‘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.’
Willow stared across the table at him in shock. ‘Seriously?’
‘He was a lifelong book collector, as am I,’ Jai pointed out. ‘I would purchase his books because I want them and for no other reason. We will agree that tonight and hopefully that will take care of your rent arrears.’
Willow nodded slowly and then frowned. ‘Are you sure you want them?’
‘I have a library in every one of my homes. Of course, I want them.’
Willow swallowed hard. ‘How many homes do you have?’ she whispered helplessly.
‘More than I want in Chandrapur but it is my duty, as it was my father’s, to preserve our heritage properties for future generations,’ he countered levelly. ‘Now let us move on to other, more important matters. Your father was too proud to ask for my help. I hope you are a little more sensible.’
Reckoning that he was about to embarrass her by offering her further financial help, Willow pushed back her plate and stood up to forestall him. ‘I’m going upstairs to get dressed first,’ she said tightly.
Jai sipped his wine and signalled the staff to remove the dishes and the trolley. He pictured Willow sliding out of the robe, letting it fall sinuously to her feet before she took off the top and removed the shorts. His imagination went wild while he did so, his body surging with fierce hunger, and he gritted his teeth angrily, struggling to get his thoughts back in his control.
Upstairs, Willow stood immobile, reckoning that Jai taking her father’s books could well settle the rent arrears. Did he really want those books? Or was that just a ploy to give her money? And when someone was as poor as she was, could she really afford to worry about what might lie behind his generosity?
Her attention fell on a sapphire ring that lay on the tray on the dressing table. It was her grandmother’s engagement ring and it would have to be sold too, even though it was unlikely to be worth very much. Her father had refused to let her sell it while he was still alive, but it had to go now, along with everything else. She could not live with Shelley without paying her way. She would not take advantage of her friend’s kindness like that.
She spread a glance round the room, her eyes lingering on the precious childhood items that would also have to be disposed of, things like her worn teddy bear and the silver frame housing a photo of the mother she barely remembered. She couldn’t lug boxes of stuff with her to clutter up Shelley’s small studio apartment. Be practical, Willow, she scolded herself even as a sob of pain convulsed her throat.
She felt as though her whole life had tumbled into broken pieces at her feet. Her father was gone. Everything familiar was fading. And at the heart of her grief lay the inescapable truth that she had always been a serious disappointment to the father she loved. No matter how hard she had tried, no matter how many tutors her father had engaged to coach her, she had continually failed to reach the academic heights he’d craved for his only child. She wasn’t stupid, she was merely average, and to a man as clever as her father had been, a man with a string of Oxford degrees in excellence, that had been a cruel punishment…
Downstairs, enjoying a second glass of wine, Jai heard her choked sob. He squared his shoulders and breathed in deep, deeming it only natural that at some point on such a day Willow’s control would weaken and she would break down. There had been no visible tears at the funeral, no emotional conversations afterwards that he had heard. Throughout, Willow had been polite and pleasant and more considerate of other people’s feelings than her own. She had attempted to bring an upbeat note to a depressing situation, had behaved as though she had already completely accepted the changes that her father’s death would inflict on her.
When the sounds of her distress became more than he could withstand, Jai abandoned his careful scrutiny of her father’s books – several first editions, he noted with satisfaction, worthy of the fine price he would pay for them. He drained his glass and forced himself to mount the stairs to offer what comfort he could. All too well did he remember that he himself had had little support after his father’s sudden death from a massive stroke. Thousands had been devastated by the passing of so well-loved a figure and hundreds of concerned relatives had converged on Jai to share his sorrow, but Jai hadn’t been close enough to any of those individuals to find solace in their memories. In reality only he had known his father on a very personal, private level and only he could know the extent of the loss he had sustained.
Willow was lying sobbing on the bed and Jai didn’t hesitate. He sat down beside her and lifted her into his arms, reckoning that she weighed barely more than a child and instinctively treating her as such as he patted her slender spine soothingly and struggled to think of what