The Sheikh's Convenient Princess
Liz Fielding
From secretary…to the sheikh's wife! Sheikh Ibrahim al-Ansari knows a reconciliation with his estranged father means accepting his father’s choice of bride…unless he gets there first! Luckily he has the perfect convenient princess in mind – his stunning new assistant Ruby Dance.After her last cheating boyfriend Ruby is avoiding all commitments, but this ‘promotion’ could help her family so she agrees to a temporary marriage. She should be craving her next assistant role – not the devastating beauty of the desert and the man who rules it all…Romantic GetawaysEscape to Paradise!
From secretary...to the sheikh’s wife!
Sheikh Ibrahim al-Ansari knows a reconciliation with his estranged father means accepting his father’s choice of bride...unless he gets there first! Luckily he has the perfect princess in mind—his new assistant Ruby Dance.
After her last cheating boyfriend, Ruby is avoiding all commitments, but this promotion could help her family, so she agrees to a temporary marriage. She should be craving her next assistant role, not the devastating beauty of the desert and the man who rules it all...
Romantic Getaways
Escape to Paradise!
This Valentine’s Day escape to four of the world’s most romantic destinations with these sparkling books from Mills & Boon Romance!
From the awe-inspiring desert to vibrant Barcelona, and from the stunning coral reefs of Australia to heart-stoppingly romantic Venice—get swept away by these wonderful romances!
The Sheikh’s Convenient Princess
by Liz Fielding
The Unforgettable Spanish Tycoon
by Christy McKellen
The Billionaire of Coral Bay
by Nikki Logan
Her First-Date Honeymoon
by Katrina Cudmore
The Sheikh’s Convenient Princess
Liz Fielding
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
LIZ FIELDING was born with itchy feet. She made it to Zambia before her twenty-first birthday and, gathering her own special hero and a couple of children on the way, lived in Botswana, Kenya and Bahrain—with pauses for sightseeing pretty much everywhere in between. She now lives in the west of England, close to the Regency grandeur of Bath and the ancient mystery of Stonehenge, and these days leaves her pen to do the traveling.
For news of upcoming books visit Liz’s website: www.lizfielding.com (http://www.lizfielding.com).
I’m dedicating this, my 65th title, to my wonderful
readers—some of whom have been with me from
the first Friday in December 1992, when my
first book, An Image of You, was published.
You are my inspiration.
Contents
Cover (#ufb73b816-ba45-501b-9ac6-c89437cfe259)
Back Cover Text (#ud26a18df-294c-5cf1-99d7-86851b005f29)
Introduction (#u93cb67f0-55fc-583a-9edb-76ef2fc63fad)
Title Page (#uc1760c45-e4b3-59a9-be36-c91be349f034)
About the Author (#ub30d04e5-0b0f-5392-b918-5cce51d970a2)
Dedication (#u78730ac3-40e4-5285-a49a-135c81b809ae)
CHAPTER ONE (#ulink_e4876ab7-9ddd-5ddb-8b24-620b0059aca5)
CHAPTER TWO (#ulink_a9feb244-0d8c-5d34-955f-c61627fefb1c)
CHAPTER THREE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER FOUR (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER FIVE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER SIX (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER SEVEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER EIGHT (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER NINE (#litres_trial_promo)
Extract (#litres_trial_promo)
Copyright (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER ONE (#ulink_d06b1228-d78f-571a-977a-8212a28b41af)
‘BRAM...’
Bram Ansari had answered the phone without looking up from a document that had just arrived by courier. ‘Hamad...I was about to call you.’
‘Then you’ve received the summons to Father’s birthday majlis.’
‘It arrived ten minutes ago. I imagine I have you to thank for that.’
‘No. It’s his wish. He’s sick, Bram. It’s a significant birthday. You need to be home.’
His brother did not sound particularly happy at the prospect.
‘I doubt everyone thinks that.’
‘It’s covered. The old man has negotiated a secret deal with the Khadri family.’
‘A deal?’ Bram frowned. ‘What kind of deal?’ The last time he’d seen Ahmed Khadri the man had threatened to cut his throat if he ever stepped foot in Umm al Basr. ‘Tell me.’
As his brother explained the secret deal his father had negotiated to enable Bram to return home the colour leached out of the day until the sky, the sea, the flowers overflowing the tower turned grey.
‘No...’
‘I’m sorry, Bram, but at least you’re prepared. If Bibi hadn’t managed to smuggle a note to her sister you would have been presented with a fait accompli.’
‘You think I can go through with this?’
‘It’s the price that must be paid.’
‘But I won’t be the one paying it!’ He took a breath. ‘How is your family?’ he asked, cutting Hamad short when he would have argued. ‘The new baby?’
‘In sh’Allah, all my precious girls are thriving. Safia sends her fondest wishes and thanks for the gifts.’ He hesitated. ‘She said to say that you are always in her prayers.’
Bram ended the call then swept the invitation from the table in impotent fury. The longed-for chance to kneel at his father’s feet and beg his forgiveness had come attached to a tangle of string that would take more than prayers to unravel. It would need a miracle.
The phone beeped, warning him that he had a missed call. He glanced at the screen and ignored it. His aide was spending a long weekend with friends in the Alps and the last thing he needed right now was a joyous description of the snow conditions.
* * *
Qa’lat al Mina’a, perched high on its rocky promontory, shimmered like a mirage in the soft pink haze of the setting sun.
Far below, beyond a perfect curve of white sand, a dhow was drifting slowly along the coast under a dark red sail and for a brief moment Ruby felt as if she might have been transported back into some Arabian Nights fantasy, flying in on a magic carpet rather than a gleaming black helicopter.
The illusion was swiftly shattered as they circled to land.
The fortress might appear, at first glance, to be a picturesque ruin, a reminder of a bygone age, but behind the mass of purple bougainvillaea billowing against its walls was a satellite dish, antennae—all the trappings of the communications age, powered by an impressive range of solar panels facing south where the jebel fell away to the desert.
And the tower did not stand alone. Below it she glimpsed courtyards, arches, gardens surrounding an extensive complex that spread down to the shore where a very twenty-first century gunmetal-grey military-style launch was sheltered in a harbour hewn from the rock. And they were descending to a purpose-built helipad. This was not some romantically crumbling stronghold out of a fantasy; the exterior might be battered by weather and time but it contained the headquarters of a very modern man.
As they touched down, a middle-aged man in a grey robe and skullcap approached the helicopter at a crouching run. He opened the door, glanced at her with astonishment and then shouted something she couldn’t hear to the pilot.
He returned a don’t-ask-me shrug from his seat. Sensing a problem, Ruby didn’t wait but unclipped her safety belt, swung open the door and jumped down.
‘As-salaam aleykum. Ismee, Ruby Dance,’ she said, raising her voice above the noise of the engine. ‘Sheikh Ibrahim is expecting me.’
She didn’t wait for a response but shouldered the neat satchel that contained everything she needed for work, nodded her thanks to the pilot and, leaving the man to follow with her wheelie suitcase, she crossed to steps that led down to the shelter of the courtyard below.
The air coming off the sea was soft and moist—bliss after hours cooped up in the dry air of even the most luxurious private jet—while below her were tantalising glimpses of terraces cut into the hill, each shaded by ancient walls and vine-covered pergolas. There was a glint of water running through rills and at her feet clove-scented dianthus and thyme billowed over onto the steps.
It was beautiful, exotic, unexpected. Not so far from the fantasy after all.
Behind her the pilot, keen to get home, was already winding up the engine and she lifted her head to watch the helicopter take off, bracing herself against buffeting from the down force of the blades. As it wheeled away back towards the capital of Ras al Kawi, leaving her cut off from the outside world, she half lifted a hand as if to snatch it back.
‘Madaam...’
Despite her confident assertion that she was expected, it was clear that her arrival had come as a surprise but, before she could respond to the agitated man who was following her down the steps, a disembodied voice rang out from below, calling out something she did not understand.
Before she could move, think, the owner of the voice was at the foot of the steps, looking up at her, and she forgot to breathe.
Sheikh Ibrahim al-Ansari was no longer the golden prince, heir to the throne of Umm al Basr, society magazine cover favourite—a carefree young man with nothing on his mind but celebrating his sporting triumphs in some fashionable nightclub.
Disgraced, disinherited and exiled from his father’s court when his arrest for a naked romp in a London fountain had made front page news, his face was harder, the bones more defined, the natural lines cut a little deeper. And not just lines. Running through the edge of his left brow, slicing through his cheekbone before disappearing into a short-clipped beard was a thin scar—the kind left by the slash of a razor-sharp knife—and dragging at the corner of his eye and his lip so that his face was not quite in balance. The effect was brutal, chilling, mesmerising.
He was never going to be the beast—his bone structure beneath the silky golden skin was too perfect, the tawny eyes commanding and holding all her attention, but he was no longer the beautiful young man who had appeared in society magazines alongside European aristocrats, millionaires, princes. Whose photograph, trophy in hand, had regularly graced the covers of the glossier lifestyle magazines.
She was momentarily distracted by a flash of pink as a droplet of water, caught in the sun’s dying rays, slid down one of the dark, wet curls that clung to his neck.
She was standing with her back to the setting sun and he raised a hand to shade his eyes. ‘What the devil?’
Mouth dry, brain freewheeling and with no connection between them, her lips parted but her breath stuck in her throat as a second drop of water joined the first, hung there until the force of gravity overcame it and it dropped to a wide shoulder, slid into the hollow of his collarbone.
She watched, mesmerised, as it spilled over, trickled down his broad chest, imagining how it would feel against her hand if she reached out to capture it.
The thought was so intense that she could feel the tickle of chest hair against her palm, the wet, sun-kissed skin, and instinctively closed her hand.
She hadn’t expected him to be wearing a pin-striped suit or the formal flowing robes of a desert prince, but it was her first encounter with an employer wearing nothing but a towel—a man whose masculinity was underlined by the scars left by his chosen sports.
‘Who are you?’ he demanded.
Not some empty-headed ninny to stand there gawping at the kind of male body more usually seen in moody adverts for aftershave, that was for sure, and, sending an urgent message to her feet, she stepped down to his level.
‘Not the devil, Sheikh.’ She uncurled her clenched hand and offered it to him as she introduced herself. ‘Ruby Dance. I’ve been sent by the Garland Agency to hold the fort while Peter Hammond recovers from his injuries.’
Sheikh Ibrahim stared at her hand for what felt like forever, then, ignoring it, he looked up.
‘Injuries?’ Dark brows were pulled down in a confused frown. ‘What injuries?’
She lowered her hand. Well, that explained the confusion at her arrival. Obviously the message about his aide’s accident had failed to reach him.
‘I understand that Mr Hammond crashed off his snowboard early this morning,’ she replied, putting his lapse of manners down to shock. ‘I was told that he’d spoken to you.’
‘Then you were misinformed,’ he said. ‘How bad is it?’
‘The last I heard was that he’d been airlifted to hospital. I’ll see if I can get an update.’ She took her phone from her bag. ‘Will I get a signal?’ He didn’t bother to answer but she got five strong bars—those antennae weren’t just for show—and hit the first number on her contact list.
There were endless seconds of waiting for the international connection—endless seconds in which he continued to stare at her. It was the look of someone who was sure he’d seen her before but couldn’t think where.
‘Ruby? Is everything okay?’ Amanda Garland, the founder of the Garland Agency, had called her first thing, asking her to drop whatever she was doing, fly out to Qa’lat al Mina’a and hold the fort until other arrangements could be made.
‘Yes...’
‘Tell me.’ There was no fooling Amanda.
Ruby swallowed, took a breath. She was imagining it, she knew. It had been years since her photograph had been all over the media, but his sculptured chest, the smattering of hair arrowing down beneath the towel—far too reminiscent of that scene in the fountain—was wrecking her concentration.
In an attempt to get a grip, she turned away, focusing on the sea, the misted shape of the dhow far below, dropping its sails as it turned to edge up the creek.
‘Ruby!’
‘Everything’s fine,’ Ruby said quickly. ‘The flight went without a hitch but my arrival has come as something of a surprise. It seems that Sheikh Ibrahim did not get the message about Peter’s accident.’
‘What?’ Amanda was clearly shocked. ‘I’m so sorry, Ruby. Is there anything I can do? Do you want me to speak to the Sheikh?’
‘All I need is an update on Mr Hammond’s condition.’ Amanda gave her the details. ‘And which hospital...? Thanks—that will be perfect. I’ll speak to you later.’ She disconnected.
‘Well?’ he demanded as she turned to him, keeping her gaze fixed on his face. Tawny eyes, a hawkish nose, a mouth with a one-sided tug that gave it a cruelly sensuous droop—
‘Peter has broken his left leg in two places, torn a ligament in his wrist and cracked some ribs,’ she said, blotting out the thoughts that had no place in a business environment—thoughts that she didn’t want in her head. ‘They’ve pinned him back together and he’ll be flown home in a day or two. Amanda is going to text me contact details.’
‘Who is Amanda?’
Hello, good to meet you and thank you for rushing to fill the gap would have been polite. Thank you for putting my mind at rest was pretty much a minimum in the circumstances. But Ruby had long ago learned to keep her expression neutral, to never show what she was thinking or feeling, and she focused on the question rather than his lack of manners.
‘Amanda Garland.’ The name would normally be enough but Sheikh Ibrahim did not work in London, where it was shorthand for the best in business and domestic staff. There was no smile of recognition, no gratitude for the fact that his injured aide’s first thought had been to summon a replacement. ‘The Garland Agency supplies temps, nannies and domestic staff to an international clientele. Amanda is also Peter’s godmother.’ She returned her phone to her bag and took out the heavy white envelope that she’d sent with the driver who’d picked her up. ‘When he sent an SOS for someone to hold the fort, she called me. I have her letter of introduction.’
She’d already had her hand ignored once and did not make the mistake of offering it to him so that he could ignore the letter too, but waited for him to reach for it.
‘A letter of introduction from someone I don’t know?’
‘Perhaps Mr Hammond thought you would trust his judgement.’
‘How good would your judgement be if you were lying in the snow with a broken leg?’ he demanded.
‘Since that’s never going to happen, I couldn’t say.’ Her voice was deadpan, disguising an uncharacteristic urge to scream. She’d been travelling for hours and right now she could do with a little of the famous regional hospitality and a minute or two to gather her wits. ‘All I know is that his first concern was to ensure that you weren’t left without assistance.’
His only response was an irritated grunt.
Okay, enough...
‘Your cousin, His Highness the Emir of Ras al Kawi, will vouch for her bona fides,’ she assured him, as if she was used to casually bandying about the names of the local royals. ‘Her Highness Princess Violet entrusted Amanda with the task of finding her a nanny.’
‘I don’t need a nanny.’
‘That’s fortunate because I’ve never changed a nappy in my life.’ Her reputation for calm under pressure was being put to the test and there had been an uncharacteristic snap to her response that earned her the fractional lift of an insolent brow. ‘Miss Garland’s note contains the names of some of the people I’ve worked for, should you require reassurance regarding my own capabilities,’ she continued, calling on previously untested depths of calm.
‘Will I have heard of them?’ he asked, with heavy emphasis on them.
Since she had no way of knowing who he’d heard of, she assumed the question was not only sarcastic but rhetorical. Choosing not to risk another demonstration of the power of that eyebrow, she made no comment.
In the face of her silence he finally held out his hand for the letter, ripping open the flap with the broad tip of his thumb.
His face gave nothing away as he scanned the contents but he turned to the man holding her suitcase, spoke to him in Arabic before, with a last thoughtful look at her, he said, ‘I’ll see you in my office in fifteen minutes, Miss Dance.’
With that, he turned away, his leather flip-flops slapping irritably as he crossed the stone terrace before disappearing down steps that led to a lower level.
Shakily, Ruby let out her breath.
Whew. Double whew, with knobs on. Forget the grateful thanks for dropping everything and flying here at a moment’s notice—that had been tense. On the other hand, now that he’d taken his naked torso out of sight and she could think clearly, she could understand his reluctance to take her at face value.
It wasn’t personal.
Doubtless, there had been attempts to breach his security in the past, although whether for photographs of his isolated hideout, gossip on who he was sharing it with, or insider information on who was about to get the golden touch of Ansari financial backing was anyone’s guess.
Any one of them would be worth serious money and an unexpected visitor was always going to get the hard stare and third degree. She, more than anyone, could understand that.
Easy to say—as she followed the servant through an ancient archway and down a short flight of steps, her skin was goosebumped, her breath catching in her throat—but it felt very personal.
At the bottom of the steps, sheltered from the sea by stone walls and from the heat of the summer by pergolas dripping with blue racemes of wisteria, scented with the tiny white stars of jasmine, was a terrace garden.
She stopped, entranced, her irritation melting away.
‘Madaam?’ the servant prompted, bringing her back to the reason she was there, and she turned to him.
‘Sho Ismak?’ She asked his name.
He smiled, bowed. ‘Ismi Khal, madaam.’
She placed her hand against her chest and said, ‘Ismi, Ruby.’ Then, with a gesture at the garden, ‘This is lovely. Jameel,’ she said, calling on the little Arabic she’d learned during working trips to Dubai and Bahrain and topped up on the long flight from London.
‘Nam. It is beautiful,’ he said carefully, demonstrating his own English with a broad smile, before turning to open the door to a cool tiled lobby, slipping his feet from his sandals as he stepped inside.
She had no time to linger, admire the exquisite tiles decorating the walls, but, familiar with the customs of the region, she followed his example and slipped off her heels before padding after him.
He opened the door to a large, comfortably furnished sitting room, crossed the room to draw back shutters and open a pair of doors that led onto a small shaded area overlooking the sea. There was a rush of air, the scent of the sea mingled with jasmine and, despite the less than enthusiastic welcome and her own misgivings about coming here, she sighed with pleasure.
When Amanda had explained that Sheikh Ibrahim was sitting out his exile in a fort in Ras al Kawi, his maternal grandmother’s native home, she had imagined something rugged, austere. It was all that, but below the ancient fortress a home, a garden, had been carved from the shelter of the hillside.
The man might be a grouch but this place was magical.
Khal was all set to give her the full guided tour of the suite, starting with the tiny kitchen, but she had just a few minutes to freshen up and get her head straight before she had to report to Sheikh Ibrahim.
‘Shukran, Khal.’ She tapped her watch to indicate that she was short of time. ‘Where... Ayn...?’ She mimed typing and he smiled, then took her to the door, pointed at the steps leading down.
‘Marra,’ he said, and held up one finger, then, ‘Marrataan.’ Two fingers.
Once, twice?
‘Etnaan? Two floors?’
He nodded, then rattled something off that she had no chance of understanding, before heading off down them.
* * *
Bram had showered on the beach when he came out of the sea but he stood in his wet room with cold water pouring off him while he caught his breath, recovered from that moment when he’d looked up and seen the dark, foreshortened silhouette of Ruby Dance against the sky and his heart had stopped.
In that split second he’d imagined every possible drama that would have brought Safia flying north to Ras al Kawi. To him. When Ruby Dance, and not Safia, had stepped out of the shadow, the complex rush of disappointment, guilt had hit him like a punch in the gut.
Her hair was the same dark silk as Safia’s but it had been cut in short, feathery layers. Her eyes were not the rare blue-green that was the legacy of Iskandar’s army, who’d fought and scattered their seed every inch of the way along the Gulf to India, but the cool blue-grey of a silver fox. She was a little taller and, while her voice had the same soft, low musical tones that wrapped around a man’s heart, when she spoke it was with that clear precision—as English as a rainy day—of the privileged aristocratic women he’d known in Europe.
What she did have in common with Safia was a rare stillness, a face that gave no hint of what she was thinking or feeling.
Schooled to obedience—accepting without question a marriage arranged to keep the peace between their warring families when they were children—Safia would have played the role of perfect wife, borne his children, never by so much as a breath betraying her love for another man.
The arrival of a courier that morning bearing the summons home, and the difficult call from his brother, had stirred up long-buried memories, bringing Safia’s image so vividly to mind that it had taken time for his brain to catch up with what his eyes were telling him. A seemingly endless moment when everything dead within him had stirred, quickened and he’d come close to taking her hand to draw her close. To step back five years and, if only for a moment, be the man he was meant to be. Husband, father, heir to his father’s throne.
He shook his head, grabbed a towel and scrubbed at his face to erase the treacherous thought and concentrate on what Ruby Dance had said about Peter.
A badly broken leg, a wrist that would be out of action for weeks, the agony of cracked ribs; the timing couldn’t be worse. There were a number of projects requiring his undivided attention and, after five long years of exile, the longed-for call home with a sting in the tail...
He glanced at the letter of introduction, picked up his phone and keyed Amanda Garland into the search engine.
Her reputation—clients who were prepared to publicly laud her to the skies, a Businesswoman of the Year award, an honour from Queen Elizabeth—was as impressive as the list of people she’d offered as a reference.
He’d asked the Dance woman if he would have heard of any of them and the fact was that he’d met all of them. If she was used to working at this level she must be seriously good at her job and, unlike Peter, she wouldn’t be itching to disappear into the desert for days at a time with a camera.
* * *
Ruby wasted no time in stripping off and stepping into the walk-in shower. She let the hard needles of water stream over her for one long minute, stimulating, refreshing, bringing her body back to life.
It was warmer here than in London, than on the air conditioned jet, and she abandoned her dark grey trouser suit in favour of a lightweight knee-length skirt and linen top. And, having already experienced the ancient steps, she slipped on a pair of black ballet flats.
She still had a few minutes and used them to check her phone for Amanda’s text, copying the details of the hospital onto one of the index cards she carried with her before going in search of Sheikh Ibrahim’s office.
The evening was closing in. The sea was flat calm, the sky ranging from deep purple in the east to pale pinks and mauves in the west while, in the shadows, tiny solar lights twined around the pergolas and set amongst the casual planting, were blinking on, shining through leaves, glinting on a ripple of water trickling down through rocks.
The garden had a quiet magic and she could have stood there for hours letting the peace seep into her bones. She took one last look then, out of time, she walked down to the next level where, in a corner, a few shrivelled fruits still clung to a pomegranate tree.
She found another flight of steps half hidden behind the thick stems of the bougainvillaea that softened the tower wall. These were narrower, skirting the cliff face with only a wall that did not reach the height of her shoulder to protect her from a nerve-tingling drop onto the rocks below. She did not linger and, precisely fifteen minutes later, as instructed by the Sheikh, she stepped down into a courtyard where concealed lights washed the walls, turning it into an outside room.
Sheikh Ibrahim, wet hair slicked back and now wearing shorts and a loose-fitting T-shirt that hung from those wide shoulders, was sitting, legs stretched out, ankles crossed on the footrest of an old-fashioned cane planters’ chair, smartphone in hand.
There was a matching chair on the other side of the low table.
She placed the card with the hospital details in front of him, slid back the footrest on the empty chair, removed her phone, tablet, notepad and pen from her satchel and, tidily tucking her skirt beneath her, sat down.
He looked at her for what seemed like endless minutes, a slight frown buckling the space between his eyes.
Ruby had learned the habit of stillness long ago. It was her survival technique; she’d schooled herself not to blink, blanking even the most penetrating of stares with a bland look that had unnerved both the disapproving, pitying adults who didn’t know what to say to her and the jeering classmates who knew only too well.
Perhaps she’d become complacent. It was a long time since anyone had bothered to look beyond the image of the professional peripatetic PA that she presented to the world. Now, sitting in front of Sheikh Ibrahim, waiting for him to say something, say anything, it took every ounce of concentration to maintain her composure.
Maybe it was the memory of water dripping onto his bare shoulder, running down his chest, the certainty that he’d been naked beneath that towel that was messing with her head.
Or that his thighs, calves, ankles honed to perfection on horseback, on the blackest of black ski runs, were everything hinted at beneath the jodhpurs he’d been wearing on the Celebrity cover she’d downloaded to the file she’d created as soon as Amanda had called her. Confirmed in the photograph of him cavorting naked in a London fountain, one arm around a girl in transparently wet underwear as he’d poured a bottle of champagne over them both. The photograph that had cost him a throne.
Or maybe it was that she recognised the darkness in his eyes, an all-consuming hunger for redemption. It crossed the space between them and a shiver rippled through her as if he’d reached out and touched her.
‘Jude Radcliffe tells me that he offered you a permanent position in his organisation,’ he said at last. ‘Why didn’t you take it?’
‘You talked to Jude?’ Amanda hadn’t held back when it came to references.
‘Is that a problem?’ He spoke softly, inviting her confidence. She was not fooled. His voice might be seductively velvet but it cloaked steel.
‘No, but it is Sunday. I didn’t think he’d be at the office.’
‘He wasn’t. I know him well enough to call him at home.’ His response was casual enough, but she didn’t miss the underlying warning; someone he knew on a personal basis would be totally frank.
‘Did he tell you that his wife was once a Garland temp?’ she asked, demonstrating her own familiarity with the family. ‘It’s how they met. She was expecting her second baby the last time I worked at Radcliffe Tower.’ She picked up her phone and checked her diary. ‘It’s due next month.’
‘You keep files on the people you work for?’
She looked up. ‘The way they like their coffee, their favoured airlines, the name of their hairdresser, shirt collar size, the brand of make-up they use, important birthdays. They’re the small details that make me the person they call when their secretaries are sick,’ she said. ‘They’re the reason why their PAs check whether I’ll be available before they make their holiday bookings.’
‘You don’t undersell yourself. I’m surprised you were free to fly here at such short notice.’
‘I’d taken a week’s holiday to do some decorating.’
‘Decorating?’ he repeated, bemused.
‘Paint, wallpaper?’
‘You do it yourself?’
‘Most people do.’ Obviously not multimillionaire sheikhs.
‘And at the end of the week?’
Was he suggesting a longer stay? The thought both excited and unsettled her. ‘Shall we see how it goes?’
His eyes narrowed. ‘Are you suggesting that I am on some kind of probationary period, Ruby Dance?’
Yes... At least, no...
For a moment there was no sound. A cicada that had been tuning up intermittently fell silent, the waves lapping at the rocks below them stilled in that moment when the tide, suspended on the turn, paused to catch its breath.
She hadn’t meant... Or maybe she had.
Deep breath, Ruby.
‘My role is to provide emergency cover for as long as needed. A day, a week...I had assumed you would have someone to call on to stand in for Peter? Although...’
‘Although?’
‘If there had been anyone available to step into his shoes at a moment’s notice I doubt he would have called his godmother.’
He gave her a thoughtful look but neither confirmed nor denied it, which suggested she was right.
‘Do you have a file on me?’ he asked.
Back on firmer ground, she flicked to the file she’d been compiling. ‘It’s missing a few details. I don’t know your collar size,’ she replied, looking up and inviting him to fill the gap in her records.
He shook his head. ‘You are bluffing, Ruby Dance.’
‘You like your coffee black with half a spoonful of Greek honey,’ she replied. ‘You have your own jet and helicopter—the livery is black with an A in Arabic script in gold on the tail—but, since you only travel once or twice a month, they are available for charter through Ansari Air, the company you set up for the purpose. The demand for this service apparently exceeded supply because you’ve since added two more executive jets and a second helicopter to your fleet. Should you need to travel when they are all busy you use Ramal Hamrah Airways, the airline owned by Sheikh Zahir al-Khatib, a cousin on your mother’s side of the family. Your birthday is August the third, your father’s birthday is...’
He held up a hand to stop her.
‘The day after tomorrow.’
Amanda had passed on everything she knew about the man and the cabin crew on his private jet had been more than willing to share his likes and dislikes—anything, in fact, that would help her serve their boss. Like the entrepreneurs whose companies he had financed with start-up loans, they appeared to believe the sun shone out of the Sheikh’s backside.
Perhaps he improved with acquaintance.
‘You’ve made your point,’ he admitted, ‘but you haven’t answered my question.’
‘Jude offered me a very generous package as PA to his finance director,’ she said, ‘but I enjoy the variety offered by temping.’
Again there was that long, thoughtful look and for a moment she was sure he was going to challenge her on a response so ingrained, repeated so often, that she had almost come to believe it. His perceptiveness did not surprise her. A man who’d made a fortune in a few short years as a venture capitalist would need to read more than a business plan; he would have to be fluent in body language.
Under the circumstances, a man looking for a hidden agenda might well read her give-nothing-away stillness as a red flag and, since he wasn’t about to divulge his collar size, she leaned forward and put the phone down.
‘Radcliffe urged me to make other arrangements before the end of May,’ Sheikh Ibrahim continued after a moment. ‘He mentioned a wedding.’ His glance dropped to her hand.
‘Not mine.’
‘No, I can see that you already wear a wedding ring. Your husband does not object to you working away from home?’
Her fingers tightened protectively against the plain gold band she wore on her right hand, the hand on which she knew they wore wedding rings—if they wore them at all—in this part of the world.
‘It’s a family ring,’ she said. ‘My grandmother wore it. And my mother. If I were married I would wear it on my left hand.’ She looked up but he said nothing and she knew that he could not have cared less whether or not she was married or what her husband thought about her absences. That was the reason she temped. She was here today, gone tomorrow and no one, not even the person she was working for, had the time or inclination to concern themselves with her personal life. ‘I’m booked to cover Jude’s PA,’ she said. ‘She’s getting married at the beginning of June. Hopefully, Peter Hammond’s leg will be up to all these steps by then.’
Sheikh Ibrahim was saved from answering by the appearance of Khal, carrying a tray, which he placed in front of her.
‘Shaay, madaam,’ he said, indicating a small silver teapot.
‘Shukran, Khal.’ She indicated a second pot. ‘And this?’
‘That is mint tea,’ Sheikh Ibrahim said before he could answer. ‘I’m surprised you don’t have a note of my preference in your file.’
‘My files are always a work in progress, but I do have a note that, unusually, you take it without sugar. Would you like some now, Sheikh?’
‘We’re on first name terms here.’ If her knowledge irritated him he kept the fact well hidden. ‘Everyone calls me Bram.’
She was on first name terms with most of the men and women she temped for on a regular basis, but she hadn’t seen any of them half naked.
It shouldn’t matter, but somehow it did.
She glanced up at the sky, the stars beginning to blink on as the hood of darkness moved swiftly over them from the east, and took a steadying breath. When she looked back it occurred to her that she wasn’t the only one struggling to hold onto at least the appearance of relaxation. She was pretty fluent in body language herself and, despite the way he was stretched out in that chair, he was, like her, coiled as tight as a spring.
‘Would you like tea, Bram?’ she managed, hoping that the slight wobble was just in her head.
Their gazes met and for a moment she felt dizzy. It wasn’t his powerful thighs, shapely calves, those long sinewy feet stretched out in front of her like temptation. It was his eyes, although surely that dark glowing amber had to be a trick of the light? Or maybe she was hallucinating in the scent-laden air?
CHAPTER TWO (#ulink_4ec78b5c-1762-5bf3-bf9b-152f817736f5)
A PING FROM her phone warning her of an incoming text broke the tension. Bram nodded and, miraculously, Ruby managed to pour mint tea into a tall glass set in a silver holder and place it in front of him without incident.
As if he too needed a distraction, he reached for the card on which she’d written the hospital details, murmured something.
‘I’m sorry?’
He shook his head. ‘He’s in Gstaad. I broke my ankle there years ago.’
‘Remind me never to go there. It’s clearly a dangerous place,’ she added when he gave her a blank look.
Her Internet search for information had thrown up dozens of photographs of him in skin-hugging Lycra, hurtling down vertiginous ski runs, and with the resulting medals around his neck.
‘Maybe,’ he said, his eyes distant, no doubt thinking of a different life when he’d been a champion, a media darling, a future king.
‘I’m sorry.’
He didn’t ask her what she was sorry for and in truth she didn’t know. If he wanted to ski, play polo, there was nothing to stop him, other than shame for having disgraced his family. Was giving it all up, leaving his A-list social life in Europe to live in this isolated place, atonement for scandalising the country he had been born to serve?
Or did he want the throne of Umm al Basr more than the rush of competition, the prizes and the glamorous women who hung around the kind of men who attracted photographers?
Was the hunger at the back of his eyes the need for forgiveness or determination to regain all he had lost?
He dropped the card back on the table.
‘Call the hospital. Make sure they have all the details of Peter’s medical insurance and tell them that whatever he needs above and beyond that he is to have. Talk to his mother,’ he continued as she made a note on her pad. ‘Liaise with her about flying him back to England as soon as he’s able to travel. Make sure that there is a plane at their disposal and arrange for a private ambulance to pick him up and take him wherever he needs to go.’
She made another note. ‘Is there any message?’
‘You’re a clumsy oaf?’ he suggested, but without the smile that should have accompanied his suggestion.
She looked up. ‘Will there be flowers with that?’
‘What do you think?’
What she thought was that Peter Hammond hadn’t crashed his snowboard for the sole purpose of annoying his boss although, if she’d been him, she might have been tempted to take a dive into the snow rather than spend one more day working for Bram Ansari.
What she said was, ‘Get well soon is more traditional under the circumstances, but it’s undoubtedly a man thing. I’m sure he’ll get the message.’
She certainly did but, despite the cool reception, she had some sympathy. It was bad enough to have your routine disrupted by the drama of outside events without having a total stranger thrust into your life and, in Bram Ansari’s case, his home.
He might be an arrogant jerk but she was there to ensure that Peter’s absence did not disturb his life more than absolutely necessary and she was professional enough to make that happen, with or without his co-operation. Not that she’d waste her breath saying so. The first few hours were show-not-tell time.
‘No doubt he’ll be as anxious to be back on his feet as you are for his return,’ she said as she picked up the card and tucked it into her notebook. ‘Unfortunately, bones can’t be hurried.’
‘I’m aware of that but Peter manages the day-to-day running of Qa’lat al Mina’a. Without him we don’t eat.’
‘Everything is flown in from the city, I imagine.’ She could handle that. It wouldn’t be the first time that running a house had come within the remit of an assignment. ‘What did people do here before?’
‘Before?’
‘Before there was a city with an air-conditioned mall selling luxuries flown in from around the world. Before there were helicopters to deliver your heart’s desire to places such as this.’
He shrugged. ‘They fished, kept livestock and there were camels to bring rice, spices, everything else.’ He gave her another of those thoughtful looks. ‘Have you ever wrung a chicken’s neck, Ruby? Or slaughtered a goat?’
‘Why?’ she asked, not about to make his day with girlish squealing. ‘Is that included in the job description?’
‘There is no job description. Peter has an open-ended brief encompassing whatever is necessary.’
He was challenging her, she realised. Demanding to know if she was up to the job.
Clearly the quiet diligence she usually found most helpful when dealing with a difficult employer wasn’t going to work here, but they were stuck with each other until one of them cracked and summoned the helicopter.
‘You’re saying you make it up as you go along?’ she asked, lobbing it right back because it wasn’t ever going to be her. She couldn’t afford the luxury.
‘Is there a better way?’
‘Personally, I’m working to a five-year plan,’ she said, ‘but, for the record, exactly how many goats has Peter Hammond slaughtered?’
A glint appeared in those amber eyes and a crease deepened at the corner of Bram Ansari’s mouth. Not a smile, nothing like a smile; more a warning that she was living dangerously. Not that she needed it. She’d been aware of the danger from the moment she’d first set eyes on him.
‘One?’ she suggested. Then, when he didn’t answer, ‘Two?’ Still nothing. ‘More than two?’
‘So far,’ he admitted, ‘he’s managed to dodge that bullet by ensuring that the freezer is always fully stocked.’
‘Much less messy,’ she agreed briskly, ‘and I’m sure the goats are grateful for his efficiency. If you’ll point me in the direction of his office I’ll attempt to follow his example.’ Apparently she’d won that round because his only response was to wave a hand in the direction of a pair of open glazed doors leading from the terrace. ‘And your office?’
‘My office is wherever I happen to be.’
Having dished out the if-you’re-so-damned-good-get-on-with-it treatment, he leaned back in the chair and closed his eyes.
She wasn’t entirely convinced by his relaxed dismissal—she had won that round on points—but she picked up her glass, crossed the terrace, flipped on the light and kicked off her shoes as she entered Peter Hammond’s office. She half expected to find a man cave but it was uncluttered, austere in its simplicity.
A huge rug, jewel-coloured and silky beneath her feet, covered the flagstone floor. The walls were bare ancient stone, hung with huge blow-ups of stunning black and white photographs: weathered rock formations; the spray of a waterfall frozen in a moment in time and so real that if she put a hand out she might feel it splashing through her fingers; a close-up of the suspicious eye of a desert oryx.
The only furniture was a battle-scarred desk and a good chair. The only item on the desk was a slender state-of-the-art laptop which, no doubt, had the protection of an equally state-of-the-art password.
She put her cup and bag on the desk, opened up the laptop and, sure enough, she got the prompt.
It wasn’t the first time she’d been faced with this situation and she reached for the pull-out ledge under the desk top—the classic place to jot down passwords.
Nothing. While she approved of Peter Hammond’s security savvy, on this occasion she would have welcomed a little carelessness. No doubt Bram Ansari was, at that moment, lying back in his recliner amusing himself by counting down the seconds until she called for help.
She sat down, checked the drawers.
They were not locked, but contained nothing more revealing than the fact that he had a weakness for liquorice allsorts and excellent taste in pens and notebooks.
A walk-in cupboard at the rear of the office contained shelves holding a supply of stationery on one wall and a neat array of box files. Against the other wall was a table containing a printer and a scanner.
She took down the file labelled ‘Medical Insurance’, carried it to the desk and, having found the relevant paperwork, discovered that there wasn’t a phone. Of course not. There was no landline here—Bram had been holding the latest in smartphones, the same model as her own—and Peter would have his mobile phone with him.
Not a problem. She took her own phone from her bag—the cost of her calls would be added to his account—and saw the waiting text. Number unknown.
She clicked on it and read.
Amanda gave me your number, Ruby, so that I could give you the password for Peter’s laptop. It’s pOntefr@c! Can you let me have the details of his medical insurance when you have a moment? Good luck! Elizabeth Hammond.
She grinned. Pontefract—where the liquorice came from.
She tried it and was in.
‘Bless the man!’ she said and called Elizabeth Hammond to pass on the insurance details, along with the rest of Bram Ansari’s instructions.
‘Heaven’s, that was quick, Ruby. You’re clearly as hot as Amanda said.’
If only the rest of the ‘open-ended brief’ was as simple...
‘If there’s any other information you need just call me on this number,’ she said. ‘How is Peter?’
‘Sore but the breaks were clean and should heal without any permanent damage.’
‘That is good news. Sheikh Ibrahim said to tell him that he’s a clumsy oaf, which I assume is man-speak for get well soon.’
‘It’s going to be weeks, I’m afraid.’
‘Weeks?’
‘Can you manage that? Bram Ansari is...’ She paused, called out to someone that she was coming, then said, ‘I’m sorry, Ruby, but I ordered room service and it has just arrived. Thanks again for all your help.’
Ruby, phone at her cheek, wondered what Elizabeth Hammond had been about to say when she’d been interrupted.
Bram Ansari is difficult to work for? Bram Ansari is a pain in the butt? Bram Ansari is very easy on the eye?—a fact which did not cancel out the first two. She knew, no one better, that attractiveness, charm, in a man could hide a multitude of sins.
Obviously, she had no concerns on the charm front.
* * *
Bram watched from beneath hooded lids as Ruby Dance picked up her glass and disappeared into Peter’s office.
Something about her bothered him and it wasn’t just that first shocking moment when he’d thought she was Safia. It was nothing that he could put his finger on. She was clearly good at her job if a little waspish. No doubt she was simply responding to his own mood; Jude Radcliffe, not a man to bestow praise lightly, had said that he was very lucky that she’d been free. Apparently she had a memory like an elephant, was cool-headed in a crisis and was as tight-lipped as a clam. She certainly hadn’t been fazed by his clumsy attempt to unsettle her, to get a feeling for the woman hiding behind that cool mask.
On the contrary, he felt as if he’d been in a fencing match and was lucky to have got away with a draw.
Only once he’d caught a momentary flash of irritation in those cool grey eyes. Such control was rare, a learned skill. That she’d taken the trouble to master it suggested that she had something to hide.
He thumbed her name into a search engine but all he came up with was a dance studio. That, too, was unusual. His curiosity aroused, he called up the security program he used when he ran an initial check on someone who was looking for financial backing. Again nothing.
No social media presence, no borrowing, not even a credit rating, which implied that she didn’t have a credit card. Or maybe not one in that name. It was definitely time to go and check what she was up to in Peter’s office.
He’d just swung his feet to the floor when his phone rang.
‘Bram?’
The voice was sleepy, a bit slurred, but unmistakable.
‘Peter...’ No point in asking how he was; he would be floating on the residue of anaesthesia. ‘I suppose you were trying to impress some leggy chalet maid?’
‘You’ve got me,’ he said, a soft chuckle abruptly shortened into an expletive as his ribs gave him a sharp reminder that it was no laughing matter. ‘Next time I’ll stay in bed and let her impress me.’
‘Good decision. What’s the prognosis?’
‘Boredom, physio, boredom, physio. Repeat until done... What’s the Garland Girl like?’
‘Garland Girl?’
‘That’s what they were called before it became politically incorrect to call anyone over the age of ten a girl. She did turn up, didn’t she? I told Amanda that it was urgent. Tried to tell you but your phone was busy and then...’ He hesitated, clearly trying to remember what had happened next.
‘Don’t worry about it. She’s here and right now staring at your laptop wondering where you hid your password. I was on my way to rescue her when you rang.’
‘She won’t need you to rescue her,’ he said. ‘Garland temps are the keyboard queens, the crème de la crème of the business world. Her job is to rescue you. Ask m’father,’ he said. ‘M’mother was one...’ He coughed, swore again. ‘She sends her love, by the way.’
‘Please give her my best wishes. Is your father there?’ he asked.
‘He’s at the UN until next week. Why?’ he said, suddenly sharper. ‘Is there a problem?’ When he was too slow to deny it Peter said, ‘What’s happened?’
‘Well, the good news is that I have received an invitation to my father’s birthday majlis.’
‘And the bad news is that Ahmed Khadri will gut you the moment he sets eyes on you.’
‘Apparently not. Hamad phoned to warn me that my father has done a secret deal with Khadri. Safia hasn’t given my brother a son and they’re impatient for an heir with Khadri blood. The price of my return is marriage to Bibi Khadri, Safia’s youngest sister.’
Peter’s soft expletive said it all. ‘There’s more than one way to gut a man...’
‘He wins, whichever way I jump. If I go, he has more influence in court as well as the eye-watering dowry he will demand from me. If I stay away, my father will take it as a personal insult and any chance of a reconciliation will be lost. I doubt Khadri can make up his mind which outcome would please him most.’
‘Who knows about this?’
‘No one. Hamad only found out because Bibi managed to smuggle a note to her sister.’
He was not the only one to be horrified by such a match.
‘Okay... So if you turned up with a wife in tow—’
‘You’re rambling, Peter. Go to sleep.’
‘Not a real wife. A temp,’ he said. ‘And, by happy coincidence, you happen to have one handy... Ask the Garland Girl.’
* * *
Ruby put the phone down, turned to the laptop and began to go through Peter’s diary, printing off each entry for the following week. She had collected the sheets from the printer, sorted them and clipped them into a folder when a shadow across the door warned her that she was no longer alone.
‘I realised that you didn’t have the password to Peter’s laptop but I see that you’ve found it. Did he have it written down somewhere obvious?’ he asked.
She counted to three before she looked up. Bram Ansari was leaning against the doorjamb, arms folded, but there was an intense watchfulness in his eyes that belied the casual stance.
‘No,’ she said.
‘No, not obvious?’
‘No, he didn’t have it written down.’
‘And yet you are in. Should I be worried?’
Ruby was seriously tempted to leave it at that and let him wonder how she’d done it. She resisted. He’d taken his time about it but he had eventually turned up and playing mind games was not the way to build a working relationship. She took pride in the fact that when she had worked for someone she always got a call back.
‘I’m good, Bram, but I’m not that good. Peter asked his mother to text it to me.’
‘I was just talking to him. He didn’t mention it.’
‘Maybe he forgot. Or maybe he wanted to make me look amazingly efficient. How is he?’
‘High on the lingering remains of anaesthetic. Talking too much when he should be resting.’
‘Did you rest?’ she asked. ‘When you broke your ankle?’
His shoulders moved in the merest suggestion of a shrug. ‘Boredom is the mother of invention.’
His smile was little more than a tug on the corner of his mouth, deepening the droop, but it felt as if he had included her in a private joke and her own lips responded all by themselves. And not just her lips. Little pings of recognition lit up in parts of her body that had lain dormant, unused, not wanted in this life. Definitely not wanted here.
‘He rang to make sure that you’d arrived safely and to tell me how lucky I am to have you.’
‘What a nice man,’ she said. ‘I’ll send him a box of liquorice allsorts.’
‘It didn’t take you long to discover his weakness.’
‘One I confess that I share.’ He didn’t respond and, feeling rather foolish, she said, ‘I’ve spoken to Mrs Hammond and passed on all the information she needed.’ He nodded. ‘It’s going to be weeks before Peter will be able to manage all these steps.’
‘He won’t be coming back.’ She frowned. ‘His father was Ambassador to Umm al Basr when Peter was a boy. He loves the desert and when he dropped out of university, didn’t know what to do with himself, I asked him if he wanted to come here and give me a hand. I’d given financial backing to a friend who wanted to go into commercial production with winter sports equipment—’
‘Maxim de Groote.’
‘Is that in your file too?’ he asked.
‘It’s all over the Internet.’
‘I don’t use social media.’ He shook his head, as if the interest of other people in his life bewildered him.
She wasn’t convinced. This was a man whose naked romp in a fountain, caught on someone’s phone, had gone viral on social media networks before the police arrived to arrest him.
‘When he publicly floated his company Maxim told a journalist that he owed everything to you,’ she said. ‘Did he?’
‘No, he owed it to his own vision and hard work.’
‘And the fact that you had the faith to invest in him.’
‘I knew him,’ he said, ‘but I was immediately inundated with would-be entrepreneurs looking for capital. Peter was going to stay for a few weeks and do the thanks-but-no-thanks replies while he thought about his future.’
‘But that didn’t happen.’
‘He would insist on reading the crazier ideas out loud and one of them caught my interest. The rest, as they say, is history.’ He shrugged as if his ability to pick winners was nothing. ‘Peter stayed because it suited him at the time.’ He gestured towards the photographs. ‘These days he spends more time out in the desert with his camera than at his desk.’
‘Peter is the photographer? He’s very talented.’
‘And it’s time he got serious about it. If I hadn’t been so busy I would have kicked him out a year ago. The fact that he had Amanda Garland’s number to hand suggests that he’d been working on an exit strategy of his own.’ He nodded at the folder she was holding. ‘What have you got there?’
She glanced at it. ‘It’s your detailed diary for tomorrow and a summary for the week. I wasn’t sure how Peter handled it. I usually print out a list.’
‘Run me through it,’ he said, finally leaving the doorway and crossing to her desk.
‘You have a conference call booked with Roger Pei in Hong Kong tomorrow morning and there’s a reminder that you should call Susan Graham in New York before Wall Street opens.’ She went through a list of other calls he was both expecting and planned to make. ‘The times and numbers are all there.’
‘And the rest of the week?’
‘You have video conferences booked every day this week, you’re flying to Dubai on Wednesday and there’s a charity dinner here in Ras al Kawi hosted by His Highness Sheikh Fayad and Princess Violet tomorrow evening.’
‘I can’t miss that,’ he said, taking the folder from her and checking the entry. ‘Have you got anything to wear?’
‘Wear?’
‘Something suitable for a formal dinner.’
She felt her carefully controlled air of calm—which hadn’t buckled under the suggestion that she might have to slaughter a goat—slip a notch. But then she hadn’t taken that threat seriously.
‘You want me to go with you?’ Meetings, conferences, receptions were all grist to her mill, but she’d never been asked to accompany any of the men she’d worked for to a black tie dinner. They had partners for that. Partners with designer wardrobes, accessories costing four figures, jewellery...
Perhaps sensing her reluctance, he looked up from the diary page. ‘It comes under the “whatever is necessary” brief. You were serious about that, Ruby?’ he asked, regarding her with a quiet intensity that sent a ripple of apprehension coursing through her veins.
‘Whatever is necessary within the parameters of legal, honest and decent,’ she said, hoping that the smile made it through to her face.
He handed back the diary. ‘Call Princess Violet’s office and ask her assistant to send you some dresses from her latest collection.’
‘I have a dress,’ she said quickly. Even the simplest of Princess Violet al Kuwani’s designer gowns would cost more than she earned in a month.
‘Let me guess,’ he said. ‘It’s black.’
Black was practical and her capsule wardrobe had been created to cover all eventualities, although she hadn’t anticipated wearing anything so formal on this assignment.
‘A simple black dress will take you anywhere,’ she told him. ‘It’s the female equivalent of a dinner jacket.’
‘So it’s a boring black dress.’
‘I’ll be working, not flirting.’
‘I’m glad you understand that.’ He held her gaze for a moment then said, ‘There has been a development that will involve rescheduling some of those appointments, but first we will eat.’
No, no, no...
No socialising in the workplace. No getting into situations where people would ask where she came from, about her family, all the conversational gambits used to probe who you were and where you would fit into the social layers of their lives.
She didn’t do ‘social’.
‘Come,’ he said, extending a hand towards her, and for the first time since she’d arrived she saw not the A-list pin-up, the sportsman, the venture capitalist, but a man born to command, a prince. ‘Bring the diary with you.’
The diary. Right. It was a working dinner. Of course it was. He only wanted her with him to keep track of who he spoke to, the appointments he made. That she could handle and, fortifying herself with a steadying breath, she gathered her things and headed for the door and that outstretched hand.
She was sure he was going to place it at her back, maybe take her arm as they descended the worn, uneven steps. He waited until she passed him, closed the door behind them and, having held herself rigid, knowing that no matter how much she tried to relax she would still jump at his touch, she felt a weird jolt of disappointment when he simply paused beside her.
Disappointment was bad.
She looked up, anywhere but at him.
During the short time she had been working, every trace of light had left the sky. Above them stars were glittering diamond-bright in a clear black sky, but she was too strung up to look for the constellations; all her senses were focused on the man beside her. The warmth of his body so close to hers. The scent of the sea air clinging to his skin overlaid with the tiny flowers that had fallen on his shoulders as he brushed past a jasmine vine.
No...
The word clanged in her brain so loudly that when Bram glanced at her she thought he must have heard.
It wasn’t as if she even liked the man but it was pointless to pretend that she was immune to the magnetic quality that had once made him a Celebrity cover favourite.
Work, she reminded herself. She was here to work.
Concentrate on the job.
‘What’s your routine?’ she asked in her briskly efficient PA voice as he led the way down to a lower level, determined to blot out emergency signals from synapses that hadn’t been this excited in years.
‘Routine?’ He frowned, as if it was a word alien to his vocabulary.
‘What time are you normally at your desk? I imagine it’s earlier than London.’
‘Peter usually goes for a run or swim at first light, has breakfast and if he’s not chasing the light with his camera he deals with overnight emails.’ He glanced down at her. ‘Do you run, Ruby?’
‘Only for a bus.’ She’d hoped to raise a smile, lessen the tension, but there was no noticeable reaction.
‘Swim?’
She glanced across the tumble of walls, courtyards, to the dark water sucking at the foot of the fort. ‘Not in the sea.’
‘There is a pool.’ If he’d noticed her involuntary shiver, he made no comment. ‘There’s also a fully equipped gym if you prefer.’
‘No, thanks.’ She’d already seen him wet from the sea and she wasn’t about to risk walking in on him slicked with sweat. ‘I keep in shape by walking to work when I can, using the stairs instead of the lift and taking a weekly tap dancing class.’ He gave her another of those looks. Assessing, unnerving... ‘It’s cheaper than a gym membership and the shoes are prettier,’ she said quickly.
‘There’s no shortage of steps here.’ His smile, unexpected as the sun on a winter morning—he knew how to smile?—took her by surprise. For a moment her foot hung in mid-air and then, as she missed the step, she flung out her hands, grabbing for something—anything—to hang onto and found herself face first in Bram Ansari’s washed soft T-shirt, nestled against the hard-muscled shoulder it concealed. Drowning in the scent of sun-dried laundry and warm skin as he caught her, held her.
‘Sorry,’ she mumbled in a rush of embarrassed heat, jerking back from the intimacy of the contact. ‘Apparently I can’t walk and talk at the same time.’
‘The steps are old, uneven.’ Her head might have made a bid to escape the mortifying closeness but the rest of her was pressed against hard thighs, a washboard-flat stomach, her breasts pinioned against the broad chest that she was picturing all too vividly. ‘Maybe you should stick to swimming while you’re here,’ he said, moving his hands to her shoulders and, still holding her steady, taking a step back. ‘If you didn’t bring a costume then send for one. You’ll be glad of it when the weather heats up.’
Forget the weather. Bram Ansari was creating all the heat she could handle.
‘It seems hardly worth it for a week.’
They had reached a point where the steps narrowed and he’d taken the lead so that when he stopped, turned, he was looking directly into her eyes.
‘And if I need more than a week?’
Ruby had been a temp for a long time and she knew that there were people you had to flatter, those you had to mother and those rare and wonderful individuals who just got on with it and required nothing from you except your ability to keep things running smoothly in a crisis. Then there were the ones you had face down, never showing the slightest hint of weakness, never showing by as much as the flicker of an eyelash what you were feeling.
It had been clear from the moment that she’d set eyes on him that Sheikh Ibrahim al-Ansari fitted the latter description. Ignoring the battalion of butterflies battering against her breastbone, she looked right back at him and said, ‘At this rate I’ll be surprised if I’m here for more than twenty-four hours.’
They continued to stare at one another for the longest ten seconds in her life and then he said, ‘Is that it or have you run out of smart answers?’
‘I wouldn’t count on it.’
This time his smile was no more than a tiny contraction of the lines fanning out from eyes that said nothing but it softened his face and had much the same effect on her knees.
‘No...’ For a moment he seemed lost for words. ‘Shall we eat?’
‘Good idea. With my mouth full I’ll be less likely to put my foot in it.’
His smile deepened and it was probably a good thing that he placed his hand beneath her elbow, keeping her safe as they continued down the steps. Probably. She wouldn’t fall, but her skin shimmered with the intimacy of his touch and she didn’t let out her breath until they stepped down onto a terrace from which wide steps led down to the beach and he finally let go.
A table had been laid with a white cloth, flowers, candles sheltered within glass globes, sleek modern silver cutlery. The only sound was the lulling ripple of the sea, the shushing of the sand moving as the tide began to recede.
The scene was seductively exotic, a long way from the usual end to her working day. Khal gave her a wide smile as he held out a chair for her then, when she was settled, he turned to Bram and asked him a question.
For a moment the conversation went back and forth until finally Bram said, ‘Antares.’
‘Ruby?’ Khal asked, turning to her and evidently expecting her to understand what he’d said.
‘Khal is asking if you wish to ride in the morning.’
‘Ride?’
The soft, fizzing intimacy of the moment shattered and in an instant she was in the past, hugging the fat little Shetland pony that had arrived on her fourth birthday, the feel of his thick, shaggy mane beneath her fingers, the smell of new leather.
‘Do you ride?’ Bram prompted when she took too long to answer.
Ruby forced a smile. ‘Not for years and, in view of what happened to Peter, I promised Amanda that I wouldn’t take part in any dangerous sports while I was here.’
‘Life is a dangerous sport, Ruby.’ He held her gaze for a moment, a questioning kink to his brow, but when she said nothing he turned back to Khal, said a few words in Arabic.
The man bowed, wished them both goodnight and left them to their supper.
‘Antares?’ she asked as she picked up her napkin and laid it on her lap, determined to keep the conversation impersonal. ‘You name your horses after the stars?’
‘Only the brightest ones. Antares, Rigel, Vega, Hadar, Altair, Adhara. They were my polo string.’ He shook his head. ‘I should have sold them when I left England. They’re getting fat and lazy.’
‘It’s hard. They become an extension of you,’ she said. ‘Part of the family.’ Her mother had wanted to sell her ponies as she grew out of them but she’d pleaded with her father and they had all stayed, eating their heads off and costing a fortune in vet’s bills.
His look was thoughtful—so much for keeping it impersonal—but a woman appeared with a tray and he said, ‘Ruby, this is Mina. She is an extraordinary cook but she only has a few words of English. Her husband, son and daughter-in-law take care of the fort for me.’
‘As-salaam alaykum, Mina.’
Mina responded with a rush of Arabic and a broad smile. ‘She’s very happy to meet you,’ Bram said, filling their glasses from a jug of juice. ‘You have some Arabic?’
‘I’ve worked in Bahrain and Dubai so I picked up a few words. Amanda assured me that you worked in English but I assumed all the staff would be Arabic speaking so I downloaded a basic course to my tablet. It was a long flight.’
‘The legend is true then.’
‘Legend?’
‘Peter suggested that to have a Garland Girl as a personal assistant or nanny is considered something of a status symbol.’
She rolled her eyes. ‘A newspaper did a profile on Amanda’s agency years ago and came up with that ghastly name. They made us sound like the office equivalent of the Playboy Bunny.’
His jaw tightened as he fought a grin.
‘It’s okay,’ she said, ‘you can laugh. I’m twenty-seven. No one’s idea of a girl,’ she said. ‘Or a bunny.’
‘There is no right answer to that,’ he said, offering her a plate. ‘Have one of these.’
She took one of the hot, crispy little pastries without comment. It was filled with goat’s cheese and as she bit into it Ruby almost groaned with pleasure. They had to be about a million calories each, but she told herself that she’d work them off walking up and down all those steps.
‘You approve?’
‘They are scrumptious.’
‘That’s a word I haven’t heard in a while. If I had to make a guess, I’d say you went to one of those exclusive boarding schools where the British upper classes park their children.’
The kind of women whose social calendar would include afternoons at Smith’s Lawn watching as princes whacked a ball with a polo stick, and après-ski parties in Gstaad...
‘What is this? Tit for tat?’ she asked, with a smile to disguise the fact that she’d changed the subject. ‘I know how you like your coffee so you checked me out online?’
‘And if I had, Ruby Dance,’ he replied, his voice softer than a Dartmoor mist and twice as dangerous, that almost-smile a trap for the unwary, ‘what would I have found?’
Her skin prickled, her mouth dried.
He had...
Despite Jude’s reference, despite the fact that Peter Hammond was Amanda’s godson, he’d put her name into a search engine and knew exactly what he would find.
‘Not very much,’ she admitted.
‘Not very much suggests that there would be something,’ he pointed out, ‘but there was no social media, no credit history and no Ruby Dance who was born twenty-seven years ago.’ He sat back in his chair. ‘I could dig deeper and unearth your secrets, but why don’t you save me the bother and tell me who you really are?’
Protected by the reputation of the Garland Agency, her anonymity as a temp, this was the first time anyone had ever bothered to question Ruby’s bona fides and the air rang with the silence as she tried to marshal her thoughts.
She wasn’t fooled by the casual way he’d asked the question.
She’d been joking when she’d suggested that she’d last no more than twenty-four hours. Apparently the joke was on her because she wasn’t going to be able to brush this aside, laugh it off as an aversion to the rush to tell everyone what she had for breakfast, of sharing pictures of cute kittens, as an excuse for her low profile.
He’d already gone far deeper than social media, was certain that she had not been born Ruby Dance, and the less he found the more suspicious he would become.
She unstuck her tongue from the roof of her mouth and said, ‘I changed my name for family reasons.’
‘A clause in a will? Your mother remarried?’ he suggested.
She shook her head. He was dangling easy answers before her. Testing her. ‘There was a scandal involving my father. Newspaper headlines. Reporters digging around in dustbins and paying the neighbours for gossip.’
He raised an eyebrow, inviting her to continue.
‘Amanda Garland knows my history,’ she said, ‘and her reputation stands on trust.’
‘Trust her, trust you—is that the deal?’
Her throat was dry and the juice gleamed enticingly but she resisted the urge to grab for it, swallow a mouthful. ‘That’s the deal.’
‘And that’s why you continue to temp rather than accept a permanent job? For the anonymity?’
‘Yes...’ The word stuck like a lump of wood in her throat.
‘Where is your father now, Ruby?’
‘He’s dead. He and my mother died when I was seventeen.’
‘Do you have any other family?’
‘No.’ She shook her head. ‘I was the only child of only children.’ At least as far as she knew. Her father might have had a dozen children...
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