Kitabı oku: «The Scandalous Collection», sayfa 25
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
HASSAN shut the door of the studio behind him and began to walk down the wide marble corridor towards the nursery suite. His heart was heavy but he knew he could not put off this moment any longer. It was time to accept and face up to the truth.
He’d been waiting for the right moment. For Ella to properly recover from the birth. For the doctors to give both mother and daughter the thumbs-up. And for this terrible sense of remorse to leave him.
Yet it wouldn’t leave him. It clung to him like glue. Deep down he knew there was only one thing which would make him feel better—ironically, the very thing which would bring his world crashing down about him.
He found Ella standing by the window in the main salon, looking out onto one of the smaller fountains where a plume of water formed a graceful curve. Barefooted beneath her cream silk robe, her hair was hanging loose down her back and she turned round when she heard him enter. Her blue eyes were as bright as usual but he saw darkness in their depths, as if she, too, had recognised that the moment of truth was here.
‘Your father has been on the phone,’ he said heavily.
‘Oh? What did he say?’
He saw the faint lines crisscrossing her pale brow and realised that she must have lived much of her life like this. On a kind of knife edge, never knowing what her father was going to do or say next. His mouth hardened. And hadn’t it been exactly the same when she’d met him? Hadn’t he brought that same element of uncertainty into her life? He wondered why he had never seen that before, but the answer came to him almost immediately. He’d never seen it because he’d never allowed himself to see it.
‘He wants to know whether we are planning to go to Alex and Allegra’s wedding.’
She looked at him. ‘And what did you tell him?’
‘I said that we hadn’t decided. Because that’s the truth of it, isn’t it, Ella? We haven’t decided so many things, and I don’t think attending your sister’s wedding is top of the list of things we need to resolve.’
Ella nodded, but his words made her heart plummet. She knew they couldn’t keep putting off the inevitable, yet she was afraid to face up to it. Afraid of what lay ahead—of a cold and empty future without her husband by her side.
Hadn’t she hoped that they could just forget the past and move on? Capitalise on the love—yes, love—which had pulsed through the air between them after their baby had been born. That moment of pure and unfettered joy when their eyes had met and they had silently acknowledged the new life they had created.
She looked at Hassan now, wondering whether they should postpone any decisions for a few days longer. He still looked slightly shell-shocked, even though it had been a week since they had returned from the desert. The longest seven days of her life, and easily the most eventful.
They’d been dazed and disorientated as they had entered the celebrating city of Samaltyn, cradling their newborn daughter with pride. They’d called her Rihana because they both liked the name, and when Ella had discovered it meant ‘sweet herb,’ that had clinched it. Because hadn’t Hassan been making sweet, herbal tea when she’d gone into labour? For a while she’d been on such a high of hormones and emotion that it was all too easy to pretend they were like any normal couple who’d just had a baby.
But now the intensely intimate memories of the birth had started to fade, leaving a couple who had resolved nothing. Who had begun to eye each other warily, as if each waiting for the other to make a move. She found herself wishing that she was back in that simple Bedouin tent again, where she had felt so incredibly close to Hassan. But she couldn’t keep getting herself into medical emergencies just to get him to show some feelings, could she?
‘You said you wanted to go home,’ Hassan said roughly, his words breaking into her thoughts and sounding almost like an accusation. ‘Have you thought any more about that?’
Ella winced as his stark words brought reality crashing in. During the ecstatic days following Rihana’s birth, it had been all too easy to forget about her insecurities, but Hassan’s question brought it into such sharp focus that she could no longer ignore it. Her insecurity was all bound up in her marriage, she realised, in her relationship with him. And nothing had changed.
Yes, during those heightened and unbelievable moments in the desert, she’d felt as close to him as she’d imagined it was possible for a man and woman to feel. When the helicopter had landed and the obstetricians had rushed in and taken over, before leaving the two—no, three—of them alone again for a few minutes, it had seemed a very precious time indeed.
Their eyes had met over the dark head of the baby who had latched so eagerly onto her breast and she thought she’d read something other than dazed pride in Hassan’s expression. She’d clung to the hope that he might now want to forge a new and closer future. A future for all of them.
But all those hopes had evaporated by the time they returned to the palace, where it seemed that normal procedure was to be renewed almost immediately. Hassan had done what he did best and occupied himself with the practicalities. Making sure that she had the best after-care. Issuing statements to the world media and declining to the give them the full and dramatic story of Rihana’s birth. Filling the nursery with a department-store quota of soft, fluffy toys.
Yet the subsequently smooth transition from pregnant queen to new mother seemed to have left Ella feeling just as displaced as before. And nothing would ever change so long as she was with Hassan, she realised. Why would it, when he didn’t seem to want anything more than this?
Now she focused on his words and realised that it was worse than she’d thought. That he actively wanted her to go.
‘I’d thought I’d wait—’
‘For what, Ella?’ he interrupted bitterly. ‘For me to bond even more with Rihana so that I’ll find it unbearable when you take her away from me?’
‘You want me to go,’ she stated dully.
Hassan flinched. Was she determined to twist the knife, to make this even more painful than it already was? And could he really blame her, if that was the case, for surely he deserved everything she chose to heap upon his head?
‘I can’t see any alternative.’ His voice was harsh. ‘Surely you can’t wait to get away from a man who forced you to come here even though you wanted to stay in London. A man who doesn’t have a heart, nor any compassion. Because I now have looked at myself through your eyes, Ella, and I do not like what I see.’
‘What on earth are you talking about?’ she whispered.
He shook his head as the memory swam into his mind, like dark, distorting smoke. ‘That portrait!’ he grated. ‘I have just been into the studio and seen the man that you have painted. A ravaged man—’
‘Hassan—’
‘Isn’t there some novel where the man agrees a trade-off with the devil for eternal youth?’ he demanded. ‘And meanwhile there’s a portrait in the attic which shows the growing darkness inside him?’
‘It’s called The Picture of Dorian Gray,’ she said automatically.
‘Well, the darkness is right there on that canvas you’ve done of me, only I haven’t even had the eternal youth in exchange,’ he said bitterly, until he realised that wasn’t quite true. Because in a way, every man who ever had a child was given the gift of eternal youth. Only he would never see the daily miracle of his daughter’s developing life. He would be resigned to meeting her on high days and holidays, their precious time eaten into by the initial adjustment of having to reacquaint themselves every time they met. He would grow older never really knowing his child, and he would have no one to blame but himself.
Ella stared at him. ‘What are you trying to say, Hassan?’
He knew that he had to tell her. Everything. Every damned thing. She had to know the terrible lengths to which he had been prepared to go—and that would be the end of their marriage, once and for all.
‘Do you want to know the real reason why I was so insistent you came out to Kashamak when I discovered you were pregnant?’ he demanded.
She remembered the way he had expressed it at the time—as concern for her morning sickness and the need for someone to look after her. But she hadn’t been naive enough to think they were the real reasons. ‘It was about control, wasn’t it? About making sure that I conducted the pregnancy in a way you approved of.’
‘Yes, it was. But deep down, it was even more manipulative than that,’ he said quietly. ‘I thought you’d have trouble adjusting, you see. That motherhood would cramp your style.’
‘Cramp my style?’ she repeated blankly.
‘That was when I was still labouring under the illusion that you were a good-time girl. A social butterfly. I thought you’d hate your life here and you’d want to be free again. And that’s what I wanted too.’
Ella saw the muscle which was working frantically at his cheek and the expression in his black eyes. But for once, they were not empty. Instead they were filled with the most terrible look of bleakness she had ever seen. Even worse than the time he’d told her about his mother.
‘You wanted me to leave?’ she guessed slowly. ‘And to leave the baby behind, with you?’
He winced, but he did not look away from her. The truth was painful but he could not deny it—and didn’t he deserve this pain? Didn’t he deserve all the recriminations she chose to hurl at his head? ‘Yes.’
‘To bring her up as your father once did, without a mother?’
‘Yes.’ He shook his head, as if he was coming out of a deep sleep. ‘It’s only been during the past few weeks that I realised I couldn’t possibly go through with it. That I couldn’t inflict on my own child what I had suffered myself. But for a while, the intention was there.’ He met the question which blazed from her eyes. ‘How you must hate me, Ella.’
For a second she thought that perhaps it would be easier if she did, because the man who stood before her was the most complex individual she’d ever met. And didn’t she suspect that the dark and complicated side of him wanted her to hate him? That it would be easier for him if she did, if she pushed him away and thus reinforced all his prejudices against women.
But Ella realised that nobody had ever been there for Hassan, not emotionally. After his mother had left, he’d never let anyone get close enough to try, and she wondered if she had the courage to do that. To risk being rejected by him all over again.
Yet what choice did she have? To live a life blighted by regret because she hadn’t had the guts to put her pride aside and reach out for a man who badly needed love. Her love—and their daughter’s love. Couldn’t she and Rihana help his damaged heart to heal?
‘I don’t hate you, Hassan,’ she said softly. ‘In fact, I love you. Even though you didn’t want me to love you. And even though you did your best to make me turn my heart against you. I have to tell you that it hasn’t worked. And that if you were to ask me to stay here, with Rihana, and to be a proper wife in every sense of the word, then I would do it in a heartbeat. But I will only do it on one condition.’
Her soft and powerful words had momentarily stilled him, but now he stirred because conditions were familiar territory to him. His eyes were wary as they looked at her. ‘Which is?’
She swallowed. ‘I need to know that you care for me in some small way. That there’s a small seed of affection in your heart which maybe we can nurture and grow. And that you will nurture it, because while I’ve grown rather fond of the sand which surrounds us, I can’t live my life in an emotional desert.’
For long, silent seconds he stared at her, recognising the courage it had taken to lay open her feelings like that. How she humbled him with her courage! His eyes began blinking rapidly and when eventually he could bring himself to speak, his voice sounded strangely hoarse to his ears—the way it had done when he’d had his tonsils removed as a boy. ‘Not a seed,’ he said brokenly.
‘Not a seed?’ she repeated in confusion.
He shook his head. ‘Not a seed, no, but an eager young plant in its first rapid flush of life. For that is the strength of my “affection” for you, Ella!’ A rush of emotion surged through his veins as he reached out and pulled her in his arms. ‘But I do not know it by such a mediocre word as affection, because for days now I have been realising that it is called something else. Something I have never known before, nor dared to acknowledge.’
‘Could you perhaps try acknowledging it now?’ she suggested gently, knowing instantly what he meant because she could see it written all over his face. But she needed badly to hear it. She had bared her heart to him and now Hassan needed to redress the balance. To be her equal in every way there was.
He took both her hands in his. ‘Ella, I … love you. You hear how my voice falters on these words, but that does not mean you should doubt them. With all my heart and body and mind, I love you. You are everything a woman should be and I do not know why a generous fate should have brought you into my life. You have offered me your heart when I do not deserve—’
‘No!’ Her fierce word cut him short but her hands were trembling as she reached up to cup his dark and beloved face between her palms. ‘You didn’t deserve the childhood you had and maybe I didn’t either. But I think it’s time we had some lovely things in our life together, and they are right here at our fingertips. We can reach out and take them any time we want, starting right now. Not palaces or privileges or some flashy lifestyle with stuff, but you, me and Rihana.’
‘And our marriage will not fail,’ he declared softly.
‘No, it won’t—because we won’t let it fail,’ she agreed shakily. ‘We will learn from all the mistakes our parents made and we will give Rihana the kind of childhood that neither of us knew.’
His lips were passionate as he claimed hers in a kiss far deeper than any kiss he’d ever known. It was about more than passion and maybe about even more than love. It was about understanding and forgiving. About commitment and sharing. About making a happy home for the little girl who lay sleeping in her crib.
Bobby Jackson had christened his daughter Cinderella because he’d wanted her to marry a prince and somehow his rather ambitious dream had come true.
But Ella and Hassan had very different aspirations for their little girl, and that was why Rihana’s middle name was Hope.
Scandals of the Famous
The Scandalous Princess
Kate Hewitt
The Man Behind the Scars
Caitlin Crews
Defying the Prince
Sarah Morgan
The Scandalous Princess
Kate Hewitt
CHAPTER ONE
‘NOW there, at least, is a Jackson who has bettered himself.’
Princess Natalia Santina glanced at her mother, whose arctic tone belied what had sounded like a compliment. Queen Zoe’s eyes were narrowed, her lips pressed together in disapproval. Her usual look then. Natalia turned to see who was the subject of her mother’s grudging praise. Her gaze moved through the crowd of well-heeled guests who had come to the engagement party of her older brother Alessandro and his unexpected fiancée, Allegra, daughter of British tabloid fodder and ex-footballer Bobby Jackson, to finally rest on Ben Jackson, Allegra’s older brother and self-made millionaire. Not that the money made a difference to her mother. Anyone, she liked to say with a sniff, could make money. Breeding was what mattered.
After all, the fiancé who had thankfully just broken Natalia’s own engagement—Prince Michel of the small mountain principality of Montenavarre—hadn’t had much money. He’d claimed Natalia had possessed impossibly expensive tastes, which was undoubtedly true for him. Prince Michel might be second in line to the throne but he was practically penniless, and in any case Natalia had no intention of spending her life in some draughty castle in the Alps, listening to her husband go on and on about his country’s tediously noble history.
The question of just how she intended to spend her life remained, as yet, unanswered. For the moment Natalia was simply glad to enjoy her reprieve from matrimony. Nothing in her experience so far had recommended it.
Now her own gaze narrowed as she took in Ben Jackson’s powerful form. He was dressed in a well-cut grey silk business suit, his tie a sober navy, his movement restrained and precise as he chatted to another guest. Unlike his father, whose flashy tie, booming voice and expansive gestures proclaimed new money like nothing else could, Ben Jackson was the epitome of understated male elegance. Queen Zoe, Natalia had noticed with a stab of amusement, had held out only two fingers for Bobby Jackson to shake and flinched visibly when he’d lavishly kissed her hand instead.
‘What does Ben Jackson do exactly?’ she asked her mother, who stiffened at the vulgarity of such a question. Natalia knew you weren’t supposed to ask what people did, because of course people of class didn’t do anything. Not for money. Queen Zoe didn’t even like to mention the successful business ventures of her own son and heir to the throne. Sometimes Natalia wondered if her mother had stepped from the pages of a Victorian novel, or even a time machine. Her attitudes certainly did not belong to this century.
‘He’s an entrepreneur, as far as I can tell,’ Zoe said stiffly. ‘Something in finance.’
How boring, Natalia thought, even as she eyed the oldest Jackson with undisguised feminine appreciation. The set of his shoulders underneath the tailored grey silk was impressive indeed. He lifted one long-fingered hand to make a point, his blazing eyes and set mouth creating an expression, Natalia decided, of controlled enthusiasm. He felt deeply, but he didn’t want anyone to know. She’d always been good at reading expressions, and gauging a person’s attitude. It had certainly helped her through twelve years of incomprehensible education, when often the curve of a mouth or lift of an eyebrow was the only clue as to whether she’d got it right or wrong.
‘Who is he talking to?’ she asked her mother. ‘Ben Jackson, I mean?’
Her mother sighed with the kind of weary disappointment Natalia was long used to. ‘He’s talking to the minister of culture and tourism,’ she told her, ‘which you would know, if you professed any interest in or duty to the country of your birth and family.’
Natalia did not reply. She knew her mother was really referring to her recently broken engagement. Both her parents had wanted her off their hands and out of the country. At twenty-seven, happily unmarried and with a rather active social life, she was an embarrassment to the royal family. At least this time it was by choice.
‘You’re right, Mother,’ Natalia said with as much docility as she could muster. ‘I should be familiar with Santina’s ministers. I suppose I’ll have to remedy that immediately.’
And with a suggestive sway of her hips, she sauntered over to where Ben Jackson was still looking intriguingly … passionate.
The word slid slyly into her mind. Ben Jackson didn’t look like a passionate man. The shoulders were impressive, yes, but everything about the man from his sober suit to his close-cut brown hair said restrained. Controlled. Boring, even. A man who guarded his passions—if he had them at all—carefully.
‘Princess Natalia!’ The minister of culture and tourism inclined his head in a nod as Natalia approached. She smiled, reaching out to shake his hand.
‘Minister. How lovely to see you again.’ The minister blinked, and Natalia wished she’d thought to ask the man’s name before she’d come over. It would have added a nice touch.
‘Likewise, Your Highness,’ the minister responded after a pause, and still smiling, Natalia turned to Ben Jackson. Up close he wasn’t quite so boring. His body radiated a certain leashed power, and despite his aura of restrained wealth and prestige, Natalia still felt an undercurrent of cynical wariness that intrigued her. He might have risen far on his own, but he hadn’t left the boy behind. But then, you could never really leave behind the child you’d been … even if you wanted to. Desperately.
His eyes were blue, navy like his tie, and now they were narrowed not in admiration or even assessment but … amusement, Natalia realised with an icy pang of shock. He was laughing at her. The thought caused a stab of irritation to knife through her. If there was one thing she couldn’t stand it was to be laughed at. The butt of someone’s silent joke. It had happened too many times before.
‘I don’t believe we’ve been introduced,’ she said, switching from Italian to English. She held out her hand, and Ben Jackson’s mouth flicked upwards at one corner, the faintest of mocking smiles.
‘Not formally,’ he agreed, ‘although I know you are one of the Santina princesses, and you undoubtedly know I am a Jackson.’ He took her fingers in his own for the most cursory of handshakes, but Natalia was still left with an impression of latent strength.
‘Ah, but which Jackson?’ she replied with a lift of her brows. ‘There are so very many of you.’
Ben Jackson narrowed his gaze, his mouth pressed into a thin line. Natalia gave him a bland smile back. She would not be anyone’s amusement. Not ever again. If she amused, it would be by choice, not because of what she could—or couldn’t—do.
‘And there are quite a few Santinas as well,’ he replied in as bland a tone as her smile. ‘Large families are such blessings, aren’t they?’
‘Oh, yes,’ Natalia murmured, although she’d hardly call her large family a blessing. Their relationships were too fractured and distant for that. Save for her twin sister, Carlotta, Natalia didn’t feel particularly close to anyone in her family, and certainly not her parents. Yet knowing what she did of Bobby Jackson’s clan, she didn’t think Ben thought his family such a blessing either.
The minister of tourism and culture had excused himself with a murmur, and Natalia nodded to his retreating back. ‘You were certainly having a cozy chat with our minister. Are you planning on spending some time on our fair island?’ She’d spoken playfully, giving him a flirtatious look from under her lashes, but Ben Jackson remained all too expressionless. Unaffected, or perhaps still amused.
‘As a matter of fact, I am.’
‘A holiday, perhaps?’
‘Not quite.’
He was definitely amused. Natalia suppressed another stab of irritation. She was used to managing such conversations better, or, if she were honest, wrapping men like Ben Jackson around one manicured pinkie. No, not men like Ben Jackson. She had a feeling she hadn’t met many men like Ben Jackson, which was something to be thankful for. The man was downright annoying.
‘Then perhaps,’ she suggested, ‘you’re here to keep an eye on your sister? Make sure she behaves herself?’
‘My sister is an adult and perfectly capable of behaving herself,’ Ben replied coolly, ‘unlike some women who have been happily plastered across the pages of most of the tabloids of Europe.’
Natalia jerked back just a little, shocked by the sudden sharpness in his tone. He didn’t sound amused any more; he sounded condemning. She knew she was featured heavily in most tabloids and gossip magazines. She sought out such publicity deliberately. Yet hearing this aggravating man mock her for the exaggerated stories of her evening exploits made her now burn with fury—and shame.
‘Then you must be watching out for the rest of your family,’ she said with an answering edge to her voice. She let her gaze sweep through the room, lingering pointedly on his outrageous father, who was laughing far too loudly, before moving on to one of his sisters arguing heatedly with a guest, and then another sister—some kind of reality TV star, for heaven’s sake!—who certainly looked the part, before finally resting on yet another sister, a curvy blonde who was poured into a dress and flirting outrageously with a man twice her age. ‘I don’t believe all of them are able to behave themselves, are they?’
Ben’s expression didn’t change, not one bit, yet Natalia experienced a ripple of unease anyway. She felt again that impression of latent strength, leashed power.
‘I believe,’ Ben said softly, ‘this is a case of the pot calling the kettle black.’
She lifted her chin. ‘I hardly think we can compare families, Mr Jackson, despite their similar sizes.’
‘Ah, I see. You’re a snob as well as a brat.’
Natalia drew back, shocked. No one ever talked to her like that, at least not a commoner at a public event. Within the palace walls was another matter altogether. ‘You should know,’ she told him coldly, ‘that I could have you thrown out of here for making remarks like that.’
‘Is that a threat?’
Natalia said nothing. It was a threat, and a useless one at that. She could go and fetch one of the liveried guards standing sentry at the doors to the palace ballroom, and she could request that they eject Ben Jackson from the premises. Whether they would do so was highly questionable. Ben Jackson was the brother of the future queen of Santina and, despite his family’s insalubrious background, an honoured guest. And the palace staff, on orders from her parents, took any of her requests with an irritating dose of cautious skepticism. She’d just been very foolish.
‘Consider yourself warned,’ she told him, and he laughed softly.
‘At least you have some sense.’
‘And you have no manners,’ she shot back.
His eyebrows lifted once again, and another mocking smile quirked that rather mobile mouth. ‘Kettle?’ he reminded her softly. ‘Pot?’
Natalia resisted the very strong urge to remind him she was of royal blood. And to kick him in the shins. Or maybe somewhere a bit higher. She plucked a flute of champagne from a circulating tray and took a large sip. ‘So,’ she said, eyeing him over the rim of her drink, ‘why are you considering spending time on Santina?’
Ben regarded her for a moment, and then seeming to shrug although his shoulders barely moved, he decided—thankfully—to be civil. ‘I’m starting a sports camp for the island’s disadvantaged youth.’
Surprise flickered through her. She’d expected him to say something about touring Santina’s sights, or renting a private yacht or palazzo. The usual reason a restless millionaire came to their shores. ‘How very charitable of you,’ she finally murmured.
‘Thank you.’
‘And I suppose you’re hoping to find the next Lionel Messi or David Beckham? Get a few kickbacks?’
Ben narrowed his eyes. ‘If you’re implying that my aim in starting this camp is to find a future star and benefit financially from it then you would be very much mistaken.’
‘Oh, come now. Surely you can’t deny you have something of an ulterior motive? Or are you going to spend however many weeks or months setting up this little camp with no profit whatsoever?’
‘As incredible as it seems to you, Your Highness,’ Ben murmured, ‘yes.’
Natalia shook her head. She knew enough about business—or at least men—to realise that no one did anything for free. There was always a price; it just depended on who paid it. And even if Ben had the saintliest motives possible, she still liked to annoy him. Especially since he’d annoyed her so much. ‘Perhaps not a future star, then,’ she acknowledged, ‘but the publicity can’t be bad.’
‘You know what they say about publicity. No publicity is bad publicity, except I don’t think that’s quite true in your case?’ He left it as a question, but the iron in his eyes made Natalia quite sure that he had no doubt about the publicity she’d had—or its accuracy. Only last week she’d been photographed leaving a club at 4:00 a.m., in the company of two well-known jet-setting playboys. A man like Ben Jackson probably found that shocking—and shameless. ‘In any case,’ he continued, ‘the amount of publicity generated by a youth club on this small island will be negligible to my business or its profits.’
Natalia didn’t know whether to be amused or outraged by his complete dismissal of this small island. She was a bit of both. Her mother would possibly swoon at such scorn. ‘Well,’ she said, keeping her voice careless, ‘since you seem so well-acquainted with the tabloids of Europe, I have no doubt you’ll be able to deliver the information into the right hands and guarantee yourself a front page or two.’
He stared at her for a moment, long enough to make her lose her edge of defiance and start to squirm. Or at least want to squirm. Thankfully she remained quite still. ‘Are you always this pleasant?’ he finally enquired.
‘No, I’m not,’ she told him. ‘You happened to catch me at a good moment.’ He let out a dry chuckle, surprising her. So boring Ben Jackson possessed a sense of humour. A small one.
‘I shudder at the thought of catching you at a bad one,’ he told her, and his voice was low and honeyed enough to slide right over her senses. Restrained and boring he may be, but he was also all too attractive.
Natalia knew she had been rather rude to him, but only because she’d felt so defensive. As soon as she’d met Ben Jackson he’d examined and dismissed her, all in the space of a few minutes. She’d spent a long time perfecting her air of polished, jaded sophistication, and she didn’t like someone like Ben blowing it. Seeing right through it. Laughing at her. ‘Shudder away,’ she told him. ‘Somehow I don’t think we’ll be meeting again.’
Ben Jackson let his gaze sweep slowly over her—far too slowly, for Natalia felt not only as if he were seeing right through her, but stripping the clothes from her body. Not that she was wearing much. Her silver-spangled dress was haute couture but very short, with a plunging V neckline. She felt her body heat all over under his deliberate scrutiny, and knew Ben Jackson saw the revealing colour wash over her. Unfortunately she went blotchy when she blushed. Not at all the look she was going for, and a ridiculous response to a man who had treated her abominably. She needed to get out of here, before Ben Jackson saw—and knew—too much.
