banner banner banner
The Sheikh's Convenient Princess
The Sheikh's Convenient Princess
Оценить:
Рейтинг: 0

Полная версия:

The Sheikh's Convenient Princess

скачать книгу бесплатно


‘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.