face while he tried to work out whether he had made the right or wrong move with Chrissie. She was so stubborn, so unforgiving. Did she have genuine cause to feel that way?
He refused to believe that his late father had lied to him, so what point was there in making enquiries at the embassy? Such an investigation into King Lut’s behaviour would be downright disloyal and it would be sure to spawn unpleasant rumours and damaging gossip. His features sombre at that prospect, Jaul cursed below his breath. He had a wife. He had two children. He might have spent two years in ignorance of those facts but the reality was that now he had to live with his wife and his children in the present and not in the past, harking back to old disruptive issues that only roused bitterness and aggression in both of them.
She had taken the money and run. Did he continue to hate her for that even when he now knew that she had been pregnant and in dire need of financial help? She was younger than he was, less mature and all of a sudden he hadn’t been there for her. A woman of greater selfishness might have had a termination rather than raise two children she had not planned to conceive. Whether he liked it or not, fate had ensured that he had let her down by not being there for her when he had been needed.
And on a much lighter note, he ruminated abstractedly, shapely mouth sultry with recollection, the sex was amazing. But where once it had been the icing on the cake, now it was the only glue likely to give them a future as a couple. Wasn’t that why he had swept her off to bed? That laced with unashamed desire, of course.
Why was he even thinking like this? In the past, Chrissie had often made him think about stuff that generally struck him as not quite masculine and when they were first married he had resented that truth. He was not a knight on a white charger like some character out of the medieval romances she had once adored. He had never pretended to be perfect but he had always known that she wanted him to be that knight. Chrissie the realist was deeply intertwined with Chrissie the romantic.
And now he was about to be the bad guy again, he acknowledged grimly. He had no choice. He had not had a choice from the moment he’d learned of his son’s existence.
* * *
Chrissie was brushing her hair when she heard the guest-room door open and she stiffened, leaving down the brush and walking to the bathroom door. Jaul was in jeans and a bright turquoise tee that clung to his impressive chest and if she felt lacerated by what had occurred, he looked infuriatingly energised, she reflected wretchedly.
‘I thought we should talk in here,’ Jaul confided.
Less risk of being overheard by his staff, she translated. So, what was he about to tell her that she might want to shout and scream about?
‘I still want the divorce,’ she repeated doggedly. ‘What happened just happened but it doesn’t change my mind about anything.’
Burnished golden eyes shaded by luxuriant black lashes surveyed her without perceptible surprise. ‘We have a link we could still build on—’
‘I don’t think so,’ she argued, waving a pale, slender hand in a dismissive gesture. ‘Been there, done that. I could never trust you again and let’s face it...you wanted a divorce as well until you found out about Tarif. I appreciate that Tarif’s birth changes things for you but it doesn’t change them for me.’
‘And that’s your final word on this subject?’ Jaul pressed with sudden severity.
Chrissie lifted her chin, refusing to let mortification take over. She had made a mistake but that didn’t mean she had to live with it and build her entire future around it. ‘Yes, I’m sorry, but it is...’
‘Then perhaps you should look at this...’ Jaul slid a folded document out of his back pocket and held it out to her. ‘I didn’t want to be forced to make use of it. I had hoped to avoid it because coercing you is something I would’ve preferred not to do. But this particular document would have been produced by my lawyers had any divorce meeting taken place,’ he explained flatly. ‘However, I have cancelled that meeting.’
‘What on earth is it?’ Chrissie whispered anxiously.
‘It’s the pre-nuptial contract you signed before we got married,’ Jaul informed her levelly. ‘I don’t think you read it properly.’
The vaguest of memories stirring, Chrissie wrenched open the sheet of paper and saw the clause marked with a helpful red asterisk in the margin. Her heart in her mouth, she read the clause relating to the custody of any children born of their marriage in which she had agreed that any child they had would live in Marwan with Jaul.
Her mouth ran dry because she vaguely remembered reading that more than two years previously and cheerfully dismissing the concept from her mind because it had not seemed remotely relevant to her at the time. After all, they had not been planning to start a family immediately and the prospect of babies and the problems of custody should their marriage run aground had seemed as remote as the Andes to her back then. They had been madly in love, at least she had been in love and, trusting and naive soul that she was, it had not occurred to her that some day in the not too distant future her blithe acceptance of that clause might come back to haunt her...
HE HAD TRIED to play nice, Jaul reflected grimly, but nice hadn’t panned out too well with Chrissie, who was suspicious of his every move and had ensured that they were now down to the brutal bare bones of legal agreements and custody. Possibly he wasn’t very good at playing nice, he acknowledged in exasperation, having much more experience of playing nasty. The King’s word was the last word to be heard in serious disputes in Marwan and there was always an aggrieved party, convinced of unjust treatment and favouritism. He had learned that, regardless of negotiation and compromise, someone would always be dissatisfied with his decision.
Like a drowning woman forced to review the most important moments of her life, Chrissie was pale as death as she stared down at that clause in the pre-nuptial contract. Her heart was sinking down to the very soles of her feet. She could not see how she could possibly combat an agreement that she had voluntarily signed.
Jaul breathed in slow and deep, muscles rippling below the T-shirt, wide shoulders taut. ‘At some future date, should you remain convinced that you want a divorce—’
Her turquoise eyes flared back to life like the unholy blue hot streak flickering inside a flame. ‘You’d better believe that I won’t change my mind!’ she traded furiously.
‘Then you will be entitled to your own household in Marwan in which to raise the twins. I’m afraid that is the best I can offer you should you want your freedom back,’ Jaul imparted grittily, white teeth flashing bright against golden skin.
‘But...for the moment, a separate household for the three of us is out of the question?’ Chrissie prompted dangerously.
‘I’m afraid so. At least this way, however, you retain shared custody of our children,’ Jaul pointed out.
‘They’ve never been our children, they’ve always been mine!’ Chrissie vented painfully, biting back a flood of recrimination.
‘Only because I didn’t know I was a father,’ Jaul parried.
‘And what you refer to as “this way” means that you expect me to pretend that we still have a real marriage?’ she interpreted jaggedly
