was a child involved and didn’t Hassan have the right to know about the existence of that child, no matter what their feelings for each other were?
‘I have no choice but to tell him,’ she said quietly.
Ben’s voice sounded gruff. ‘Actually, you do have a choice. I just hope he appreciates the one you’ve made. Let me know if there’s anything I can do. And I mean anything.’
‘I will. Thanks, Ben.’ Ella swallowed down the sudden lump which had risen in her throat. ‘Oh, and Ben? You won’t tell anyone else about this, will you?’
‘Not unless you want me to. Let’s hold off the hysterical reaction from the rest of the clan for as long as possible, shall we?’
Ella was thoughtful as she replaced the phone, realising that she couldn’t put off telling Hassan a moment longer. Until she also realised that she knew very little about him, other than that he was a sheikh. She didn’t even know where he lived! She frowned. Hadn’t his aide mentioned a country when he’d delivered her the dress and the insultingly sexy thong? Kasha-something. Kashamak?
She sat down at her computer and tapped the name into the search engine to discover that Kashamak was indeed a country, and that Hassan was its supreme ruler, although he had a younger brother.
She stared at a photo of him, clad in what was clearly his national dress, and thought how formidable he looked. His thick black hair was covered by a white headdress, held in place by a dark, knotted silk cord. It made him look more foreign. More unapproachable.
It was strange to stare at the sensual curve of his mouth and to remember how thoroughly it had explored her body. She remembered the powerful orgasm which had shaken her to the core, the first one she’d ever experienced. Was that what had made the sex seem so profound to her, or was that just the effect he had on all women?
With an effort, she dragged her eyes away from the photo. There were whole pages of facts about Kashamak’s huge natural resources and the border disputes with one of the neighbouring countries, which Hassan had recently settled, but Ella barely took anything else in. She didn’t need to know that to his country he was a hero, because the whole point of looking at all this stuff had a purpose. She now knew where he was based, but how did you go about contacting a man who was so obviously out of reach? His very position isolated him from people like her and he certainly hadn’t left behind his mobile number and told her to be in touch, had he?
In the end, she summoned up the courage to ask her sister Allegra, who in turn asked Alex, who said, regretfully, that he couldn’t really hand Hassan’s number out to anyone, not even family. Security issues, he explained. But he would pass on her details to the sheikh and ask him to be in touch with her.
Ella felt mortified when this piece of information was relayed to her, though she supposed she should be grateful that her sister hadn’t demanded to know why she wanted to contact Hassan. She guessed she was so bound up in her own impending marriage that she hadn’t quizzed her about their smoochy dancing. Or mentioned the subsequent stand-up row on the dance floor….
A sense of frustration caught hold of her and she wondered what Hassan might think when he heard about her efforts to contact him. What if he failed to get in touch? What if he thought she was just a woman on the make who couldn’t accept that he hadn’t wanted to see her again?
At this, Ella brightened a little. That might be the best of all possible worlds. She would have appeased her conscience by trying to contact him, but there would then be no need to involve him in her baby’s life.
Galvanised into action, she made an appointment with her doctor and went to see him the very next morning. Somehow it made her feel better to have done something really positive. Having her blood pressure taken and being checked out and told that she was perfectly healthy filled her with a feeling of hope for the future. She could do this. She would do this.
Lots of women brought up babies on their own, and some of them even ran their own businesses!
Later, she collected a cappuccino and an apple doughnut from the coffee shop near the headquarters of Cinderella-Rockerfella and realised that it was the first time she’d felt properly hungry in days. Swinging the brown paper bag from her fingers, she walked into the office and greeted Daisy with a smile, wondering why her assistant’s face looked so peculiar.
‘Are you all right, Daisy?’
Rather dramatically, Daisy started jerking her head in the direction of Ella’s office. ‘In there,’ she said in a stage whisper.
‘In where, what?’ asked Ella, confused. But her confusion quickly morphed into something else, something she could never have put a name to but which felt like terror and excitement and a sudden cold dread all swirled together as she reached for the door handle.
Drawing a deep breath, she walked into her tiny office, shocked but somehow not surprised to see the towering form of Sheikh Hassan Al Abbas silhouetted against the window.
ELLA’S heart missed a beat as the sheikh’s powerful body managed to block out most of the available light. And not just the light. It was as if he had sucked all the oxygen out of the atmosphere, making it suddenly very difficult for her to breathe. ‘Wh-what are you doing here?’ she whispered.
Hassan stared at the woman who had just walked into the cluttered office. The only colour in her pale face was the scarlet lipstick which coloured her unsmiling lips and he found himself thinking that she looked like a stranger. But she was a stranger, he reminded himself grimly, one he’d only ever seen beneath the false glittering light of chandeliers. Or naked, of course.
‘You wanted to see me, Ella,’ he said softly. ‘So here I am.’
The shock of seeing him again felt like a physical blow and Ella put her doughnut and coffee down on the desk, afraid that her trembling fingers would spill the scalding liquid. ‘I wanted to speak to you. There’s a difference.’ She met his black, empty eyes, furious with her body for the instinctive little tremble it gave. As if it was recognising that here was a man who had the power to turn her into a trembling mass of longing. Who could breathe danger into her heart. With an effort, she dragged her attention back to his sombre face. ‘Do you always turn up in someone’s office unannounced? It’s certainly an unconventional approach.’
‘Ah, but I’m an unconventional man in many ways. In others, of course, I can be rather more predictable.’ His black eyes flicked over her, thinking how tired she looked. ‘And since we didn’t make any arrangement to hook up again, I’m curious to know what it is you want?’
Ella was finding it hard to cling onto her equilibrium. His appearance here had taken her by surprise, but that wasn’t the only reason for the sudden racing of her heart. It was him. The effect he was having on her, no matter how hard she tried to remain immune to him. And seeing him in the flesh again was infinitely more powerful than studying a photograph on the Net.
The night they’d … met, he had been wearing a formal tuxedo, which flattered even the plainest-looking man. And this was a man who certainly had no need of flattery. Today he wore an expensive suit, the kind worn by successful businessmen the world over. And yet he did not seem to wear it comfortably. It seemed too constricting for the powerful lines of his body. Already, he had undone a button
