on some makeup from her purse and a defiant slash of scarlet lipstick, she stuffed her ruined silver dress into the bathroom bin, sickeningly aware that there were tiny beads lying all over the floor. And then, having forced her feet into what was quite clearly a pair of evening shoes, she let herself out of the suite, momentarily trying to get her bearings.
Heading towards a wide corridor hung with lavish chandeliers she caught a glimpse of perfectly manicured grass in the distance and realised that she must be near the palace gardens. Could she find some passing member of staff and ask them to arrange a car to take her back to the hotel? Was that possible?
‘Miss Jackson? Miss Jackson, isn’t it?’
The icily cultured voice behind her made Ella freeze in horror because she couldn’t fail to recognise those aristocratic tones. Oh, please don’t let it be Queen Zoe, she prayed silently, her hopes crumbling as she turned round to stare into the cold features of her sister’s future mother-in-law.
Awkwardly, Ella bobbed a curtsey, her cheeks burning with embarrassment. ‘Er, good morning, Your Majesty.’
‘It’s Ella, isn’t it?’
‘That’s right, Your Majesty.’
The queen raised her eyebrows. ‘Forgive me for being a little surprised to see you here at such an hour. I thought that you and your family were staying at the hotel?’
Ella hoped her grimace resembled a smile. What could she do, other than be evasive? Tell the queen that she’d spent the night with the sheikh? Wasn’t the fact that she was creeping around the corridors wearing new clothes which didn’t match last night’s shoes evidence enough? ‘I … I fell asleep,’ she said lamely.
There was a silence while Ella dared the queen to ask just where she’d fallen asleep. But fortunately, good breeding must have stopped her, for the older woman simply gave a disapproving look, as if she didn’t believe a word of it.
‘I see. And have you had breakfast?’ asked the queen.
‘Er, no. I’m not really very hungry, Your Majesty. In fact, I really ought to be getting back to the hotel. My mother will be wondering where I am.’
‘Yes, I can imagine she will be,’ answered the queen drily. ‘Well, speak to one of the staff and they will arrange a car for you.’
‘Thank you, Your Majesty.’ Ella gave the deepest curtsey she could manage and waited until the queen gave a brief nod before walking off.
It took her a while, but eventually she found someone and made herself understood well enough to order a car.
Minutes later she was being driven along a picturesque coastal road, grateful to put miles between herself and the Santina royal palace. But Ella’s stomach was in knots and she barely noticed the deep sapphire of the sea or the perfect blue of the sky. For once, the island’s scenic beauty left her cold.
All she could think about was the way she’d behaved. It was not only completely uncharacteristic, it was also shameful, because she had chosen the worst man in the world with whom to be sexually rampant. She’d been given the perfect opportunity to prove to Hassan Al Abbas that his bias against the Jackson family was unfair and unfounded. Yet instead, she had simply reinforced all those prejudices with her own behaviour. He’d accused the women in her family of behaving like cheap tramps and hadn’t she gone ahead and done just that?
Ella bit her lip as the car began to snake down the road towards the hotel. She’d let everyone down. But most of all, she’d let herself down.
And she was the one who had to live with what she’d done.
‘I DON’T care how you do it. Just do it!’ The woman’s voice was shrill and insistent. ‘It’s my wedding day and I’ve dreamt about it for too long to make any kind of compromise.’
‘I’ll work something out,’ promised Ella, replacing the phone with a heavy sigh, which wasn’t entirely due to the latest unreasonable request from one of her high-profile clients. Since the earliest days of her thriving events company, Cinderella-Rockerfella, she’d been asked for many bizarre things, and usually she took them all in her stride. But usually she wasn’t feeling a mixture of guilt and general queasiness, the way she’d been feeling nonstop since she’d returned from her sister’s royal engagement party.
Nothing she did seemed to help. She found herself wishing she could forget the sheikh who had given her so much pleasure when he’d taken her to his bed. But what she wished even more was that she could rid herself of the nagging fear which was growing by the day. The fear which this morning had manifested itself in bringing up her breakfast only minutes after she’d eaten it.
With an effort, she forced the worrying thoughts from her head and looked up at Daisy, her assistant, an efficient twenty-two-year-old whose high energy levels had recently made Ella feel as if she was about a hundred.
‘What kind of couple wants to sit on matching thrones for their wedding ceremony, Daisy?’ she asked wearily.
‘A couple with massive egos?’ suggested Daisy with a grin. ‘But I guess that isn’t so surprising. Two music stars that huge are bound to want to make a splash, especially as they’ve sold the photo rights to Celebrity! magazine. And anyway, you couldn’t be better placed to organise something like that, could you, Ella, since your own sister is actually marrying a real-life royal!’
‘Please don’t remind me,’ said Ella with a wince.
‘Why not? Most people would be revelling in the reflected glory, yet you’ve hardly said a word about the engagement party since you got back and that was weeks ago,’ grumbled Daisy. ‘I had to read about it for myself in all the papers.’
‘Well, there you go.’ Ella realised that her fingers were trembling and she put down the black felt-tip pen with which she’d been doodling. She looked down and saw that she had actually drawn a sword by the side of her notes. What the hell did that mean? ‘Daisy, will you try to organise two golden thrones for me? Ring up that theatrical props company we sometimes use and see if they can help out. I … well, I have to go out this afternoon.’ She stood too quickly and her head spun like a merry-go-round. It had been doing a lot of that lately.
Daisy glanced at her. ‘Ella, are you okay? You’ve gone a really funny colour.’
‘No, I’m fine,’ said Ella, swallowing down the increasingly familiar taste of nausea which was rising in her throat. ‘I’ll see you later.’
Blanking the concerned look of her assistant, she walked out into the busy London street where an unseasonal shower was in full pelt and she realised too late that she wasn’t wearing her raincoat. But who cared about getting caught in the rain, or ostentatious last-minute additions to showbiz weddings, when there was something so big in your head it was beginning to dominate everything you did?
She was shivering as she took a bus to her house in Tooting. It wasn’t the most fashionable post code in town but it was well served by public transport and had the added bonus of being cheap. Living there meant she didn’t have to live in a shoebox and she’d been able to plough any
