‘That’s fine. Discuss away,’ she said. ‘But could you please do it quickly because I’m planning to take a walk in the park while the sun’s still out.’
‘But you’ve only just got back!’
‘Rania will be here while Darius has his nap, so I thought I’d have a bit of a snooze in the fresh air, because your son kept me awake for a lot of the night. Forgive me for having such an outrageous plan for my afternoon—but I wasn’t aware I had to clock in and out every time I left the apartment, although maybe that was stupid of me,’ she added sarcastically. ‘Perhaps the reason you bought the whole penthouse floor of this block was because it resembles a fortress.’
‘You don’t like living here?’ he questioned. ‘This was your favourite out of the shortlist, if you remember?’
Jasmine hesitated because usually he didn’t ask her opinion—riding roughshod over her wishes was much more his style. She knew she really ought to count her blessings now that she had security for her son and no financial worries. But despite these things, she’d quickly found London very different from Oxford—especially when you had a baby in tow. When she’d been working at the Granchester she’d had no responsibilities and her time off had been her own. But not any more. Now she was achingly aware that her baby needed pals his own age, which was why she had joined an infant playgroup—the one Zuhal had insisted on vetting.
Darius loved it when they sang songs and jangled tambourines and she’d met plenty of other young women her age. But they’d all been nannies, not mothers, which had made Jasmine feel even more of an outsider. She’d made friends with a couple of them on a very superficial level, but hadn’t dared ask them back to her home. Because if they saw all this wall-to-wall luxury, wouldn’t they inevitably start asking questions? In fact, hadn’t one of them—Carrie—already tried? Questions Jasmine couldn’t possibly answer because then it would all come tumbling out that she was the one-time mistress of a future king, and mother to his illegitimate heir.
‘It’s very comfortable,’ she said, in careful reply to the Sheikh’s drawled query. ‘But sometimes I get stir-crazy living all the way up here. I mean, I know there’s the balcony to sit on but it’s not quite the same as walking outside. Sometimes I feel…’
‘What?’ he prompted softly.
?
?Oh, I don’t know…’ She shrugged her shoulders. ‘Trapped.’
His eyes narrowed. ‘I can understand that. Very well. I will grant you your wish. We will take a walk together.’
Startled, she looked at him. ‘And how’s that supposed to work? I thought we weren’t supposed to be seen together.’
‘Nobody will notice us. We will simply be a couple out walking in the sunshine, one of many such couples. My military training taught me that I can always blend into the background if I try,’ he explained. ‘And my bodyguards have been trained to observe from the shadows.’
Blend in?
Jasmine stared at him. Was he deluded? Dominating the vast sitting room with his powerful presence, his outward appearance wasn’t so very different from the other successful businessmen who frequented this part of the capital. In his exquisitely cut charcoal suit and a silk shirt the colour of buttermilk, he was certainly dressed like your average billionaire. But he was different, no two ways about it. He was a desert sheikh and that affected the way he did things. The way he thought about things. She didn’t particularly want to go for a walk with him yet the alternative was being cooped up inside, with the four walls closing in on them and a sensory overload on both her imagination and her body, so Jasmine nodded her head.
‘Okay,’ she said.
While Zuhal spoke rapidly into his cell phone in his native tongue, she went off to get ready, checking Darius and assuring Rania she wouldn’t be long. Pausing only to pull on a pair of espadrilles and cram a straw hat over her head, she exited her bedroom to find Zuhal waiting for her in the hallway, looking at his golden wristwatch with ill-disguised irritation. He had removed his tie and undone the top two buttons of his shirt, offering a distracting glimpse of dark chest hair just beneath the pale silk.
Did she imagine his jaw tightening when he caught sight of the summery espadrilles whose matching pink ribbons were criss-crossed over her lower legs like a wannabe gladiator? No, she didn’t think so. She might have been innocent when she met him and been subsequently accused of naivety—but she wasn’t deluded enough to deny the unmistakable sensual charge which entered the atmosphere whenever they were alone together. It was the same sensory overload which made her itch to touch the slashed angles of his darkly handsome face, and to cover his lips with hungry kisses. A response which she tried her best to batten down, usually with remarkably little effect—like today—when the tug of heat low in her belly was inconveniently reminding her how big he used to feel when he was inside her.
But it was strange and curiously satisfying being outside with him as Jasmine realised that fresh air or daylight had never really featured in their relationship. In some ways it had been more of a vampire affair. There had been those badly lit restaurants of their early dates, and afterwards her being smuggled into a borrowed mews house for snatched nights together. But the combination of blue sky and sunshine glittering on the water of the lake was making her feel curiously carefree, in a way she hadn’t been for months. And Zuhal had been right about his bodyguards slipping into the shadows, because even when she looked very hard, she couldn’t see them.
He hadn’t exaggerated about blending in himself, either. Was it the fact that he had removed his tie, or was it just his unusually relaxed stance rather than his regal demeanour, which made him into just a spectacularly handsome man who was taking a summer stroll with his…?
What?
How would she describe her role in the future King’s life? Not his girlfriend, that was for sure. Not even his lover—not any more. And mother of his child made it sound as if they’d been married, which of course they never had been. She bit her lip. She’d never had any status at all, really—which begged the question of why she had tolerated it so happily. Was that because her sexual awakening had been so powerful that it had rocked her world in a way which nothing else had come close to? Because she’d been so totally caught up in this new way of living and feeling—of being somebody’s lover?
Or was it because at the time she’d thought herself in love with him? Crazy, really. How could you be in love with a man who treated you as a convenience—flitting in and out of your life as the mood took him? She hadn’t really known him at all—and, as she was starting to get to know him now, she was seeing a ruthless side which he’d never shown before.
His deep voice broke into her reverie.
‘I thought the whole point of a walk in the sunshine was that it was supposed to be relaxing, but instead you’re looking as if you have all the cares of the world on your shoulders. Relax, Jazz. It’s a beautiful day.’
Jasmine blinked to find the Sheikh’s black gaze trained on her. The edges of his lips were curved into a smile and silently she reproached herself. She had to stop analysing stuff and wishing for things which were never going to happen. Why couldn’t she just live in the moment and enjoy it?
‘You’re right. It is. Gorgeous.’ Tilting her hat back, she breathed in, half closing her eyes until a vaguely familiar tinkle of music made her open them again. There was an ice-cream van in the distance, with a small queue of children forming at the front, and maybe it was the powerful collision between difficult past and difficult present which made something hard and hurtful coil itself around her heart.
‘Jazz? Is something wrong?’
Zuhal’s deep voice snapped her back to reality and she blinked at him, momentarily disconcerted. ‘Why?’
‘You’ve gone pale.’ His voice had become a silken whisper. ‘As pale as milk.’