Modern Romance May 2015 Books 1-8. Кейт Хьюит

infinitely more important reality of the twins’ very existence? It was as though something had momentarily stolen her wits, overpowering all memory and rationality in the same moment. Well, what was done was done and he had been equally guilty of inappropriate behaviour, she reminded herself in consolation. Of course, she had once been accustomed to Jaul’s distinctly carnal can’t-keep-my-hands-off-you nature, had indeed at one stage gloried in her apparent power to attract him, innocently assuming that it meant more than it did. It seemed in that line though he hadn’t changed a bit.

      Jaul was receiving a lengthy message from his PA. He was taken aback to be invited to a legal meeting the following morning between the legal firm chosen by Bandar and the lawyers who would apparently be arriving to represent Chrissie’s interests. After her attitude to the divorce issue the night before he was disconcerted but less surprised by her unexpected visit. Had she already thought better of her behaviour? Evidently she could muster a crack divorce team virtually overnight. Perhaps she had also mulled over the financial advantages of giving him the divorce he wanted, he reasoned sardonically. When had money come to mean so much to her?

      It was a question he had asked himself repeatedly two years earlier when she had accepted his father’s pay-off to turn her back on their relationship and walk away. How had he missed out on that devious, greedy streak in her make-up? At the time he would have described her as the least mercenary woman he had ever met. Had she cunningly concealed her avaricious side from him in an effort to impress him? When they had been together she had gone to great lengths to prove that his wealth meant little to her. And if he was honest, he had been impressed because by that stage he had become bored with women who valued him for what he was worth rather than for the man he was.

      Yet the woman he had valued beyond all others had proved to be the greediest of all. That was a lowering truth he hated to recall for it exposed his poor judgement when he was at the mercy of his libido. A reminder he evidently needed, he conceded darkly, acknowledging without much surprise that one look at Chrissie’s beautiful face and slender but shapely proportions could still arouse him.

      Chrissie was finally wondering how on earth she could broach the subject of Jaul being a father and increasingly it was sinking in for her that it would come as an enormous shock to him. Her fingers dug into the clutch bag Lizzie had pressed on her and in a sudden movement she bent her pale head and snapped it open to withdraw the birth certificates. Those documents were self-explanatory and there was really no need at all for her to start stumbling into an awkward announcement.

      Chrissie extended the certificates. ‘I’m sure you’re wondering why I came here.’ Not to kiss you and dream about ripping off your clothes again, she completed inwardly while her face burned with mortification. ‘I had to see you because I thought you should see these first...’

      Another frown drawing together his fine ebony brows, Jaul grasped the documents with an unhidden air of incomprehension. She hadn’t mentioned the kiss and he was grateful for that, well aware of Chrissie’s ability to throw a three-act drama over what he viewed as trivia. Time had shot them both back briefly into the past and that was all. Nothing more need be said, he was thinking while he grasped the fact that for some peculiar reason his estranged wife had given him a pair of birth certificates.

      ‘What are these?’ Jaul scanned the name of the mother and went cold. ‘You have children?’

      ‘And so do you,’ Chrissie advised thinly. ‘You got me pregnant, Jaul.’

      Jaul stilled and stopped breathing. Pregnant? The word screamed at him. It was not possible in his mind to credit it at that first moment, but now his quick and clever brain was checking dates, making calculations, recognising that whether he liked it or not it was a possibility. A possibility he didn’t want to think about though. He had children, a boy and a girl. The concept was so shattering that he literally could not think for several tense seconds. The woman he was planning to divorce was the mother of his children. Inwardly he reeled from that revelation, instantly grasping how that devastating truth would change everything. Everything!

      But why was he only learning about something as incredibly important as the news that he was a father over a year after the event of their birth? Jaul was not accustomed to receiving the kind of shock that rocked his world on its axis. Momentarily he closed his eyes before opening them to stare at Chrissie...beautiful, deceptive Chrissie, who had hit him with an own goal of mammoth proportions.

      ‘If this is true...and I assume that it is,’ Jaul framed with the greatest difficulty he had ever had in controlling both his temper and his tone, ‘why am I only being told about the existence of my son and daughter now?’

      Of all the reactions he might have had and she had envisaged while the taxi ferried her across London, that particular one had not featured. It was a Eureka moment for Chrissie and she didn’t need to leap out of a bath to be galvanised into instantaneous rage and jump to her feet. ‘Is that all you’ve got to say to me?’ she shouted at him full force.

      Innumerable generations of royal ice stiffened Jaul’s spine, for no male had been more minutely trained from childhood than he had been to deal with a sudden crisis without any show of unseemly emotion or ill-judged vocal exclamations. ‘What were you expecting me to say?’ he enquired.

      The door burst open and all four of his bodyguards rushed in to stare at Chrissie in disbelief. As collected as ever, indeed as if such interruptions were part of his normal life, Jaul sent them into retreat with the instruction that on no account was he to be disturbed again. He knew what had happened: his highly anxious protection squad had heard her shout when nobody shouted at him and had feared that some sort of a dangerous incident was developing. But they were nervous and on edge, having never been abroad before and London was a very scary place as far as they were concerned.

      Turquoise eyes glittering with rage, Chrissie knotted her fingers into fists. ‘Well, maybe I expected something a little more human and you asked me a very, very stupid question!’

      Jaul gritted his strong white teeth. ‘Stupid how?’

      ‘You asked me why you’re only finding out about Tarif and Soraya now and I want to ask you...is that a joke?’

      ‘No. It was not a joke,’ Jaul responded with perfect diction, studying her with assessing dark eyes. ‘Why would I joke about it? Try to calm down and think about what you’re saying. This is a very serious matter.’

      And that was the moment when Chrissie lost even the slight hold she still retained on her temper. The father of her children was poised there like a granite pillar and acting as coolly and politely as though they were discussing the weather. It was too much, too great an insult after that offensive question to be borne in silence. How dared he ask her to calm down? How dared he talk down to her when he had just about wrecked her life and abandoned her to sink or swim?

      ‘You complete bastard,’ she breathed in a raw undertone, barely able to get the harsh syllables past her parted lips. ‘Why weren’t you told? You deserted me—’

      ‘I did not—’

      ‘You went back to Marwan and you never returned to me—that’s desertion. You didn’t answer your phone. You didn’t call, email, write, even text...I never heard another word from you!’ Chrissie slashed back at him shakily, bitter wounding memories surfacing inside her head to power her on. ‘You left me no way of contacting you. Of course I appreciate now that that was deliberate because you knew before you left that you weren’t coming back—’

      ‘That is untrue—’

      ‘Shut up!’ Chrissie practically screamed at him, her sense of injustice and furious hurt too great to be silenced now that she finally had Jaul in front of her. ‘Don’t lie to me! At least be honest...what could you possibly have to lose now?’

      His lean, devastatingly handsome features clenched hard. ‘I have never lied to you—’

      ‘Well, the “love you for ever” bit was certainly a lie! Telling me that the Oxford apartment was our home when your father