Modern Romance Collection July 2024 Books 1-4

CHAPTER SIX

SUNNYSHIFTEDPOSITION in the opulent limousine on the drive to Ashton Hall while absently wondering why Raj’s staff had warned her to bring her passport, because they were not on this occasion leaving England.

Pansy was dozing, replete after her lunch before their departure. Maria was playing some game on her phone. She had been in the limo when it arrived to collect them, and Sunny couldn’t help but be impressed by the fact that Raj had recognised that continuity of care was important for their niece’s stability. Particularly, she reflected anxiously, when their every meeting with Raj seemed to happen at a different place. It had been six weeks since they had been together on his yacht, six weeks since they had talked face-to-face.

But none of that mattered now, none of the differences, none of the disagreements, she reminded herself firmly. Time had moved on for them both. Raj had his life with his other women and she had her life with Pansy and a future baby. Utterly detached, those lifestyles, she acknowledged. But...a baby, a joy that she had believed would never be hers, and Raj had given her that baby. Unknowingly, without intent, she conceded, that daring rush of joy draining away again into guilt and shame. Raj would never have given her that baby by intent and that truth mattered so much.

The limousine turned down a long leafy lane and pulled off onto a gravelled frontage to align with a jewel of a Georgian country property.

‘Oh, wow!’ the nanny gasped in delight. ‘Working for Mr Belanger is so exciting!’

Sunny scanned the opulent vehicles already parked and the helicopters on the front lawn and thought instead that Raj was exceptionally busy. And hadn’t she known that already when his staff had had to cancel his visit a fortnight earlier and remake it? Raj worked and travelled and that was his chosen way of living, because nobody could say that he worked simply to earn when he already had more money than he could use in a dozen lifetimes. No, Raj moved on to the next challenge in the science and development field, always ahead of the crowd. He used his brilliance, kept himself gainfully occupied in the world of profit and expansion, probably as he had been taught as a child, and he continually prospered and triumphed. So, why did a part of her feel sorry for Raj’s inability to relax and pause to smell the roses? It was a nonsense to think that way about a male who was so phenomenally successful.

Their arrival was a repeat of their previous arrival in Italy. Staff hovered uncertainly and then Raj came striding out and Sunny’s heart stopped dead and then hammered in a dangerously staccato beat because, my word, she thought in the same moment, he was beautiful. Incredibly tall, well built and superbly sophisticated, sheathed in a formal black business suit that accentuated his black hair and very dark eyes.

Pansy, unimpressed by that detachment of his, whooped and scurried forward to greet him without hesitation, reaching his knees to embrace his legs and there was the change. A smile spread across his lean, darkly handsome face like a tide and he grinned down at his niece in welcome, delighted by her enthusiasm, not yet understanding that he was the only male in Pansy’s world and already undeniably special to the little girl. He scooped her up into his arms.

‘’Lo, Unc,’ Pansy managed, a little hand reaching up to his face to touch his nose. ‘Noz...eye...’ she told him, keen to show off her latest learning before fumbling to a halt at his lips, forgetting that word.

‘Hello, Pansy,’ Raj said cheerfully. ‘That’s mouth...mouth,’ he sounded out with care.

And Sunny just melted inside herself because she saw the effort he was making, the natural way he was ready and willing to interreact with their niece at the most basic level. It had only taken a little encouragement for him to stop being so self-conscious and fearful of rejection. And she could never ever air that conviction because to voice it would injure his pride. But she could see how easily he could react to having a child of his own and it hurt that she was so convinced that he would never ever offer that warmth to their child. An unplanned, unsought child, an accident...a mistake.

Raj freed Pansy as soon as she squirmed for freedom. He strode across the echoing marble hall with its chequerboard black and white floor to focus on Sunny instead. She was dressed once again in a flowing purple garment that screened all possible view of her shapely curves. And he didn’t care because he now knew what lay under all that screening fabric and it was entirely his to enjoy, his to appreciate and he was, he conceded, a male very much into the concept of his woman only showing herself to him in private.

She was smiling, that smile lighting up her beautiful face, sunlight flooding in to gleam across the golden tumble of her hair, and he was thoroughly entranced by the prospect of the weekend ahead. Sunny...all to himself. He went hard as a rock, shifting position to accommodate that instantaneous surge of physical hunger. He felt like a teenager again. He couldn’t wait, he genuinely would struggle to wait to be alone with her, finally freed from all other concerns. Just him and Sunny, just exactly as he’d planned weeks ago even if he had had to wait longer than he had hoped to see her again...

‘Sunny,’ he murmured softly. ‘It feels like for ever since I saw you last and I’m afraid I’m about to ask you to wait yet again for me. My business conference is still current. An important person was delayed and, as a result, we are running late and my time frame has changed.’

‘That’s fine,’ Sunny hastened to assure him as he gathered both her restive hands in his and just held them. Swoon, she was thinking dizzily, not having expected such an enthusiastic reception after their last meeting. She had been mistaken, she allowed guiltily. Clearly Raj did not hold spite. Evidently, she and Pansy got a clean sheet for every visit and that was heart-warming, particularly after what had happened between them. Instantly she relaxed on that belief, colliding with those very dark, so intense eyes of his and feeling the heat rise below her skin. He had stunning eyes and she only had to meet those eyes to remember them on her before dawn as he sank into her hard and deep and gave her the most breathtaking pleasure she had ever known.

‘I’ve organised a tour of the house and grounds to keep you occupied and later, we’re having dinner together.’ With a wave of his hand, he signalled an older man. ‘This is Stuart, who manages the estate here at Ashton Hall.’

‘I really wasn’t expecting... I mean, if you’re busy, and you obviously are.’

‘Right at this moment,’ Raj husked, staring down at her with hungry dark eyes, ‘you are the most important person.’

Sunny was stunned into silence by that announcement. Did he mean that literally? Were they at odds again in the understanding stakes? Had he assumed, because Raj was very prone to assuming stuff that suited him, that because she had fallen into his bed so easily, she would be willing to do so again? Or was she being fanciful? Imagining more than he meant? Maybe he was simply smoothing over and moving past the intimacy of that night on his yacht? Or being charming? Trying to relax her?

It was hard to tell with Raj. He wasn’t like other people. He didn’t always make reasonable deductions from what she saw as fact. He was quite likely to make up his own story of how he wanted things to happen inside his own complex head. And that worried her, seriously worried her because she didn’t want to end up arguing with him again and increasing the tension.

But friction was inevitable, she reminded herself unhappily. She had to tell him this weekend that she was pregnant. He deserved to know that truth from the first. That wasn’t something she could deny or conceal and she wanted to be fair and open with him because he would definitely prefer that approach.

Stuart showed them up an elegant staircase into bedrooms and reception areas, letting drop that all the conference visitors would be leaving and that only she and Pansy were spending the weekend. Pansy and Maria were soon ensconced in a comfortable nursery filled with new toys. Sunny was shown into a spacious bedroom where her case already awaited her. Leaving it untouched, she continued the tour with Stuart and Pansy, walking downstairs again to admire a pillared ballroom and a gracious library and other grand reception rooms before moving outside to take in the view.

A rolling green lawn ran up to the edge of a fenced park and beyond that she could see a herd of deer grazing at the edge of dense woodland. It was peaceful and beautiful and she allowed Stuart to show her where the walled garden was before telling him that they would find their own way back. A priority for her was to let her niece enjoy a closer look at the deer.

That was achieved but the peace and quiet didn’t last long because Pansy’s whoops of excitement sent the herd leaping away at speed, a development that her niece found even more thrilling. After that, she headed for the walled garden where she dawdled near any promising plants with her camera and took pictures while Pansy scampered about, revelling in her freedom.

When they returned to the house, Stuart offered to have Pansy’s supper brought to the nursery and she agreed. It was time to get Pansy into the bath and into her pyjamas for bed. By the time all that was accomplished, Sunny was ready to dress for dinner. When she returned to her allotted room, she found a dress hanging in a garment bag outside the wardrobe. It carried a note from Raj: ‘Please wear this for me.’

Sunny frowned and extracted it from the bag. It was layered, long and stretchy and the sort of soft blue shade she liked. What on earth strange idea had Raj taken into his handsome head? Buying a dress for her? And how did she refuse without causing offence? And didn’t she have a big enough challenge to surmount with her unexpected pregnancy? Honey, she recalled her mother saying, was always better received than vinegar.

Showered and her usual minimal make-up applied—well, possibly rather more than usual—she donned the dress. It moulded her curves more than she liked but she appreciated the floaty upper layer and it did fit amazingly well. She might as well enjoy the sight of her waist while she still had it, she thought forlornly, because nature would soon be thickening it up. And how was Raj likely to feel about that? Well, what did that matter, considering that that night had been a one-off? Even so, nervous tension made her antsy.

Stuart knocked on the door to tell her that Raj was waiting for her downstairs.

Her heart was beating very fast when she reached the hall where Raj awaited her. He looked amazing, sleek and sophisticated in an exquisitely tailored dark suit that moulded his broad shoulders and faithfully outlined his long, powerful legs. ‘We’re a little late but it’s a clear night for flying.’

‘Flying?’she stressed in astonishment.

‘Tonight, we’re doing something special for dinner,’ Raj informed her, walking her down the shallow steps and round the side of the house to a helicopter.

‘But Pansy—’

‘Maria knows that we’ll be back tomorrow morning and she will be able to get in contact with us at any time,’ Raj asserted. ‘I’ve thought of everything.’

Reckoning that it was hard to combat such a claim and remain strictly polite, Sunny bundled up her skirts and began to clamber awkwardly into the helicopter, but a pair of hands settled to her hips for Raj to lift her in. Flustered, she settled in a seat and utilised the headphones she was handed. Why the heck were they doing something special for dinner? What was that about? Her frown deepened.

‘You really are the most frustrating man I’ve ever met,’ she told him roundly before the pilot lifted the heavy craft into the air.

Raj merely smiled. He wanted her to enjoy herself. In fact, he was determined that she should enjoy herself every moment that she was with him. He had phoned her several times over the past six weeks, ostensibly to ask after his niece, but the previous week he had noticed that Sunny seemed out of sorts, not her usual upbeat self, and it had bothered him. She needed a little fun in her life and, although he considered himself to be one of the world’s most serious and least fun-loving guys, he was convinced that he could dig deep and surprise and please her.

‘Paris?’ she checked in wonder as the limousine powered them through the busy well-lit city streets and she peered out at the magnificent buildings. ‘Just for dinner?’

‘Just for dinner. I’m taking you to one of my hotels.’

‘It’s like being Cinderella for the night.’

‘I’m no fairy godmother...nor am I a Prince Charming,’ Raj proclaimed with a shudder.

A magnificent hotel dazzling with the combined light of crystal chandeliers and blazing windows awaited them. Raj swept her in through the front doors, past glittering groups of people sporting evening wear and opulent jewellery, and straight into a mirrored lift. As the doors closed on the view, she registered in horror that everyone seemed to be staring at her.

‘Why was everyone looking at me? Do I look that strange?’

‘No, of course, you don’t look strange. It’s my fault that people are staring,’ Raj assured her in exasperation. ‘The only women I’m ever seen in public with are employees. Obviously, you are not an employee and that makes you a source of interest.’

And some of the interest could be in the highly identifiable dress she wore, fresh off the catwalk and designed by the season’s hottest designer, Stevie Carteret. He had seen the dress in a newspaper and had thought it looked exactly like something that Sunny would like. It was sort of floaty and enveloping but the wispy top layer was transparent and the close fit of the dress beneath showed off Sunny’s glorious curves.

Sunny studied their reflection in one of the mirrors. They were the odd couple, Raj so tall, her barely reaching his chest. But even that glimpse of him, his square jawline blue black with stubble because he hadn’t shaved again, his wide sculpted mouth relaxed, made her heartbeat quicken, her breath catch in her throat, that warm curling sensation of sensual familiarity spread like temptation through her pelvis.

‘I’m surprised you’re taking me out in public,’ she confided breathlessly as he guided her out of the lift and straight across an opulent hallway into an incredibly elegant reception area.

‘In today’s world it’s wiser to show you off occasionally rather than try to hide you. Hiding anyone merely invites speculation and suspicion. I learned that a long time ago.’

‘What is this place?’ she asked as he closed his big hand over hers and led her out onto a balcony set with a table for two and a waiter hovering in readiness.

‘It’s my penthouse apartment on the top floor. It’s convenient and fully serviced without the need for further staff.’

‘It’s also very beautiful,’ Sunny savoured, standing by the wrought-iron railing to admire the view and note the boats chugging down the river far below them, boats crammed with tourists admiring the historic city by night, their cameras flashing, their bright chatter floating softly upward.

Raj placed his hands either side of hers where they were braced on the rail and then slowly eased his hands over hers. ‘I thought you would like it.’

Insanely conscious of the heat of his big body at her back, Sunny laughed and quivered with awareness and a weakening yearning to simply lean back into him. ‘I do but I’m also wondering how many times you’ve been here and you’ve been so lost in work that you didn’t even take the time to appreciate the beauty.’

Raj grinned, drinking in the faint coconut scent drifting up from her hair. ‘That’s why you’re here,’ he told her shamelessly. ‘To keep me grounded...to show me everything I fail to notice around me.’

The warmth of him was spreading through her like a dangerous drug, lighting up pathways she had worked hard to shut down again weeks earlier. Raj, for that one sultry night, had been an indulgence, but the whole point of an indulgence was that it should be a very, very occasional treat because to repeat indulgences too often was to be self-destructive. And Sunny reminded herself that she was much too sensible for that sort of behaviour, particularly when she was pregnant.

Champagne was being uncorked by the waiter and Sunny thought fast and told a hurried lie. ‘I’m on these tablets right now that mean I shouldn’t touch alcohol. I don’t want to be a party pooper but I would rather not drink.’

‘Not a problem.’ Raj waved away the champagne and suggested that they sit down and start their meal.

‘Sorry about that,’ Sunny muttered as she sipped her water, still feeling ashamed of the lie she had told to conceal her condition. He would understand later but this seemingly special dinner, staged high above the grandeur of the river Seine, was neither the right moment nor the right place in which to make such a very personal and private announcement.

‘Don’t apologise on my behalf, because I seldom drink. My father was a heavy drinker. I suspect he was an alcoholic and that that powered his violent temper and his mistreatment of my mother and me,’ he intoned grimly. ‘If that is in my genes, I should be careful.’

They ate delicious starters and embarked on the main course. Why, Sunny was wondering, did this appear to be a meal that was celebrating something? She was bemused. It felt as though she had missed some crucial line of dialogue at some stage, ensuring that everything after it seemed oddly out of sync. She drank the fruit juice that was brought to her and concentrated on her tender steak. When the dessert arrived, she toyed with hers.

Raj closed a hand over hers. ‘Come closer.’

Sunny’s eyes opened very wide. ‘Er...why?’ she mumbled.

Raj’s gaze welded to the generous swell of her firm breasts and then up to her soft pink luscious mouth. ‘I want to hold you,’ he said frankly. ‘Obviously.’

Obviously? Since when was that requirement obvious? He dismissed the waiter, said he’d call for coffee and reached for Sunny. He was so strong that he literally lifted her out of her chair to bring her down on his spread thighs with a growly sound of satisfaction that reverberated through his chest. ‘That’s better. Now watch the fireworks,’ he told her.

What fireworks?she almost asked, but a split second later fireworks were shooting up into the night sky and bursting into brilliant multicoloured flowers in the most breathtaking display. ‘Those are so pretty...they even have pastel ones. Pansy would adore this.’

‘We’ll do this with her another time.’

Sunny rested back in his arms, shocked that she had settled there without argument, but he felt so good and he made her feel so safe. ‘You knew the fireworks would be on,’ she guessed.

‘I put them on for you,’ Raj corrected.

Sunny twisted on his lap and awkwardly peered at his hard profile. ‘But why would you do that?’

‘Because I felt like it...and because you can be very slow on the uptake, Sunny,’ he spelt out softly, his mouth dropping down to a sensitive spot on her nape and dallying there until tiny little quivers of response were running through her like a river in full flood. ‘Something I’m only now finding out.’

‘What are you saying?’ Sunny almost whispered.

Expelling his breath in a measured hiss, Raj thrust his chair back and lifted her again, lowering her to the floor to stand before him. ‘This whole evening...you still haven’t got the message?’ he breathed almost incredulously.

‘What message?’ she asked, held captive by dark eyes flaming gold like a tiger’s.

‘There are now no other women in my life,’ Raj imparted with precision. ‘That term was what we negotiated...and now we have a deal, signed, sealed and delivered.’

Sunny was shattered. She stood there, anxious lavender-blue eyes locked to him in dawning comprehension. ‘I told you that relationships don’t come under the deal heading.’

Raj groaned out loud. ‘And I told you I’d never had a relationship before. But you and I...that’s a deal. It took me longer than I expected to settle the mistresses and remove them from my life but I haven’t been with any of them since I met you, so that’s exclusive, right?’ A questioning ebony brow lifted.

‘Right,’ she agreed limply, because she truly could not think of anything else to say when he had stunned her stupid and her legs felt like cotton-wool supports because she had never ever envisaged being in the situation he had now placed her in. ‘I can’t believe you went to all that trouble for me.’

‘I want you. And when I want something as much as I want you I will do whatever it takes to make it happen.’

‘Obviously,’ she said shakily. ‘But I really wasn’t expecting this development. I agreed to be with you for one night, not anything like this!’

‘Understandably, I made certain assumptions of my own,’ Raj fielded.

‘Oh, that doesn’t surprise me in the slightest!’ Sunny flung back at him, breathless with lingering shock and disbelief. She had tried to keep him at a distance. She had put up barriers but Raj had rolled over the top of her barriers like an enemy tank. Entirely off his own bat, he had shelved his mistresses in apparent favour of her alone.

But how could that possibly work in the future? Eventually, he would get tired of her, of course he would, and then everything with Pansy would become horribly awkward because, in the aftermath, neither of them was likely to want to see the other.

‘And what about when we break up again? How is that likely to affect Pansy?’ Sunny demanded.

Raj groaned. ‘Why is Sunny the optimist considering worst-case scenarios here? We’re adults, we’ll remain civil and it won’t have the smallest effect on our niece.’

Sunny breathed in deep and slow, calming, composing herself.

‘This isn’t a game, Sunny. I don’t play games. What I like about you is that you’re honest with me about what you want, what you expect, and I will try to deliver,’ Raj told her with roughened sincerity. ‘But I’ll get it wrong sometimes. I hate failure but it’s human to fail. I like perfect the best and, so far, this evening has been perfect.’

Only it wouldn’t be perfect any more if she practised that honesty he liked so much about her. Everything would fall apart in the instant she admitted that she had conceived his child. He wouldn’t see the miracle that she saw, no, he would see a betrayal of trust, because she had na?vely assured him that she couldn’t get pregnant. Only she hadn’t known that there even could be a risk of that development.

She was torn in two at the prospect of having to tell him. No, not at this moment when he was smiling, when he had got rid of the other women in his life to make a special place for her, when he had put on flowery fireworks purely for her benefit. How could she allow him to have surrendered so much for a reward like that? He wouldn’t see their unborn child as a reward. Raj viewed life and people through a different lens.

‘And now it’s about to get even more perfect,’ Raj concluded, vaulting upright with a slashing wicked smile that made her heart pound. He scooped her up into his arms with ease and strode back indoors, ignoring her gasp of surprise as he strode through double doors into a bedroom fit for a queen. Her troubled gaze flicked over gleaming contemporary furniture, lamplit pools of privacy and the biggest bed she had ever seen draped in white linen. Through the windows she could see the fireworks still throwing up colourful blossoms. She would tell him about the baby in the morning, she decided, when things were calm again and he was in a more receptive mood.

‘I’ve been thinking of this moment multiple times a day for weeks,’ Raj confided as he knelt down on one knee and flipped her shoes off with the utmost casualness.

‘I never even got to thank you for the dress,’ Sunny exclaimed, suddenly shy at the prospect of being stripped naked, wondering if he would notice the subtle differences that were already changing her body. Her breasts were larger, and, goodness knew, she hadn’t needed nature’s help there, and there was a very faint curve now to her tummy, which had previously been flat.

‘I saw a picture of it and it was you,’ Raj told her, dropping his jacket where he stood, yanking off his tie, all action and impatience now that what he saw as the formalities had all been taken care of.

Yet Sunny seemed to still be in shock because she was as yet showing him none of the relief and satisfaction he had somehow expected. He had embraced celibacy for many weeks for her, had focused on the goal and that goal was acquiring Sunny at any cost. And even before he dared to lay a finger on her, he knew that she was worth it, he knew that she wanted to be with him because he was the man that he was, because she cared, and he had never had that before. She didn’t want him to take her out and show her off, she didn’t want the public recognition that could drive normal people to insanity, she didn’t want the money and all that it could buy, she only wanted him.And in Raj’s world, that made her a pearl beyond price.