The sheikh's chosen wife (10 page)

'I prefer tea to coffee,'
she murmured, aiming her concentration at the only neutral thing she could
find, which was the table set for breakfast.

The warm sound of his
laughter was in recognition of her diversion tactics. Then suddenly he wasn't
laughing, he was releasing a gasp of horror. 'You are bruised!' he claimed,
sending her gaze flittering to the slight discolouring to her right shoulder
that she had noticed herself in the shower earlier.

'It's nothing.' She tried
to dismiss it.

But Hassan was already
turning her round and his black eyes were hard as they began flashing over
every other exposed piece of flesh he could see. 'Me, or the fall?' he demanded
harshly.

'The fall, of course.'
She frowned, because she couldn't remember a single time in all the years they
had been together that Hassan had ever marked her, either in passion or anger,
yet he had gone so pale she might have accused him of beating her.

'Any more?' he asked
tensely.

'Just my right hip, a
little,' she said, holding her tongue about the sore spot at the side of her
head, because she could see he wasn't up to dealing with that
information.'—Hassan, will you stop it?' she said gasping when he dropped down in
front of her and began to unfasten her white trousers. 'It isn't that bad!'

He wasn't listening. The
trousers dropped, his fingers were already gently lifting the plain white
cotton of her panty line out of the way so he could inspect for himself. 'I am
at your feet,' he said in pained apology.

'I can see that,' she
replied with a tremor in her voice that had more to do with shock than the
humour she'd tried to inject into it. His response was so unnecessary and so
very enthralling. 'Just get up now and let me dress,' she pleaded. 'Someone
might come, for goodness' sake!"

'Not if they value their
necks,' he replied, but at least he began to slide her trousers back over her
slender hip-bones.

It had to be the worst
bit of timing that Faysal should choose that moment to make one of his silent
appearances. Leona was covered—just—but it did not take much imagination for
her to know what Faysal must believe he was interrupting. The colour that
flooded her cheeks must have aided that impression. Hassan went one further and
rose up like a cobra.

'This intrusion had
better be worth losing your head for!' he hissed.

For a few awful seconds
Leona thought the poor man was going to prostrate himself in an agony of
anguish. He made do with a bow to beat all bows. 'My sincerest apologies,' he
begged. 'Your most honourable father. Sheikh Khalifa, desires immediate words
with you, sir.'

Anyone else and Hassan
would have carried out his threat, Leona was sure. Instead his mouth snapped
shut, his hands took hold of her and dumped her rudely into a chair.

'Faysal, my wife requires
tea.' He shot Leona's own diversion at the other man. Glad of the excuse to
go, Faysal almost ran. To Leona he said, 'Eat,' but he wasn't making eye
contact, and the two streaks of colour he was wearing on his cheekbones almost
made her grin because it was so rare that anyone saw Sheikh Hassan Al-Qadim
disconcerted.

'You dare,' he growled,
swooping down and kissing her twitching mouth, then he left quickly with the
promise to return in moments.

But moments stretched
into minutes. She ate one of the freshly baked rolls a white liveried steward
had brought with a pot of tea, then drank the tea—and still Hassan did not
return.

Eventually Rafiq appeared
with another formal bow and Hassan's apologies. He was engaged in matters of
state.

Matters of state she
understood having lived before with Hassan disappearing for hours upon end to
deal with them.

'Would you mind if I
joined you?' Rafiq then requested.

'Orders of state?' she
quizzed him dryly.

His half-smile gave her
an answer. Her half-smile accompanied her indication to an empty chair. She
watched him sit, watched him hunt around for something neutral to say that was
not likely to cause another argument. There was no such thing, Leona knew that,
so she decided to help him out.

'Tell me about your
Spanish mistress,' she invited.

It was the perfect strike
back for sins committed against her. Rafiq released a sigh and dragged the gutrah
from his head, then tossed it aside. This was a familiar gesture for a man of
the Al-Qadim household to use. It could convey many things: weariness, anger,
contempt or, as in this case, a relayed throwing in of the towel. 'He lacks
conscience,' he complained.

'Yet you continue to love
him unreservedly, Rafiq, son of Khalifa Al-Qadim,' she quietly replied.

An eyebrow arched.
Sometimes, in a certain light, he looked so like Hassan that they could have
been twins. But they were not. 'Bastard son,' Rafiq corrected in that proud way
of his. 'And you continue to love him yourself, so we had best not throw those
particular stones,' he advised.

Rafiq had been born out
of wedlock to Sheikh Khalifa's beautiful French mistress, who'd died giving
birth to him. The fact that Hassan had only been six months old himself at the
time of Rafiq's birth should have made the two half-brothers bitter enemies as
they grew up together, one certain of his high place in life, the other just as
certain of what would never be his. Yet in truth the two men could not have
been closer if they'd shared the same mother. As grown men they had formed a
united force behind which their ailing father rested secure in the knowledge
that no one would challenge his power while his sons were there to stop them.
When Leona came along, she too had been placed within this ring of protection.

Strange, she mused, how
she had always been surrounded by strong men for most of her life: her father,
Ethan, Rafiq and Hassan even Sheikh Khalifa, ill though he now was had always
been one of her faithful champions.

'Convince him to let me
go,' she requested quietly.

Ebony eyes darkened. 'He
had missed you.'

So did green. 'Convince
him,' she persisted.

'He was lonely without
you.'

This time she had to
swallow across the lump those words helped to form in her throat before she
could say, 'Please.'

Rafiq leaned across the
table, picked up one of her hands and gave it a squeeze. 'Subject over,' he
announced very gently.

And it was. Leona could
see that. It didn't so much hurt to be stonewalled like this but rather brought
it more firmly home to her just how serious Hassan was.

Coming to his feet, Rafiq
pulled her up with him. 'Where are we going?' she asked.

'For a tour of the boat
in the hopes that the diversion will restrain your desire to weaken my
defences.'

'Huh,' she said, for the
day had not arrived when anyone could weaken Rafiq in any way involving his
beloved brother. But she did not argue the point about needing a diversion.

He turned to collect his gutrah.
The moment it went back on his head, the other Rafiq reappeared, the proud and
remote man. 'If you would be so good as to precede me. my lady. We will collect
a hat from your stateroom before we begin...'

Several hours later she
was lying on one of the sun loungers on the shade deck, having given in to the
heat and changed into a black and white patterned bikini teamed with a cool
white muslin shirt. She had been shown almost every room the beautiful yacht
possessed, and been formally introduced to Captain Tariq Al-Bahir, the only
other Arab as far as she could tell in a twenty-strong crew of Spaniards. This
had puzzled her enough to question it. But 'Expediency,' had been the only
answer Rafiq would offer before it became another closed subject.

Since then she had eaten
lunch with Rafiq and Faysal, and had been forced, because of Faysal's presence,
to keep a lid on any other searching questions that might be burning in her
head, which had been Rafiq's reason for including the other man, she was sure.
And not once since he'd left her at the breakfast table had she laid eyes on
Hassan—though she knew exactly where he was. Left alone to lie in the softer
heat of the late afternoon, she was free to imagine him in what would be a
custom built office, dealing with matters of state.

By phone, by fax, by
internet—her mouth moved on a small smile. Hyped up, pumped up and doing what
he loved to do most and in the interim forgetting the time and forgetting her!
At other times she would have already been in there reminding him that there
was a life other than matters of state. Closing her eyes, she could see his
expression: the impatient glance at her interruption; the blank look that followed
when she informed him of the time; the complaining sigh when she would insist
on him stopping to share a cup of coffee or tea with her; and the way he would
eventually surrender by reaching for her hand, then relaxing with   extented
sigh...

In two stuffed chairs
facing the window in his palace office—just like the two stuffed chairs
strategically placed in the yacht's stateroom. Her heart gave a pinch; she
tried to ignore what it was begging her to do.

Hassan was thinking along
similar lines as he lay on the lounger next to hers. She was asleep. She didn't
even know he was here. And not once in all the hours he had been locked away in
his office had she come to interrupt.

Had he really expected
her to? he asked himself. The answer that came back forced him to smother a
hovering sigh because he didn't want to make a noise and waken her. They still
had things to discuss, and the longer he put off the evil moment the better, as
far as he was concerned, because he was going to get tough and she was not
going to like it.

Another smothered sigh
had him closing his eyes as he reflected back over the last few hours in which
he had come as close as he had ever done to causing a split between the heads
of the different families which together formed the Arabian state of Rahman.

Dynastic politics, he
named it grimly. Al-Qadim and Al-Mukhtar against Al-Mahmud and Al-Yasin, with
his right to decide for himself becoming lost in the tug of war. In the end he
had been forced into a compromise that was no compromise at all—though he had
since tried to turn it into one with the help of an old friend.

Leona released the sigh
he had been struggling to suppress, and Hassan opened his eyes in time to see
her yawn and stretch sinuously. Long and slender, sensationally curved yet
exquisitely sleek. The colour of her hair, the smoothness of her lovely skin,
the perfectly proportioned contours of her beautiful face. The eyes he could
not see, the small straight nose that he could, the mouth he could feel against
his mouth merely by looking at it. And—

Be done with it, he
thought suddenly, and was on his feet and bending to scoop her into his arms.

She awoke with a start,
saw it was him and sent him a sleepy frown. 'What are you doing?' she
protested. ‘I was comfortable there—'

'I know,' he replied.
'But I wish to be comfortable too, and I was not.'

He was already striding through
the boat with a frown that was far darker than hers. Across the foyer, up the
three shallow steps. 'Open the door,' he commanded and was surprised when she
reached down and did so without argument. He closed it with the help of a foot,
saw her glance warily towards the bed. But it was to the two chairs that he
took her, set her down in one of them, then lowered himself into the other with
that sigh he had been holding back for so long.

'I suppose you have a
good reason for moving me here,' she prompted after a moment.

'Yes,' he confirmed, and
turned to look into those slumber darkened green eyes that tried so hard to
hide her feelings from him but never ever quite managed to succeed. The wall of
his chest contracted as he prepared himself for what he was about to say. 'You
have been right all along.' He began with a confession. 'I am being pressured
to take another

She should have expected
it, Leona told herself as all hint of sleepy softness left her and her insides
began to shake. She had always known it, so why was she feeling as if he had
just reached out with a hand and strangled her heart? It was difficult to
speak—almost impossible to speak—but she managed the burning question. 'Have
you agreed?"

'No,' he firmly denied.
'Which is why you are here with me now—and more to the point, why you have to
stay.'

Looking into his eyes,
Leona could see that he was not looking forward to what he was going to say.
She was right.

'A plot was conceived to
have you abducted,' he told her huskily, 'the intention being to use your
capture as a weapon with which to force my hand. When I discovered this I decided
to foil their intentions by abducting you for myself.'

'Who?' she whispered, but
had a horrible feeling she already knew the answer.

'Did the plotting? We are
still trying to get that confirmed,' he said. 'But whoever it was they had
their people watching your villa last night, waiting for Ethan and your father
to leave for the party on the Petronades yacht. Once they had assured
themselves that you were alone they meant to come in and take you.'