Willow nodded slowly. ‘I hope you now realise that’s there’s nothing—’
‘I was jealous,’ Jai framed with grim finality. ‘Jealous for the first time ever, so that meant the fault had to be yours, not mine. I didn’t want to talk about it last night. I wanted to slide into bed with you and whisper, “I’m a jealous toad,” and drown my hurt pride in sex, but you had Hari with you and I didn’t want to disturb the two of you. I bet Hari would have started crying if you tried to return him to his lonely cot.’
Her natural smile drove what remained of her tension from her heart-shaped face. ‘Oh, dear...’ she whispered, and she extended a forgiving hand to him. ‘You should’ve woken me. I wouldn’t have minded. I didn’t mean to fall asleep with Hari. I was sort of using him like a teddy bear for comfort.’
‘I’d much rather you used me for comfort,’ Jai confided, closing his hand over hers and using that connection to tug her off the side of the bed and into his arms. He covered her mouth slowly and urgently with his and kissed her breathless. She leant against him for support, letting the remainder of her tension drain away.
‘I went to see your mother because—’ she began awkwardly.
‘No, not now,’ Jai interrupted, pressing a fingertip against her parted lips. ‘Let tonight be for us. Anyway, I’m reasonably intelligent. I’ve already worked out why you did it.’
‘Have you really?’ she asked.
‘Yes,’ Jai assured her with satisfaction. ‘I’m getting better at understanding how your mind works. Jivika dropped you in it. Her knowledge has been burning a hole in her brain for years and she jumped at the chance to share. And, you being you, you couldn’t resist the urge to try and create a happy ending for everyone involved.’
‘Principally you,’ Willow whispered. ‘It was arrogant of me to think I knew best.’
‘And even more arrogant of me to start ranting about disloyalty and deception because the woman I know and love isn’t capable of that kind of betrayal,’ he concluded.
Willow froze. ‘Know...and love?’
‘Passionately love,’ Jai qualified levelly. ‘I love you in a way I have never loved any woman and I didn’t even realise it was love. I told myself all sorts of face-saving lies when I stopped having sex with other women after that night I spent with you.’
Her gaze flew up to his in shock. ‘Are you saying that you weren’t with anyone else after me...all those months?’ she prompted in disbelief.
‘Yes. I persuaded myself that my celibacy was down to guilt at having taken advantage of you. I even assumed that I’d somehow gone off sex. When I tried repeatedly to check up on you afterwards, I told myself it was because I felt responsible for your well-being. In fact, what I was feeling was really quite simple, I just wanted to see you again, but I wasn’t ready to admit that to myself.’
Willow, however, was still in shock and concentrating on only one startling fact at a time. ‘You mean all that time while I was pregnant and raising Hari you didn’t—’
‘I haven’t been with anyone else since our first night,’ Jai confirmed. ‘I didn’t want anyone else. What I found with you was so good that every other experience paled in comparison. So, yes, I was in love with you from way back then and, no, I didn’t understand that.’
Willow’s eyes rounded in wonder and she looked up into those gorgeous arctic-blue eyes and suddenly she was smiling. ‘I love you too,’ she told him quietly and without fanfare.
‘I was hoping so,’ Jai admitted, smiling down at her with love and tenderness gleaming in his intent gaze. ‘I mean, you had the bravery to confront me with something everyone else ran scared from, and I very much hoped that love gave you the strength to go against my wishes in the belief that what you found out might make me happier.’
‘You understand,’ she breathed in relief.
‘Of course I do. In the equivalent position I would have done the same thing for you. I very much regret that I wasn’t around when your father was doing a number on your self-confidence,’ he confessed. ‘It also made me appreciate that he had a side to his character that I never saw, a less presentable side.’
‘I’m sorry about what you’ve had to hear about your father.’
‘Later, not now,’ he insisted again, brushing her hair back from her cheeks and reaching behind her to run the zip down on her dress. ‘Tonight is all about us and I’m determined that nothing will come between us.’
‘Literally!’ She gasped as her dress pooled round her feet and he dispensed with her bra even faster.
Jai skimmed off her panties and lifted her back onto the bed, standing back from her to strip off his clothes with near indecent haste. ‘I’m burning for you,’ he groaned.
He came down to her, his skin on hers feverishly hot and his sensual mouth hungry and urgent, both hands holding hers to the mattress until they fought free to sink into his luxuriant hair. In the space of minutes her life had been transformed by the simple truth that the man she loved not only understood her, but also loved her back with all the fierce emotion she had long craved. Happiness flooded her like a rejuvenating force, every insecurity forced out and forgotten because what she had most wanted in the world had suddenly become hers.
‘I’m crazy about you,’ Jai husked in the aftermath of their unashamed passion. ‘I couldn’t wait to get back here to be with you because I so much regretted what I’d said to you and nothing else mattered. The past is the past and I don’t want to revisit it, now that the truth is out.’
‘Meaning?’ she prompted.
‘There will be no recriminations. Not on my part. We all get a clean sheet. My father’s behaviour almost destroyed my mother and the guilt of knowing that and remaining silent tormented Jivika for years. We’ll leave all that behind us now and my mother will be part of our lives,’ he outlined.
‘You’ve seen your mother? You’ve spoken to her?’
‘Yes, but only very briefly,’ Jai told her with a rueful smile as he looked down at her, his lean, darkly handsome face pensive. ‘Unfortunately, she’s flying back to London tomorrow and it’s her stepdaughter’s wedding in a couple of days, so she couldn’t delay her flight. But she’s planning to come back for a visit in a few weeks and spend time with us.’
‘She must’ve been shocked when you showed up at the hotel,’ Willow remarked.
‘Shocked, delighted, tearful. We have a lot to catch up on, but we’ll take our time,’ Jai murmured, curving an arm round Willow to press her closer. ‘And if it wasn’t for you I wouldn’t even have had the opportunity to meet her and give her that chance. For that I owe you a debt I can never repay.’
‘Oh, I’ll take it out of your hide somehow,’ Willow teased, running an appreciative hand down over a long, lean, hair-dusted thigh. ‘Don’t you worry about that. You’ll be paying it off for a very long time and, I promise you now, it’s likely to use up every ounce of your surplus energy.’
Jai burst out laughing and crushed her lips under his. ‘I love you so much, balmaa.’
Willow succumbed to a shameless little wriggle of encouragement and pressed her mouth tenderly to a bare brown shoulder. ‘I love you too and I’m going to have to learn Hindi to know what you’re calling me.’
‘Beloved,’ Jai translated, a little breathless as her wandering hands stroked across the taut expanse of his flat stomach.
‘I like that,’ she told him happily. ‘I like that very much indeed.’
EPILOGUE
IN AN ELEGANT shift dress the shade of polished copper, Willow studied her reflection in
the mirror. The dress was very flattering, the ultimate in maternity wear, and very nearly concealed the bump of her second pregnancy.
A pair of lean bronzed hands settled gently on her hips from behind and she grinned as Jai’s hands slowly slid round to caress her swollen stomach. She adored the fact that he was so ridiculously excited about the daughter she carried. They hadn’t shared the gender news with anyone else, but Willow could hardly wait to make use of the pretty clothes she had begun to collect.
Even as a toddler, Hari was very much a little boy, stomping through mud and puddles and shouting with excitement as he climbed and jumped and toppled. Of course, their daughter might well be a little tomboy, just as energetic, but Willow knew that she would at least be able to enjoy dressing her daughter in pretty clothes until she became more mobile.
‘Happy Birthday, balmaa,’ Jai husked in her ear, breathing in the rich coconut scent of her tumbling strawberry-blond hair as he pressed a kiss to her shoulder and folded her back against his tall, powerful body.
A split second later, he stepped back to slowly slide a necklace round her slender throat, tipping her head forward to clasp it at her nape. Her fingers lifted to touch the sparkling diamond heart and she whirled with a smile in the circle of his arms to stretch up and find his mouth for herself. Excitement buzzed through her, an ache stirring in her pelvis as he crushed her against him, his urgency only matching her own, because Jai had been away on a business trip for a week and she had missed him.
‘I was scared you wouldn’t make it back in time,’ she confided breathlessly against his shoulder.
‘I would never miss your birthday,’ Jai censured, watching her finger the delicate heart at her throat. ‘That’s my heart you hold and it always brings me home again.’
Willow giggled. ‘You’re getting almost romantic,’ she teased. ‘We should go downstairs and see our guests.’