Kitabı oku: «The Scandalous Collection», sayfa 19
And she was the one who had to live with what she’d done.
CHAPTER FIVE
‘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.
CHAPTER SIX
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 …
