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.