Where was he?
But even as the true extent of the situation in which she now found herself sank in, Ella made a decision. It had happened and there was absolutely nothing she could do about it. It had been amazing and unexpected and she wasn’t going to act all shame-faced and cowed. They had both been responsible for what had taken place last night.
And if he decided that he had enjoyed it so much that he wanted to do it all over again, what then? Ella stared at the ceiling, unable to prevent the rush of memories from flooding back. Wouldn’t she be only too happy to start over, so they could prove to each other that first impressions needn’t necessarily count?
‘Hassan?’ she called softly.
No answer.
She wondered if he was in the shower, perhaps lathering creamy soap over that honed, olive skin. Suddenly, she could imagine only too well what that might look like. The hard, flat planes of his body. The powerful legs, the taut stomach and the dark mass of hair which grew around his manhood. She closed her eyes. She wasn’t going to take herself there. It had been … well, it had been absolutely fantastic. But she wasn’t going to read too much into it, not at this stage. All she wanted was to get back to her family as soon as possible, and she needed his help to do that.
‘Hassan!’ Her voice was louder now but there was still no reply, when just at that moment came a rap at the door.
What should she do?
Ignore it? Wait for Hassan to come out of the bathroom and deal with it himself? Surely, the fewer people who saw her here, the better.
But the rap was repeated and there came the distinct and undeniable sound of someone saying her name.
‘Miss Jackson?’
Ella screwed up her nose in confusion. That was her. No way on earth she could deny it. How the hell did they know she was here? Wrapping the sheet around her like a fancy-dress version of a Grecian goddess, she padded barefoot to the door, pulling it open and gazing suspiciously through the small crack. Outside stood a tall man she didn’t recognise, with a polite smile on his face and what looked like some dry-cleaning hanging over his arm.
‘Miss Jackson?’ he said again.
Ella screwed her eyes up. ‘Who are you?’
‘You don’t know me. My name is Benedict Austin and I work as an aide to Sheikh Hassan Al Abbas. He asked me to make sure that you got this.’
With this, he handed her the package and Ella blinked. ‘What is it?’
‘You’ll find some clothes in there. The sheikh was most insistent that you have them, since I understand that you …’ He hesitated. ‘Spilt some wine down your dress last night.’
Ella could feel herself blushing since she suspected that this man knew very well what had really happened to her dress. And in that moment, she felt furious. Why couldn’t Hassan have had the decency to hand over the clothes himself instead of sending one of his puppets to do the deed? She looked the aide straight in the eye. ‘Do you have any idea where he is?’
‘The sheikh?’ The aide gave an apologetic shrug as if this was a question he had been asked by indignant women many times during his career. ‘I’m afraid he had to fly back to Kashamak with some urgency. There were pressing affairs of state which he needed to attend to.’
Ella had thought it wasn’t possible to feel any worse than she already did, but this new piece of information just went to show how wrong she could be. So he had done a runner. He had left without even bothering to say goodbye.
Humiliated, she wanted to tell this Benedict Austin just what he could do with his clothes, but pride told her that was a luxury she couldn’t afford. What had happened was bad enough, but if she was seen slinking out of the palace wearing a tattered version of last night’s dress then she might as well carry a banner, announcing to the world how she’d spent the night.
‘Thank you,’ she said with as much dignity as she could muster, before taking the proffered package and quietly closing the door on him.
Some women might have cried, but not Ella. She was a survivor. She wasn’t about to waste her tears on someone as unworthy as Hassan Al Abbas. Instead she concentrated on making herself presentable enough to find her way out of the strange palace.
A shower and vigorous hair wash got rid of every last trace of the sheikh’s scent from her body, even if the memory of him wasn’t quite so easy to shift.
She stared at herself in the mirror, reading the bewilderment which had darkened her blue eyes and wondering why she had behaved like that.
Hadn’t she spent her whole life despairing at how easily her mother had capitulated to the whims of her straying ex-husband, allowing him back in her life whenever it pleased him? Time and time again she had begged her mum to grow a little backbone and stand up to the man who’d made such a fool of her. But once she’d realised that her mother would listen to nothing except the demands of her own heart, Ella had vowed that she would be different. She would always be cool-headed when it came to men. She would regard them with the same impartiality as she would a prospective business deal.
Up until now, she’d never had a problem with that strategy, but then, up until now she’d never met a man like Hassan Al Abbas. Nor ever felt as if she were a slave to her body. The only sexual experience she’d had prior to last night had been an unmitigated disaster, mainly consisting of her lying looking wide-eyed up at the ceiling, wondering what all the fuss was about.
Well, last night she’d found that out for herself. And suddenly she understood. Suddenly she could see why people took such huge risks when it came to sex. Why they made complete fools of themselves. She felt as if she had been initiated to a secret club, without having decided whether or not she really wanted to be a member.
With trembling fingers, she opened up the package which Hassan’s aide had brought with him. Inside lay a cool white dress and a pair of panties nestling among sheets of tissue paper. But while the dress was a fairly respectable length, the panties were nothing but a peach-coloured thong, a sexy little garment which revealed more than it concealed. The thin, satin string made her bottom look almost bare and the filmy peach fabric at the front showed the dark fuzz of hair through which Hassan had hungrily tangled his fingers only hours before.
Her skin felt tainted as she put it on, yet what choice did she have but to wear it? Had he chosen it, she wondered, or did he usually leave that kind of thing to his aide?
Slapping on some makeup from her purse and a defiant slash of scarlet lipstick, she stuffed her ruined silver dress into the bathroom bin, sickeningly aware that there were tiny beads lying all over the floor. And then, having forced her feet into what was quite clearly a pair of evening shoes, she let herself out of the suite, momentarily trying to get her bearings.
Heading towards a wide corridor hung with lavish chandeliers she caught a glimpse of perfectly manicured grass in the distance and realised that she must be near the palace gardens. Could she find some passing member of staff and ask them to arrange a car to take her back to the hotel? Was that possible?
‘Miss Jackson? Miss Jackson, isn’t it?’
The icily cultured voice behind her made Ella freeze in horror because she couldn’t fail to recognise those aristocratic tones. Oh, please don’t let it be Queen Zoe, she prayed silently, her hopes crumbling as she turned round to stare into the cold features of her sister’s future mother-in-law.
Awkwardly, Ella bobbed a curtsey, her cheeks burning with embarrassment. ‘Er, good morning, Your Majesty.’
‘It’s Ella, isn’t it?’
‘That’s right, Your Majesty.’
The queen raised her eyebrows. ‘Forgive me for being a little surprised to see you here at such an hour. I thought that you and your family were staying at the hotel?’
Ella hoped her grimace resembled a smile. What could she do, other than be evasive? Tell the queen that she’d spent the night with the sheikh? Wasn’t the fact that she was creeping around the corridors wearing new clothes which didn’t match last night’s shoes evi
dence enough? ‘I … I fell asleep,’ she said lamely.
There was a silence while Ella dared the queen to ask just where she’d fallen asleep. But fortunately, good breeding must have stopped her, for the older woman simply gave a disapproving look, as if she didn’t believe a word of it.
‘I see. And have you had breakfast?’ asked the queen.
‘Er, no. I’m not really very hungry, Your Majesty. In fact, I really ought to be getting back to the hotel. My mother will be wondering where I am.’
‘Yes, I can imagine she will be,’ answered the queen drily. ‘Well, speak to one of the staff and they will arrange a car for you.’
‘Thank you, Your Majesty.’ Ella gave the deepest curtsey she could manage and waited until the queen gave a brief nod before walking off.
It took her a while, but eventually she found someone and made herself understood well enough to order a car.
Minutes later she was being driven along a picturesque coastal road, grateful to put miles between herself and the Santina royal palace. But Ella’s stomach was in knots and she barely noticed the deep sapphire of the sea or the perfect blue of the sky. For once, the island’s scenic beauty left her cold.
All she could think about was the way she’d behaved. It was not only completely uncharacteristic, it was also shameful, because she had chosen the worst man in the world with whom to be sexually rampant. She’d been given the perfect opportunity to prove to Hassan Al Abbas that his bias against the Jackson family was unfair and unfounded. Yet instead, she had simply reinforced all those prejudices with her own behaviour. He’d accused the women in her family of behaving like cheap tramps and hadn’t she gone ahead and done just that?
Ella bit her lip as the car began to snake down the road towards the hotel. She’d let everyone down. But most of all, she’d let herself down.
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?’
The Sheikh’s Heir Page 5
