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.
CHAPTER SIX
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 of his shirt and must have tugged impatiently at his tie. Ella suddenly became aware that beneath all the royal trappings lurked a very primitive man, and the enormity of what she was about to tell him filled her with dread.
But first it was important to establish some kind of dialogue. There were a couple of things she needed to clear up, no matter what happened afterwards, because surely the answers to her questions would determine just how he viewed women in general, and her in particular.
‘So tell me, Hassan,’ she said in a low voice. ‘Do you always leave a woman’s bed in the middle of the night, without even bothering to say goodbye to her?’
He was surprised by her directness and more than a little irritated by her lack of remorse. Didn’t she feel even a shred of shame over what had happened? he wondered. Or were one-night stands a regular occurrence in her life? His jaw tightened, unwilling to accept that he had chosen a woman who spread her favours freely, and yet, given her background, why was he so surprised?
‘I decided that leaving when I did was the best form of damage limitation,’ he said flatly.
‘Excuse me? Did you say damage limitation?’
‘Oh, come on. Let’s not dress it up to be something it wasn’t,’ he said, shrugging off her outrage. ‘It was great sex—we both know that—but under the circumstances, it was ill-advised. It wasn’t going anywhere. It never could. So what would have been the point in prolonging it?’
‘Surely good manners might have prompted you to say some sort of goodbye?’
He gave a short laugh. ‘I think we abandoned good manners some time after you threw champagne in my face.’
‘And they were certainly a distant memory by the time you ripped my dress off.’
Hassan’s mouth hardened, because her defiant words were exciting him. And this was exactly what he hadn’t wanted: to be reminded of just how completely he had fallen victim to her vixen charms. He remembered the soft yield of her bare breasts beneath his calloused fingers and felt a savage jerk of lust, along with a stab of self-contempt. For what use was a man who could defeat his enemies in battle if he then allowed himself to weaken in the arms of a woman he despised?
‘You got the replacement dress and underwear I sent?’
‘Yes, I got them,’ she snapped. ‘I happened to be wearing them when I bumped into Queen Zoe in the palace corridors on my way out.’
He winced. ‘What did she say?’
‘Oh, she’s too polite to say anything much, although her face was a picture. Especially when I told her that I’d spent the night with you.’
Hassan looked at her in horror. ‘You told her you spent the night with me?’
Briefly, Ella allowed herself to enjoy his discomfiture until she reminded herself that this was not about scoring points. ‘No, of course I didn’t tell her. But I wish I had. The high and mighty sheikh who’d made no secret of his contempt for the Jacksons, actually ending up in bed with one of them! That would have provided plenty of fuel for the gossips, wouldn’t it?’
For a moment, Hassan almost smiled, because nobody could deny that she had spirit as well as beauty, and no woman had ever spoken to him in such a way before. If she was not who she was then he might have enjoyed a short and mutually satisfying affair with her, laying down his usual ground rules of no commitment before it commenced.
But that was not going to happen.
Not with Ella Jackson.
He looked around her office, his mouth flattening with distaste as he took in its garish appearance. It was as tacky as he’d imagined when the investigator he’d hired had told him that she ran an events company called Cinderella-Rockerfella.
The walls were covered with glossy photos of events she had presumably organised—ghastly montages of occasions which looked like the height of vulgarity. There was an enormous
