Kitabı oku: «The Sheikh's Secret Son», sayfa 2

She started for the door—when had the room grown so large?—but Ben spoke again, once more halting her in her tracks. “You will please tell Attorney Klinger and the others that His Highness has decided not to open Kharmistan to foreign investors. You might call them foreign devils, or infidels, if you think it will help prove that this ignorant Arab has no business sense, no concept of the fortune he is turning down.”

Eden whirled back to face him, her blue eyes narrowed as her entire face pinched and blanched at the same time. “You wouldn’t dare,” she said, her heart pounding so loud she could barely hear herself speak.

He turned to her slowly, his dark eyes cold, his face a mask of handsome, deeply tanned, unreadable flesh. “If you have done your research, Eden, and I am convinced you have, you will know that I currently hold the position of twenty-third richest man in the world. I do not have much time for such lists, but they do seem to impress Westerners. So you see, Eden, I do not need your clients. I never did. I would not be here today if I had not seen your name on one of the status reports the faithful Nadim placed on my desk six months ago. He did not remember your name. I, however, have it branded on my heart.”

Eden refused to comment on his last statement. “Six…six months ago? You’ve been planning all of this? Negotiating with our clients for six long months? Putting us all through hoops, acting as if you wanted this deal—all so you could come here today to insult me? Embarrass me? Why? Do you plan to have me lose my job? Is that it? Are you that petty? You’ve ignored me for more than five years. How does that end up being my fault?”

“Six o’clock, Eden.” He walked past her and put his hand on the doorknob. “Now, if you will excuse me? I have a meeting to postpone until tomorrow. It will only be postponed, will it not, Eden?”

Eden chewed on the inside of her cheek, longing to tell him to go to hell, longing to tell him she didn’t give two snaps for the deal her firm had been working on for six long months. “Yes, that’s right. Only postponed, Your Highness,” she ground out at last, then exited the room ahead of him as he held open the door and graciously gestured that she should precede him.

Mary Ellen Fortune poured two cups of tea in the large kitchen of the contemporary Colonial house she and her late husband had built on Fortune land several years earlier.

The house was only two miles from the original homestead that had been expanded to three or more times its size over the years. Not that Cameron had felt the huge, rambling house hadn’t been large enough for he and Mary Ellen to raise their family there, alongside the family of his brother, Ryan.

Cameron had liked elegance, and size, and this house reflected his need for the overtly flamboyant and Mary Ellen’s equal need to make a comfortable and cozy home within the parameters her husband had set up. Now, with the children grown and gone, with Cameron gone, the house she loved was too big, too empty.

“You and Sawyer could come here for a while, darling,” Mary Ellen said as she carried the teacups to the wide butcher-block-topped kitchen table, placing one cup in front of Eden. “Security on the ranch is excellent, as you know. He couldn’t touch Sawyer here.”

Eden ran a hand through her hair, pushing the thick, wavy mass back from her face. She’d driven directly to the ranch as soon as the meeting had broken up, which it had done rapidly once Sheikh Barakah Karif Ramir had regally begged the kind indulgence of those gathered and then departed the room without so much as a word of excuse, surrounded by his phalanx of guards.

Eden had been so distracted that she couldn’t even remember what her boss had said to her, what he had asked her. She’d just sicced him on Jim Morris, and been the first person on the elevator when it returned to the twenty-sixth floor.

Her memory of locating her car in the underground parking lot, the drive to the Double Crown Ranch, to her mother’s house, was equally vague. All she’d known was that she’d had to get to her mother, and she had to stay away from her own home on Edgewood Drive. Just in case she was followed…

“I can’t stay here, Mom,” Eden said, shaking her head. “Thanks to Ben—to the sheikh, that is—we’re all meeting again tomorrow in San Antonio. I’d have to get up before dawn to make it into the city on time. But Sawyer could come here, couldn’t he? He and Mrs. Betts.”

“He could,” Mary Ellen agreed, just as if she hadn’t been the one to suggest the visit from her grandson. “And Mrs. Betts could watch him while I’m working. I have to get the quarterly reports in order soon, you know.”

Eden nodded. Her mother had always been just that. A mother first and foremost, a loyal wife. But she also had a great business head that she’d employed to clean up after her husband’s financial messes over the years.

With Cameron’s death, she had stepped reluctantly into the limelight, and her business acumen had quickly landed her with new responsibilities and a reason to face life once more after her husband had gone.

“He wouldn’t be a bother, Mom. He’s got his pony up at the stables, but Mrs. Betts can drive him there whenever he wants…” Eden began, apologizing before the fact, but her mother waved off her weak words.

“I’m not saying I’m agreeing with you on this, Eden,” Mary Ellen said, a hint of motherly sternness creeping into her voice. “But I know you’ve had a shock. The first thing you need to do is talk with this Ben Ramsey…this Sheikh Ramir. Straighten out what happened between you before Sawyer was born, learn more about these letters he swore he wrote to you, make your peace between you. Only then can you decide if you want to tell him of Sawyer’s existence.”

“You think I should, though, don’t you?” Eden asked, grimacing as she looked at the clock on the wall, knowing she had to begin her drive back to San Antonio in the next fifteen minutes or she’d never be able to meet Ben at six o’clock, as he had ordered.

“He is the boy’s father,” Mary Ellen said, raising her teacup to her lips, then setting it down again. “I don’t know that he deserves Sawyer, or that Sawyer deserves him, but I do know that Sawyer deserves some answers.”

Eden slumped against the back of the large wooden chair. “Oh, God.” She lowered her head, rubbed at her forehead. “I’ll send Mrs. Betts and Sawyer here directly after dinner tonight. That’ll give me some time, and some distance. Unless he already knows…” she said, her voice drifting off even as her head shot up and she looked at her mother.

“He could know, couldn’t he? Once he’d seen my name he probably had someone make inquiries, check up on me, make sure I was the same Eden Fortune. Oh, God, Mom, why didn’t I think of this before—he might already know!”

Two

Sheikh Barakah Karif Ramir entered the Palace Lights penthouse suite with the slow and measured step that reflected his life of patience, of waiting, of watching for the most opportune moment and then seizing that moment with both hands.

That was life in Kharmistan, the life of a prince, a sheikh. It was the life his late father had lived, and his father before him, for all of the sheikhs of Kharmistan who had known the feint and jab of politics, of intrigue, while these Americans were still learning how to build log cabins.

The sheikh had been raised at his father’s knee, then sent off to be educated; first in England, later in America. He had not needed the education found in books, for there were books and teachers in Kharmistan. At the age of twelve he had been sent away to learn the ways of the world, of the men who were outside his father’s small but strategically important kingdom.

Having an English mother had helped him, but nothing she had taught him could have prepared him for the lack of respect, mingled with hatred and misunderstanding, that had greeted him when he’d taken his first steps out of Kharmistan and into the world beyond his father’s kingdom. In Kharmistan his family name was revered, honored, even feared. In England he was the outsider, the alien being, the oddity. His clothing was ridiculed, his speech pattern mocked.

That was when the young prince had learned the value of conformity, at least an outward conformity that seemed to put his classmates at ease.

He had forsaken his comfortable tobe and kibr for the short pants and blazer of his classmates, even though his father had gained permission for him to avoid the school uniform.

He had answered insults with a smile until he had found sticks big enough to beat them all down. Those sticks had been his brilliant horsemanship, his skill on the playing fields, his excellence in the classroom.

Within a year he had become the most popular student in the school, as well as its top student. He was invited to large country estates over term breaks, introduced to the sisters of his classmates, both welcomed and welcome wherever he went. His friends were legion, and they believed they knew him well.

They never knew him at all. But he knew them. He knew them very well.

What had begun so encouragingly in England had been equaled and then outdone by the success he had found in America during his years at Yale. He assimilated. He blended. He fit in. He became one of “them,” even though he was not one of them.

He could never be one of them, one of those he met, roomed with, ate with, laughed with over the years.

Because he was Barakah Karif Ramir, only son of the sheikh, heir to the throne of Kharmistan.

All his English and American friends knew him as Ben, the nickname his Yale roommate had given him when he could not remember how to pronounce Barakah.

And being Ben was easier, simpler. Nobody groveled, nobody harassed, nobody bothered to try to impress him or beleaguer him or ask anything of him.

It had been as Ben that he had traveled to Paris in an attempt, years after his return to Kharmistan, to recapture some of that simplicity that had been lost to him in the halls of his father’s palace.

It had been as Ben that he had met Eden Fortune, the beautiful Texan he’d foolishly introduced himself to as Ben Ramsey. And why not? He’d anticipated an innocent flirtation, a Parisian romance, perhaps a mutually pleasurable dalliance.

Most women fawned all over him once they learned he was a prince. They fawned, and they preened, and they asked inane questions, and they got mercenary gleams in their beautiful eyes when they looked at him.

He had not wanted to see that acquisitional gleam in Eden Fortune’s lovely blue eyes. And he had not. He had seen interest, yes. In time, he had seen love, a love he returned in full measure.

Even as he deceived her.

The summons back to Kharmistan had come too soon, before he could confess that deception, before he could ask her to marry him, share her life with him. A hurried note left on a pillowcase, and he was gone, flying back to Kharmistan on his private jet, racing to the bedside of his seriously ill father.

But he had written. He had written several times, little more than hurried notes scribbled between taking care of state business and sitting at his father’s bedside. He had ordered those notes hand-delivered to Paris, with her replies placed directly into his hands.

Nothing.

There had been nothing.

No answer. No response.

And then she’d been gone. By the time he could assure himself of his father’s recovery and jet back to Paris, Eden had returned to America.

He may have let her believe he had never gotten a letter from her, but he had. The concierge at the hotel had handed him a small envelope when he had inquired about Eden at the front desk. It’s better this way. Eden. He had taken that to mean that she’d wanted nothing to do with him once he had told her, in his letters, of his true identity, of the privilege and the burden that he carried as heir to the throne of Kharmistan.

For nearly six years he had believed he had done the right thing to walk away, to not look back. To forget. His father had never fully recovered from his stroke, and Ben had been forced to work night and day to try to fill his shoes, to keep their subjects calm, to eventually step into those shoes completely when his father died.

There had been no time for romance, for fond memories, for much of anything except the work of ruling his country.

He had married Nadim’s daughter because it had been a politically advantageous move that had solidified the populace. But neither Leila nor Ben had been in love. Her death three years later had saddened him greatly, but he had barely noticed a difference in his always busy days. For he was the sheikh, and the sheikh lived for the state, not for personal happiness.

And then he had seen the memo from one Eden Fortune that Nadim had placed on his desk….

“Nadim?” he called out now as he went to the small bar in the corner of the living room of the suite, helping himself to an ice-cold bottle of spring water. “Nadim, are you there?”

A servant dressed in the traditional white linen tobe, his kaffiyeh secured to his head with an agal fashioned of thick woolen cords, appeared in the doorway, bowed to him. “His Excellency will be with you momentarily, Your Highness, and begs your pardon for inconveniencing you by even a moment’s absence,” he said, then bowed himself out of the room.

“Yeah, right,” Ben muttered under his breath as he pulled the kaffiyeh from his own head, suddenly impatient with the formality with which he was treated as the Sheikh of Kharmistan. It was as if he lived inside a bubble, and no one was allowed to approach too closely, speak too plainly, say what the devil was on his or her mind.

He had a sudden longing for that long-ago summer in Paris, for the days and nights he had spent with Eden. That was probably because she had looked today as she had looked then, only even more beautiful, more assured, more amazingly intelligent and independent.

Although not so independent that she could refuse his request—his ultimatum—to come here tonight, to meet with him again. She had been angry with him, certainly, but she had also seemed frightened. Frightened for her job? No. It had been more than that, he was sure of it.

But what? What?

“Your Highness requested my presence? I ask forgiveness for being unprepared for your seemingly precipitate return. Things did not go so well at the meeting?”

Ben turned to look at his closest advisor. Yusuf Nadim was a tall, extraordinarily handsome man in his mid-sixties. Dark skin, dark hair without a strand of gray, a thin mustache over his full upper lip. Nadim wore Western clothing well, but seldom, and looked quite impressive now in his sheer white silk kibr ornamented with a gold neckband and tasseled cord. He wore the flowing kibr over a fine linen tobe. His kaffiyeh was constructed of the same sheer material as his kibr, and anchored in place with an elaborate agal wrapped in gold thread.

He bowed to Ben, but his dignity did not bow with him.

My third cousin, the man who would be sheikh, Ben thought idly, then dismissed the reflection as it did not give him pleasure. Neither did the subject at hand.

“You would like me to say yes, it did not go well. Would you not, Nadim?” Ben asked, smiling quite deliberately. “That way you could remind me of how very indispensable you are to the Sheikhs of Kharmistan, both to the father before him and now to the son. You could tell me how foolish I was to think I could negotiate a simple business deal without you by my side.”

“On the contrary, Your Highness. I would never presume such a thing. I only ask, as advisor and father-in-law and friend, to humbly serve Your Highness with all of my feeble, unworthy self, in any way I can.”

Nadim bowed again, but not before Ben saw the quick gleam of satisfaction—mingled with dislike?—in Nadim’s dark eyes. He recalled his father’s words on the subject of enemies. It is best to keep them close, where you can watch them.

Ben took another long drink of water, to cleanse his palate after Nadim’s too sweet apology—or whatever the hell the man thought he had been offering. “I postponed the meeting until tomorrow, as something came up. Something unexpected,” he told Nadim, effortlessly massaging the truth, “and unexpectedly personal.”

“Your Highness?” Nadim asked, waiting to seat himself until Ben had lowered himself onto one of the two striped couches in the living room area of the immense suite. The suite had six rooms, not counting those for the servants. Texans, it seemed, took great pleasure in living up to their reputation of “everything is bigger in Texas.”

Ben pushed a hand through his coal-dark hair. Choosing his words carefully, he said, “Do you by chance remember an American woman by the name of Fortune, Nadim? Miss Eden Fortune?”

“A woman?” Clearly, Nadim was puzzled. “You postponed a meeting we have been planning for six months—for a woman? I know our beloved Leila is gone these past three years, Your Highness, but surely if you had need of a woman, there is no dearth of them at home in Kharmistan. If you had but asked, I—”

“There is a saying here in America, Nadim—‘Get your mind out of the gutter.’” There was an edge of steel in Ben’s voice as he interrupted the man. “You would do well to remember it.”

Nadim inclined his head. “My profound apologies, Your Highness.”

“Not that I am not honored by your offer to…um…pimp for your sheikh,” Ben said, unable to hide his smile. “I had no idea that procuring willing females was part of your duties as my advisor.”

Ben now saw the anger in Nadim’s eyes, the fullness of it, the depth of it, even as the man answered with a smile of his own. “Your Highness is being droll.”

“I try,” Ben said, his own humor evaporating. “Now, to get back to Miss Eden Fortune, if I might. Do you recall the name?”

“I do not, Highness. I am sorry. Have I met the woman?”

Ben stood, walked over to stand in front of his advisor, looked down at him as he sat at his ease. “No, Nadim, you have not. Perhaps you remember my father’s illness of some years ago, the time of his first cerebral accident?”

Nadim frowned as he stood, bowed to his sheikh. “Those were such trying times, Your Highness,” he said apologetically. “Your father had been meeting with the various desert chieftains on the delicate matter of water rights when he collapsed, sending everyone into a panic. Fools, all of them, believing that Kharmistan could not survive your father’s death. Our neighbors were looking for a reason to invade our territory, and without the loyalty of the chieftains we faced a turmoil that had to be avoided at all costs. We had to find you, which, I recall, was not an easy task, Your Highness, and then prominently produce you, prove that Kharmistan would go on, no matter what happened to your father.”

“Then you do recall, Nadim,” Ben said, beginning to pace once more. “And you found me. You found me in Paris. Now do you remember the name Eden Fortune?”

Nadim’s eyes were as dark as a starless midnight in the Kharmistan desert. “The woman. Of course. The father on his sick bed, possibly his death bed, and the lovesick son passing notes like a schoolboy, demanding delivery by hand in Paris. How could I forget?”

Ben turned on his heels, looked straight at his father-in-law. “But you did as I said, didn’t you, Nadim? You followed my direct order to have my letters hand-delivered to Miss Fortune in Paris?”

Nadim pulled his robe about him as he lifted his chin, struck a pose caught somewhere between arrogance and servility. “You question my loyalty, Your Highness? You question my vow to serve my prince in every way? I should leave your service at once, Your Highness, if you were to have lost confidence in me.”

“I will consider that an answer in the affirmative, Nadim. You did send a messenger with my letters. They were, as you had promised me, delivered directly into her hands. I must believe that she lied to me this afternoon, for I cannot believe that my most trusted advisor lied to me six years ago, and is lying now even as he looks into the eyes of his sheikh.”

Nadim continued to stare at Ben for long moments, then bowed, turned, and departed the room.

Ben’s suspicions went with him.

Ben paced the living area of the penthouse suite, pretending he did not see the hands on the mantel clock, pretending he had not heard the clock strike six a quarter hour earlier.

She was not coming. He could not believe she would not come. Not because he had demanded her presence, but because of her loyalty to her employer. Even as he had fallen in love with Eden, he had been able to see her finer qualities with a calm and detached eye. Loyalty, he had been sure then, had been sure until fifteen minutes ago, was very important to Eden.

As he, obviously, was not. Had never been.

How strange, how odd, how unprepared Ben was for rejection. From the time he had been a child, he had only to crook his finger, raise his eyebrow, give the faintest hint of what—or who—he wanted, and all that he desired had simply dropped into his lap.

His birth counted for some of this, his personality and will to succeed accounted for more. From his excellence in sports to his conquests with women, he had only ever brushed up against failure, had never embraced it. Failure had never embraced him.

Except for Eden Fortune, in Paris.

Except for Eden Fortune, here in Texas.

And now what was he to do? If he backed out of the negotiations with the American triad, Eden would surely lose her position. Obviously he had not thought through his plan completely. After six long months of planning, he had failed to factor in Eden’s temperament, her stubbornness in the face of his demands.

She was her own person. He had known that in Paris, he should have remembered it before he had presented her with an ultimatum that could only hurt any chance he had of speaking with her, perhaps holding her again. Perhaps loving her again.

“Stupid!” Ben told himself as he reached up a hand to his sheer kaffiyeh with its bold black agal. He had been as stupid, as cowhanded, with Eden as he had been to have dressed himself in the brilliantly striped aba denoting him as sheikh, a move meant to impress her, perhaps intimidate her.

Before he could yank the kaffiyeh from his head, strip off the aba to reveal the more pedestrian slacks and knit shirt beneath it, the doorbell of the suite buzzed once, twice.

“Eden,” Ben breathed, relaxing his shoulders, realizing that he, who routinely stared down princes, had been both anticipating and dreading this meeting. He was on edge, nervous. And that made him angry.

He walked over to stand in front of the floor-to-ceiling windows looking out over the city as one of the servants opened the door to the tiled foyer and he heard Eden give the man her name.

“Miss Eden Fortune, Highness,” the servant said a moment later, bowing Eden into the room, then retiring as he earlier had been bidden. Haskim would be back in a half hour, to serve the dinner of Middle Eastern specialities Ben had ordered prepared in the suite kitchen. Ben had, with an inner smile, ordered Dolma—stuffed grape leaves—among other Middle Eastern specialties, just to see how Eden reacted when she took her first bite of the delicacy that was a bit of an acquired taste.

Now he felt petty, and wished he had ordered from the hotel kitchens. Not that Nadim would allow such a thing without making a great fuss out of being his official taster, just in case the hotel chef had tried to poison the Sheikh of Kharmistan. The last person Ben wanted present in the room tonight was his outwardly conscientious, inwardly jealous father-in-law.

Ben watched as Eden walked into the room, her head held high, her posture that of a soldier about to undergo inspection. She was still clothed in the same trim, prim navy-blue suit he had seen her in this morning. Ben considered the outfit to be a deliberate choice, one meant to show her disdain for him, her determination to make this a business meeting and nothing more.

“Your Highness,” she said with a barely perceptible inclination of her head as she stopped, folded her hands in front of her. Glared at him.

Her dark brown hair was still drawn back severely. A French twist, Ben believed the style was called. He wondered if Eden could appreciate the irony in that description. The severe hairstyle helped to accentuate Eden’s high cheekbones, the clean sweep of her jaw, the fullness of her lips. Just as the severe blue suit skimmed over her body, setting off memories, hinting of a promise Ben was sure Eden had no intention of declaring.

She was magnificent. From her pride to her delicious body, she was magnificent. Just as he remembered her. Just as he had never been able to forget her.

Her blue eyes sparkling with anger and a hint of fear he could not like, she gestured to the couches, saying, “If the inspection is over, would it be possible for the two of us to sit down, discuss our problems like adults?”

“I have no intention of reneging on the deal with the clients your law firm represents, Eden,” he said immediately, hoping to see some of the starch leave her slim shoulders. “I can only ask your forgiveness for such a heavy-handed threat, but in my stupidity I could not think of another way to convince you to have dinner with me tonight.”

Eden sat, sliding her hands along her thighs as she did so, smoothing down her skirt. “You could have asked me, Ben,” she said bluntly. “That’s how we do it here. You ask, I answer.”

“In the affirmative?”

Her chin lifted a fraction. “Hardly. I much prefer to keep our association limited to business.”

Ben sat on the facing couch, smiled. “Then I withdraw my apology, for I was determined that we should meet privately. I regret that you only agreed under duress, but I am equally determined to enjoy the evening.”

As if on cue, one of the kitchen servants—Nadim insisted they travel with a full staff—bowed himself into the room, carrying a heavy silver tray laden with a sampling of Middle Eastern appetizers, including the Dolma.

“It all looks delicious, thank you,” Eden told the servant, who bowed to her then asked Ben if he could be permitted to serve them with cold juices freshly squeezed in the kitchen. Ben agreed, and the servant bowed again, backing out of the room.

“I thought he was going to kiss your feet,” Eden said, sitting forward on the couch and picking up a small china plate as her free hand hovered over the assortment of appetizers. “Oh, Dolma. I adore stuffed grape leaves, don’t you? And what’s that?” she asked, pointing to another dish. “I don’t think I recognize that one.”

“A sampling of Maldhoom,” Ben said, watching as Eden popped a grape leaf into her mouth, closed her eyes as she savored the taste. “It is made of eggplant and a variety of seasonings. I can ask my cook to write down the recipe if you like.”

Eden wrinkled her nose. Just the way she’d wrinkled her nose at that small restaurant on the West Bank of Paris as she watched him eat his way through a plateful of snails. “Eggplant? Thanks, but I’ll pass. But these are eggrolls of some kind, aren’t they?”

“Shamboorek,” Ben told her, wondering how he could have forgotten how dedicated Eden could be to good food. “We have many varieties of eggrolls, but these, I do believe, are stuffed with ground lamb, onion, and seasoned with a variety of spices.”

Eden nodded her understanding, wiping her fingers on one of the linen napkins placed on the tray, then dabbing the napkin at her chin, which had collected a bit of the sauce from the Dolma. She took a sip of apple juice the servant had placed in front of her, then reached for the Shamboorek.

She had the eggroll halfway to her mouth before she stopped, looked at him, and a very becoming blush colored her cheeks. “I’m so sorry. I haven’t eaten more than a few bites all day for one reason or another. I can’t believe I’m diving in like this!”

“But understandable. The fuller the mouth, the less one can be made to speak,” Ben said, lifting a glass of chilled apple juice to his own lips.

“What’s that, Ben?” Eden asked, putting the eggroll back on the plate. “Some kind of ancient proverb? If it is, I don’t like it.”

“Again, my apologies. And, please, continue to enjoy the food. I can remember now how much joy food gives you. A woman who enjoys the pleasures of the senses, and is not ashamed to indulge herself. Do you remember the night I fed you fresh strawberries in cream, Eden? How you licked the cream from my fingers, how I kissed the tart juice on your lips? So innocently sensual, so impossible to forget.”

“That’s it!” Eden said, tossing down her napkin. She stood, with only one quick, longing look toward the plate of Shamboorek. “I came, we spoke, and now I’m leaving. I’ll see you in the morning, Your Highness. And then I’ll count myself lucky if I never have to see you again!”

“Your Highness?”

Ben turned to see three of his servants standing in the hallway, one of them with sword already drawn. “We heard the raising of voices, Your Highness,” Haskim said. “There is trouble?”

Ben grinned up at Eden, who was glaring at the servants with enough anger in her eyes to most probably stop a charging rhino in its tracks. “Do you want to see what would happen if I were to say ‘Sic her, boys’?” he murmured quietly, so that only Eden could hear. “Or maybe you would just rather sit down once more, and enjoy your Shamboorek.”

As Eden stood, and steamed, Ben waved the servants out of the room, wondering just how far Nadim had told them to go, how close Nadim had ordered them to stay.