The sheikh's chosen wife (26 page)

She was playing with his
fingers where they pleated firmly with hers. 'You were in trauma enough without
having a demented woman throwing a fit of hysterics.'

'You were right, though.
He did hear you.'

She nodded. 'I know.'

'Here...' He offered her
the stick of white plastic. Taking it back, she stared at it for a long time
without saying a single word.

'It doesn't seem so
important now.' she murmured eventually.

'The proof or the baby?'

She shrugged then pouted.
'Both, I suppose.'

In other words the
delight she should be experiencing had been robbed from the moment. On a sigh,
he scooped her up in his arms again and stood up.

'Where are you taking me
now?' she questioned.

'Bed,' he answered
bluntly. 'Preferably naked, so that I can hold you and our child so close to me
you will never, ever manage to prise yourself free.'

'But your father—'

'Has Rafiq,' he inserted.
'And you have me.'

With that he pushed open
the door to the main corridor, then stopped dead when he saw the sea of anxious
faces waiting for news.

'My father has
recovered,' he announced. 'And my wife is pregnant.'

There, he thought as he
watched every single one fall to their knees and give thanks to Allah, that has
killed two birds with one single stone. Now the phones could start buzzing and
the news would go out to all comers of the state. By the time they arose in the
morning there would not be a person who did not know what had taken place here
tonight.

'You could have given me
a chance to break the news to my own father.' Leona showed that her own
thoughts were as usual not far from his own.

'He knows—or suspects.
For I told him when I asked him to come here tonight. That was while we were
still sailing the Red Sea, by the way,' he added as he walked them through the
two lines of kneeling bodies. 'Raschid alerted me at Evie's instigation. And I
am telling you all of this because I wish to get all my guilty machinations out
of the way before we hit the bed."

'You mean that Evie knew
you suspected when I called her up yesterday and she didn't drop a hint of it
to me?'

'They are sneaky, those
Al-Kadahs,' he confided as he trod the stairs. 'Where do you think I get it
from?'

'And your arrogance?'

'Al-Qadim through and
through,' he answered. 'Our child will have it too, I must warn you. Plenty of
it, since you have your own kind of arrogance too.'

'Maybe that's why I love
you.'

He stopped halfway up the
stairs to slash her a wide, white rakish grin. 'And maybe,' he said lazily,
'that is why I love you.'

She smiled, lifted
herself up to touch his mouth with her own. He continued on his way while they
were still kissing— with an audience of fifty watching them from the floor
below.

Why not let them look?
Sheikh Hassan thought. This was his woman, his wife, the mother of his coming
child. He would kiss her wherever and whenever. It was his right. In-shallah.