someone made it real, and that was the sorry truth of it—it was real. She couldn’t hide from the reality any longer. And it was pointless trying to lie or to make the truth more palatable by putting some kind of gloss on it. Dreading her brother’s reaction to her next piece of news, she licked her lips.
‘His name is Hassan Al Abbas.’
There was another brief silence, and when he spoke, Ben’s voice had taken on an entirely different tone. ‘The sheikh?’
‘That’s the one.’
‘You’re having the baby of one of the most powerful men in the Middle East?’
Ella shivered. It sounded even more daunting when he put it like that. ‘So it would seem.’ She heard her brother utter a few terse expletives. ‘Ben, don’t swear!’
‘What do you expect me to do?’ he retorted savagely. ‘Have you thought about what you’re letting yourself in for? Don’t you know what a reputation he has? Hell, Ella, I didn’t even know you two were an item.’
‘We’re not!’ she put in fiercely. ‘We are most emphatically not. We … we met. We fought and then … then …’
‘I think I can work out the rest for myself,’
he said quickly. ‘The question is what you’re going to do about it?’
Ella’s hand strayed to her stomach. A still-flat stomach, it was true, but not for much longer. Deep inside her was growing a tiny embryo which was half that black-eyed brute of a man, but also half her. Half Jackson. Bobby and Julie’s first grandchild. A first nephew or niece for her brothers and sisters. A new life about to enter her crazy and dysfunctional family. A terrible pain clutched at her heart as she thought of the heavy burden of responsibility which now hung over her, but knowing, too, that there was only one thing she could do. And fast following on that pain came a powerful wave of protectiveness. A determination that something good would come out of this whole mess.
‘I’m going to keep the baby,’ she said fiercely.
‘Good.’ Ben let out a long and ragged sigh. ‘That’s good. And what about Al Abbas? What does he say about it all?’
‘I haven’t told him. And he won’t want to be the father, Ben.’ Her voice was flat as she remembered the way he’d snuck out of her bed, like a thief in the middle of the night. ‘He doesn’t even like me!’
There was a pause. ‘So are you going to tell him?’
Again, she thought of Hassan. Not the man who had seduced her with such ease and shown her what true pleasure could be. But the other side of that same man. She remembered the strange, cold emptiness she’d seen in his eyes and a shiver rippled down her spine. ‘I don’t know,’ she said desperately.
‘You know that it’ll be irrevocable once you do, and that you’ll have little control over what happens next?’ he warned. ‘That not only is he unimaginably wealthy, he is also an autocrat. Men like that are possessive about what is theirs, and he will see this baby as belonging to him. He’s ruthless, sis—make no mistake about that.’
Ben’s words told her nothing she didn’t already know and part of her wanted to steer clear of Hassan in order to protect herself and her baby. Ella felt the drumming of her heart as she worked out what she wanted to do. If she could wave a magic wand, it would be to erase all memory of the heartless sheikh from her life. But this wasn’t just about her any more, was it? There 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
