The Sheikh's Convenient Princess Read online

  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 int
o 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 we
ar 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?