Читать книгу The Scandalous Collection - Кейт Хьюит, Пенни Джордан - Страница 40

‘I DON’T care how you do it. Just do it!’ The woman’s voice was shrill and insistent. ‘It’s my wedding day and I’ve dreamt about it for too long to make any kind of compromise.’

‘I’ll work something out,’ promised Ella, replacing the phone with a heavy sigh, which wasn’t entirely due to the latest unreasonable request from one of her high-profile clients. Since the earliest days of her thriving events company, Cinderella-Rockerfella, she’d been asked for many bizarre things, and usually she took them all in her stride. But usually she wasn’t feeling a mixture of guilt and general queasiness, the way she’d been feeling nonstop since she’d returned from her sister’s royal engagement party.

Nothing she did seemed to help. She found herself wishing she could forget the sheikh who had given her so much pleasure when he’d taken her to his bed. But what she wished even more was that she could rid herself of the nagging fear which was growing by the day. The fear which this morning had manifested itself in bringing up her breakfast only minutes after she’d eaten it.

With an effort, she forced the worrying thoughts from her head and looked up at Daisy, her assistant, an efficient twenty-two-year-old whose high energy levels had recently made Ella feel as if she was about a hundred.

‘What kind of couple wants to sit on matching thrones for their wedding ceremony, Daisy?’ she asked wearily.

‘A couple with massive egos?’ suggested Daisy with a grin. ‘But I guess that isn’t so surprising. Two music stars that huge are bound to want to make a splash, especially as they’ve sold the photo rights to Celebrity! magazine. And anyway, you couldn’t be better placed to organise something like that, could you, Ella, since your own sister is actually marrying a real-life royal!’

‘Please don’t remind me,’ said Ella with a wince.

‘Why not? Most people would be revelling in the reflected glory, yet you’ve hardly said a word about the engagement party since you got back and that was weeks ago,’ grumbled Daisy. ‘I had to read about it for myself in all the papers.’

‘Well, there you go.’ Ella realised that her fingers were trembling and she put down the black felt-tip pen with which she’d been doodling. She looked down and saw that she had actually drawn a sword by the side of her notes. What the hell did that mean? ‘Daisy, will you try to organise two golden thrones for me? Ring up that theatrical props company we sometimes use and see if they can help out. I … well, I have to go out this afternoon.’ She stood too quickly and her head spun like a merry-go-round. It had been doing a lot of that lately.

Daisy glanced at her. ‘Ella, are you okay? You’ve gone a really funny colour.’

‘No, I’m fine,’ said Ella, swallowing down the increasingly familiar taste of nausea which was rising in her throat. ‘I’ll see you later.’

Blanking the concerned look of her assistant, she walked out into the busy London street where an unseasonal shower was in full pelt and she realised too late that she wasn’t wearing her raincoat. But who cared about getting caught in the rain, or ostentatious last-minute additions to showbiz weddings, when there was something so big in your head it was beginning to dominate everything you did?

She was shivering as she took a bus to her house in Tooting. It wasn’t the most fashionable post code in town but it was well served by public transport and had the added bonus of being cheap. Living there meant she didn’t have to live in a shoebox and she’d been able to plough any spare cash into her thriving little business. The business she’d worked so hard to get off the ground, because she’d wanted to be an independent woman, determined that she would never have to rely on the whims of a man for her income or livelihood.

And the thought which was echoing round and round in her head was: What’s going to happen to your precious business now, if your worst fears are confirmed?

The house felt cold when she entered and she went straight into the bathroom where the pregnancy testing kit she’d bought was still sitting unused next to the toothpaste. For a moment she just stared at it before pulling it off the shelf with hands which were shaking, knowing that she couldn’t put off the moment of truth any longer.

Her heart was pounding as she tore open the cardboard box and as she crouched over the loo, attempting to pee onto the narrow little stick, she thought how surreal this felt. This is what millions of women all over the world have done, she told herself. Were probably doing even now. But she’d bet all the money in her purse that not one of them was doing it as the result of a one-night stand with an empty-eyed sheikh who’d left her without even bothering to say goodbye.

She didn’t need to see the blue line on the stick to know that the test was positive. She’d known that in her heart all along. Forcing herself to make a cup of hot, sweet tea, she took it into the sitting room and sat drinking it as the light began to fade from the sky. One by one, the pinpoints of stars began to speckle the sky and all she could think about was the single fact which was going to change her life for ever.

She was pregnant.

Pregnant by the sheikh.

She was going to have an unplanned baby by a man who despised her and all she stood for. Ella put down her empty teacup and closed her eyes. It didn’t really get much worse than that, did it?

Yet it was strange what tricks the mind could play. For a few weeks more, Ella pretended it wasn’t happening. She let the secret grow inside her head as well as inside her belly and she was slim enough for it not to notice. It was as if, by not telling anyone else, she could almost convince herself that it wasn’t happening. But aligned with this lack of logic was the overwhelming desire to tell someone, to unburden herself to someone who might understand.

Not her mother. Definitely not her weak, romantic mother. Not her sisters either—not if she didn’t want word to get out. And definitely not her father. Ella shuddered. Her father would go mental if he found out.

Which left Ben, her brother. Brilliant Ben, who, for all his reputation as a control-freak tycoon, was fiercely protective when it came to the women in his family. He was currently living in some splendour in a beach house on the island of Santina while he worked on a charity project. Before she had time to change her mind, Ella picked up the phone and dialled his number.

‘Ben Jackson.’

‘Ben, it’s Ella.’

The rather abrupt note in his voice gave way to one of softening affection. ‘Ella,’ he murmured. ‘Who I still haven’t quite forgiven for leaving the island in such dramatic fashion after the engagement party. Why the hell didn’t you come to the lunch the next day? I was looking forward to a catch-up.’

‘Actually, the reason I didn’t come to the lunch is sort of the same reason why I’m ringing you now.’

His voice was teasing. ‘Am I supposed to guess what that is, or are you going to cut to the chase?’

Ella swallowed, instinctively knowing that this was the kind of news no brother wanted to receive. And that there was no way of saying it which could possibly lessen its impact. ‘Ben, I’m pregnant.’

There was a pause.

‘But you don’t have a boyfriend, Ella—or at least, you didn’t the last time I spoke to you. Which happened to be at the engagement party. What’s going on?’ His voice roughened in a way she hadn’t heard it do for years. ‘Who’s the father?’

Ella felt stricken with shame, wishing that she’d never made this wretched call, knowing that she was about to fall off her sainted little-sister pedestal, big-time. But telling 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 of women brought up babies on their own, and some of them even ran their own businesses!

Later, 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.