‘Some other time,’ Jai parried, closing down that informational avenue without hesitation, the hand he had braced lightly against her spine urging her forward to greet the couple who had entered. ‘Our first arrivals...congratulations, Jivika! How did you get your husband out the door this early?’ he asked with a grin, clearly on warm, relaxed terms with the older couple.
‘I thought your bride might enjoy some support at a family event like this and, like most men, I doubt it even occurred to you that this is a rather intimidating event for a newcomer,’ the older woman said drily to Jai as she walked towards Willow and extended her hand. ‘I’m Jai’s aunt, Jivika, his father’s sister. I’ll give you the lowdown on the family members to avoid and those you can afford to encourage,’ she promised with a surprisingly warm smile lighting up her rather stern features.
‘Jivika!’ her husband scolded.
Jai just laughed. ‘I could put my wife in no safer hands. Willow, be warned... Jivika was a leading barrister in London and retirement is challenging for her.’
‘Only during Indian winters,’ his aunt corrected. ‘The rest of the year we live in London.’
Willow was grateful for the older woman’s assistance as a slow steady flood of guests flowed through the giant doors and drinks were served in the vast drawing room. ‘Grandad was so pretentious,’ Jivika said of her surroundings.
And her commentaries on various relatives were equally entertaining. Willow got used to asking Jai’s aunt to identify guests and when she saw her husband deeply engaged in conversation with a tall, shapely blonde, beautiful enough to pass as a supermodel, she couldn’t resist asking who she was.
‘Cecilia Montmorency. What’s she doing here?’ Jivika asked bluntly in turn.
Jolted by that name, Willow explained the mistake on the guest list while becoming disconcerted that Cecilia was constantly touching Jai’s arm and laughing up into his face in a very intimate manner. She registered that she was not quite as safe from jealous possessiveness as she had cheerfully assumed. But then how could she be? Jai must have loved Cecilia to want to marry at the age of twenty-one, and love was a binding emotion that people didn’t tend to forget, not to mention a deeper layer of commitment that Willow had lacked in her marriage from the outset.
‘You’re seeing a not-so-merry divorcee on the prowl for her next meal ticket,’ Jivika commented. ‘It must be galling to know that she once dumped one of the richest men in the world.’
It was Willow’s turn to stare and exclaim, ‘Jai’s...?’
His aunt smiled. ‘I like that you didn’t know but you can bet your favourite shoes that Cecilia knows what he’s worth down to the last decimal point.’
Willow guiltily cherished the older woman’s take on Jai’s ex as a gold-digger and, relaxing more and more in her company, she became more daring and asked about Jai’s mother, asking what sort of woman she had been that she could walk away from her child.
‘Been listening to Jai’s version of reality, I assume?’ Jivika shot her a wry glance. ‘Jai was indoctrinated by my brother from an early age. Milly didn’t walk away from her son by choice. My brother, Rehan, fought her through the courts for years and succeeded in denying her access to her son, even in the UK while Jai was at school there. In the end she gave up—the woman really didn’t have much choice after the legal system in both countries had repeatedly failed her.’
Stunned by that very different version of events, Willow studied the other woman in disbelief. ‘Why didn’t you tell Jai?’
Jivika spread her hands and sighed, ‘At first, loyalty to my much-loved but misguided brother and, since his death, no desire to raise sleeping dogs and upset Jai. He’s astute. He’s capable of making his own decisions. It’s not my place to interfere and he could hate me for it.’
Willow swallowed hard, thinking of the judgements she had made about Jai’s mother simply by listening to his opinion of his mother’s behaviour. That he might not know the truth had not once occurred to her. Now she was barely able to imagine what it would be like for him to learn that the father he had loved and respected had lied to him for years on the same subject and she fully understood his aunt’s unwillingness to intervene. Jai deserved to know the truth and yet who would want to be the one to tell him? she thought ruefully.
Sher joined them and was about to move on when a question from Jivika revealed that Willow had trained as a garden designer. His handsome features sparked with sudden interest and he turned back to say, ‘I’ll call over in a few days and put a project in front of you...if you’re interested? I have a garden to restore.’
‘I’d be happy to offer advice but I haven’t had a huge amount of working experience,’ Willow admitted ruefully, because Hari’s impending birth and her need to earn money had forced her to put her potential career on a back burner.
‘Good enough for me,’ Sher told her reassuringly. ‘What counts is not the number of projects you have completed but whether or not you have the eye and the skill and can interpret my preferences.’
‘I’ll let you decide that,’ Willow said, colouring a little with relief, encountering Jai’s bright shrewd gaze as he joined them and swept her onto the dance floor with the quite unnecessary explanation that it was expected of them.
‘You seem to have managed beautifully without me by your side,’ Jai observed.
Willow looked up at him, wondering why she couldn’t decide whether that statement was supposed to be a positive or negative comment. Her nose wrinkled and she smiled. ‘Having your aunt by my side was like having an entire army backing me,’ she confided with helpless honesty.
Jai laughed out loud. ‘I’m very fond of Jivika,’ he admitted. ‘She was particularly stellar when I was homesick in London as a child. Of course, she and my father were very close.’
Not quite as close as they could’ve been, Willow reflected, thinking of that exchange relating to Jai’s mother, before conceding that the Singh family dynamic was vastly different from anything she had ever seen before, because even his family treated Jai with the reverence his status as Maharaja commanded, a bred-in-the-bone awe that his father must have enjoyed as well. Such men might not have the right to rule any longer in a republic, but the people still viewed them as being very special and unquestionably royal. Every month Jai held an audience at which any of his father’s former subjects could approach him for advice or assistance of any kind and he still saw it as his duty to give that attention to those in need.
‘So, my family and friends haven’t been as intimidating for you as Jivika feared?’ Ice-blue eyes inspected her face with unmistakeable concern.
Touched by that consideration, Willow shifted a little closer to him and his arms tightened round her before his hands smoothed down to the gentle curve of her hips. ‘No, everyone’s been wonderfully welcoming. How was Cecilia?’ she dared.
The faintest colour fired the exotic slant of Jai’s hard cheekbones. ‘Unchanged. She has one of those amazingly bubbly personalities that always charms, even though she’s been through what sounds like a pretty brutal divorce. I was surprised that her arrival and her approach didn’t annoy me more...but then we broke up a long time ago and, looking back, I’m prepared to admit that at that age I was more of a boy than a man. It’s time to forgive and forget.’
Willow hadn’t been prepared to detect quite that much enthusiasm on the topic of the ex who had jilted him. Dimly, she supposed it was healthier that Jai wasn’t bitter and had clearly long since moved on from that period of his life.