The Sheikh's Convenient Princess

* * *

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.’