and respect for her groom. Why, she might as well have taken her vows naked, he thought in disgust, wondering how Ella could bear to work for such people.
Because she’s a Jackson, that’s why. She is one of these people.
‘So why were you trying to contact me?’ he questioned softly.
His question brought reality crashing back into her thoughts and Ella’s heart began to pound. ‘No ideas?’
‘Plenty.’ He looked into her eyes and remembered thrusting into her so deep that it felt as if he was in danger of losing himself in the process.
‘Oh?’
‘Maybe you decided your night with me was so hot that you wanted a repeat of it. I wouldn’t blame you if you did.’
Ella was appalled at her answering stab of desire and even more appalled by his out-and-out arrogance. ‘I try never to make the same mistake twice, Hassan. Any other suggestions?’
Dark clouds drifted into his mind. He made himself say it as a safeguard. In the same way that people often forced themselves to confront a worst-case scenario, thinking that if they did, it meant it would never come true.
‘Or our ill-judged liaison has left us with something other than regrets.’
She stared at him, because didn’t his words make what she was about to tell him even more difficult? ‘That’s the most cold-hearted description I’ve ever heard,’ she whispered.
Her lack of denial unsettled him but Hassan kept his nerve, the same way he’d kept it when someone had once held the blade of a knife to his throat. In that moment, he had thought he was going to die. But he hadn’t died, had he? He had defied the odds and lived to fight another day. ‘That’s because I am a cold-hearted man, Ella. Be in no doubt of that. And I haven’t come here to play guessing games. What is it that you want to say to me?’
‘That you’re right!’ She swallowed as she forced out the bitter truth. ‘That we have been left with something—or rather, I have.’ She looked into the narrowed black eyes and spoke in a low voice. ‘I’m having a baby, Hassan.’
Hassan swallowed, remembering the way that the knife blade had nicked against his skin, a wound made to warn him rather than to slay him. But the flesh had healed, hadn’t it? While this … this …
This would not heal!
He took a step towards her, his voice low and urgent, his eyes locking on hers as if looking for the essential flaw in her argument. ‘But not necessarily my baby?’
‘Of course it’s your baby!’
‘There’s no of course about it,’ he denied as the rush of blood to his head threatened to deafen him. ‘You fell into my bed with a speed which is unequalled—even in my experience. How am I to know that you don’t do that with a different man every night of the week?’
His words hurt, as no doubt he intended them to, but Ella didn’t show it. She forced herself to be logical rather than emotional, the way she’d had to be for most of her life. Because could she really blame him for jumping to such a conclusion, when all he had was the evidence of how she’d behaved?
She realised that he was lashing out at her because of what she’d just told him. That he was scared. Because what man would jump for joy at being informed that a total stranger was having their baby? He probably thought she was trying to railroad him into marriage or commitment—he was certainly arrogant enough for that. Well, maybe it was time to reassure him that she could manage perfectly well on her own.
‘Because actually, I don’t sleep around, though of course you’re perfectly at liberty not to believe me,’ she said quietly.
‘You made an exception just for me, did you?’
‘There’s no need for false modesty, Hassan. I’m sure plenty of women have made an exception for you in the past.’ But stupidly, that hurt too. Why on earth should it hurt to think of him in bed with other women? She sucked in a deep breath. ‘I realise this has come as a shock to you—’
‘Oh, the mistress of all understatement!’ he mocked, because somehow mockery was easier than having to acknowledge that what she said was true. And that even as she stood there in her blue silk dress, with her scarlet lips trembling, his child was growing deep inside her.
‘But I want you to know that I am planning to have this baby and to keep it and to … to love it.’ She saw his mouth twist with derision and she guessed what he thought was about to follow. ‘And I’m not asking you for anything.’
He gave a cynical laugh. ‘That really would be a first. So why bother telling me?’
‘Because you’re the father and I felt it was my duty to let you know.’
Hassan stilled as he plucked one word from her breathless sentence.
Duty.
It was a word which had made him the man he was. A word his own mother had rejected, causing irreparable damage to their royal house and wrecking three lives in the process. Wasn’t it now his duty to stand by and support this woman, no matter how much he abhorred the idea?
‘This is like some bad dream,’ he said suddenly.
Ella nodded. Because hadn’t she thought exactly the same? ‘It came as a shock to me too,’ she admitted.
He shook his head. ‘But I made sure that I was careful.’
‘I know you did.’
He wondered how it could have happened and then remembered the way his hands had trembled as he had pulled on the protection…. ‘Just not careful enough,’ he said bitterly as he looked into her ice-blue eyes. ‘Call it weakness—yes, why don’t we call it weakness?—but having you writhing all over my bed made my attention to detail a little lacking! I’d been away fighting a war and it was a long time since I’d been with a woman. What’s your excuse?’
‘My excuse is that I had a momentary lapse of judgement,’ she said, not wanting to tell him that he had blown her away. Because wouldn’t that make him even more arrogant and unreasonable? ‘As it happens, I’m pretty much a novice when it comes to sex—’
‘You weren’t acting much like a novice that night.’
‘Maybe that has more to do with your breadth of experience rather than my lack of it,’ she answered. ‘There’s no point in us arguing about it. I just felt you had a right to know that you’d fathered a child. And now you do. I’ve discharged my duty. So if you wouldn’t mind leaving, I really do have work to get on with.’
He read defiance in her eyes. It was not an emotion he encountered very often and, to his surprise, he realised that she meant it. That she was not posturing or making empty threats in order to impress him—that she actually wanted him to leave!
The contrary side of his nature made him want to rebel against a woman trying to dictate what his behaviour should be. But so did something else. He felt the sudden twisting of his gut as a rush of unwanted emotion hit him. For a moment, the pain of it took him back to a time he had
