Page 28 of Unknown Royal Baby

A gusty sigh escaped as she folded her arms, her mind shying from that horrible thought to her surroundings.

The accommodation Isam had organised was private as he’d promised and quiet enough to relax in, if you could forget it was in the heart of Zahdar’s royal palace!

It was a small mercy, she supposed, that this luxurious suite of rooms didn’t have ceilings gilded with real gold like some of the rooms they’d passed on the way here. Nor were there columns studded with rubies and lapis lazuli like in the entrance colonnade where they’d entered the enormous complex. And that, she’d learned later, hadn’t even been the main entrance!

Yet everything here, from the artworks to the vast proportions and sumptuous furnishings, screamedroyal. Her en-suite bathroom could accommodate a hockey team, the sunken bath clearly designed for more than one person.

An illicit image crept into Avril’s mind, of sharing it with Isam. Even after a year she had perfect recall of his lean, powerful body and how it had felt, naked, against hers.

She shivered, not with cold but with a heated awareness that belied the fact she’d given birth only four months ago.

Surely new mothers weren’t supposed to be interested in sexy men. Particularly men who’d lost interest inthemas objects of desire.

Isam was the perfect host. But he never, by so much as a sidelong glance, gave any indication he viewed her as an attractive woman any more. As if the carnal heat saturating his gaze on their one night together had been a mirage.

What do you expect? The man’s forgotten that night, erased it from his memory.

If it had been significant enough to him he’d remember.

You weren’t significant enough.

The carping inner voice had only made a reappearance in Avril’s life since Isam left her without a word in London. Before that, with Cilla’s help, she’d virtually banished the old self-doubt from her life, the belief she wasn’t special enough to make her parents stay. Wasn’t special enough to inspire love.

Avril stiffened. She was an adult and knew she wasn’t responsible for her parents’ actions.

She was capable and strong. Yet she felt undone by the insistent tug of attraction for Isam that still lurked deep inside. Even though to him she was merely an inconvenient problem. She was a complete stranger to the one man to whom she’d ever given her trust. How that hurt.

She grimaced. Scratch the surface and there, after all, was the needy little girl she’d once been. The one who’d cried when Mummy left and didn’t come back. Who’d stifled tears when Daddy went away too. But at least by then she’d had Cilla and some stability in her world.

Which is what Maryam will need. Stability and love, lots of it.

She’d deliver that for her daughter. She’d do everything necessary to ensure it. Including negotiating a shared parenting arrangement with a royal sheikh!

Avril stared out at their private courtyard.

Filled with scented flowers, it was glorious, so pleasing to the senses that even she could tell every plant, every path and fountain had been put together by a master. As for the pool with its hand-painted tiles and cushioned sunbeds with embroidered silk canopies and gauzy curtains...

The whole place was beyond anything she could have dreamt. Was it any wonder she felt out of place?

Cilla had raised her to be independent and practical, and Avril had worked for some powerful people, occasionally glimpsing their more rarefied worlds.

But this was on a different scale. This wasn’t just wealth. This was royal privilege, complete with liveried staff, a palace bigger than her old neighbourhood, and a labyrinthine web of protocols governing everything right down to modes of address and appropriate clothing. She knew from the compendium of information that had been supplied to help her and Bethany acclimatise.

Acclimatise! Avril had read it from cover to cover and wished Isam had found them rooms in an anonymous hotel in the city.

Here everything reminded her of the immense power Isam wielded. The imbalance between them.

What was she, an ordinary woman from an ordinary background, doing here? Already she felt at a disadvantage and they hadn’t even begun their negotiations.

‘Avril?’

Isam’s rich baritone slid across her skin as if conjured by her thoughts. Her flesh prickled, every fine hair on her body standing alert while her heartbeat quickened.

She whipped around to discover Isam in the doorway. Instead of a dark suit, he wore long white robes and a headscarf secured with a twist of dark cord. The simple clothes suited him, emphasising his height and the lean strength of his body.

A dull throb started low in her abdomen and she fought to ignore it. She no longer had the defence of anger against him. The news he hadn’t deliberately cut her out of his life changed everything.

Avril feared that at the core of her jumbled emotions was something too strong, too dangerous to her peace of mind.

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