The Sheikh's Secret Babies(12)

‘But I don’t want to,’ Chrissie had confessed abruptly, backing off a step, feeling cornered and slightly intimidated by the sheer height and size of him in the narrow space between the book stacks.

A fine ebony brow had quirked. ‘I have offended you in some way?’

‘We just wouldn’t suit,’ Chrissie had countered between gritted teeth, her irritation rising at his refusal to simply accept her negative response.

‘In what way?’

‘You’re everything I don’t like,’ Chrissie had framed in a sudden burst of frustration. ‘You don’t study, you party. You run around with a lot of different women. I’m not your type. I don’t want to go to Paris for dinner! I don’t want diamonds! I haven’t the slightest intention of going to bed with you!’

‘And if I didn’t offer you Paris, diamonds or sex?’

‘I’d probably end up trying to kill you because you’re so blasted full of yourself!’ Chrissie had shot at him in a rage. ‘Why can’t you just take no for an answer?’

Jaul had suddenly grinned, a shockingly charismatic grin that had made her tummy somersault. ‘I wasn’t brought up to take no for an answer.’

‘With me, no means no!’ Chrissie had told him angrily. ‘Persistence only annoys me—’

‘And I am very persistent as well as full of myself,’ Jaul had acknowledged softly. ‘It seems we are at an impasse—’

Chrissie had stabbed a finger to indicate the directional arrow pointing down to the nearest study area. ‘You have your book—go study.’

And without another word she had walked away with her trolley, heading for the lift that would let her escape to the floor above.





CHAPTER THREE

CARRYING A TWIN in each arm, Chrissie was greeted by Sally at the front door of Cesare and Lizzie’s home. Her nephew and niece, Max and Giana, clustered round the two women eager to see their cousins. Tarif whooped with excitement when he saw Max and opened his arms to the older boy.#p#分页标题#e##p#分页标题#e#

‘He knows me!’ Max carolled in amazement.

‘Once Tarif’s walking, he’ll plague the life out of you,’ Chrissie quipped, passing over Tarif while Sally took charge of Soraya because Giana was too young to manage her.

An elegant and visibly pregnant blonde with green eyes and a ready smile came out of one of the rooms leading off the spacious hall. ‘Chrissie...lovely. I wasn’t expecting you until later,’ Lizzie confided warmly.

The tears still burning behind Chrissie’s eyes suddenly spilled over without warning. As she saw her big sister look at her in astonishment Chrissie swallowed back a sob and blundered into her sibling’s outspread arms. ‘Sorry.’

‘You don’t need to apologise if something’s upset you,’ Lizzie insisted. ‘What on earth has happened? You never cry—’

Fortunately Lizzie had not been exposed to Chrissie’s grief two years earlier once it had finally dawned on her that Jaul was not returning to the UK. It had been a matter of pride to Chrissie that she should not distress her otherwise happy sister with the sad tale of how she had screwed up her own life. She had put a brave face on her abandonment and subsequent pregnancy, talking lightly and always unemotionally of a relationship that had broken down and a young man unwilling to acknowledge responsibility for the babies she’d carried.

‘You don’t need the creep...you don’t need anyone but Cesare and me!’ Lizzie had told her comfortingly and she had asked no further questions.

Now as Chrissie bit back the sobs clogging her throat she was faced with the reality that as she had never told her sister about Jaul, she had to do it now. Emotional turmoil had been building up inside her from the very moment Jaul had appeared at her front door. Her past had pierced the present and most painfully, for all the gloriously happy and agonisingly sad memories of Jaul she had packed away were now flooding through the gap in her defences and hurting her all over again.

‘For goodness’ sake,’ Lizzie exclaimed, banding an arm round her taller sister to urge her into the drawing room with its comfortable blue sofas and sleek pale contemporary furniture.

Cesare was talking on his mobile by the window and he concluded the call, frowning with concern when he registered the tear-stained distress stamped on his sister-in-law’s face.

‘I was just about to tell you that my sisters are arriving this evening and expecting you to go out clubbing with them tomorrow night—’

Chrissie tried to force a smile because she got on like a house on fire with Cesare’s younger sisters, Sofia and Maurizia, and the three women always went out together when they visited London. ‘I might not be good company—’