Midnight in the Desert Collection. Оливия Гейтс

on the score of their marriage when they first met for fear of influencing her into a negative response. She could understand that. Yet even so, regardless of how she had felt at the beginning, she had adapted, a little voice pointed out in her head—adapted, without even appreciating the fact, to her new position and responsibilities to live a life that was a great deal more demanding but also more interesting than the life she had left behind her in England.

      Paradoxically it had wounded Ruby to hear her husband admit that he too had felt trapped when he had learned that he had to marry her. It was a case of very bad timing to learn that truth at the same time as she told him she had already conceived his child. But perhaps once again she was being unfair to him, Ruby reasoned uncertainly, reluctant to come over all dramatic like his first love. After all, how much enthusiasm could she reasonably expect from him? A baby with a woman he didn’t love could only feel like another chain to bind him even though he had already agreed to take on Leyla.

      Raja sank down on the side of the bed and reached for her hand. ‘We will have two children. We will be a family before we have learned how to be a couple.’

      ‘Not how you would have planned it?’ Ruby prompted.

      ‘When it comes to us nothing seems to go as planned and who is to say that what we have now is not all the better for that?’ Expression reflective, he sounded more as if he was trying to convince her of that possibility than himself. ‘I’m accustomed to change and I will handle this, but you have already had so many challenges to overcome in so short a space of time. This is a tough time for you to fall pregnant.’

      Ruby was bewildered. ‘I—’

      ‘Naturally I feel guilty. I should have been more careful with you,’ Raja breathed curtly. ‘You have enough to deal with right now without this added responsibility.’

      ‘You still haven’t told me how you feel about the baby. Don’t you want it?’ Ruby queried anxiously.

      Raja dealt her an astonished appraisal. ‘Of course I want my own child, but not at the cost of your health and emotional well-being.’

      ‘I’ll be fine.’ Ruby was disappointed that he had said nothing more personal. ‘But most of those fancy clothes you bought me aren’t likely to fit in a few months.’

      ‘Not a problem. I like buying you things,’ Raja volunteered, his thumb rubbing gently over the pulse in her narrow wrist. ‘I want you to spend the next couple of days just acclimatising and catching up on your rest.’

      Ruby gave him an impish grin. ‘No more all-night sex sessions, then?’

      Dark colour highlighted his superb bone structure and his eloquent mouth quirked in reluctant appreciation of that sally. ‘Oh, Ruby …’ he breathed, his hands gathering her slight body up so that he could kiss her with all the devastating expertise that sent her defensive barriers crashing flat like a domino run.

      Feeling daring, Ruby pushed the sheet back. ‘You could rest with me,’ she muttered in an intuitive invitation.

      ‘I have only fifteen minutes to make a meeting on the far side of the city,’ Raja groaned, pausing to extract a second driving kiss, his breathing fracturing as he stared down at her with unalloyed hunger before finally springing up again, adjusting the fit of his trousers to accommodate his response to her. ‘You’re a constant temptation. I’ll see you mid-afternoon and we’ll go over the adoption papers we need to lodge to apply for Leyla.’

      He found her very attractive, Ruby told herself consolingly.

      It wasn’t love, it was lust, but marriages had survived on less. He was taking the advent of an unplanned baby very much in his stride, but then Raja was the sort of guy who typically rose to every challenge. The very worst thing she could do was brood about what they didn’t have as opposed to what they did. In time he might almost come to love her out of habit. What was wrong with that? Did she need the poetry and the hand-holding? It would have been much worse had she fallen in love with a man she couldn’t have. A man, for example, who belonged to another woman. Here she was safely married to a very handsome, sexy and exciting man and she was still feeling sorry for herself. Why was that? Was she one of those perennially dissatisfied personalities who always wanted more than she could have?

      Ruby was dozing when she heard a mobile phone going off somewhere very close to her ear. With a sound of exasperation she lifted her head and focused in surprise on the slim cell phone flashing lights and lying semi-concealed in a fold of the bedding. It was Raja’s phone. It must have fallen out of his pocket while he was kissing her. She closed a hand round it and immediately noticed the photo of the gorgeous blonde.

      And that was that. Ruby suffered not one moral pang rifling through Raja’s phone and discovering that someone called Chloe had sent him a series of suggestive texts in English. Obviously a woman who was a lover, a woman who had shared a bed with him, enjoying all the intimacies and no doubt many more than Ruby had ever had with him. In shock Ruby read the texts again.

      The skank, she thought furiously, appalled by the sexy little comments calculated to titillate the average male. Raja’s healthy libido did not require stimulation yet he had been receiving those texts ever since they got married. She went through his phone. If he had sent any texts back to Chloe he had clearly had the wit to delete them.

      So, who was Chloe and what was Ruby going to do about her? Was she his most recent girlfriend? Why hadn’t he told Chloe to leave him alone? Why hadn’t he told her that his relationship with her was over? He had promised Ruby that he would be faithful and that there would be no other woman in his life while he was with her. Suddenly the cocoon of shock that had kept Ruby unnaturally calm was cracking right down the middle …

CHAPTER TEN

      DISTRESS flooded Ruby and for a horrible timeless period she was too upset even to think straight. Men had cheated on Ruby before but invariably because she refused to sleep with them and it had never hurt so much that she wanted to scream and sob and rage all at the same time.

      Yet she had instinctively trusted Raja—why was that? She peered down at the photo. Chloe was a very beautiful woman. Few men would feel obligated to ditch a woman with Chloe’s looks and penchant for provocative texts just because they had made an arranged marriage. Why would Raja award Ruby that amount of loyalty when he didn’t love her?

      I felt incredibly trapped. I didn’t want a wife I didn’t choose for myself. Today the revelation about the baby had proved such a shock that Raja had at last chosen to be honest with her, sharing what was on his mind and in his heart. All the time that she had subjected him to her bad temper and resentment over the head of their need to marry he had suffered in silence rather than admit that he felt exactly the same way. That truth had cut deep. Was Raja planning to keep Chloe in the background of his life while he pretended to be a devoted husband? Was Chloe to be his secret comfort and escape from the exigencies of his royal life and arranged marriage?

      The advent of two children was unlikely to lock Raja closer to home and hearth. In all probability children would make him feel more trapped than ever. The demands of a family and all the accompanying domesticity would never be able to compete with the freewheeling appeal of a Chloe, willing to send him sexy texts about what she longed to do to him between the sheets.

      Ruby was devastated. She had understood what Raja meant when he had said that they should have had the time to get to know each other as a couple before they considered becoming parents. She also knew that she had literally shot herself in the foot. Tears trickling down her cheeks, Ruby thought about Leyla and yet she knew she could have done nothing different where that little girl was concerned. Her need to give Leyla the love she craved had been overwhelming. But hadn’t she railroaded Raja into that commitment with her? She missed the little girl a great deal and could hardly wait for the magical day when she would have the right to take Leyla out of the orphanage and bring her home as her daughter. She had already pictured sharing that special day with Raja but Chloe’s texts and the intimate pledges within them