The Sheikh's Baby Omnibus by Penny Jordan Read Free Book Online

not give up the woman he loved, no, not even if Xavier did try to carry out his threat and disinherit him!
    His cousin was quite plainly besotted with the woman, and now that Xavier had met her for himself he was beginning to understand just how dangerous she was.
    But not even Khalid’s love would be strong enough to withstand the knowledge that she had been his cousin’s lover. That she had given herself willingly to him! That the thought of ensnaring an even richer man than Khalid, in Xavier himself, had been enough to have her crawling into his bed.
    That knowledge would hurt Khalid, but better that he was hurt quickly and cleanly now than that he spent a lifetime suffering a thousand humiliations at her hands! As he undoubtedly would do!
    Surely the silence from the bedroom was unnatural. The woman should be awake by now, if only for the sake of her child!
    Irritably Xavier strode towards the bedroom area, and pulled back the hanging.
    Mariella was lying on the bed deeply asleep, one arm flung out, her pale skin gleaming in the soft light.
    The thick strawberry-blonde hair was softly tousled, a few wisps sticking to her pink-cheeked face, lashes, which surely must be dyed to achieve that density of colour, surrounding the turquoise she insisted on claiming was natural.
    In her sleep she sighed and frowned and made a little moue of distress before settling back into sleep.
    Unable to drag his gaze from her, Xavier continued to watch her. There was nothing about what he knew of the type of person she was that could appeal to his aesthetic and cultured taste. But physically...
    Physically, hormonally, she exerted such a pull over his senses that right now...
    He had taken a step towards the bed without even realising it, the ache in his groin immediately a fierce, primal surge of white-hot need. If he took her in his arms and woke her now, would it be Khalid’s name he heard on her lips?
    That thought alone should have been enough to freeze his arousal to nothing, but instead he was filled with a savage explosion of angry emotion at the thought of any man’s name on her lips that wasn’t his own!
    As he battled with the realisation of just what that meant, his attention was suddenly distracted by the happy gurgling coming from the cot.
    Striding over to it, he stared down at Fleur. Her child. The child another man had given her! A surge of primitive aching pain filled him.
    Fleur had kicked off her blankets and was playing with her bare toes, smiling coquettishly up at him.
    Xavier sucked in his breath. She was so small, so delicate...so very much like her mother.
    Instinctively he bent to pick her up.
    Mariella didn’t know what woke her from her deep sleep, some ancient female instinct perhaps, she decided shakily as she stared across the room and saw Xavier bending over Fleur.
    Gripping the bedclothes, she burst out frantically, ‘Don’t you dare hurt her.’
    ‘Hurt her?’ Tight-lipped, Xavier swung round. ‘You dare to say that when she has already been hurt immeasurably simply by being brought into being as the child of a woman who...’
    Unable to fully express his feelings, he compressed his mouth.
    ‘I suppose she is used to being left to amuse herself whilst her mother sleeps off the effects of her night’s work!’
    Mariella could scarcely contain her fury.
    ‘How dare you say such things, after the way you have behaved? You are the most loathsome, the most vile man I have ever met. You are totally lacking in any kind of compassion, or...or responsibility!’
    Her eyes really were that colour, Xavier recognised in disbelief as he watched them darken from turquoise to inky blue-green.
    Did they turn that colour when she was lost in passion? Was she as passionate in her sexual desire as she was in her anger? Of course she was...he knew that instinctively, just as he knew equally instinctively that if she were his...
    ‘It is nearly eleven o’clock, the child must be hungry,’ he told her tersely,