The Sheikh's Convenient Princess

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

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.’