Читать книгу Crowned For The Sheikh's Baby: Crowned for the Sheikh's Baby - Melanie Milburne, Melanie Milburne - Страница 16

CHAPTER FOUR

‘SO WHEN WERE you planning to tell me?’

Swallowing down the nausea which was rising in her throat, Hannah looked at her little sister, trying not to react to the accusing stare which had accompanied her accusing words. Trying to convince herself that Tamsyn couldn’t possibly know—not when she’d only just found out herself.

‘Tell you what?’ she questioned weakly.

‘About your pregnancy, of course,’ hissed Tamsyn. ‘Or were you planning to keep it a great big secret until you were just about to pop?’

Hannah swallowed again, only this time the saltiness in her throat felt suspiciously like the taste of tears—and she’d convinced herself she wasn’t going to cry. She wasn’t, she thought fiercely. Because tears wouldn’t solve anything. She’d learnt that the hard way.

‘How did you know?’ she whispered.

‘Hello? Are you serious?’ Tamsyn filled up the kettle, not appearing to notice that she was splashing water all over Hannah’s carefully polished tiles. ‘It must be obvious to everyone.’

‘Nobody at the Granchester knows,’ said Hannah quickly.

‘Really? Well, maybe the other staff don’t have eyes in their heads or maybe I just know you better than anyone, but it’s as obvious to me as the nose on your face. Look at you, Hannah—your breasts are enormous and your complexion looks green...’

‘Thanks,’ said Hannah tonelessly.

‘I can’t believe it. You, of all people.’

‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

Tamsyn shrugged. ‘You’re the one who was always so good. Who never put a foot wrong.’

Hannah didn’t answer, just stared up into her sister’s bewildered face. It was true. She’d been the model child. The peacemaker. The quiet one who had learnt that saying as little as possible and pretending the bad stuff wasn’t happening was the best way for things to get back to normal. Whatever normal was. But this was one situation where pretending it wasn’t happening wasn’t going to work.

‘So who’s the daddy, Hannah?’ continued Tamsyn. ‘I didn’t even realise you were in a relationship.’

Because she wasn’t in a relationship, that was why. Hannah leaned back in the armchair and closed her eyes, not wanting to betray her fear, knowing that sooner or later she was going to have to come clean. To say the words out loud. Because words would make it real. They would confirm what up until now had just been a nagging fear.

She was pregnant.

She was carrying the desert King’s child beneath her thundering heart.

Her mind took her back to that crazy night when Kulal had laid her down on that narrow single bed, his black eyes full of intent as he had run a careless thumb over her thrusting nipple. What had happened next had seemed inevitable—but that wasn’t really true. She could have stopped him. He’d given her every opportunity to do so, but she had just carried on regardless. She had broken every rule in the book—and she wasn’t just thinking about the Granchester’s strict policy of not fraternising with guests. Hadn’t she clung onto her virginity as if it was something very precious? Hadn’t it been a big deal for her, having seen what the fallout from casual sex could be? While most women her age seemed content to be free with their bodies, Hannah had been the opposite—as prim as a woman from a different age.

And she had surrendered all that innocence to a man who had simply taken it as his due! Who afterwards had looked at the ceiling with a reflective look on his hawk-like features.

‘I’ve never done it in such a narrow bed before,’ he had observed thoughtfully, his fingers sliding between her thighs and easing them apart. ‘I think it adds a certain something.’

But even that arrogant boast hadn’t been enough to kill her hunger for him. Instead, she had just turned to him with silent invitation in her eyes and he’d done it to her all over again. And again. She remembered the intensity of feelings which had seemed to explode inside her, like a bomb which been waiting a long time to be detonated. Was that why she had responded like someone she didn’t really know—showing a side of herself she hadn’t realised existed? Like a wildcat, she thought guiltily. Like...

She remembered what he’d said, just before the first time.

‘You want this, Hannah?’

‘Yes.’

‘And so do I. But it’s one night only—do you understand? Not just because I am a king and you a chambermaid, and our positions in life are so incompatible. The truth is that I’ve just come out of a relationship and I’m not looking for another one. If you want more than that, I cannot give it to you and I’ll walk out of this room right now and leave you alone, no matter how hard I might find it.’

But Hannah had been powerless to resist him. How could she have resisted him when just looking into those gleaming black eyes had made her want to melt?

‘One night is fine with me,’ she had whispered back.

‘So who’s the daddy?’ repeated Tamsyn, cutting impatiently into Hannah’s uncomfortable thoughts.

And that was when Hannah realised that the tables were turned for the first time in their lives. That Tamsyn, for all her wildness, had never presented with a problem as big as this. A problem which seemed insurmountable. Which had made her thoughts spin with increasing desperation, ever since she’d first seen that blue line on the pregnancy test.

‘You won’t be able to keep it a secret for ever, you know.’ Tamsyn poured boiling water into the teapot before looking up. ‘Is it that bloke who works in the accounts department—the one you got off with at the Christmas party?’

Hannah shuddered. No way. That particular encounter had ended humiliatingly when he’d shoved his hand up her jumper and she’d jumped away and told him she didn’t want sex in the stationery cupboard, and he had sneered and told her she was fat and frigid.

She certainly hadn’t jumped away in horror when Kulal had touched her, had she?

But she knew Tamsyn was right. She couldn’t keep it a secret. She had no right to do that. And wasn’t the truth of it that if she disregarded her thoughtless and stupid behaviour... She swallowed again. If she thought about the reality rather than the repercussions—then she couldn’t deny the unexpected sense of excitement which was bubbling away inside her. She was going to have a baby and she would love and protect that baby with all her heart, just as she’d done for her little sister—no matter what obstacles lay ahead.

‘His name is Kulal.’ For the first time since she’d lain in his arms she said his name out loud and even as she uttered it, she thought how bizarre it was that her very first lover should have been the influential desert King.

‘Nice name,’ said Tamsyn approvingly. ‘What’s he like?’

And here it was—in all its unvarnished and frankly unbelievable truth.

‘He’s...well, he’s very powerful and dynamic.’

‘Really?’

She heard the doubt in Tamsyn’s voice which she couldn’t quite disguise and, for the first time in her life, Hannah wasn’t sure how to respond. Because she had always been the one who came armed with words of wisdom. Words to soothe and comfort. There hadn’t been a single bad situation during their growing up which she hadn’t felt equipped to deal with.

Until now.

Had she been guilty of thinking she was so clever—so invulnerable—that she would never find herself in a situation like this? Well, here was reality—about to teach her the hardest lesson of all.

‘He’s a sheikh,’ she said.

Tamsyn screwed up her face. ‘What are you talking about?’

Hannah swallowed. ‘The father of my baby. He’s a...’ She cleared her throat because not only did it sound unbelievable—it also sounded slightly grandiose. ‘A desert king,’ she finished quietly.

She could see that Tamsyn was trying not to laugh, but then the gravity of the situation must have hit her and the smile was wiped from her sister’s wide mouth. ‘This is no joking matter,’ she said crossly.

‘I’m not joking—he is a desert king.’

‘Hannah.’ Tamsyn glared. ‘You’re not experienced. You don’t realise what men are like. They say all kinds of things when they’re trying to get a woman to—’

‘He is!’ declared Hannah, with an uncharacteristic burst of fervour because usually, she trod carefully where Tamsyn was concerned. ‘He’s called Sheikh Kulal Al Diya and he’s the King of Zahristan.’

‘Good...grief.’ There was a pause and then, the tea-making forgotten, Tamsyn slumped against the sink, her eyes wide. ‘Not...not the one in the papers who was described as—’

‘One of the world’s most eligible bachelors?’ supplied Hannah. ‘Yes, that’s him.’

‘But...how? I mean, how?’

The question was well-meant, but it hurt. Because Tamsyn’s incredulity said a lot. It said: how could someone like Kulal have possibly become involved with a woman like her? Yet Hannah was in no position to criticise her sister’s disbelief, when she felt pretty much that way herself.

‘He needed a partner to take to a fancy party.’

‘And he chose you?’

Hannah drew her shoulders back and spoke to Tamsyn with uncharacteristic coolness. ‘Yes, he did. I was working for him.’

‘As a chambermaid?’

‘As a chambermaid,’ Hannah agreed tightly. ‘I was assigned to work solely for him. Sometimes we used to chat about stuff. We got on quite...well.’

Tamsyn gave a raucous laugh. ‘I’ll say. So you went off to a party with him and...?’

‘I’m not going to spell it out for you, Tamsyn—it’s pretty obvious what happened.’

Tamsyn looked momentarily surprised—as if this new and rather bolshie sister, who usually trod so carefully, was taking a little getting used to. She nodded. ‘So what are you planning to do?’

Hannah hesitated before answering because this was the bit she still wasn’t quite clear about. Because the moment she told him, she would lose control over the situation. Instinct told her that. Kulal wasn’t just a powerful man—he was also a desert king and weren’t royals notoriously possessive about their heirs? The truth was that she didn’t know how he would respond because she didn’t really know him. He might try to take control of her and the baby. He might deny all responsibility and send her packing. In many ways, it would be easier all round if she just crept away and brought up the baby on her own without bothering to tell him.

A long sigh escaped from her lips. It would be easier, yes—but deep down she knew she couldn’t go through with it. Because Hannah had grown up never knowing or meeting her father, and she knew all about the huge emotional hole that could leave at the centre of a child’s existence. There were risks involved in letting him know—of course there were—but these were risks she had to take.

‘I’m going to tell him, of course,’ she said. ‘As soon as you’ve gone, I’m going to telephone him.’

The only problem being that she didn’t actually have a number for him, because he hadn’t given her one. Well, why would he, when he’d never been intending to see her again? There had been one final, lingering kiss and Hannah, completely exhausted after their energetic night, had fallen into a deep sleep. And when she’d woken up, he was gone. The penthouse suite along the corridor had been cleared of all evidence that Kulal had stayed there. The bodyguards had disappeared and so had the Sheikh’s luggage. Even the fancy dress and priceless necklace were gone, presumably on their way back to the stylist. It might have all been a dream, were it not for the pleasurable aching of her body. And yet she had still been suffering from some kind of delusion, hadn’t she? There had still been a stupid part of her which had wondered if he might have left her a note or something.

But whisking her way around his suite—supposedly giving it the most thorough cleaning of its life—had failed to produce any kind of sentiment that Kulal Al Diya would ever give her another thought. Hannah had felt flat—there was no denying it. It had been the most spectacular introduction to sex and now she was going to have to resign herself to her usual frigid life. Yet it had been more than that. In his arms, she had felt like a woman who was capable of anything. He had been tender with her. And passionate. In fact, he had been everything a woman dreamt a man could be.

Maybe it was easy to be that way when you knew you were never going to see someone again. When you knew that you weren’t even going to have to speak to them in the morning. She told herself she should be grateful he’d just crept away in the early hours, because the reality of waking up in that cramped staff bedroom would have been embarrassing. Would she have boiled the electric kettle which was jammed onto one of the shelves and offered to make him a mug of herb tea? Then watched as he put on his clothes and tried to make his escape as quickly as possible?

She’d tried to feel indignant that he’d beat such a hasty retreat, but she couldn’t quite bring herself to be angry with him. Had she somehow been aware—on a deep, subliminal level—that the cells of his child were already multiplying rapidly inside her? Was that why she found it so difficult to stop thinking about him, with a heart that beat a little too fast and a soft yearning which made her feel uncomfortable?

But Hannah knew that feelings passed. All of them. And that eventually the intensity of what was happening to you faded with time. She’d told herself to be grateful that nobody at the Granchester had found out and her job was safe. She’d got away with it, scot-free. Or so she’d thought. She had worked for two more weeks at the Sardinian hotel before returning to London, just in time to discover that her period was late and to try to deny to herself why that might be. Until denial was no longer an option...

Hannah clicked onto the Zahristan website but, naturally, there was no handy link to the King’s email account. She found the number of the Embassy in London and tried ringing, in the hope of being able to convey a subtle message through one of the diplomats. But the phone system was automated and her dilemma didn’t fall into the category of someone visiting the country who was chasing up their visa. She supposed she could mail Kulal a letter and emblazon it with ‘private and confidential’—but there was no guaranteeing he would receive it unopened. The embassy might think it was from a crackpot and even if they didn’t, it meant that the Sheikh would discover he was going to be a father after his staff had found out. Hannah knew very little about royal protocol, but even she could recognise that would be a big mistake. A very big mistake.

She needed to tell him in person—but how?

There was a solution—to use the money she’d been squirrelling away since she’d first started work. The little sums of money which had grown, bit by bit, into a halfway decent sum which would one day become a deposit on a home of her own.

Could she break into it to buy herself an airline ticket to Zahristan?

Her heart began to pound. There was no other option—because how else was she going to get to see Kulal? But that money was sacrosanct and symbolic. She’d promised herself she would never touch it and now fear washed over her as she realised that once again she wasn’t playing safe. Because this wasn’t risk-averse Hannah. This was more of the same Hannah who had leapt into bed with the desert King, when deep down she’d known she shouldn’t. Her hand went down to cradle her belly because she knew she had little choice. She’d protected Tamsyn when they had been growing up—just as she would protect her baby now. She didn’t know how Kulal would respond, but that wasn’t her problem. She needed to give their child the best possible chance—and everything else was outside her control.

And surely he would have the decency to refund her air fare?

Which was how she ended up in a plane, crossing the Murjaan Sea and heading towards the Sheikh’s homeland.

She was fortunate that Zahristan had opened its borders a decade ago, after winning the war with neighbouring Quzabar, and fortunate that she had enough annual leave to book herself a last-minute break. She couldn’t decide if it was good fortune or fate that her visa-acquiring trip to the Zahristan Embassy had introduced her to a helpful woman called Elissa. Elissa had informed her that visitors were allowed access to the Sheikh’s palace every Tuesday and Thursday afternoon, and His Royal Highness was actively encouraging trips from foreign visitors. At this, Hannah’s heart had leapt—because surely she could engineer some kind of meeting if she gained access to Kulal’s home.

After consulting a weather map, she discovered that the temperature of her destination was roasting and so she used some more of her precious savings to buy some suitable clothes. Inexpensive clothes in natural fabrics in light colours which wouldn’t absorb the heat. Clothes which would disguise her tender breasts which were the only outward sign of her pregnancy. But most important of all—new clothes which meant she wouldn’t turn up at a fancy palace looking like a tramp.

The flight was long and her limbs felt cramped, because she hadn’t wanted to squander any of her precious money upgrading her seat. She tried distracting herself by reading what was supposed to be the definitive history of Zahristan, but the clunky paragraphs didn’t manage to hold her attention for long. For a long time, the book lay open on the same page as she wondered what would happen when she finally gained access to Kulal. Would she be thrown in some dark jail—forced to wait for the British consulate to come and bail her out and put her on the next flight to England, with a fierce lecture on compromising international diplomacy ringing in her ears?

But even if the worst happened and she didn’t get within a hundred yards of him, at least she would have tried.

Hannah stared out of the plane window—at the seemingly endless expanse of desert. As the aircraft began to descend, she could see the welcome green of palm trees and in the distance a gleam of water, surrounded by tents. And now they were approaching a city—with turrets and gleaming spires, just like in a fairy tale. There were flashes of blue and lots of gold. This must be Ashkhazar, which she’d just read about. A rich city with a troubled history. Hadn’t Kulal mentioned it briefly when she had run her fingertip over the raised scar which ran from nipple to groin and was the only blemish which marred his perfect body? But he hadn’t wanted to talk about what had caused it. The truth was he hadn’t wanted to talk about anything much, except how much he liked her breasts. Well, he was going to have to talk about his baby, whether he liked it or not.

And then her stomach gave a flip as the airport watchtower grew closer and she closed her eyes as the huge aircraft began to swoop towards the runway.