they’d had before.
Ella would hold her breath as she felt the mattress dip beneath Hassan’s weight, and perhaps if she hadn’t been so pregnant, she might have attempted some form of seduction. As it was, even sitting up was a big, lumbering effort. She didn’t even want to think of how clumsy it would look if she tried to launch herself at him. Anyway, such plans were pretty pointless since Hassan would fall asleep almost as soon as his head touched the pillow, while she was left staring at the moon shadows flickering over the ceiling.
One morning she awoke to find him leaning over her, his dark face creased with concern, and for one crazy moment, she thought he was going to kiss her. Her lips parted as eagerly as a young chick on the nest, but his face became shuttered as he drew back from her.
‘You look exhausted,’ he observed quietly. ‘Can’t you sleep?’
‘No.’ She waited for him to ask him why and wondered if she dared tell him the reason. Because I miss you. I miss you touching me. Kissing me. Making love to me. Because I’m scared of the future … and I’m only just beginning to realise the heartache which lies ahead if we’re living these separate lives. But she wasn’t going to beg. Or whine. She hadn’t quite sunk to that. She kept her voice light. ‘Nobody ever died from lack of sleep.’
‘No, but it isn’t fair to you or the baby to see you looking so exhausted,’ he said harshly. ‘I will move back into my own rooms and sleep there from now on.’
Her eyes beseeched him to reconsider even if her pride stopped her from asking him outright, but he was true to his word. It didn’t take long for one of his valets to move his few possessions out of her suite, and after that night, Ella slept alone.
As the days passed, so her loneliness increased. With her sickness firmly in the past and without the diversion of long and erotic nights with Hassan, Ella’s life in the palace seemed empty and pointless. Only continuing with her husband’s portrait, into which she poured all her thwarted passion and despair, helped fill the long, waiting days.
But that was her only distraction. The constant heat and lack of seasonal change were having a disorientating effect on her. She felt like someone who had awoken from a long sleep and found themselves in an unknown place. The flowers in the garden looked fake; the sky seemed too blue to be real. The beautiful, gilded palace began to feel like a glittering cage.
Hard to believe that it was early December and, back home, everyone would be gearing up to Christmas. She thought about the glittering lights which twinkled along Regent Street and the supermarkets which would be stuffed to the gills with chocolate. She thought about those tacky paper chains her father used to insist on, because no matter what his faults were, he absolutely loved Christmas and had passed on that love to his children.
And crazily, she began to miss her family. All her family. Her mother might be a walk-over where her father was concerned, but she had always been there when you needed her. The email correspondence they’d been sharing suddenly seemed woefully inadequate, especially the last one which had expressed a wistful desire to ‘see my little girl looking pregnant.’
She even missed her sisters. She hadn’t had a chance to talk to Allegra about her engagement. And while Izzy might be erratic at times, she was filled with an energy and enthusiasm which Ella missed.
Now that all the Jacksons knew she was pregnant, would there really be any shame in admitting defeat and going home and accepting help from her family instead of from Hassan? Because his help came with a price tag which was beginning to seem way too high. She didn’t have to be some sort of passive wimp who just took whatever type of behaviour the sheikh doled out to her.
Her troubled thoughts wouldn’t leave her and eventually it dawned on her that she wanted to go home. And that she would have to tell Hassan. She would emphasise that her trip out here hadn’t been wasted because at least it had enabled them to get to know each other and to establish a degree of civility. And she wouldn’t be unreasonable over access either. In fact, she would make sure that he had as much of it as he liked. Because she would never allow a man who had been neglected by his mother to be kept at a distance by his son or daughter.
Once she had psyched herself up enough, she sat down to breakfast, her manner curiously calm as she took her place opposite her husband.
She went through the ritual of drizzling honey onto her bowl of yoghurt. She could sense him watching her, so suddenly she put her spoon down and looked up to meet the dark fire of his eyes.
‘You’re still not sleeping?’ he questioned before she could say a word. ‘Even though you now have the bed to yourself?’
‘No.’ She shook her head. ‘It’s getting much too uncomfortable to sleep.’
‘Is there anything I can do?’ he questioned.
For a moment she was tempted to say yes. To tell him to come back to her bed and get close to her. And despite her determination not to, she allowed herself a brief glimpse of how it could have been. She imagined a scenario where joys and problems could have been discussed, and shared. And then she thought about what it was: an empty relationship with a man who was cold and unloving towards her. Who had told her emphatically that he couldn’t love. What woman in her right mind would settle for something like that?
‘Yes.’ She hesitated, clasping her fingers together just in case they started trembling. ‘Actually, there is.’
Something in the tone of her voice made his eyes narrow. ‘And what might that be, Ella?’
There was a pause. ‘I want to go home.’
Hassan nodded as a terrible tearing sense of inevitability twisted his gut. ‘Home?’ he questioned.
‘Yes, home. I want to see my family.’
‘But I thought your family drove you mad?’
‘And they do—frequently!’ Her gaze was very steady as she looked at him. ‘But at least they feel stuff. At least their hearts are in the right place, even if they often get it wrong!’
Her implication was crystal clear and suddenly Hassan was forced to accept what he would have once considered impossible. That, for all their faults, at least the Jacksons had the courage to face up to their own emotions. Their lives might be chaotic at times, but they didn’t run away and hide from their feelings. And yet didn’t he despise that kind of messy emotion? Surely that wasn’t a brief pang of envy he was experiencing? His mouth hardened. ‘And you miss them?’
‘I do.’ She nodded, steeling her heart. ‘I feel like a shadow here, Hassan. As if I’m invisible. I want to fly home so that I can see a few friendly and familiar faces and eat some mince pies and listen to c-c-carols….’
To her horror, she realised that tears had sprung to her eyes and when Hassan made to move towards her she waved him away. ‘D-don’t!’ she stumbled, knowing that if he touched her she would be lost. ‘Please don’t. You’ve made it very clear you don’t want me near you, so please don’t let a few tears tempt you from your chosen path. My life has telescoped down to this beautiful place which now feels like a prison, though I’m starting to wonder if that’s how you wanted it to be all along.’
Hassan sucked in a breath. He felt as if he had wandered into a maze of his own making, where darkness had suddenly fallen. He had pushed her away in order to protect himself. Pushed her and pushed her until she had decided that she could take no more. Now she wanted out, and he had no one to blame but himself. He looked at her pale face, at the swollen curve of her belly, and was overcome with a terrible wave of regret.
‘But you’re nearly thirty-six weeks pregnant,’ he pointed out.
‘So?’
‘So the airlines won’t allow you to fly.’
‘You’ve got your own plane, Hassan, so I can’t see that will be a problem.’
In silence, he got up from the table and walked