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For a split second she allowed herself to think of how thatto iine how she would’ve felt if Jaul had come back to her and if he had been with her when she’d discovered that she was pregnant She realised that she was picturing an entirely different and infinitely happier world and fierce regret filled her, backed by a terrible anguished sense of loss because she was beginning to suspect that Jaul had been as miserable as she hen they were first separated How could his father have believed he had the right to inflict such suffering on them both?

Hot, burning tears lashed the backs of Chrissie’s eyes in an unsettling surge She blinked rapidly, intense ulf her because she only ever cried in the strictest privacy, a discipline learned the hard way after her life had fallen apart following Jaul’s vanishing act two years earlier She snatched in a deep, audible breath and Jaul swung away frohts at the prospect of confronting Yusuf, his late father’s staunchest supporter

Yusuf would not necessarily be discreet in the aftermath of such a discussion It was a stark moment of choice for Jaul because he had to choose between his e and his respect for his father’s memory But he knew that that respect was not an excuse to avoid discovering an unpalatable truth Yet if Chrissie was telling the truth, it would be an appalling truth that he would never be able to live with, he reflected griht As he had been raised to do, he would do what he knew to be his duty and act with honour, regardless of what he found out

‘Where’s the cloakroo his attention back to her

When he saw the sheen in her turquoise eyes and the dampness on her cheeks, he tensed and took a sudden step forward

‘The first door at the top of the stairs but the bedrooed ebony brows pleating ‘You’re upsetyou’re crying’

Chrissie flew upright as though she were a puppet whose strings had been jerked without warning ‘Of course I’!’ she protested huskily ‘It’s stupid, it’s just all this stuff about the pastit’s confusing me’

‘I’ed undertone as he closed his arure to hold her still ‘I knew that telling you about the accident would rake it all up again, which hy I was so reluctant—’

‘But I had to know the truth,’ Chrissie told hi to hide the wet lustre of her eyes

A tinyold as he scored his knuckles lightly down the side of her face in a soothing gesture ‘I hurt you’

Chrissie looked up at hi he was even with his blue-black hair a littlejawline stubbled His black lashes were luxuriant above eyes of storh her to create the kind of sudden tension that made her suck in her breath As she connected with his burnished gaze a pulse was ha like crazy above her collarbone She wanted hiernails bit into her palms as her hands fisted He was all lean th as he eased her closer and her body thruh her veins His war pleasure shot through her with the force of a lightning bolt

Jaul lifted her up into his arms and carried her into the bedrooers feathered through his hair and instinctively closed into the silky black strands to hold hi to think of so other than the reality that Jaul had almost died two years earlier Had he died she would never have seen hiain, never had the chance to hold hi him proudly hold his son in his arms

CHAPTER EIGHT

JAUL KISSED MUCH as heboth passion and sleek proficiency into a devastating sensual assault