Chrissie wrapped her arms round his neck. ‘Ruthlessness in pursuit of the right goal is acceptable.’
All her tension evaporated while he held her close and heat of a different ilk warmed at her feminine core.
‘But...who is to say...what the right goal is?’ Jaul quipped, running down the zip on her dress to ease it off her shoulders.
As the dress dropped to her feet, exposing the frilly silky lingerie he loved to see her in, he made a sound of appreciation low in his throat and carried her over to the orgy-sized bed to settle her down on the white linen sheet.
‘My only goal,’ he proffered softly, ‘is to keep you as my wife and the mother of my children for ever and make you so happy that you eventually forget our separation.’
Chrissie plucked at his collar. ‘I think that’s a terrific motivation,’ she told him sassily, her bright eyes dancing as he ripped off his shirt with more haste than cool. ‘Particularly since you’ve been so very separate from me in bed this past week...and I haven’t been at all happy.’
Jaul dealt her a troubled glance. ‘I burned for you but once I received Yusuf’s note...’
‘What note?’
Jaul explained the note. ‘And in the same moment I read it I knew I had got everything wrong with you. I couldn’t afford to take anything for granted.’
His wife ran worshipping fingers idly along the rippling muscles of his abdomen. ‘I thought you’d lost interest.’
‘You must be joking!’ Jaul exclaimed, rolling her back to come down over her, his taut lower body hard with an arousal she could feel. ‘I always want you. I just knew I didn’t deserve you.’
Chrissie ran an appreciative hand down over a lean, powerful thigh. ‘Love makes people more forgiving and I love you an awful lot.’
His kiss was hot, hungry and wildly exciting and her heart pounded and her pulses raced. Happiness was spinning and dancing inside her like a sudden burst of golden sunshine.
‘And I love you,’ he confessed with a flashing grin that tugged at her heart because the twins so strongly resembled him. ‘I love you more than I ever thought I could love anyone and I always will.’
Three years after that incredibly romantic reconciliation in the former harem, Chrissie watched the twins squabble over a ride-on plastic car they were playing with in a shaded courtyard. At four years old, Tarif and Soraya were lively and opinionated and in need of firm handling from both their parents. Rising, Chrissie uttered a sharp word to break up the quarrel, threatening to remove the car entirely if the children refused to share it peaceably. It was interesting to sit back down again and watch her children negotiate a compromise.
Lizzie phoned while Chrissie was savouring peppermint tea served with tiny cakes. Smoothing the barely visible bump that thickened her figure, she thought how grateful she was that her morning sickness had not lasted into her second trimester. Indeed her second pregnancy was progressing much more smoothly than her first and she put that down to the lack of stress in her current life. She chatted at length to her sister, who was due to arrive with her family and their father for a visit at the end of the week. Her family were regular visitors and distance had not driven a wedge between the sisters.
When their nanny reclaimed the twins for an early evening meal, Chrissie wandered down to the stables to visit Hero. Two years earlier, her elderly pony had arrived to take up residence in the ritziest stall in the royal block. Their reunion had been a wonderful surprise for Chrissie and she had been overwhelmed that Jaul, incredibly busy as he was, had taken the time and trouble to ensure that Hero could live out what remained of his days near his mistress in Marwan.
Having become heavily involved in the development of the nursery education programme, Chrissie had found her first year in Marwan had raced past her. Jaul’s people were friendly and supportive and although she sometimes attended formal occasions with Jaul, rubbing shoulders with diplomats, foreign dignitaries and businessmen, for much of the time she was simply Jaul’s wife. Family life and time to spend with the children were immensely important to both of them.
Having visited Hero, Chrissie headed back to their private wing to shower and change. Every year they celebrated that night the barriers between them had finally dropped and they spent the night in the harem. That was where they had rediscovered their love and happiness and it was a wonderful way of remembering how they had started out and keeping faith with the promises they had exchanged.
Dusk was falling when Jaul began lighting candles and a meal was being set out below the pillars. The murals were covered by discreet curtains, ensuring that no staff member could be shocked or offended by those depictions of earthly lust and love. Jaul liked to think that love must have featured in some of the relationships that had taken place in the harem but he could not begin to imagine how his grandfather Tarif had chosen shallow physical relationships over the far deeper and more lasting bonds he could have formed with the wife who had loved him.