Modern Romance February 2020 Books 1-4. Louise Fuller

      ‘No, it is true!’ Willow hissed back at him, green eyes blazing. ‘I disagreed with what you said about that night and, because I dared to disagree, that was the end of the discussion. You didn’t care about how you were making me feel.’

      Jai registered that a huge argument had blossomed and decided to walk away rather than continue it, continuing it being beneath his dignity in his own mind. He flung open the concealed door in the panelling to the en suite bathroom and closed it firmly behind him, shaken by the fire in his bride and forced to consider her explanation by the essential streak of fairness that he had been raised to respect.

      He had not humiliated her, he told himself fiercely as he stepped into his luxury rainforest shower, and then he recalled an image of her standing, small and pale and stiff, that morning. Well, if he had humiliated her, he had certainly not intended to do so. All he had done was express his feelings concerning their sexual encounter. But he had done so to a former virgin, who could understandably have felt very rejected by such a negative attitude, his conscience slung in with unwelcome timing. He had consciously been trying to distance himself from a chain of events that shamed him, he acknowledged grimly. And she had vehemently disagreed with him and he hadn’t known how to handle that, he conceded in grudging addition.

      The door of the en suite bathroom opened, Willow finally having realised that the panelling effectively concealed doors into dressing rooms and other facilities only obvious to someone who actually saw a door being used.

      ‘And now you’re doing it to me again!’ Willow declared angrily from the doorway, incensed by his departure. ‘Walking away because I disagree with you!’

      In the spacious shower cubicle Jai grimaced. ‘I’ll join you in a few minutes and we’ll talk.’

      ‘Oh, don’t bother on my account!’ his bride said sharply. ‘It’s probably jet lag but I’m exhausted and I’m going back to bed for a nap!’

      Tears lashing her hurt eyes and angrily blinked back, Willow clambered back into the comfortable bed and curled up into a brooding ball of resentment. Some people didn’t like conflict and maybe he was one of them. Obviously, she needed to brush up on her communication skills and stop her temper jumping in first because she was willing to admit that nobody had ever made her as angry as Jai could. He was the very first person she had ever shouted at and in retrospect she was full of chagrin and regret because even she knew that that was not the way to persuade anyone round to a new point of view.

      But she just felt so wounded by his outlook because those months pregnant and alone but for Shelley had been very tough. And she truly hadn’t appreciated that Jai was still so bone-deep outraged at her failure to tell him that she had conceived. No, he had managed to hide that reaction very effectively until he’d got her to the altar, she reflected bitterly, and only now was she seeing that, for all his appearance of frankness, Jai was much more complex below that surface façade of cool than he seemed and quite capable of nourishing reactions that she’d not even begun to detect.

      But then, shouldn’t she have expected a few surprises when they were only really getting to know each other now? When it was only a practical marriage rather than one based on love and caring? Well, he definitely had all the caring genes when it came to their son, Willow conceded reluctantly, he just didn’t have them for her. She felt hollow inside, as if she had been gutted, and a quiver of self-loathing ran through her that she could still be so sensitive to Jai’s opinions.

      He thought she had let Hari and him down by not informing him that she was pregnant. He would hold it against her to the grave, she thought morosely, suspecting that Jai was as proverbially unforgiving and hard as that vast sandstone fortress above Chandrapur. He expected, he wanted perfection and she had a whole pile of flaws. Jai had flaws too but, unlike her, seemed supremely unaware of them. Of course, she rather suspected that his father had been of a very different nature from hers, not the type to linger on his child’s every failing. On that deflating note, Willow fell asleep.

      A smiling, dark-skinned face above hers wakened her with a gentle touch on her shoulder.

      ‘I am your maid, Alisha,’ the young woman informed her, bobbing her head. ‘His Royal Highness the Maharaja will be dining in an hour.’

      Dimly, Willow registered that daylight had gone and wondered in dismay how long she had slept, before glancing at her watch and discovering that she had slept for far longer than she had planned.

      ‘I have run a bath for you…but there is a shower…it is your choice,’ Alisha added with yet another huge good-natured smile. ‘I have also laid out clothes for you.’

      Willow was bemused by being awarded that amount of personal attention until it occurred to her that she was receiving it purely as a mark of respect towards Jai’s wife, a sort of reflected glory she felt ill-prepared to handle. But she would have to learn to handle it, she told herself urgently, because she was living in a formal household crammed with servants and she was always going to be the Maharani of Chandrapur within these walls even if she didn’t feel as though she had any true right to such high status and esteem.

      ‘A bath would be great,’ she agreed, since it had already been run for her, and she sat up to slide her arms into the silky robe being extended for her use, thinking that Shelley would adore hearing about such luxuries because that kind of personal attention was non-existent in the world in which she and her friend had grown up in. Not so much a world, she ruminated wryly, as the school of hard knocks, which had formed them both from childhood.

      Her bathroom was separate from Jai’s, Willow realised with a guilty grimace as she sat in her bath surrounded by floating rose petals and some sort of scented oil. No wonder he had seemed startled by her following him in there to confront him yet again, she conceded, heat flushing her cheeks in sudden mortification. No, arguments when she was overtired and cross were not to be recommended, she conceded ruefully, although she had said nothing that even now, calmer and cooler, she would have been willing to retract.

      Her maid had laid out a long dress for her and Willow winced, getting a hint of what her life was expected to be like in the Lake Palace. She was supposed to dress up simply to dine with her bridegroom. Had she been a more conventional new bride, she would’ve been doing that automatically though, she reflected ironically, an arrow of remorse piercing her that that was not the case between her and Jai. On the surface their marriage might seem normal but underneath it was a sham, bereft of the understanding, love and knowledge that what he had termed ‘a normal marriage’ would need to thrive.

      Alisha directed her downstairs, where Ranjit guided her across the echoing main hallway into yet another splendid room furnished with a formal dining table and chairs. Coloured glass panels portraying a fanciful forest full of fantasy animals decorated the walls and it was wonderfully cool and air-conditioned.

      ‘So, some of this place is air-conditioned,’ Willow remarked as Jai strode in, and in stark comparison to her moreover, barefoot and clad with almost laughable informality in an open-necked red shirt and well-fitted designer jeans that outlined his lean hips and long, powerful thighs. As always, he looked amazing and her breath shortened in her throat as involuntarily she relived the feel of his hot skin below her stroking fingers, the springy softness of his black hair and, ultimately, the crashing intoxicating surge of his mouth on hers.

      Burning up with chagrin inside her own skin, Willow dropped hastily into a chair.

      ‘Yes, those rooms where it was possible without seriously damaging the décor. If you find our bedroom too warm, just tell me. I will make it possible there too, but I do not expect us to spend much time here during the hottest months of the year,’ he imparted smoothly, his dark low-pitched voice, richer than velvet, brushing against skin suddenly pebbling with goose bumps. ‘The summer heat can be unbearable.’

      Willow nodded as a wide selection of little bites was brought in to serve as a first course and Ranjit carefully indicated the spicy items lest they not be to her taste, while Jai talked about the local sights he intended to show her. She tried a sample of flavours while wondering if Jai intended merely to act as