‘Why on earth would you be jealous of her?’ Jai demanded in astonishment.
‘Because she was all over you like a rash at the party and at no time did I see you pushing her away and respecting the sort of boundaries you’re accusing me of breaking with Sher!’ Willow accused.
‘That was a different situation,’ Jai argued. ‘She was a friend long before I became more deeply involved with her.’
‘Oh, have it your own way!’ Willow snapped back in frustration, wishing she could get inside his head to rearrange his brain into a pattern she could recognise. ‘I’m done here. I’ve got nothing more to say to you until you admit that you’re a jealous, possessive toad, and then I might forgive you for insulting me!’
Beneath Jai’s speechless gaze, Willow rammed open the door and vanished back into the palace without another word. He refilled his wine glass and stood looking out over the lake, watching a sloth bear slurp a noisy drink at the edge of the lake while the chitter chatter of monkeys at dusk filled the air. Slowly he breathed in deeply, telling himself he had been foolish to assume that marriage would be an easy ride.
And yet it generally was with Willow, he conceded grudgingly. She had slotted into his life as though she had always been there, and he shared more with her than he had ever shared with a woman. At the outset, he had assumed that their marriage would be all about Hari, only it wasn’t. Their son was a point of connection, but it was Willow’s unspoilt, gentle nature, her lack of feminine guile and her interest in learning about everything that was new to her that continued to intrigue Jai. The flirting, most probably, had been unconscious, he decided, and possibly he should have kept his reservations about the degree of friendliness between his wife and his best friend to himself.
After all, he fully trusted Sher, so why hadn’t he had the same amount of faith in Willow? Hadn’t he once even cherished the insane suspicion that Willow might have been a fortune hunter? Was he so truly a prisoner of his father’s unhappy past and Cecilia’s mercenary betrayal that he could not trust a woman? That idea shook him and put him into a brooding mood before he went back to his office to work, as was his wont, to escape his uneasy thoughts.
Several hours later, he entered their bedroom quietly and discovered the ultimate bed-blocker blinking up at him in the moonlight: his son, snuggled up next to his mother. Hari closed his eyes again and Jai went off to find another bed.
Willow woke early the next morning with Hari tugging at her hair, and looked down at her son in surprise because she hadn’t intended him to spend the night with her, had simply fallen asleep while cuddling him for comfort. It’s not safe to sleep with him, her conscience reproached her, and she freshened up and returned Hari to the nursery staff, who greeted him as though he had been absent a week. She breakfasted alone, assuming Jai was already in his office because he was fond of dawn starts. Her annoyance with him was still intense, but she was troubled by the stand-off she had initiated the night before because Jai could be as stubborn and unyielding as the rock she had compared him to.
Willow sighed. She had had to confront him. He had not given her a choice and how could she compromise? The answer was that on such a dangerous point of contention, she couldn’t compromise, not if she wanted their relationship to have a future. That truth acknowledged, she frowned as she realised that this was also the morning Jai’s mother had invited her to meet her. She hadn’t had time to dwell on that thorny issue in recent days but now it was first and foremost in her mind.
Did she ignore that invitation as Jai would unquestionably expect her to do, or did she meet Lady Milly because she now knew, thanks to Jivika, that Jai’s mother had been cruelly misjudged?
Surely she had a right to discover the facts of the situation for herself? Or, even as Jai’s wife, was that background none of her business? Sadly, Jai was too loyal to his father’s memory to take advantage of the same opportunity, she reflected, and that was tragic. Maybe she could be a peacemaker, a go-between, she thought optimistically. If the meeting went the right way, it could bring Jai a great deal of happiness, she reasoned, her heart lifting at that optimistic prospect. Even Jai’s aunt, however, had been unwilling to run the risk of getting involved and yet Jivika was neither a weak nor timid personality. Willow’s teeth worried anxiously at her lower lip as she weighed the odds and then a rueful smile slowly crept across her lips because when it got down to basics, it was a simple decision.
Jai had been badly damaged and hurt by his conviction that his mother had abandoned him as a baby. Willow loved him, even when she was angry with him. If there was anything she could do to ease that pain that Jai fought to hide from the world, she would do it. And if he rediscovered a lost mother from the exercise, it would be well worth the risk she took and far more than she had ever managed to achieve with her own father, she conceded sadly.
A couple of hours later, Willow walked into the Royal Chandrapur, an exclusive boutique establishment on the other side of the city. From reception, she wheeled Hari’s buggy into the tiny lift and breathed in deep.
The first surprise was that the small blond woman who opened the door to her appeared to be much younger than she had expected. Well-preserved, she assumed, meeting eyes of the same startling pale blue as her husband’s and taking in the huge smile on the other woman’s face.
‘I didn’t think you’d come,’ she said frankly.
Willow winced. ‘I almost didn’t. Jai doesn’t know I’m here,’ she admitted guiltily.
‘And this is…little Hari?’
As the door closed behind them, Jai’s mother knelt down by the side of the buggy and studied Willow’s son in fascination. ‘He is spookily like Jai was at the same age,’ she whispered appreciatively. ‘Just a little older than Jai was when I left India.’
Willow breathed in deep and settled into the seat the other woman indicated with a casual hand. ‘What I don’t understand is, if you wanted contact with Jai why did you virtually cut him dead when you did finally meet him as an adult?’
‘Let me start at the beginning and then perhaps you’ll understand better. If you don’t, that’s fine too. I’m grateful you came here. First of all, I am Milly…and you are… Willow, I gather?’
Willow harnessed the very rude impatience tugging at her and nodded with a smile.
‘Would you like tea?’
‘No, thanks. Being here with you makes me a little nervous. Let’s talk about whatever we have to talk about,’ Willow urged.
‘A little background first, then,’ Milly decided, seemingly magnetised by the tiny fingers Hari was stretching out to her. ‘May I lift him?’ she asked hopefully.
Leaning down, Willow detached the harness and watched her son being scooped gently into his grandmother’s arms.
‘Where do I start?’ Milly sighed then. ‘I was twenty and Jai’s father was fifty when we married. My family were against it from the start because of the age gap but I was madly in love and I thought I knew it all.’
‘I didn’t know that there was such a big age gap between you,’ Willow admitted.
‘The marriage didn’t work from the start. Rehan wanted a quiet little wife, who stayed at home, and I was very independent. He was insanely jealous and controlling but the assaults didn’t begin until after Jai was born,’ Milly murmured flatly.
Willow’s clear gaze widened in dismay. ‘He hit you?’ she exclaimed.
Milly nodded. ‘We had terrible rows and he couldn’t control his temper. But I’m talking about slaps and kicks, not severe beatings.’
‘Abuse is abuse,’ Willow opined.