heavy burden of responsibility which now hung over her, but knowing, too, that there was only one thing she could do. And fast following on that pain came a powerful wave of protectiveness. A determination that something good would come out of this whole mess.
‘I’m going to keep the baby,’ she said fiercely.
‘Good.’ Ben let out a long and ragged sigh. ‘That’s good. And what about Al Abbas? What does he say about it all?’
‘I haven’t told him. And he won’t want to be the father, Ben.’ Her voice was flat as she remembered the way he’d snuck out of her bed, like a thief in the middle of the night. ‘He doesn’t even like me!’
There was a pause. ‘So are you going to tell him?’
Again, she thought of Hassan. Not the man who had seduced her with such ease and shown her what true pleasure could be. But the other side of that same man. She remembered the strange, cold emptiness she’d seen in his eyes and a shiver rippled down her spine. ‘I don’t know,’ she said desperately.
‘You know that it’ll be irrevocable once you do, and that you’ll have little control over what happens next?’ he warned. ‘That not only is he unimaginably wealthy, he is also an autocrat. Men like that are possessive about what is theirs, and he will see this baby as belonging to him. He’s ruthless, sis—make no mistake about that.’
Ben’s words told her nothing she didn’t already know and part of her wanted to steer clear of Hassan in order to protect herself and her baby. Ella felt the drumming of her heart as she worked out what she wanted to do. If she could wave a magic wand, it would be to erase all memory of the heartless sheikh from her life. But this wasn’t just about her any more, was it? There was a child involved and didn’t Hassan have the right to know about the existence of that child, no matter what their feelings for each other were?
‘I have no choice but to tell him,’ she said quietly.
Ben’s voice sounded gruff. ‘Actually, you do have a choice. I just hope he appreciates the one you’ve made. Let me know if there’s anything I can do. And I mean anything.’
‘I will. Thanks, Ben.’ Ella swallowed down the sudden lump which had risen in her throat. ‘Oh, and Ben? You won’t tell anyone else about this, will you?’
‘Not unless you want me to. Let’s hold off the hysterical reaction from the rest of the clan for as long as possible, shall we?’
Ella was thoughtful as she replaced the phone, realising that she couldn’t put off telling Hassan a moment longer. Until she also realised that she knew very little about him, other than that he was a sheikh. She didn’t even know where he lived! She frowned. Hadn’t his aide mentioned a country when he’d delivered her the dress and the insultingly sexy thong? Kasha-something. Kashamak?
She sat down at her computer and tapped the name into the search engine to discover that Kashamak was indeed a country, and that Hassan was its supreme ruler, although he had a younger brother.
She stared at a photo of him, clad in what was clearly his national dress, and thought how formidable he looked. His thick black hair was covered by a white headdress, held in place by a dark, knotted silk cord. It made him look more foreign. More unapproachable.
It was strange to stare at the sensual curve of his mouth and to remember how thoroughly it had explored her body. She remembered the powerful orgasm which had shaken her to the core, the first one she’d ever experienced. Was that what had made the sex seem so profound to her, or was that just the effect he had on all women?
With an effort, she dragged her eyes away from the photo. There were whole pages of facts about Kashamak’s huge natural resources and the border disputes with one of the neighbouring countries, which Hassan had recently settled, but Ella barely took anything else in. She didn’t need to know that to his country he was a hero, because the whole point of looking at all this stuff had a purpose. She now knew where he was based, but how did you go about contacting a man who was so obviously out of reach? His very position isolated him from people like her and he certainly hadn’t left behind his mobile number and told her to be in touch, had he?
In the end, she summoned up the courage to ask her sister Allegra, who in turn asked Alex, who said, regretfully, that he couldn’t really hand Hassan’s number out to anyone, not even family. Security issues, he explained. But he would pass on her details to the sheikh and ask him to be in touch with her.
Ella felt mortified when this piece of information was relayed to her, though she supposed she should be grateful that her sister hadn’t demanded to know why she wanted to contact Hassan. She guessed she was so bound up in her own impending marriage that she hadn’t quizzed her about their smoochy dancing. Or mentioned the subsequent stand-up row on the dance floor….
A sense of frustration caught hold of her and she wondered what Hassan might think when he heard about her efforts to contact him. What if he failed to get in touch? What if he thought she was just a woman on the make who couldn’t accept that he hadn’t wanted to see her again?
At this, Ella brightened a little. That might be the best of all possible worlds. She would have appeased her conscience by trying to contact him, but there would then be no need to involve him in her baby’s life.
Galvanised into action, she made an appointment with her doctor and went to see him the very next morning. Somehow it made her feel better to have done something really positive. Having her blood pressure taken and being checked out and told that she was perfectly healthy filled her with a feeling of hope for the future. She could do this. She would do this.
Lots of women brought up babies on their own, and some of them even ran their own businesses!
Later, she collected a cappuccino and an apple doughnut from the coffee shop near the headquarters of Cinderella-Rockerfella and realised that it was the first time she’d felt properly hungry in days. Swinging the brown paper bag from her fingers, she walked into the office and greeted Daisy with a smile, wondering why her assistant’s face looked so peculiar.
‘Are you all right, Daisy?’
Rather dramatically, Daisy started jerking her head in the direction of Ella’s office. ‘In there,’ she said in a stage whisper.
‘In where, what?’ asked Ella, confused. But her confusion quickly morphed into something else, something she could never have put a name to but which felt like terror and excitement and a sudden cold dread all swirled together as she reached for the door handle.
Drawing a deep breath, she walked into her tiny office, shocked but somehow not surprised to see the towering form of Sheikh Hassan Al Abbas silhouetted against the window.
CHAPTER SIX
ELLA’S heart missed a beat as the sheikh’s powerful body managed to block out most of the available light. And not just the light. It was as if he had sucked all the oxygen out of the atmosphere, making it suddenly very difficult for her to breathe. ‘Wh-what are you doing here?’ she whispered.
Hassan stared at the woman who had just walked into the cluttered office. The only colour in her pale face was the scarlet lipstick which coloured her unsmiling lips and he found himself thinking that she looked like a stranger. But she was a stranger, he reminded himself grimly, one he’d only ever seen beneath the false glittering light of chandeliers. Or naked, of course.
‘You wanted to see me, Ella,’ he said softly. ‘So here I am.’
The shock of seeing him again felt like a physical blow and Ella put her doughnut and coffee down on the desk, afraid that her trembling fingers would spill the scalding liquid. ‘I wanted to speak to you. There’s a difference.’ She met his black, empty eyes, furious with her body for the instinctive little tremble it gave. As if it was recognising that here was a man who had the power to turn her into a trembling mass of longing. Who could breathe danger into her heart. With an effort, she dragged her attention back to his