful presence as much as possible because she hated the reality that she still found him wildly attractive. And, even as she stood there infuriated by his attitude, her mouth was dry and her pulses were quickening in treacherous response to his proximity.

‘Why didn’t you bring our son?’ Jasim pressed.

Elinor bridled at the tone he employed, which suggested that he was dealing with someone rather slow on the uptake. ‘There’s too much tension between us. I didn’t want to plunge Sami into the middle of another argument.’

‘I have a nurse here ready to take care of him.’

The fact that Jasim was already thinking ahead to make childcare arrangements on Sami’s behalf totally unnerved Elinor and roused her protective instincts. ‘I wouldn’t want Sami to be with a stranger—’

‘Thanks to your selfishness, my entire family and I are strangers to Sami—are we all to be excluded from knowing him on that basis?’ Jasim slung at her with biting derision.

Elinor did not appreciate being called selfish and she flashed him an accusing look. ‘You’re the one who created this situation.’

‘How so? I made you my wife in good faith.’

‘I don’t accept that. I heard Yaminah talking,’ Elinor reminded him with spirit while she noted the black density of the eyelashes that enhanced his stunning dark golden eyes. ‘She got some nonsensical idea in her head that I was after her husband and that he was interested in me. Her suspicions were completely without foundation.’

‘When my late brother gave you a ring that was a family heirloom worth a fortune, he made his interest in you very clear,’ Jasim condemned, a slight tremor rippling through his lean, powerful frame as he recalled his repugnance at that more recent discovery. In his eyes that discovery had delivered a damning indictment of Elinor’s morals. Yaminah’s fear that she might lose her husband to the nanny had been soundly based in fact, for Murad would never have given a ring from the royal jewellery collection to a woman he only planned to have an affair with.

At his comeback, Elinor’s eyes had flown wide in dismay and she swallowed awkwardly. ‘How did you find out about that ring?’

‘How do you think I finally found you?’ Jasim demanded with a sardonic laugh. ‘The inside of the ring was stamped with symbols that marked its history and ownership. When you sold it—for a tithe of its true worth—it eventually passed into the hands of a jeweller who recognised its provenance and importance. He contacted our embassy to make discreet enquiries.’

Elinor was stunned that the diamond ring she had sold had ultimately led to her being tracked down. ‘Your brother did not give that ring to me personally. He gave it to my mother,’ she protested in a rush.

Jasim’s ebony brows pleated. ‘Your mother?’ he jibed.

‘When my mother was a student, Murad fell in love with her and asked her to marry him. Your father, however, wouldn’t allow it and they broke up. Your brother wouldn’t take the ring back.’

Jasim was still frowning, his incredulity palpable. ‘If you are telling me the truth, it is not a story that I have ever heard before—’

‘Probably because it happened over thirty years ago!’ Elinor interrupted without apology. ‘But the point is that it did happen and a couple of years ago, when he was revisiting his old college at Oxford, Murad decided to look my mother up again. He had heard that she had married a professor in the history faculty, but not that she had died several years ago.’

‘Naturally, I will check this extraordinary story out.’ But Jasim remained resolutely unimpressed by the past connection she was suddenly proclaiming between their families. It stuck him as fanciful and unlikely in the extreme.

‘Your brother simply turned up at my home and I had to tell him that my mother had passed away. He was very disappointed and sad and I asked him in. When he found out that I was a newly qualified nanny, he urged me to apply for the job of looking after his daughter.’

‘Why didn’t you share these facts with me before?’

Her gleaming green gaze narrowed, Elinor searched his darkly handsome features, absently admiring his classic bone structure. ‘Your brother asked me not to mention the connection to anyone in case it was misinterpreted. And when I met you I had no idea that you were suspicious of what my relationship with him might be. You did think he had some sort of inappropriate interest in me when you came to Woodrow, didn’t you?’

His brilliant eyes were level and unapologetic and his strong jaw line had an aggressive slant. ‘It was possible. In the past Murad had indulged in a series of extra-marital diversions.’

‘Well, I wasn’t one of them!’ Elinor lifted her head high, defying his unimpressed appraisal. ‘For goodness’ sake, you know you were the first man I slept with!’

Jasim shifted a broad shoulder in a manner of dismissive assent that incensed her.

‘What the heck is it going to take for me to convince you that my dealings with your brother were entirely platonic?’ she threw at him furiously.

‘We are neither of us stupid. A clever ambitious woman would have been careful not to offer intimacy in advance of a more serious and profitable relationship,’ Jasim pointed out flatly.

That alternative interpretation of the facts was the last straw for Elinor’s temper. Focusing indignant emerald-green eyes on him, she snapped, ‘How dare you insinuate that I was some gold-digging schemer ready to break up another woman’s marriage? I hate you … I can’t wait until we get a divorce!’

‘You’ll have to wait a long time. I have no intention of giving you a divorce,’ Jasim informed her stonily. ‘I want you to live up to the promises you made when you went through that marriage ceremony with me.’

Elinor folded her arms in a sharply defensive movement. She was livid at the manner in which he was standing in judgement over her while refusing to believe her side of the story. ‘No way!’ she told him baldly.

Jasim lifted his imperious dark head high and rested his attention on the ripe curve of her soft pink lips. ‘I am prepared to stand by my promises and give you another chance.’

‘I don’t want another chance from you!’ she bawled at him, her pride bristling in revolt from that condescending offer. ‘Do I strike you as that much of a doormat?’

‘Sami needs both of us. He also needs to be living in Quaram where he can learn the language and culture of the people whom he will one day rule. That requirement is not negotiable,’ Jasim imparted with steely cool.

Elinor’s response to feeling threatened was to go straight into attack and she took an angry step forward. ‘I’m not prepared to live abroad and certainly not with you, so we have a major problem. I don’t trust you … I don’t trust you at all!’ she blazed back at him without hesitation.

Jasim closed lean brown fingers round her wrist and tugged her to him. His sardonic dark golden gaze flared down into hers. ‘You may not trust me but you still can’t take your eyes off me.’

‘That’s a ridiculous lie—how can you be so vain?’ Elinor raged, although a tide of colour had flooded her cheeks and sexual awareness was like a firework flaring through her body, sending a chain reaction through every skin cell. Memory was taking her back and stealing away her resistance; it was a very long time since that night of passion.

He closed an assured hand into the tumble of her Titian curls and tilted her face up to his. Scorching eyes raked over her and she trembled, maddeningly conscious of the tightening of her nipples and the surge of heat and moisture at the apex of her thighs. At an almost scornfully slow pace, he tugged her up against him and traced the fullness of her lower lip with his fingertip. When that finger slid between her parted lips it was the most erotic thing she had ever known and the tightening knot low in her pelvis made her press her thighs together in an effort to contain the tingling sensation of immediate arousal.

The silence sizzled as their eyes collided. He kissed her with smouldering sexual skill and she quivered violently, fighting the tiny ripples of arousal currenting through her body with all her might. His tongue delved deep in a sweeping reconnaissance that tensed her every muscle.

‘Am I vain?’ Jasim husked against the swollen pink contours of her mouth. ‘I don’t think so. I excite you.’

And that was the taunt that finally gave her the strength to do what she should have done much sooner and push him away from her. On legs that were distinctly unsteady she stalked over to the window, where she stood struggling to catch her breath. But he had hit her problem right on the head, she acknowledged with bitter self-loathing. Excitement. He filled her with it and seduced her with it. She could not resist that wild charge of electrifying excitement or the explosive high ignited by his touch. Even standing there with her hands curled into defensive fists, she could still feel the magnetic pull of him and the painful aftermath of a desire that had to go unsatisfied.