to find our meeting making headlines in tomorrow’s newspapers.’
Ella heard the undeniable command in his voice and part of her wanted to rebel against it. He was so unashamedly autocratic, she thought. So completely used to getting his own way. If she went to his hotel suite then wouldn’t that allow him to call the shots? She didn’t know what he was going to say but she knew she needed all her wits about her, and maybe the best way of ensuring that was to be on home territory.
‘You can come to my house instead,’ she said. ‘Get the address from Daisy on your way out. I’ll see you there at nine, but you’d better have eaten something first. I’m not planning on making you dinner.’
He paused for a moment as he went to pass her, studying the dark spill of her silken hair and the scarlet tremble of her lips. The desire to kiss her was overwhelming. But he fought it as he had fought so much else in his life.
‘I’ll be there,’ he said softly, ignoring the dark dilatation of her eyes as he walked out of the office without another word.
WITH his bodyguards sitting grim-faced in two waiting cars, Hassan rang the doorbell, briefly wondering if he’d got the wrong address. He frowned. This neighbourhood was like no other he’d ever seen and Ella’s house was in a row of other small houses which looked directly onto a busy main road.
He didn’t know anyone who lived in a place like this—the kind of place you lived in when you didn’t have a lot of money to splash around. And yet Ella Jackson had blended in perfectly at the royal engagement party in her sparkling silver dress, her sky-high heels and those gleaming scarlet lips. He’d thought she’d be living somewhere trashy and flashy, displaying the complete lack of taste which had been on show in her office today. Not in this rather ordinary little house which was situated on the wrong side of town.
The door opened and Ella stood there, confounding yet another of his preconceptions. Gone was the silk and the gloss. With her shiny hair tugged into a ponytail, she was wearing a plain white T-shirt and faded blue jeans which emphasised the blueness of her eyes. He frowned. Gone too was that shiny red lipstick which drew attention to the luscious mouth which made a man have sinful thoughts, no matter how hard he tried not to. She was scarcely recognisable from the slick party girl he’d met, and for a moment, he felt disorientated, as if she had suddenly produced some low-key twin sister.
‘This is where you live?’ he questioned slowly.
‘No, I thought I’d rent the place out in order to impress you, but I can see that I’ve failed.’ She pulled the door open and ushered him in, stupidly unprepared for the tingling response of her body as she looked up at him. ‘Yes, it’s where I live, Hassan. Why, did you think I’d be living in some over-the-top boudoir, all gilt and ceiling mirrors and shaggy fur rugs lying all over the place?’
Actually, this was so close to what he had been thinking that for a moment he didn’t answer. Instead he stepped into the small hallway, shutting the door behind him. From there he followed the blue-jeaned sway of her bottom into what should have been the sitting room.
Except that this wasn’t what it seemed either. The surprisingly large space contained a sofa and a couple of chairs, but these were all bunched up at one end, as if they were nothing but an afterthought. Pride of place had been given instead to an easel, on which stood a half-finished painting of a naked man. It looked pretty good from where Hassan stood but his critical judgment was suspended as he made the inevitable comparison. He emerged from that with his ego satisfied but his morals outraged by the thought that she must have spent time studying another man’s genitals.
‘Who is this?’ he demanded furiously.
‘That’s none of your business.’
‘On the contrary.’ His eyes glittered. ‘You carry the child of the sheikh and that makes it my business! Who is he?’
Ella heard the control-freak quality in his voice and it set off more warning bells in her head. She’d been wondering how this meeting was going to proceed and now she had her first indication. Was he going to play high-handed and possessive with all that ‘child of the sheikh’ stuff? Her first instinct was to tell him to go to hell but some deep-rooted protectiveness told her not to inflame him. That he was not a man to make an enemy of, especially in these circumstances.
‘He’s an architectural student who poses in my life-drawing class.’
‘You have had sex with him?’
‘Of course I haven’t had sex with him! I hardly know—’ Too late she stopped herself as she realised the irony of her words, but not before a look of bitter triumph had filled his empty eyes with a dark light.
‘You hardly know him?’ he finished acidly. ‘You hardly knew me either, but that didn’t stop you opening up your milky-pale thighs for me, did it, Ella?’
Ella bit back the angry retort which hovered on her lips, telling herself that it didn’t matter. He was here to talk about the baby and that was the only thing which mattered.
‘We could waste a lot of time insulting each other, but I’m too tired to want to. And that’s not why you’re here, is it?’ She flashed him a polite smile. ‘So in the spirit of trying to conduct this conversation in a civilised way, perhaps you’d like to sit down?’
‘No, I’ll stand, thanks.’ For the first time in a long while, he realised that he had no game plan to follow, and no idea of how to get what he wanted from this woman. Although ironically, he still wasn’t quite sure what he wanted.
Restlessly, he went to look out of the window, just as a large red bus lumbered to a halt and discharged a group of teenagers who stood in noisy conversation right outside. When he turned back to face her, his expression was as perplexed as the grim faces of his waiting bodyguards. ‘Why do you live in a place like this, Ella?’
‘Why do you think? Because I like the sound of the traffic?’ She met his grim expression and shrugged. ‘It’s what I can afford, Hassan, that’s why. Any available money I have goes straight back into the business, rather than being wasted on paying a high rent.’
‘Your father doesn’t give you an allowance?’
Ella almost laughed out loud, wondering what kind of planet he was on. Or maybe it was a mark of her father’s chameleon-like qualities that he could still manage to convince the world that there was money in the family.
‘No. I don’t get anything from my father.’
He heard the acid note which had tinged her voice and for the second time that day he noticed the faint blue shadows beneath her eyes. Didn’t pregnant women suffer excessively from fatigue? A sudden pang of guilt washed over him. ‘Perhaps we will sit after all,’ he said unexpectedly, putting his hand on the small of her back and guiding her towards one of the chairs. ‘You look a little tired.’
Ella didn’t have the energy to object, but the small act of kindness left her feeling dangerously vulnerable. And she was tired. All the emotions which had accumulated over the past few weeks had left her so wrung out that it was as much as she could do not to put her head in her hands and weep.
She thought about all the plans
