Liz Fielding – The Sheikh's Convenient Princess (страница 6)

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.’

‘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.