Indian Prince's Hidden Son / Craving His Forbidden Innocent

‘And I am sure she is very grateful for your support at such a difficult time,’ Jai responded smoothly.

That reminder of her isolation hit Willow hard. Losing her father, who had been her only parent since her mother had died when she was six, was already proving even tougher than she had envisaged. Worse still, the reality that they were stony broke, for those last months had broken her father’s heart and hastened his end. Evidently fantasising about leaving his daughter much better off than they had been, her father had, as his life had drawn to a close, begun using his pension fund to play with stocks and shares without seeming to grasp the risk that he was taking.

Convinced that he was onto a winning strategy, Brian Allerton had been devastated when he’d lost all his savings. He had spent his last months grieving for the mistake he had made and the truth that he was leaving his daughter virtually penniless. They were fortunate indeed that her father had arranged and settled the expenses of his own funeral as soon as he had appreciated that his condition was incurable. But only their landlord’s forbearance had kept a roof over their heads as they had inevitably fallen behind with the rent, and that was a debt that Willow was determined to somehow settle.

‘I’ll get by,’ she parried with a stiff little smile. ‘Dad and I were always alone.’

‘Let me give you a lift,’ Jai urged smoothly.

‘No, thank you. Our neighbour, Charlie, is waiting outside for us,’ she responded with a rueful smile that threatened to turn into a grimace.

Shelley, proclaiming that she would’ve enjoyed the opportunity to travel in a limousine, hurried after Willow in dismay as she turned on her heel to head out to the ancient car awaiting them beyond the cemetery wall. Willow, not having noticed her friend’s disappointment, was all of a silly flutter, and furious with herself, butterflies darting and dancing in her tummy and leaving her breathless as a schoolgirl simply because she had been talking to Jai. Any normal woman would have grown out of such immature behaviour by now, she told herself in mortification. Unfortunately, through living with and caring for her father and lack of opportunity, Willow hadn’t yet managed to gain much real-world experience of the opposite sex.

Aside of a couple of summer residential stays, she had always lived at home, having studied garden design both online and through classes at the nearest college. Add in the work experience she had had to complete with a local landscape firm, the need to earn some money simply to eat while they had steadily fallen behind with the rent, the demands of her father’s illness and his many medical appointments, and there hadn’t been enough hours in the day for Willow to enjoy a social life with her friends as well. Gradually most of her friends had dropped away, but Shelley had been in her life since primary school and had continued to visit, oblivious to Brian Allerton’s cool, snobbish attitude to her.

Willow arrived back at the tiny terraced house and she put on the kettle while Shelley set out the drinks and a solitary tray of shortbread. Just as Jai arrived, the vicar anxiously asked Willow where she was planning to move to.

‘My sofa!’ Shelley revealed with a chuckle. ‘I wouldn’t leave her stuck.’

‘Yes, I’ll be fine with Shelley until I can organise something more permanent. I have to move out of here tomorrow. The landlord has been wonderfully understanding but it would be selfish of me to stay here one day longer than necessary,’ Willow explained, thinking that, tough though the last weeks had been, she had met with kindness in unexpected places.

* * *

A sofa? Willow was homeless? Expected to pack up and move in with a friend the same week that she had buried her father? Jai was appalled at that news. Honour demanded that he intervene but Willow had been raised to be proud and independent like her father and Jai would have to be sensitive in his approach. He was convinced that out of principle Willow would refuse his financial assistance.

‘Coffee, Jai?’ Willow prompted as she handed the vicar a cup of tea.

‘Thank you,’ he murmured, following her into the small kitchen to say, ‘Was your father at home at the end, or had he been moved to a hospice?’

‘It was to happen next week,’ Willow conceded tightly, throwing his tall dark figure a rueful appraisal, her heart giving a sudden thud as she collided involuntarily with ice-blue eyes enhanced by wondrously dense black lashes. ‘But he didn’t make it. His heart gave out.’

In an abrupt movement, she stepped back from him, disturbingly conscious of his height and the proximity of more masculinity than she felt able to bear. The very faint scent of some designer cologne drifted into her nostrils and she sucked in a sudden steadying breath, her level of awareness heightening exponentially to add to her discomfiture. She could feel her face heating, her knees wobbling as her tension rose even higher.

‘What are you planning to do next?’ Jai enquired, shifting his attention hurriedly from her lush pink lips and the X-rated images bombarding him while he questioned his behaviour.

Yes, she was indisputably beautiful, but he was neither a hormonal schoolboy, nor a sex-starved one, and he was challenged to explain his lack of self-discipline in her radius. She did, however, possess a quality that was exclusively her own, he acknowledged grudgingly, a slow-burning sensual appeal that tugged hard at his senses. It was there in the flicker of her languorous emerald eyes, the slight curve of her generous lower lip, the upward angle of challenge in her chin as she tilted her head back, strawberry-blond hair falling in waves tumbling across her slim shoulders like a swathe of rumpled silk.

‘I’ll be fine as soon as I find full-time work. These last weeks, I was only able to work part-time hours. Once I’ve saved up some money, I’ll move on and leave Shelley in peace.’ She opened the fridge to extract milk and Jai noticed its empty interior.

‘You have no food,’ he remarked grimly.

‘I genuinely haven’t had much of an appetite recently,’ she confided truthfully. ‘And Dad ate next to nothing, so I haven’t been cooking.’

She had removed her coat and the simple grey dress she wore hung loose on her slender body. Her cheekbones were sharp, her eyes hollow and his misgivings increased because she looked haunted and frail. Of course, common sense warned him that nursing her father would have sapped her energy and left her at a low ebb. Certainly, she was vulnerable, but she was a young and healthy woman and she would probably be fine. But probably wasn’t quite good enough to satisfy Jai. He would make his own checks and in the short term he would do what he could to make her future less insecure.

* * *

Willow watched Jai leave, a sinking tightening sensation inside her chest as it occurred to her that she would probably never see him again now that her father was gone. Why would she want to see him again anyway? she asked herself irritably. They were only casual acquaintances and calling him a friend would have been pushing that slight bond to the limits.

Shelley departed only under protest.

‘Are you sure you’re going to be OK alone here tonight?’ the brunette pressed, unconvinced. ‘I don’t feel right leaving you on your own.’

‘I’m going to have a bath and go to bed early. I’m exhausted,’ Willow told her ruefully. ‘But thanks for caring.’

The two women hugged on the doorstep and Shelley went on her way. Willow cleared away the glasses and left the kitchen immaculate before heading upstairs for her bath. First thing in the morning a local dealer was coming to clear the house contents and sell them. There wasn’t much left because almost everything that could be sold had been sold off weeks earlier. Even so, her father’s beloved books might be worth something, she thought hopefully, her teeth worrying at her lower lip as she anxiously recalled the rent still owing. It would be a weight off her mind if she could clear that debt because their landlord belonged to her church and she suspected that he had felt that he’d had no choice but to allow them to remain as tenants even though the rent was in arrears. The sooner he was reimbursed for his kindness, the happier she would be.

The bell shrilled while she was putting on her pyjamas and she groaned, snatching her robe off the back of the bathroom door to hurry barefoot down the steep stairs and answer the door.

When she saw Jai outside, she froze in disconcertion.

‘I brought dinner,’ Jai informed her as she hovered, her grip on the robe she was holding closed loosening to reveal the shorts and T-shirt she wore beneath and her long, shapely legs. He drew in a stark little breath as she stepped back and the robe shifted again to expose the tilted peaks of her small breasts. In a split second he was hard as a rock, his body impervious to his belief that he preferred curvier women.

‘D-dinner?’ she stammered in wonderment as Jai stepped back and two men with a trolley moved out from behind him and, with some difficulty, trundled the unwieldy item through the tiny hall into the cramped living room with its small table and two chairs.

Those wolf-blue eyes of his held her fast, all breathing in suspension.

‘My hotel was able to provide us with an evening meal,’ he clarified smoothly.

No takeaways for Jai, Willow registered without surprise while she wondered what on earth such an extravagant gesture could have cost him. Of course, he didn’t have to count costs, did he? It probably hadn’t even occurred to him that requesting a meal for two people that could be transported out of the hotel and served by hotel staff was an extraordinary request. Jai was simply accustomed to asking and always receiving, regardless of expense.

‘I’m not dressed,’ she said awkwardly, tightening the tie on her robe in an apologetic gesture.

‘It doesn’t bother me. We should eat now while it’s still warm,’ Jai responded as the plates were brought to the table, and she settled down opposite him, stiff with unease.

A bottle of wine was uncorked, glasses produced and set by their places.

‘I thought you didn’t drink,’ she commented in surprise as the waiters went back outside again, presumably to wait for them to finish.

‘I take wine with my meals,’ he explained. ‘It’s rare for me to drink at any other time.’

His eyes had a ring of stormy grey around the pupils, she noted absently, her throat tightening as her gaze dropped to the fullness of his sensual lower lip and she found herself wondering for the first time ever what Jai would be like in bed. She had been too shy and immature for such thoughts when she was an infatuated teenager and, now that she was an adult, her mental audacity brought a flood of mortified colour to her pale cheeks. Would he be gentle or rough? Fiery or smoothly precise? Her thoughts refused to quit.

‘Why did you feel that you had to feed me?’ she asked abruptly in an effort to deflect his attention from her hot cheeks.

‘You had no food in the kitchen. You’ve just lost your father,’ Jai parried calmly as he began to eat. ‘I didn’t like to think of you alone here.’

He had felt sorry for her. She busied herself eating the delicious food, striving not to squirm with mortification that she had impressed him as an object of pity. After all, Jai had been raised by his benevolent father to constantly consider those less fortunate and now ran a huge international charity devoted to good causes. Whether she appreciated the reality or not, looking out for the needs of the vulnerable had to come as naturally to Jai as breathing.

‘Why are you moving out of here tomorrow?’ he pressed quietly.

Willow snatched in a long steadying breath and then surrendered to the inevitable, reasoning that her father could no longer be humiliated by the truth. She explained about Brian Allerton’s unsuccessful stock-market dealing and the impoverishment that had followed. ‘I mean no disrespect,’ she completed ruefully, ‘but my father was irresponsible with money. He never saved anything – he only had his pension. All his working life he lived in accommodation provided by his employers and most of his meals and bills were also covered and it didn’t prepare him very well for retirement living in the normal world.’

‘That didn’t occur to me, but it should’ve done,’ Jai conceded. ‘He was an unworldly man.’

‘He was so ashamed of his financial losses,’ she whispered unhappily. ‘It made him feel like a failure and that’s one of the reasons he wouldn’t see people any more.’

‘I wish he had found it possible to reach out to me for assistance,’ Jai framed heavily, his lean, strong face clenched hard. ‘So, you are being forced to sell everything? I will buy his book collection.’