The Sheikh's Secret Baby. Sharon Kendrick

Darius went back to sleep. Jasmine could hear it quite plainly in the sounds which were issuing from his baby monitor. The lessening of his cry into a gulping sob which gradually became a little coo, which was so much a feature of his daily nap. She knew he would now be peacefully asleep again and that if only her son’s timing had been a little better, Zuhal would have been none the wiser.

      But Jasmine knew there was no point wishing that Darius had delayed his cry until the Sheikh had been hurried away from the premises. If Zuhal hadn’t been kissing her, then he would already have left. If she hadn’t been stupidly letting him kiss her and wanting the kind of things she should be ashamed of wanting…

      And anyway—wasn’t this what she had always wanted to happen? Had tried to make happen, if she hadn’t been blocked along the way by his position and power. So don’t let guilt beat you up, she told herself fiercely, even though it was difficult not to flinch as she met the naked accusation in his black eyes. You’ve tried to do your best.

      ‘My son?’ he repeated incredulously.

      She nodded. ‘Yes, he—’

      ‘Don’t you dare say another word. Just take me to see him,’ he cut over her words, his voice laced with a layer of ice she’d heard him use before—though never with her.

      ‘You will see him. I promise—just not yet. Let him sleep, Zuhal. Please,’ she said, with the confidence of someone who’d been bringing up a baby on her own for the last nine months and knew how cranky they could get if they were woken prematurely.

      ‘I won’t waken him but I want to see him.’ His autocratic command hissed through the air. ‘Take me to him, Jazz. Now.’

      Her lips dry, Jasmine nodded. How had she ever thought she could oppose his wishes? She’d never managed it in the past—so why should now be any different? He had dumped her without warning—and, even though he had told her from the start that she could never have any future with him, it had still seemed to come out of the blue. But she had held it together then, just as she must hold it together now. ‘Come with me,’ she said in a low voice, the hairs on the back of her neck prickling with unease as she led the way from the room.

      Feeling like a participant in some bizarre dream, Zuhal followed Jazz up the narrow staircase, his mind spinning with disbelief as she reached the top and gestured towards the open door of a nursery painted in sunny shades of yellow. He wanted to convince himself that she’d been lying and that it was no child of his who lay sleeping in a cot beneath the window. But as he silently crossed the room to gaze down at the infant, he knew there was absolutely no question that this was his baby. It was more than the shock of ebony hair so like his own. More than the olive skin, which was a paler version of his. It was something fundamental and almost primitive which activated a powerful surge of recognition deep within him as he gazed down at the gently parted lips of the baby boy. He saw Jazz tense as he reached down and briefly laid his forefinger against the baby’s soft cheek, before withdrawing it and turning abruptly on his heel, to walk out the way he had come. He didn’t say a word until they were back downstairs—he didn’t trust himself to speak—and even though he wanted to rage and rail at her, he kept his voice low.

      ‘Do you realise the constitutional significance of what you’ve done?’ he hissed.

      Jasmine flinched and a part of her wished she could have given into the luxury of tears if she hadn’t recognised the need to stay strong. Constitutional significance? Was that the only thing he cared about in the light of his discovery? Of course it was. It was why he’d ended their relationship and why he had turned up here today, to use her body as he might use a stone vessel filled with water to quench his thirst. For him nothing mattered other than the needs and demands of his beloved country and everything else came second to that.

      ‘Did you not think to tell me, Jazz?’ he continued, still in that icy undertone of suppressed fury. ‘That the seed of my loins had borne fruit?’

      Jasmine shivered as his words created a powerful image in her mind which made her heart clench with impotent longing until she forced herself to push it away and focus on what was important. ‘I did try to tell you.’

      His cold expression suggested he didn’t believe her. ‘When?’

      ‘After we…split up.’ When he’d sweetly informed her that she was the kind of woman who made a perfect mistress, but not the kind of woman he could ever marry. ‘Not for many weeks, it’s true. I… I didn’t realise I was pregnant. At least, not straight away.’

      ‘Why not?’ he bit out witheringly. ‘You may have been a virgin when we met but please don’t make out you were born yesterday, Jazz. What do you mean, you didn’t realise you were pregnant? What, were you waiting for the stork to fly in through the window and surprise you?’

      His words were cruel. Sarcastic. Deliberately so, it seemed. Jasmine tried to convince herself that his anger was understandable. Wouldn’t she have felt just as angry if the situation were reversed—to have discovered that she’d become a parent and have been kept in the dark about it? ‘I was all over the place,’ she admitted. ‘I was operating in a bit of a fog—on autopilot, if you like. Just getting through the day took all my energy and I felt disorientated because…well, it was weird getting used to life without you.’

      Zuhal’s lips tightened but to his surprise he found he couldn’t disagree with her because he too had been disconcerted by the discovery that Jazz had left a peculiar hole in his life. He had explained it away by reminding himself that it had all been about sex—the best sex he’d ever had. Against all the odds she had captivated him—for he had never been with someone as low-born as her before. She’d been working in the boutique attached to London’s famous Granchester Hotel where he’d been staying, and on a primitive level he had initially been drawn to her pert breasts and curvy hips. By the buttery swing of her blonde hair and the way her lips curved into a sweet smile whenever she was serving customers. But although many women caught his eye and made it clear they were his for the taking, Zuhal rarely gave into his most base desires. Sometimes he took pleasure in denying himself sexual gratification because deprivation was good for the spirit and what was easily gained was easily discarded. Plus, he liked a challenge—and a challenge had certainly been presented to him when the humble shop girl had blushed as he’d spoken to her and had had difficulty meeting his gaze.

      His hunger ignited, he had been pleased to discover she was divorced because divorced women were often cynical about marriage, with few of the marital ambitions of single women, which bored the hell out of him. They also possessed an earthy expertise which made them the best lovers.

      But Jazz hadn’t been experienced.

      He remembered his shock—and then his pleasure—when he had discovered her innocence. When she had opened those soft thighs and he had broken through the tight hymen, which had flagged up the gratifying knowledge that he was her first ever lover. He remembered the orgasm which had followed. Which had rocked him to the core of his being. And the one after, and the one after that…

      With an effort he dragged his mind back to the present because none of that was relevant now. Not in the light of his discovery that she was a secretive little manipulator.

      ‘Talk me through what happened, Jazz,’ he bit out and could see her trying to compose herself, rubbing her hands up and down over the arms of her sweater, as if she were cold.

      She swallowed. ‘When you went back to Razrastan I just carried on as normal, terrified someone at the hotel was going to discover I’d been having intimate relations with a guest.’

      ‘But nobody did?’ he probed.

      Jasmine shook her head. ‘No. Not a soul. But then, we were very discreet, weren’t we, Zuhal? You made sure of that. I was never even permitted to stay with you in your fancy penthouse suite and we only ever went to the borrowed house of one of your rich friends, under cover of darkness.’

      ‘I have always tried to be discreet about my relationships—and the newspapers would have had a field day if they’d discovered