LYNNE GRAHAM - The Sheikh's Secret Babies

It shook Chrissie now to accept that Jaul was the sole ruler of his immensely rich country in the Arabian Gulf. She finally understood the arrogance and the authority that had often set her teeth on edge. Jaul had never been in any doubt of who he was and where he was going to end up. No doubt his marriage to Chrissie had just been a brief fun stop on his upwardly mobile royal life curve and had never ever been intended to last.

‘Proceed with great caution,’ Cesare had warned Chrissie once he had established the exact identity of the man whom she had married in such secrecy two years earlier.

That recollection had made Chrissie’s skin turn clammy beneath the sleek turquoise shift dress she had borrowed from her sister’s pre-pregnancy wardrobe. Her shrewd brother-in-law had pointed out that Jaul would have diplomatic immunity, that he was firm friends with several influential members of the British government and that he would have much greater power than most foreign non-resident husbands and fathers might have if it came to a custody battle. Custody battle —the very phrase struck terror into Chrissie’s bones. Cesare assumed that Tarif—all adorable fourteen plump and energetic months of him—would now be heir to the throne of Marwan, which would make him a hugely important child on his father’s terms. As Chrissie’s fear grew in direct proportion to her anxious thoughts, her spine stiffened and her skin grew even chillier. On some craven, very basic level she didn’t want to even try to be civilised; she simply wanted to snatch her kids from Lizzie’s luxurious nursery and flee somewhere where Jaul couldn’t ever find them again.

Instead, however, Chrissie reminded herself that she was supposed to be an adult and able to handle life’s more difficult challenges. She mounted the front steps of the monstrous building with its imposing columns, portico and innumerable windows and pressed the doorbell.

Jaul was lunching in a dining room decorated in high ‘desert’ style circa nineteen thirty by his English grandmother and marvelling at her sheer lack of good taste. He didn’t want to pretend he was in the desert and sit cross-legged like a sheep herder in front of a fake fire; he wanted a table and a chair. Mercifully his personal chef and other staff had travelled with him and the service and the food were exemplary. It didn’t quite make up though for having to sleep in a bedroom decorated like a tent on a ginormous bed made of rough bamboo poles literally lashed together with ropes. Of course, he conceded wryly, the distractions of the extraordinary décor of the royal home in London served to keep his thoughts away from how Chrissie had looked in shorts with those impossibly long and perfect legs on full display.

Ghaffar, Jaul’s PA, appeared in the doorway and bowed. ‘A visitor has arrived to see you without an appointment—’

Jaul suppressed a groan and waved a dismissive hand. He was in London on a private visit and had no desire to make it anything else. ‘Please make my apologies. I will see no one.’

‘The woman’s name is Whitaker—’

Jaul sprang upright with amazing alacrity. ‘She is the single exception to the rule,’ he incised.

Chrissie tapped her heels on the marble floor of the giant echoing hall full of what looked like a display of actual mummy cases from an Egyptian tomb. It was creepy and the lack of light made it even creepier. Staring at a two-headed god statue did nothing for her nervous tension, only ratcheting it up a degree or two and making the events of the past twenty-four hours all the more challenging to bear, never mind accept.

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