The Sheikh's Undoing by Sharon Kendrick Read Free Book Online

wasn’t intent on removing his clothes ….
    ‘I have a slight ache in my …’ he shifted his position as she tucked her surprisingly long legs beneath her and he felt another sharp kick of awareness ‘… head. But other than that I feel okay.’
    The gleam in his black eyes was making Isobel feel uncomfortable. She wished he’d stop
looking
at her like that. Rather unnecessarily, she gave the fire a quick poke. ‘Good.’
    Tariq sipped at his tea, noting the sudden tension in her shoulders. Was she feeling it too? he wondered. This powerful sexual awareness which was simmering in the air around them?
    With an effort, he pushed it from his mind and sought refuge in the conventional. ‘I didn’t realise you had a place like this. I thought you lived in town.’
    Isobel laid the poker back down in the grate, his question making her realise the one-sided quality of their relationship. She knew all about
his
life—but he knew next to nothing about hers, did he?
    ‘I do live in town. I just keep this as a weekend place—which is a bit of a luxury. I really ought to sellit and buy myself something larger than the shoebox I currently inhabit in London, but I can’t quite bring myself to let it go. My mother worked hard to buy it, you see. She lived rent-free at the school, of course, and when she retired she moved here.’ She read the question in his eyes, took a deep breath and faced it full-on. ‘She died six years ago and left it to me.’
    ‘And what about your father?’
    All her old defensiveness sprang into place. ‘What about him?’
    ‘You never talk about him.’
    ‘That’s because you never ask.’
    ‘No. You’re right. I don’t.’ And the reason he never asked was because he wasn’t particularly interested in the private lives of his staff. The less you knew about the people who worked for you, the less complication all round.
    But surely these circumstances were unusual enough to allow him to break certain rules? And didn’t Izzy’s hesitancy alert his interest? Arouse his natural hunter instincts? Tariq leaned back against the pillow of his folded elbows and studied her. ‘I’m asking now.’
    Isobel met the curiosity in his eyes. If it had been anyone else she might have told them to mind their own business, or used the evasive tactics she’d employed all her life. She was protective of her private life and her past—and hated being judged or pitied. But that was the trouble with having a personal conversation with your boss—you weren’t exactly on equal terms, were you? And Tariq wasn’t just
any
boss. His authority was enriched with the sense of entitlement which came with his princely title and his innate belief that he was always right. Would he be shocked to learn of her illegitimacy?
    She shrugged her shoulders, as if what she was about to say didn’t matter. ‘I don’t know my father.’ ‘What do you mean, you don’t know him?’ ‘Just that. I never saw him, nor met him. To me, he was just a man my mother had a relationship with. Only it turned out that he was actually married to someone else at the time.’
    He narrowed his eyes. ‘So what happened?’ She remembered all the different emotions which had crossed her mother’s face when she had recounted her tale. Hurt. Resentment. And a deep and enduring sense of anger and betrayal. Men were the enemy, who could so easily walk away from their responsibilities, Anna Mulholland had said. Had that negativity brushed off on her only daughter and contributed to Isobel’s own poor record with men? Maybe it had—for she’d never let anyone close enough to really start to care about them. ‘He didn’t want to know about a baby,’ she answered slowly. ‘Said he didn’t want anything to do with it. My mother thought it was shock making him talk that way. She gave him a few days to think about it. Only when she tried to contact him again—he’d gone.’
    ‘Gone?’ Tariq raised his eyebrows. ‘Gone where?’