Читать книгу The Santina Crown Collection - Кейт Хьюит, Пенни Джордан - Страница 32

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 blown-up wedding photo of a couple he vaguely recognised, an international footballer and his bride. That the woman was wearing a gown which seemed to reveal most of her surgically enhanced breasts seemed to Hassan to mock at the very sanctity of marriage 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 buried deeper than the most precious artifacts which surrounded his father’s tomb. The time when his mother had walked away to be with the man she ‘loved.’ Leaving behind a small and confused little boy who had vowed fiercely never to allow himself to be hurt as his father had been …

And then the dark mist of memory cleared and he found himself staring into the ice-blue eyes of Ella Jackson.

She was having his baby, he realised incredulously. And therefore this was not just any baby. The child she carried was the son or daughter of the sheikh. And it was his. His.

He had once vowed never to marry. He had told his younger brother that one day the sheikhdom would be his—for no child would ever spring from the loins of Hassan Al Abbas. Blighted by the pain he had felt at his mother’s desertion, he had known that fatherhood would never be on his agenda, but now suddenly it was.

His mouth hardened and the hands which had hung by the sides of his powerful thighs now clenched into fists, because he recognised in that instant that what Ella Jackson had told him had changed his life irrevocably. In that moment, all his plans and certainties underwent a dramatic transformation and he knew what he must do. More importantly, what he must not do. He would not do as his own mother had done. He would not turn his back on his own flesh and blood.

He leaned towards her. ‘I’m not going anywhere. We need to talk,’ he said grimly.

She eyed him warily, his disturbing proximity reminding her that he was dangerous in more ways than one. ‘I thought we’d said everything there was to say.’

‘Are you kidding? We haven’t even touched the surface, Ella. Or did you think you could get away with telling me that you’re having my child and I would just walk away and leave you to get on with it?’

Yes, maybe she had. Maybe she had been that stupid and naive. Maybe she’d hoped that fate, or his reluctance to acknowledge his baby, would have taken him out of her life for good. But not any more. There was no mistaking the dark determination which had made his face look even more intimidating and something about his stance made her realise there was trouble ahead. The phone on her desk began to ring and automatically Ella reached out her hand to answer it.

‘Leave it,’ he bit out.

‘I can’t leave it. It’s my—’

‘I said, leave it. Let the other girl answer it.’

Their eyes met in silent combat as the phone rang six times before Daisy picked it up in the outer office and Ella knew this was a fight she would not win. Because how could she possibly conduct a business conversation with one of her clients under the grim gaze of the sheikh? She wouldn’t trust him not to snatch the phone right out of her hand and slam it down. And what if Daisy heard them arguing through the thin walls? ‘Okay, I’ll talk to you,’ she conceded wearily. ‘But not now and not here. I’ll meet you later, when I’ve finished work.’

‘Good.’ He held her gaze for a moment. ‘Come and have dinner in my hotel suite.’

She shook her head. ‘There’s no way I’m coming to your hotel.’

‘No?’ He saw the parting of her luscious scarlet lips and felt an unwilling kick of lust. But wouldn’t bedding her only be counter-productive to the idea which was slowly forming in his mind? An idea he would need to broach very carefully in order to get her to accept it …

‘Then where else do you suggest?’ he continued. ‘If we have what will inevitably be a difficult conversation in a crowded restaurant, we risk being overheard by waiters or other diners. And I don’t want to find our meeting making headlines in tomorrow’s newspapers.’

Ella heard the undeniable command in his voice and part of her wanted to rebel against it. He was so unashamedly autocratic, she thought. So completely used to getting his own way. If she went to his hotel suite then wouldn’t that allow him to call the shots? She didn’t know what he was going to say but she knew she needed all her wits about her, and maybe the best way of ensuring that was to be on home territory.

‘You can come to my house instead,’ she said. ‘Get the address from Daisy on your way out. I’ll see you there at nine, but you’d better have eaten something first. I’m not planning on making you dinner.’

He paused for a moment as he went to pass her, studying the dark spill of her silken hair and the scarlet tremble of her lips. The desire to kiss her was overwhelming. But he fought it as he had fought so much else in his life.

‘I’ll be there,’ he said softly, ignoring the dark dilatation of her eyes as he walked out of the office without another word.