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       CHAPTER TWO

      ‘ALLEGRA, IT’S TEN O’CLOCK.’

      Allegra highlighted another section of the document she was reading with her marker pen, then glanced up.

      ‘What?’ she enquired absently, her mind still tackling how best to encourage the powers that be in the tiny Asia Pacific country to ratify a few more women’s rights laws. As she’d found with countries great and small, diplomacy went a long way, but never far enough. She made a mental note to speak to her brother Alessandro about directing a few business deals to the country to grease her efforts. Allegra had learned the hard way that the lines of communication opened up wider with a promise of tangible reward. She’d fought too hard to win further rights for women in the country to let anything stand in the way at the last hurdle.

      ‘Sheikh Rahim Al-Hadi’s personal secretary agreed to grant you a fifteen-minute window, remember?’ Her assistant, Zara, glanced at her watch and smiled. ‘You now have fourteen minutes.’

      Allegra dropped the marker pen with a grimace.

      Wondering what sort of man she would be dealing with after her visit with her grandfather, Allegra had spent a quick half hour researching the Kingdom of Dar-Aman and its current ruling sheikh. Her initial discoveries had been appalling and an affront to everything she stood for as a champion of women’s rights.

      But she had a task to perform. A promise to keep.

      Her fingers flew over the numbers and she breathed out as the line connected. ‘Allegra Di Sione for Sheikh Al-Hadi, please,’ she said calmly, trying and failing to erase the images of the sheikh’s very vivid and very public playboy lifestyle, the pictures of gold-threaded sheets, diamond-studded mirrors and treasures in every room in the royal palace that were superimposed on her mind.

      That those exploits and excesses were enjoyed at the cost of his kingdom’s subjects made her hand tighten on the phone as she was put on hold.

      Sultry Arab music filled the brief silence, the sounds so surprisingly beautiful and poignant Allegra’s breath caught. She relaxed against her high-backed leather chair, a reluctant smile curving her lips as the hypnotic music washed over her, momentarily eclipsing every worry blotting her horizon.

      Closing her eyes, she let her mind drift, back to a time when romance books had been her secret pleasure, her selfish escape. In a flash she was transported to hot Arabian desert nights and tall figures in flowing white robes. To whispered promises in the dark and soulful brown eyes that promised forever.

      ‘Hello?’

      Allegra jerked upright, chagrined that she’d missed the first prompt.

      ‘Um... Sheikh Al-Hadi, thank you for taking my call.’

      ‘You can thank me by stating the purpose of this call, and giving it the proper attention it deserves,’ he replied, the pitch of the deep, masculine voice powering down her spine.

      His intonation, the way his voice caressed the vowels of the words he spoke, threw Allegra for a moment. A moment too long, if the harsh exhalation at the end of the line was anything to go by.

      She hurried to speak. ‘My name is Allegra Di Sione...’

      ‘I’m very much aware of who you are. What I’m still waiting to find out is why you wished to speak to me.’

      She bit her tongue against an acerbic response. As the head of her family’s charity, she’d been well practiced in diplomacy, even when she least felt it.

      Allegra reminded herself why she was doing this, and regrouped. ‘I have a matter to discuss with you—one of the utmost importance—which I’d prefer not to do over the phone.’

      ‘Since you and I have never met before, I assume this matter you wish to discuss concerns your Di Sione Foundation?’

      Allegra frowned, a little aghast by her body’s unwanted but deeply decadent reaction to his voice.

      The notion that the answer she gave would determine the course of this conversation made her hesitate. The matter she wished to discuss was intensely personal. She had no intention of failing her task. But neither did she want her access blocked before she’d even started her quest to regain the treasured box for her grandfather by admitting that her visit would be personal. For one thing, with the previous sheikh dead, she wasn’t even sure Sheikh Rahim Al-Hadi was still in possession of the box Giovanni spoke so fondly of.

      She framed her words carefully. ‘I’ll be visiting you in my capacity as the head of my family’s foundation, yes,’ she prevaricated, fighting the urge to cross her fingers.

      She didn’t believe in luck. Or fate. Or destiny. Or she would be unbearably heartbroken that the cosmos had seen it fit to orphan seven small children, then given the only loving substitute parent she’d known a life-threatening condition.

      Life was what it was.

      She’d long ago accepted the fleeting happiness along СКАЧАТЬ