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As she drew near to the table he looked up, his dark brown eyes lancing her, so she almost lost her footing and tore her gaze away, her breath uneven. What kind of joke was God playing to make this man the only person she’d ever been attracted to?
‘Is everything okay?’ She nodded towards the phone, taking the seat furthest from him—across the table.
A slightly mocking look in his eyes convinced her that he understood and was amused by her efforts. Heat flushed her face.
‘Fine. Just checking over a contract.’
‘Is that part of your...job?’
She reached for what looked to be a muffin, sniffing it first and finding that she could tolerate the sweet fragrance—a good sign! It had pieces of fruit and something like cinnamon stirred through it, and it was still warm from the oven. Cutting into it, India added a generous whip of butter, watching as it melted through the middle.
‘My job involves many things,’ he said with a lift of his shoulders.
‘Such as?’
‘In less than a year, I will become the head of this state. Already I undertake a great many political tasks on my father’s behalf; that will increase once I am crowned.’
Again, India wondered about his father’s health, and somehow, she understood what he wasn’t saying. She had experience with that particular type of stress, and the euphemisms one used, the words employed to skate about the subject and avoid deeper questioning. The truth was, it was very difficult to discuss a parent’s mortality. She didn’t push him on the subject.
‘I suppose there have been many expectations on you since birth,’ she said, wondering what that must have been like. He was born to a unique position, and must have been raised with an awareness of that.
‘I have never known any different,’ he said, his eyes regarding her with an intensity that took her breath away. ‘And what of you, India? What is it in your life that made you decide to enter into your...vocation?’
Heat stung her cheeks, and she understood the meaning beneath his quietly voiced question. ‘I needed a job that was flexible, that paid well. It ticked the boxes.’
She felt his disapproval coming off him in waves but at least he didn’t disparage her any further. How could a man with all this understand the position she’d been in?
‘I was lucky to find Warm Engagements,’ she said, biting into the muffin and swooning a little as the flavours spread through her. It was the first food she’d genuinely enjoyed in weeks, and she took a moment to have a little silent celebration. She washed it down with a whole glass of water, thirsty from the heat of the night, then poured another. ‘I had done a little work for them in the past—my best friend’s been there for years. I knew it was an agency of quality, the kind of place that didn’t stand for what you accused me of,’ she insisted. ‘And that was important to me. Plus, the pay is really great.’
His expression showed he didn’t believe her. She sighed, but what did it matter in the scheme of things? She didn’t have to win Khalil over. They weren’t going to be friends, or anything to one another whatsoever—they were simply two people who would have a child in common. And surely he’d lose interest in their baby once he’d married and procured legitimate royal heirs right here in Khatrain?
‘Anyway, I really just came here to tell you about the baby. I’m happy to see your doctor, if that’s important to you, but then I’d like to leave.’
‘Your flight is not until the afternoon,’ he reminded her softly.
He sounded like himself, but there was an undercurrent to his words that set the hairs at the back of her neck on end. It all seemed...too easy. She’d come to Khatrain to tell him the truth, because she knew the importance of that, but she’d expected him to respond differently. Without fully acknowledging the fear to herself, she realised now that she’d had a niggling worry he might insist on holding her in the country for longer, perhaps until the baby was born, so he could be assured of his parentage. His calm acceptance of her departure didn’t ring true. Which meant... She gulped past a lump in her throat, knowing she needed to play it cool, and act totally calm.
‘I don’t mind hanging around in the airport.’
‘Tell me this, then.’ His gravelled voice drew her attention back to his face; her stomach swooped. ‘What did you expect me to say, when you dropped this bombshell in my lap?’
She took another bite of the muffin to buy time. ‘I wasn’t sure. I just knew that it was the right thing to do.’
His eyes widened and yet she couldn’t understand even a hint of what he was feeling. He was a completely closed book to her.
‘And if I say I want nothing to do with you or the baby?’
India dropped her eyes to the table, her father’s rejection spearing her sharply, so for a moment she couldn’t speak. The idea of their baby, still just a little cluster of cells but growing bigger and stronger every day, having to be born into a world where that kind of rejection was their reality?
‘I would accept that, and do everything in my power to shield my child from the pain of your decision.’
She wasn’t looking at him, so didn’t see the way his jaw tightened, his eyes flashing with surprise.
‘What pain might that be?’
Her laugh was hollow, a weak, tremulous sound. ‘The pain of knowing their father didn’t want to be a part of their life.’ She shook her head, reaching for the juice.
Silence prickled around the room, so that when she put her glass on the table and it knocked the edge of her plate, the noise was almost deafening.
