exactly the kind of vulgar attitude I would have expected from a family such as yours, and one which completely vindicates my belief about your general unsuitability to be mixing in royal circles. I rest my case.’
It wasn’t so much the hateful things he was saying which made Ella’s blood boil, but the sanctimonious way he was saying them. As if he was in the right and she was in the wrong! As if he was allowed to say what he pleased and there wasn’t a thing she could do about it. Her blood was pounding in her veins as she felt her rage rise, and an odd kind of hurt and frustration come bubbling to the surface.
People were staring at them quite openly now, but she didn’t care.
‘Unsuitability?’ she declared. ‘I’ll show you unsuitability if you want!’ Almost without thinking, she grabbed a glass of champagne from a passing waitress and tossed it over his dark, mocking face before turning to push her way through the throng of openmouthed spectators.
CHAPTER TWO
FOR a moment Hassan was frozen into shocked immobility, scarcely able to believe what had just happened. The impudent minx of a Jackson girl had thrown champagne over him!
Angrily, he wiped both cheeks, aware that people were staring at him, their voices beginning to rise in excited chatter above the brief, stunned silence which had followed their very public row. But he barely paid them any attention. He was too busy watching the tottering sway of ‘Cinderella’ Jackson’s silver-clad bottom as she moved through the ballroom, as swiftly as her ridiculously high heels would allow.
He could see his bodyguard fixing him with a questioning look, as if seeking permission to go after her and give her a crash course in royal protocol. But Hassan gave a decisive shake of his head as a cold realisation crept over him.
How dare she humiliate him in such a way? And in public! Why, if a man in his own country had done such a thing, he would have been thrown immediately into the city jail!
His mouth hardening into a grim line, he began to follow her, his long stride quickly covering the distance between them. Now he was close enough to hear the clatter of her high heels on the marble floor and see the gleam of light as it highlighted the curve of her silver-beaded bottom. He saw her glance over her shoulder, her blue eyes widening when she saw him behind her, and a brief sensation of anticipation rippled over his skin as she increased her speed.
Silently, he pursued her, pleased when she briefly hesitated between two corridors—one wide and one narrow. She wouldn’t have a clue where she was going, he thought with satisfaction, whereas he knew well the labyrinth network of passageways which comprised the Santina palace. Hadn’t he and Alex played hide-and-seek in them often enough when they were children?
She chose the narrower passage and he continued to shadow her, knowing that he could easily have caught up with her there and then but he was enjoying the thrill of the chase too much to want to end it. It was like being back in battle, his senses honed and heightened as he pursued his quarry….
Only when the main body of the palace had retreated and the corridors were bare of servants did he surge forward. She whirled round as he backed her into a corner, her breath coming in short little pants. Her abundant curls were spilling down over the silver dress, one thigh was pushed forward as if to showcase its honed perfection, and he thought that he had never seen a woman look so wild and so wanton.
‘Got you,’ he said, his voice a triumphant murmur, but he didn’t touch her.
Ella stared at him, her heart pounding so hard that it felt as if it was about to leap out of her chest. She was hot and out of breath. Running in these heels had been a stupid thing to try to do because her feet now felt as if they were on fire. What had possessed her to react like that? To dare to chuck a drink over a man who was now towering above her looking like the devil incarnate, a patch of his pristine white shirt clinging wetly to his chest. A man who was different from every other man she’d ever met. Well, she had done it, and now she just had to keep her nerve.
‘You don’t scare me!’ she blurted out, but she wondered how convincing her words were as she met emptiness of his eyes.
‘Don’t I?’ Hassan leaned in a little. ‘Then maybe I need to try a little harder. Most people would be pretty scared of my reaction if they’d done what you’ve just done.’ He observed her rapid breathing which was causing the silver beads over her breasts to shimmer in a provocative sway. And suddenly it was difficult to remember just why he was so angry. He swallowed, so unbearably turned on that for a moment he could not speak. ‘That was some scene you created back there.’
Ella told herself that she ought to tread carefully. That she was dealing with someone who had danger written all over him. Someone who she, with her laughable lack of experience, didn’t have a clue how to deal with. The voice of reason was telling her to try to make it right between them, yet the apology she knew she really ought to make stayed stubbornly unspoken. For how could she forget those harsh things he’d said?
‘Who cares about a scene?’ she questioned stubbornly.
He met the defiance in her ice-blue eyes. ‘Clearly you don’t, but then you don’t have any reputation to wreck, do you?’
Actually, she did. She’d worked hard to build her own business and she survived on the income it provided. But the irony was that causing a scene with the sheikh was likely to bring new customers flocking to her, instead of taking their custom elsewhere. The fact that she was even mixing with royals would be great publicity. A bit of scandal never seemed to affect her client base. Hadn’t she noticed a definite growth in business whenever her father’s face was splashed all over the papers, no matter how dodgy the story? ‘And you do, I suppose?’
‘Of course I do!’ he snapped. ‘I am the ruler of a desert kingdom and my word is law. In fact, I make the laws.’
‘Wow! Mr. Powerful,’ she mocked.
Her insolence was turning him on almost as much as it was infuriating him. He felt a muscle working in his cheek and an even more insistent throbbing at his groin. ‘And I have people who look up to me who will not enjoy reading that their king had champagne flung at him by a brazen English nobody.’
‘I should have thought that people would have been used to your flings by now!’ she returned, and for one brief moment she thought she saw the edges of his lips tilt in the beginning of a smile. But it quickly disappeared and so did her small moment of triumph as she reminded herself that this man was the enemy. ‘Anyway, you should have thought about that before you started laying into my family.’
‘By telling the truth, you mean?’
‘It’s not—’
‘Oh, please, spare me the empty defence!’ His eyes took on a look of challenge. ‘You’re denying that your father is no stranger to the bankruptcy court? Or that your sister’s awful singing brought the house down, but not in a good way? Or that the Crown Prince has dumped his long-term girlfriend and fiancée in order to marry your other sister?’
Ella gritted her teeth. ‘If only there was another waitress nearby, I’d happily upend another drink all over you!’
‘Would you now?’ He tilted his head to one side and studied her. ‘And do you make a habit of resorting to playground tactics?’
‘Only if I’m forced to deal with the class bully!’ Ella stared
