No, Jai didn’t blame Sher for the intimate scene he had interrupted, he blamed Willow for getting too friendly, for curling up on the floor and making herself recklessly, dangerously approachable, his Maharani, acting like a giggly, frisky schoolgirl, he thought furiously. A man less sophisticated than Sher might have read her signals wrong and taken advantage, might have made a move on her, the concept of which sent such a current of lancing rage shooting through Jai that he clenched his lean hands into angry fists of restraint by his sides.
He wouldn’t lose his temper when he spoke to Willow later, but he would give her useful advice on how to keep other men at a safe distance, advice she certainly needed if what he was seeing was likely to be typical of her behaviour in male company.
‘You’ve been very quiet,’ Willow commented over dinner, hours after Sher had departed, leaving her free to spend a contented afternoon pondering the old photos while trying to visualise the lush and colourful garden that Sher would most enjoy.
That was the moment that Jai became aware that what he had planned to say to his wife didn’t sound quite the same as when he had first thought the matter over. He bre
athed in deep and decided that tact was all very well, but it might not get across the exact message he wanted to impart and that message was too important to hold back.
‘You flirt with Sher and I dislike it,’ Jai delivered bluntly, pushing back his chair and rising from his seat with his wine glass elegantly cupped in one lean brown hand.
For the count of ten seconds, Willow simply gaped at him in disbelief. He did not just say that, he could not have accused me of that, she was thinking, and then she looked at him, really looked at his lean, darkly handsome face, and realised by the glitter of his ice-blue eyes and the taut line of his sensual mouth that, no, sadly, he hadn’t been joking. She was stunned, incredulous that he could have misunderstood her banter with Sher to that extent, and then just as quickly angry at the speed with which he had misjudged her. In turn, she too rose from her chair and left the table.
‘For goodness’ sake, I don’t flirt with Sher,’ she said defensively. ‘It’s only a friendly thing, nothing the slightest bit suspect about it. I don’t know how you could possibly think otherwise.’
Jai’s cool appraisal didn’t waver. ‘But I do. You need to learn how to keep a certain distance in your manner with other men.’
‘And you need to learn how not to be irrationally jealous!’ Willow slammed back at him without warning, her patience tested beyond its limits and flaming into throbbing resentment.
Those two words, ‘irrational’ and ‘jealous,’ struck Jai like bricks. He didn’t do either emotion. Unfortunately, those same words also hooked into a phrase his aunt had, many years earlier, once used to describe his father. Later, when challenged by Jai, Jivika had withdrawn the comment and, unfortunately, Willow’s use of those offensive words sent a wave of antipathy travelling through him. ‘I’m not jealous, Willow. I’m merely asking you to monitor your behaviour in male company.’
‘But you’d really prefer me not to have male friends?’ Willow darted back at him.
Disconcerted by that surprising question, Jai frowned. ‘Well, yes, that may be the wisest approach.’
‘So, quite obviously, you are the jealous, possessive, irrational type you think you aren’t...or possibly a throwback to the dinosaurs when men and women didn’t make friends with the opposite sex?’ Willow shot back at him wrathfully. ‘Obviously you have about as much self-awareness as a stone in the wall! Sher’s like the brother I never had!’
‘You don’t have a brother!’ Jai fired back at her.
‘Didn’t I just say that?’ Willow exclaimed furiously. ‘There was no flirting between us, nothing anyone could criticise. I like him and that’s it! I certainly don’t fancy him.’
Marginally mollified by that admission and aware that Ranjit was loitering in the dining room beyond the doors opening out onto the terrace, Jai murmured in an effort to lower the volume of their dispute, ‘I’m not even saying that you knew that you were flirting. It may have been quite unconscious on your part.’
‘Well, it must have been unconscious because I don’t think I even know how to flirt, with my lack of experience in that field!’ Willow slung back at him even louder. ‘Whatever you think you saw between Sher and me, you got it wrong, Jai.’
The doors eased shut with diplomatic quietness and colour edged Jai’s spectacular cheekbones. She was being unreasonable, and he didn’t know how what he had said had escalated into a full-blown acrimonious scene. He was not the jealous type and he was never, ever irrational and, had he been possessive, he would have stopped Sher from offering her the project in the first instance. And now, he wished he had done that, he conceded grimly.
‘I didn’t get it wrong,’ he insisted, refusing to yield an inch.
Willow lifted her chin, outraged green eyes locking to his. ‘You got it wrong in every way possible,’ she told him succinctly. ‘There was no flirting but if you can’t even admit that you’re jealous, how is anyone to persuade you that you’re wrong? All right, I’ll even make it easier for you. I’ll admit that initially I was jealous of Cecilia.’
‘Why on earth would you be jealous of her?’ Jai demanded in astonishment.
‘Because she was all over you like a rash at the party and at no time did I see you pushing her away and respecting the sort of boundaries you’re accusing me of breaking with Sher!’ Willow accused.
‘That was a different situation,’ Jai argued. ‘She was a friend long before I became more deeply involved with her.’
‘Oh, have it your own way!’ Willow snapped back in frustration, wishing she could get inside his head to rearrange his brain into a pattern she could recognise. ‘I’m done here. I’ve got nothing more to say to you until you admit that you’re a jealous, possessive toad, and then I might forgive you for insulting me!’
Beneath Jai’s speechless gaze, Willow rammed open the door and vanished back into the palace without another word. He refilled his wine glass and stood looking out over the lake, watching a sloth bear slurp a noisy drink at the edge of the lake while the chitter chatter of monkeys at dusk filled the air. Slowly he breathed in deeply, telling himself he had been foolish to assume that marriage would be an easy ride.
And yet it generally was with Willow, he conceded grudgingly. She had slotted into his life as though she had always been there, and he shared more with her than he had ever shared with a woman. At the outset, he had assumed that their marriage would be all about Hari, only it wasn’t. Their son was a point of connection, but it was Willow’s unspoilt, gentle nature, her lack of feminine guile and her interest in learning about everything that was new to her that continued to intrigue Jai. The flirting, most probably, had been unconscious, he decided, and possibly he should have kept his reservations about the degree of friendliness between his wife and his best friend to himself.
After all, he fully trusted Sher, so why hadn’t he had the same amount of faith in Willow? Hadn’t he once even cherished the insane suspicion that Willow might have been a fortune hunter? Was he so truly a prisoner of his father’s unhappy past and Cecilia’s mercenary betrayal that he could not trust a woman? That idea shook him and put him into a brooding mood before he went back to his office to work, as was his wont, to escape his uneasy thoughts.
Several hours later, he entered their bedroom quietly and discovered the ultimate bed-blocker blinking up at him in the moonlight: his son, snuggled up next to his mother. Hari closed his eyes again and Jai went off to find another bed.
Willow woke early the next morning with Hari tugging at her hair, and looked down at her son in surprise because she hadn’t intended him to spend the night with her, had simply fallen asleep while cuddling him for comfort. It’s not safe to sleep with him, her conscience reproached her, and she freshened up and returned Hari to the nursery staff, who greeted him as though he had been absent a week. She breakfasted alone, assuming Jai was already in his office because he was fond of dawn starts. Her annoyance with him was still intense, but she was troubled by the stand-off she had initiated the night before because Jai could be as stubborn and unyielding as the rock she had compared him to.
Willow sighed. She had had to confront him. He had not given her a choice and how could she compromise? The answer was that on such a dangerous point of contention, she couldn’t compromise, not if she wanted their relationship to have a future. That truth acknowledged, she frowned as she realised that this was also the morning Jai’s mother had invited her to meet her. She hadn’t had time to dwell on that thorny issue in recent days but now it was first and foremost in her mind.
Did she ignore that invitation as Jai would unquestionably expect her to do, or did she meet Lady Milly because she now knew, thanks to Jivika, that Jai’s mother had been cruelly misjudged?
Surely she had a right to discover the facts of the situation for herself? Or, even as Jai’s wife, was that background none of her business? Sadly, Jai was too loyal to his father’s memory to take advantage of the same
opportunity, she reflected, and that was tragic. Maybe she could be a peacemaker, a go-between, she thought optimistically. If the meeting went the right way, it could bring Jai a great deal of happiness, she reasoned, her heart lifting at that optimistic prospect. Even Jai’s aunt, however, had been unwilling to run the risk of getting involved and yet Jivika was neither a weak nor timid personality. Willow’s teeth worried anxiously at her lower lip as she weighed the odds and then a rueful smile slowly crept across her lips because when it got down to basics, it was a simple decision.
Jai had been badly damaged and hurt by his conviction that his mother had abandoned him as a baby. Willow loved him, even when she was angry with him. If there was anything she could do to ease that pain that Jai fought to hide from the world, she would do it. And if he rediscovered a lost mother from the exercise, it would be well worth the risk she took and far more than she had ever managed to achieve with her own father, she conceded sadly.
* * *
A couple of hours later, Willow walked into the Royal Chandrapur, an exclusive boutique establishment on the other side of the city. From reception, she wheeled Hari’s buggy into the tiny lift and breathed in deep.
The first surprise was that the small blond woman who opened the door to her appeared to be much younger than she had expected. Well-preserved, she assumed, meeting eyes of the same startling pale blue as her husband’s and taking in the huge smile on the other woman’s face.
‘I didn’t think you’d come,’ she said frankly.
Willow winced. ‘I almost didn’t. Jai doesn’t know I’m here,’ she admitted guiltily.
‘And this is...little Hari?’
As the door closed behind them, Jai’s mother knelt down by the side of the buggy and studied Willow’s son in fascination. ‘He is spookily like Jai was at the same age,’ she whispered appreciatively. ‘Just a little older than Jai was when I left India.’
Willow breathed in deep and settled into the seat the other woman indicated with a casual hand. ‘What I don’t understand is, if you wanted contact with Jai why did you virtually cut him dead when you did finally meet him as an adult?’