And what of her business—how was she going to cope with the day-to-day running of it? Her celebrity clients expected a super-willowy boss, with smiling lips covered in her trademark scarlet gloss. Not some tired and lumbering pregnant woman who wasn’t even with the father of her baby, a pregnant woman who was finding it increasingly difficult to stay upright without wanting to fall asleep. Or be sick.
‘No, most definitely not your family. I am not having this baby influenced by the Jackson family,’ said Hassan unequivocably.
Her hackles began to rise. ‘You can’t stop me.’
No, he couldn’t, and he recognised that to try to push her would only make her stubbornly stand her ground. Far better, surely, to appeal to the innate sense of greed which lay at the heart of every woman? Greed which he had seen in many forms ever since his powerful body had reached adulthood and the vast resources of his inheritance had become available to him. He put the half-empty glass of cola on the bedside table and leaned forward by a fraction, seeing her ice-blue eyes widen automatically.
‘But what if I were to wave the magic wand instead?’ he questioned slowly.
‘By making yourself disappear from my life? Now that really would be a wish come true!’
How indomitable she was, he thought. And what remarkable spirit she would pass on to their child! Unexpectedly, he smiled. ‘By listening to reason.’
‘Are you trying to tell me that you’re a reasonable man?’
‘I can be.’ He paused. ‘What if I arranged for someone to stand in for you at work while you’re pregnant? Someone who would ably assist the woman who was staring at me so intently when I came to see you today.’
‘Daisy,’ she said automatically. ‘And I can’t afford to just hire someone in.’
‘Maybe not, but I can. And not just anyone. The very best in the business—someone of your choosing, of course—can be yours for the taking.’
She stared at him, her heart beginning to race, unable to deny that she was tempted by his offer. How easy it was for him, she thought. He could just chuck money at a problem and the problem would go away. What must it be like, to be that powerful? ‘And what’s the catch?’
‘The catch is that you let me look after you.’
‘I know I just said you’d make a good nurse, but I wasn’t being serious.’
But even as she attempted the poor joke, Hassan could hear the lack of conviction in her voice. Sensing weakness, he moved in for the kill. ‘Think about it, Ella. You can spend your days doing exactly as you please. You can read books you never have time for. You can relax and watch movies.’ His eyes strayed upwards to the drawings of her sister and, again, his mouth flattened. ‘You could even do some drawing, if you wanted. Maybe it would be good to have time to do those kinds of things for a change?’
Ella felt temptation grow as she considered his offer. Time to paint? Or to do nothing at all? To lie in bed in the morning until this wretched sickness had passed? She imagined not having to dress for work, to slip on the high heels and slap on the makeup. She’d worked since the age of sixteen and she couldn’t imagine not working, and yet there was no denying that the idea appealed to her.
But she felt like a bit like a starving stray cat who was too scared to reach out to take the morsels of delicious food which were being offered to her.
‘It’s very generous of you,’ she said slowly.
Hassan allowed himself a charitable smile. ‘I can afford to be generous.’
She swallowed. ‘And what … you’d come and see me from time to time, would you? Whenever you’re in London?’
His eyes narrowed. Surely she had understood the main thrust behind his offer—that in return for rescuing her, she would come under his control? He looked at the question in her eyes. It seemed not. ‘But that is not my plan,’ he said softly. ‘I have a country to run and many pressing matters. We have only just finished fighting a war. I won’t be in London and neither will you, for you will fly back to Kashamak with me, just as soon as your replacement can be appointed.’
Ella looked at him blankly. ‘Kashamak?’ she said faintly.
‘The land that I rule which produces fine warriors and great poets,’ he said proudly. ‘And the child that you carry must know all about their heritage, Ella.’ There was a pause. ‘And so must you.’
Yet deep down, he suspected she would find his land much too harsh for her Western sensibilities. What if prolonged exposure to Kashamak made her want to escape from its restrictions and return to the freedoms of her old life? What if she discovered that motherhood was not for her?
A sudden and audacious thought occurred to him.
She could leave the child behind. Leave him to care for that child, as his own father had cared for him. Because didn’t he know better than anyone that you didn’t need a mother in order to survive?
Hassan’s heart began to beat with an exultant kind of excitement as he realised what lay within his grasp. That perhaps this was the answer to his prayers. The heir he knew his people wanted and yet which, so far, he had been unwilling to provide, because the idea of marriage had been abhorrent to him. But now he was being forced to marry, wasn’t he? And that completely changed the playing field.
Ella watched as his body tensed and wondered what had caused his face to darken like that. ‘But I might not want to go and live in Kashamak,’ she objected. ‘And then what?’
‘I think you’ll find that you don’t really have any choice in the matter,’ he snapped, because the alternative was unthinkable, especially now that he had glimpsed the possibilities. The idea of his child being tutored in the ways of the world by the Jackson family would simply not be allowed to happen. He forced his voice to soften as he looked down at her. ‘Your welfare is my number-one concern, Ella, and I cannot monitor it if you are thousands of miles away.’
She heard words which sounded as empty as the look in his eyes and a shiver of trepidation whispered its way over her skin. Her welfare was his ‘number-one concern,’ was it? Sure it was! She didn’t believe him. Not for a minute. This felt more about possession than anything else. His child and therefore his woman.
His hawk-like features looked cruel in that moment, almost triumphant. How she wished she could just pull the bedcovers over her head and make him and all her problems go away.
But he was right. She didn’t have a choice. Not really. She was pregnant with the sheikh’s baby and she was going to have to accommodate that fact, as were other people. For the first time she thought how this piece of news would go down in Hassan’s homeland and she looked up into his flinty eyes.
‘Won’t your people find it odd if you just turn up with a Western woman who’s so obviously pregnant?’
‘They would find it completely unacceptable,’ he agreed silkily, realising that there was only one solution to their predicament. One which would inevitably mean a deeper association with the outrageous Jackson clan. Instinctively, he baulked against it, but what choice did he have other than to accept it? He looked down into her ice-blue eyes. ‘Which is why we must be married immediately.’
Married? Ella stared at him, her heart beginning to beat very fast. ‘Are you out of your mind?’
‘Not last time I looked.’ He saw the tension in her face. ‘What’s the matter, Ella, were you holding out for Mr Right?’
She thought of her father’s multiple marriages and the women whose hearts he had trampled along the way and she shook her head. ‘I’m too old to believe in fairy tales,’ she said.
His