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“Sheikh Al-Koury, certainly I’m allowed to have a voice.”
“A voice, yes, provided it’s not impudent.”
“Impudent?” Her laugh was brittle. “I’m not a disobedient child. I’m twenty-five and—”
“Completely out of line.” He leaned toward her, but she didn’t shrink back. Instead she lifted her chin, staring boldly into his eyes. He felt another raw rush of emotion, his temper battling with something else…curiosity…desire… none of which, of course, was acceptable.
But there it was. This was a new Hannah and she was turning everything inside-out, including him.
And he didn’t like it. Not a bit.
“You disappoint me,” he said brusquely. “I expected more from you.”
She tensed, pale jaw tightening, emotion flickering over her face, shadowing her eyes.
For a moment she looked fierce and proud and rather bruised.
A fighter without arms.
A warrior taken captive.
Joan of Arc at the stake.
He felt the strangest knotting in his chest. It was an emotion he hadn’t felt before, and it was hot, sharp, uncomfortable. He didn’t like it. He didn’t want to feel it. She worked for him, not the other way around. “I don’t know what game you’re playing, but it’s over. I’ve chased you from Palm Beach to South Beach but I’m not chasing anymore. Nor am I negotiating. It’s my way, Hannah, or this is where it ends, and you can begin looking for a new job tomorrow.”
He saw her chest rise and fall as she took a swift breath, but she didn’t speak. Instead she held the air bottled in her lungs as she stared at him, a defiant light burning in her intensely blue eyes.
How could he have ever thought Hannah so calm and controlled? Because there was nothing calm or controlled about her now. No, nothing calm in those mysterious lavender-blue eyes at all. She was all emotion, hot, brilliant emotion that crackled in her and through her as though she were made of electricity itself.
Who was this woman? Did he even know her?
He frowned, his brow furrowing with frustration as his gaze swept over her from head to toe. At work she was always so buttoned-up around him, so perfectly proper, but then, she hadn’t dressed for him tonight, she’d dressed for Alejandro, her lover.
The thought of her with Ibanez made his chest tighten again, as something in him cracked, shifted free, escaping from his infamous control to spread through him, hot, hard, possessive. For reasons he didn’t fully comprehend, he couldn’t stand the idea of Ibanez with her, touching her.
She was too good for Ibanez. She deserved so much better.
His gaze rested on her, and it was impossible to look away. Her satin dress was a perfect foil for her creamy skin and the rich chestnut hair that tumbled down her back. The low square neckline accentuated her long neck and exquisite features. He’d known that Hannah was attractive, but he’d never realized she was beautiful.
Incandescent.
Which didn’t make sense. None of this really made sense because Hannah wasn’t the sort of woman to glow. She was solidly stable, grounded, focused on work to the exclusion of all else. She rarely wore makeup and knew nothing about fashion, and yet tonight she appeared so delicate and luminous that he was tempted to brush his fingertips across her cheek to see what she wore to make her appear radiant.
The tip of her tongue appeared to wet her soft, full lower lip. His groin hardened as her pink tongue slid across and then touched the bow-shaped upper lip. For a moment he envied the lip and then he suppressed that carnal thought, too, but his body had a mind of its own and blood rushed to his shaft, heating and hardening him, making him throb.
“You’re threatening to fire me, Sheikh Al-Koury?” Her incredulous tone provoked him almost as much as that provocative tongue slipping across her lips.
“You should know by now I never threaten, nor do I engage my employees in meaningless conversation. If I’m speaking to you it’s because I’m conveying something important, something you need to know.” He was hanging on to his temper by a thread. “And you should know that I’ve reached the end of my patience with you—”
“Not to be rude, Sheikh Al-Koury,” she interrupted, before making a soft groaning sound. “But how far away is the airport? I think I’m going to be sick.”
For Emmeline, the rest of the short drive to the executive airport passed in a blur of motion and misery. She remembered little but the limo pulling between large gates and then onto empty tarmac next to an impressively long white jet.
She was rushed up the stairs, aided by a flight attendant, and then escorted into a bedroom and through a door to a small bathroom.
The flight attendant flipped on the bathroom lights and then closed the door behind her, leaving Emmeline alone.
Thank God for small mercies.
Perspiration beading her brow, Emmeline crouched before the toilet. Her hands trembled on the pristine white porcelain as she leaned forward, her stomach emptying violently into the toilet bowl.
The acid that burned her throat was nothing compared to the acid eating away in her heart. This was all her fault … she had no one else to blame. She’d been weak and foolish and insecure. She’d reached out to the wrong man in a moment of need, and to make matters worse, she’d approached Hannah, dragging her into this.
Remorse filled her. Remorse and regret. Why wasn’t she stronger? Why was she so needy? But then, when hadn’t she craved love?
Gritting her teeth, she knew she couldn’t blame her parents. They’d done their best. They’d tried. The fault was clearly hers. Apparently even at an early age she’d been clingy, always wanting to be held, needing constant reassurance and affection. Even as a little girl she’d been ashamed that she’d needed so much more than her parents could give.
Good princesses didn’t have needs.
Good princesses didn’t cause trouble.
Emmeline did both.
Emmeline’s stomach churned and heaved all over again, and she lurched over the toilet, sick once more.
Tears stung her eyes. How could anyone call this morning sickness when she was ill morning, noon and night? She flushed the toilet again.
A quiet knocked sounded on the door. “Hannah?”
It was Makin Al-Koury. Emmeline’s stomach performed a wild free fall which didn’t help her nausea in the slightest. “Yes?”
“May I come in?”
No. But she couldn’t say it. She was supposed to work for him. That meant she answered to him. Emmeline’s eyes stung. “Yes.”
The door softly opened and a shadow fell across the floor.
Blinking back tears, Emmeline glanced up as Makin filled the doorway. Tall and broad-shouldered, his expression was grim. There was no sympathy in his light gray eyes, no gentleness in the set of his jaw or the press of his firm mouth. But then, there’d been no gentleness earlier when he’d yanked her through the nightclub, pulling her onto the street, his hand gripped tightly around her wrist.
Even now, with her knees pressed to the cold tiled floor, she could feel the unyielding grip of his hand on her wrist, the heat of his skin against hers.
He’d been furious as his limousine traveled from the nightclub to the airport, and from his expression as he towered above her, he still was.
“Can I get you something?” he asked, his deep voice a raw rasp of sound in the small space.
She shook her head. “No. Thank you.”
“You are sick.”
She nodded, fighting fresh tears. “Yes.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
Her brow creased, eyebrows knitting. “I did.”
His jaw tightened. He looked away, across the small bath, his lips flattening, making him look even more displeased. “Have you seen a doctor?”
“No.”
“Why not? You said you can’t keep anything down. You should have tests run, or see if the doctor could prescribe something that would help.”
“It won’t help—”
“Why not?”
She winced at the impatience and roughness in his voice. For a moment his mask slipped and she glimpsed something almost savage in his expression. “Because…”
Her voice faded as she got lost in his light eyes, and it crossed her mind that he might be the world’s richest sheikh, but he wasn’t entirely modern. Beneath his elegant, tailored suit and polished veneer was a man of the desert.
Because Sheikh Al-Koury wouldn’t employ a pregnant, unwed woman, not even if she were American. It was a cultural issue, a matter of honor and respect. Emmeline might not be able to type quickly or place conference calls or create spreadsheets, but she’d spent enough time in the United Arab Emirates and Morocco to be familiar with the concept of hshuma, or shame. And an unwed pregnant woman would bring shame on all close to her, including her employer.
“It’s just stress,” she said. “I’m just … overly upset. But I’ll pull myself together. I promise.”
He looked at her so long and hard that the fine hair on Emmeline’s nape lifted and her belly flip-flopped with nerves. “Then pull yourself together. I’m counting on you. And if you can’t do your job anymore, tell me now so I can find someone who can.”
“But I can.”
He said nothing for several moments, his gaze resting on her face. “Why Ibanez?” he asked at last. “Why him of all people?”
She hunched her shoulders. “He said he loved me.”
His jaw hardened, mouth compressing, expression incredulous. “And you believed him?”
She hesitated. “Yes.”
Sheikh Al-Koury choked back a rough growl of protest. “I can’t believe you fell for his lines. He says those lines to everyone. But you’re not everyone. You’re smart. You’re educated. You should know better.”
“I didn’t.”
“Couldn’t you detect a false note in his flattery? Couldn’t you see he’s fake? That his lines were too slick, that he’s as insincere as they come?”
“No.” She drew a swift breath, making a hiccup of sound. “But I wish I had.”
Makin battled his temper as he stared down at Hannah where she knelt on the floor, her shoulders sagging, her long chestnut hair a thick tangle down her thin back.
Someone else, someone soft, might be moved by her fragile beauty, but he refused to allow himself to feel anything for her, not now, not after she’d become a temptress. A seductress. A problem.
He didn’t allow his personal and professional life to overlap. Sex, desire, lust … they didn’t belong in the workplace. Ever.
“I respected you.” His deep voice sounded harsh even to his own ears, but he’d never minced words with her before and wasn’t about to start now. “And I’m not sure I do anymore.”
She flinched, visibly stung, and his gut tightened, an uncomfortable cramp of sensation, and then it was gone, pushed away with the same ferocious intensity he’d applied to the rest of life.
He didn’t cater to anyone—male or female. It went against his belief system. Makin had been his parents’ only child and they’d been a very close, tight-knit family. His father, a powerful Bedouin ruler and Kadar’s royal prince, was nearly twenty years older than Makin’s French mother, Yvette.
When he was growing up, his parents had rarely discussed the past, being too focused on the present, but Makin had pieced enough details together to get a picture of his parents’ courtship. They’d met when his mother was just twenty and a film student in Paris. She was beautiful and bright and full of big plans, but within weeks of meeting Tahnoon Al-Koury, she’d accepted his marriage proposal and exchanged her dreams for his, marrying him in a quiet ceremony in Paris before returning to Kadar with her new husband.
Makin had only met his maternal grandparents once, and that was at his father’s funeral. His mother refused to speak to them so it’d been left to Makin to introduce himself to his French grandparents. They weren’t the terrible people he’d imagined, just ignorant. They couldn’t understand that their daughter could love an Arab, much less an Arab confined to a wheelchair.
Makin had grown up with his father in a wheelchair and it was neither terrible nor tragic, at least not until the end. His father was beyond brilliant. Tahnoon was devoted to his family, worshipped his wife and battled to maintain as much independence as he could, despite the degenerative nature of his disease.
Makin was twenty when his father died. But in the years Makin had with him, he never heard his father complain or make excuses, even though Tahnoon lived with tremendous pain and suffered endless indignities. No, his father was a proud, fierce man and he’d taught Makin—not by words, but by example—that life required strength, courage and hard work.
“You don’t respect me because I wanted to be loved?” Hannah asked huskily, forcing his attention from the past to the present.
He glanced down, straight into her eyes, and felt that same uncomfortable twinge and steeled himself against the sensation. “I don’t respect you wanting to be loved by him.” He paused, wanting her to understand. “Ibanez is beneath you. He’s self-centered and vulgar and the women who chase him are fools.”
“That’s harsh.”
“But true. He’s always at the heart of a scandal. He prefers married women or women recently engaged like that ridiculous Princess Emmeline—”
“Ridiculous Princess Emmeline?” she interrupted. “Do you know her?”
“I know of her—”
“So you can’t say she’s ridiculous—”
“Oh, I can. I know her family well, and I attended her sixteenth birthday in Brabant years ago. She’s engaged to King Zale Patek, and I pity him. She’s turned him into a joke by chasing after Ibanez all year despite her engagement to Patek. No one respects her. The princess has the morals of an alley cat.”
“That’s a horrid thing to say.”
“I’m honest. Perhaps if others had been more honest with Her Royal Highness, she might have turned out differently.” He shrugged dismissively. “But I don’t care about her. I care about you and your ability to perform your job with clarity and efficiency. Don’t let Ibanez waste another moment of your time. Nor my time, for that matter. Everything about him bores me.” His gaze held hers. “Are we clear?”
“Yes,” she said huskily.
“Then pull yourself together and take a seat in the main cabin so we can depart.”
Using the vanity kit provided in the bathroom, Emmeline washed her face, brushed her teeth and ran a comb through her hair. The thick dark hair still looked strange to her. Emmeline missed her golden-blond color. Missed her wardrobe. Missed her life.
This is how Hannah must have felt when thrust into Emmeline’s life.
Lost. Confused. Angry. And Emmeline knew she was the one who’d put Hannah in that position. Changing places with Hannah had been Emmeline’s idea. There was no benefit for Hannah. Nothing to be gained by masquerading as a princess. It was Emmeline who’d benefited. She’d been able to slip away from her attendants to seek out Alejandro and tell him about the pregnancy. Only in the end, when she had confronted him, it hadn’t mattered. He’d still rejected her.
Emmeline sucked in a slow breath, sickeningly aware that her selfishness and foolishness had impacted so many people. Hannah. King Patek. Sheikh Al-Koury.
What she had to do was fix things. Not just for her, but for everyone.
Once tidy and outwardly calm, she took the seat the flight attendant led her to, a seat not far from Makin’s, although he was at work typing away on his laptop.
