His words ignited memories she was trying her best to forget. The feeling of being in his arms. The crush of his mouth on hers and the instant flaring of her body in response. Ella tried to ignore the sudden yearning to have him make love to her all over again. Concentrate on what is real, she thought as she forced herself to confront her greatest fear and most foolish hope. ‘Are you saying you want a hands-on role as father?’
For a moment, Hassan didn’t answer. ‘I’m saying that’s a possibility. But I think it’s important that we discuss your needs first.’
Ella blinked in surprise. Was that genuine concern she heard in his voice? ‘My needs?’ she echoed.
‘Well, you have your own business, don’t you? I don’t know very much about party-planning, but I imagine it must require a lot of hard work and dedication, especially as you’re the boss.’
Cautiously, Ella nodded. ‘Yes, it does.’
‘And some pretty unsociable hours?’
‘That’s one of the drawbacks,’ she agreed, softening in spite of herself, because she would never have believed that he could be quite so understanding.
‘And a baby might get in the way of that?’
‘Well, ye—’ The words died on her lips as she looked into his face and saw that it wasn’t concern but calculation she saw in his black eyes. And suddenly, she realised just where this was leading. Suddenly, she realised what a sucker she was for just a few kind words. Was that what her mother had done, over and over again? Fallen under the spell of a man who had treated her like dirt just because he’d uttered a few sweet nothings along the way? The shock of realising that she had very nearly done the same thing made the blood drain from her face.
‘My God,’ she breathed. ‘You are completely and utterly ruthless! I see exactly what you’re doing. You’re trying to get me to admit that I won’t be able to cope with this baby, aren’t you?’
‘And isn’t that the truth?’ he challenged, his vow to tread carefully forgotten in his determination to get his own way. ‘Have you actually stopped to think about it, about what it might mean to you?’
‘Are you crazy? I’ve thought of nothing else for weeks!’
‘But you’re planning to carry on working?’
‘Of course I am!’ Did he have no idea how real people lived their lives? She supposed he didn’t. ‘It’s how I earn my living, Hassan. We weren’t all born in palaces and given trust funds while we lay around like pampered princes!’
He gave a short laugh. Oh, the famous myth that all princes were pampered simply because they were princes. If he told her what the reality was, she would never believe it. Instead he leaned forward to emphasise his point, slamming his forefinger into the palm of his hand. ‘And while you’re “working,” Ella, while you’re dealing with all the mindless Z-list celebrities and their attendant problems, what will you be doing with our baby? Farming it out to some underqualified child-minder who has no vested interest in its future?’
Heart racing, Ella stared at him. ‘That’s such an ignorant comment, it doesn’t even deserve the dignity of a reply.’
‘You think so? Well, how about coming up with an answer to this one? How about when the baby is ill. Who’s going to cover for you then? Or are you planning to bring a carrycot into that cramped excuse for a room which you call an office?’
His words were crowding into her mind like a flock of dark birds flapping their demented wings and Ella shook her head as she tried to shake them off. ‘I’m not the first woman in the history of the world to contemplate bringing up a child on my own! These are things which can all be worked out.’
‘How?’ he shot back.
The question caught her off-guard because in truth she hadn’t sat down to work out the day-to-day practicalities. ‘Okay, so what’s the alternative?’ she questioned hotly. ‘Are you saying you want to take the child off to your desert palace and bring it up as a baby sheikh or whatever it is they call the girl version?’
‘It’s a sheika, and yes, I can bring up a baby,’ he said. ‘The way my father brought me up. A child doesn’t need a mother in order to survive.’
Ella heard the strange bitterness which had distorted his words and suddenly she realised just where this was leading. She could read the ruthless intent which had darkened his face just as easily as if he’d said the words out loud.
He would take her baby away without a qualm. Take it away to live in some remote desert kingdom and she would never see it again.
Her stomach lurched and pinpricks of sweat broke out on her forehead. ‘I think I’m going to be sick,’ she croaked.
CHAPTER EIGHT
HASSAN had dealt with sickness before. He’d seen men spill their guts up after battle and afterwards lie grey-faced and sweating. But he’d never witnessed it in a beautiful young woman in her prime and he thought how tiny and frail she suddenly looked. Overwhelmed with remorse at the harshness of his words, he carried her to the tiny bathroom and then held back her hair from her face as she retched. Eventually, she stopped and slumped against his chest, exhausted, her eyes closed.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said eventually.
Stricken with remorse, he shook his head. ‘It is not you who should be sorry, it is me,’ he grated. ‘I am responsible for your sickness. I should not have said those things to you.’
At this, her eyelashes fluttered open to reveal ice-blue eyes which were slightly bloodshot, and to his astonishment, a faint smile was lifting the corners of her lips.
‘Your words were rather wounding,’ she conceded. ‘But not quite powerful enough to induce nausea, Hassan. That’s something which happens to lots of pregnant women, no matter what their circumstances.’
‘You have been sick before this?’ he demanded.
Ella swallowed, feeling much too weak to be able to maintain a stoic attitude. ‘Most days.’
‘Most days? But this is not good! This is why you are looking so thin and so pale.’
‘The doctor says the baby will be fine.’
There was a pause. ‘You have seen a doctor?’
Ella knew that she ought to move. That it was bizarre, ridiculous and inappropriate to be lying slumped against the man who had said such cruel things to her. But the stupid thing was that she didn’t want to go anywhere. He felt warm and he felt strong. Most important of all, he felt safe. ‘Seeing a doctor is what normally happens when a woman gets pregnant, Hassan.’
‘And who is this doctor?’
‘He’s my GP from the local health centre and he’s very good.’
Hassan tensed, his apprehension eclipsing the sudden realisation that her back was pressing against his groin.
‘A local GP cannot be charged with caring for the progeny of the sheikh,’ he said, and then saw her eyelids flutter to a close again. ‘But this is not the time to talk about it. For now, you need to rest.’
Her protest died on her lips as once again he picked her up and carried her through to her bedroom, though she couldn’t miss his faint double take when he saw a series of charcoal drawings she’d done of Izzy lining the walls. They were entitled ‘Izzy Dressing’ and they showed her sister pulling on various items of clothing. They were less shocking than most things you’d see in a municipal art gallery, but that didn’t stop Hassan’s mouth from flattening critically.
He put her down on the bed, banking the pillows up behind her, his black eyes raking over her.
‘What can I do for you?’ he demanded. ‘What can I get you to make you feel better?’
Stupidly, she felt like asking him to hold her again. To cradle her in his arms where, for just a brief while, she had felt safe and cosseted. And how pathetic was that? She struggled to sit up. ‘I don’t want anything.’
‘Sure?’
The unexpected softness in his voice made her hesitate, especially as her throat felt scorched and dry from all that vomiting. ‘There’s some flat cola in the fridge.’
His eyes narrowed. ‘Flat cola?’
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�It helps the sickness.’
‘Right.’ Grimly, he made his way to her refrigerator, an ancient-looking beast of a thing which contained a lump of cheese, some wilting salad and a bottle of cola, minus the top. His expression was no less thunderous when he took the unappetising brown liquid back to her, and held the glass up to her lips while she sipped from it.
It was an unexpectedly considerate gesture, powerfully intimate, and Ella felt some of her strength returning. ‘You make a good nurse,’ she joked.
‘And you make an appalling patient,’ he retorted. ‘If you think that you can sustain yourself and a growing baby on that pitiful excuse for food in your kitchen.’
‘I don’t have a lot of time to go shopping,’ she defended, and then realised that she had walked into a trap of her own making. ‘But all that will change, of course.’
‘How?’ he demanded. ‘Where’s the magic wand you’re going to wave? Who’s going to help you, Ella?’
‘My family.’ But even to her own ears, the words sounded unconvincing. She knew that Ben would help her in a moment and yet she baulked at the thought of running to him, terrified of disappointing her beloved big brother and becoming a burden to him. Besides, Ben lived on an island which was miles away.
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 f
ind 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 cynical smile mirrored hers. ‘Me too. So you see, maybe we are more alike than you think, since neither of us have any illusions to destroy. Maybe that makes us the ideal couple to get married, if the purpose of marriage is to legitimise children. And my country tends to be rather liberal about divorce. If you find living in Kashamak to be unbearable, I will give you your freedom, once the child is born.’
Ella’s teeth dug into the fleshy cushion of her bottom lip, because his offer of an easy divorce seemed to make a complete mockery of his marriage proposal. Yet wasn’t his suggestion the only thing which made sense in this whole crazy situation? That there was an escape route all mapped out if she chose to take it—and frankly, she couldn’t imagine not taking it.
It was just his arrogant certainty that he could just snap his fingers and she’d fall in with his plans which made her want to rebel. And so did something else—the very real fear that going to a faraway country to live with Hassan would throw up all kinds of new problems. Alone with a man who seemed to despise her … How on earth could she feel comfortable about something like that?
The Sheikh’s Heir Page 8