The sheikh's chosen wife (5 page)

Hassan didn't see it
coming. He should have done, he knew that, but he had been too angry to see
anything but his own affronted pride. So when she turned and ran he didn't
expect it. By the time he had pulled his wits together enough to go after her
Leona was already flying through the door on a flood of tears.

The tears blinded what
was ahead of her, the abaya having prevented her from taking stock of her
surroundings as they'd arrived. Hassan heard Rafiq call out a warning, reached
the door as Leona's cry curdled the very air surrounding them and she began to
fall.

What he had managed to
prevent by the skin of his teeth only a half-hour before now replayed itself
before his helpless eyes. Only it was not the dark waters of the Mediterranean
she fell into but the sea of cream carpet that ran from room to room and down a
wide flight of three shallow stairs that led down into the yacht's main foyer.

CHAPTER THREE

Cursing and swearing in
seething silence, Hassan prowled three sides of the bed like a caged tiger
while the yacht's Spanish medic checked her over.

'No bones broken, as far
as I can tell,' the man said. 'No obvious blow to the head.'

'Then why is she
unconscious?' he growled out furiously.

'Shock—winded,' the medic
suggested, gently laying aside a frighteningly limp hand. 'It has only been a
few minutes, sir.'

But a few minutes was a
lifetime when you felt so guilty you wished it was yourself lying there, Hassan
thought harshly.

'A cool compress would be
a help—'

A cool compress. 'Raflq.'
The click of his fingers meant the job would be done.

The sharp sound made
Leona flinch. On a single, lithe leap Hassan was suddenly stretched out across
the bed and leaning over her. The medic drew back; Rafiq paused in his step.

'Open your eyes.' Hassan
turned her face towards him with a decidedly unsteady hand.

Her eyes fluttered open
to stare up at him blankly. 'What happened?' she mumbled.

'You fell down some
stairs,' he gritted. 'Now tell me where you hurt.'

A frown began to pucker
her smooth brow as she tried to

'Concentrate,' he rasped,
diverting her mind away from what had happened. 'Do you hurt anywhere?'

She closed her eyes
again, and he watched her make a mental inventory of herself then give a small
shake of her head. 'I think I'm okay.' She opened her eyes again, looked
directly into his, saw his concern, his anguish, the burning fires of guilt—and
then she remembered why she'd fallen.

Aching tears welled up
again. From coldly plunging his imaginary knife into her breast, he now felt it
enter his own. 'You really went and did it,' she whispered.

'No, I did not,' he
denied. 'Get out,' he told their two witnesses.

The room emptied like
water down a drain, leaving them alone again, confronting each other again. It
was dangerous. He wanted to kiss her so badly he could hardly breathe. She was
his. He was hers! They should not be in this warring situation!

'No—remain still!' he
commanded when she attempted to move. 'Don't even breathe unless you have to do
so! Why are females so stupid?’ he bit out like a curse. 'You insult me with
your suspicions. You goad me into a response, and when it is not the one you
want to hear you slay me with your pain!"

‘I didn't mean to fall
down the stairs,' she pointed out.

'I wasn't talking about
the fall!' he bit out, then glared down into her confused, hurt, vulnerable
eyes for a split second longer. 'Oh, Allah give me strength,' he gritted, and
gave in to himself and took her trembling mouth by storm.

If he had kissed her in
any other way Leona would have fought him with her very last breath. But she
liked the storm; she needed the storm so she could allow herself to be swept
away. Plus he was trembling, and she liked that too. Liked to know that she
still had the power to reduce the prince in him to this vulnerable mass of
smashed emotion.

And she'd missed him.
She'd missed feeling his length lying alongside her length, had missed the weight
of his thighs pressing down on her own. She'd missed his kiss, hungry, urgent,
insistent...wanting. Like a banquet after a year of long, hard fasting, she fed
greedily on every deep dark, sensual delight. Lips, teeth, tongue, taste. She
reached for his chest, felt the strong beat of his heart as she glided her
palms beneath the fabric of his top robe where only the thin cotton of his
tunic came between them and tightly muscled, satin-smooth flesh. When she
reached his shoulders her fingers curled themselves into tightly padded muscle
then stayed there, inviting him to take what he liked.

He took her breasts,
stroking and shaping before moving on to follow the slender curve of her body.
Long fingers claimed her hips, then drew her against the force of his. Fire
bloomed in her belly, for this was her man, the love of her life. She would
never, ever, find herself another. What he touched belonged to him. What he
desired he could have.

What he did was bring a
cruelly abrupt end to it by rising in a single fluid movement to land on his
feet beside the bed, leaving her to flounder on the hard rocks of rejection
while he stood there with his back to her, fighting a savage battle with
himself.

'Why?' she breathed in
thick confusion. 'We are not animals,' he ground back. 'We have issues to deal
with that must preclude the hungry coupling at which we already know we both
excel.'

It served as a dash of
water in her face; and he certainly possessed good aim, Leona noted as she came
back to reality with a shivering gasp. 'What issues?' she challenged cynically.
'The issue of what we have left besides the excellent sex?'

He didn't answer. Instead
he made one of her eyebrows arch as he snatched up her spritzer and grimly
downed the lot. There was a man at war with himself as well as with her, Leona
realised, knowing Hassan hardly ever touched alcohol, and only then when he was
under real stress.

Sitting up, she was aware
of a few aches and bruises as she gingerly slid her feet to the floor. 'I want
to go home,' she announced.

'This is home,' he
replied. 'For the next few weeks’.  Coming just as gingerly to her feet, Leona
stared at his rigid back—which was just another sign that Hassan was not
functioning to his usual standards, because no Arab worthy of the race would deliberately
set his back to anyone. It was an insult of the worst kind.

Though she had seen his
back a lot during those few months before she'd eventually left him, Leona
recalled with familiar sinking feeling inside. Not because he had wished to
insult her, she acknowledged, but because he had refused to face what they had
both known was happening to their marriage. In the end, she had taken the
initiative to be away from him.

'Where are my shoes?'

The surprisingly neutral
question managed to bring him swinging round to glance at her feet. 'Rafiq has
them.'

Dear Rafiq, Leona thought
wryly, Hassan's ever-loyal partner in crime. Rafiq was an Al-Qadim. A man who
had attended the same schools, the same universities, the same everything as
Hassan had done. Equals in many ways, prince and lowly servant in others. It
was a complicated relationship that wound around the status of birth and the
ranks of power.

'Perhaps you would be
kind enough to ask him to give them back to me.' Even she knew you didn't command
Rafiq to do anything. He was a law unto himself—and Hassan. Rafiq was a
maverick. A man of the desert, yet not born of the desert; fiercely proud,
fiercely protective of his right to be master of his own decisions.

'For what purpose?'

Leona's chin came up, recognising
the challenge in his tone. She offered him a cool, clear look. 'I am not
staying here, Hassan,' she told him flatly. 'Even if I have to book into a
hotel in San Esliban to protect your dignity, I am leaving this boat now,
tonight.'

His expression grew
curious, a slight smile touched his mouth. 'Strong swimmer, are you?' he
questioned lazily.

It took a few moments for
his taunt to truly sink in, then she was moving, darting across the room and
winding her way between the two strategically placed chairs and the accompanying
table to reach for the curtains. Beyond the glass, all she could see was inky
darkness. Maybe she was on the seaward side of the boat, she told herself in an
effort to calm the sudden sting of alarm that slid down her spine.

Hassan quickly disabused
her of that frail hope. 'We left San Esteban minutes after we boarded.'

It was only then that she
felt it: just the softest hint of a vibration beneath the soles of her feet
that told of smooth and silently running engines. This truly was an abduction,
she finally accepted, and turned slowly back round to face him.

'Why?' she breathed.

It was like a replay of
what had already gone before, only this time it was serious—more serious than
Leona had even begun to imagine. For she knew this man—knew he was not given to
flights of impulse just for the hell of it. Everything he did had to have a
reason, and was always preceded by meticulous planning which took time he would
not waste, and effort he would not move unless he felt he absolutely had to do.

Hassan's small sigh
conveyed that he too knew that this was where the prevarication ended. 'There
are problems at home,' he informed her soberly. 'My father's health is failing.'

His father... Anger
swiftly converted itself into anxious concern for her father-in-law. Sheikh
Khalifa had been frail in health for as long as she had known him. Hassan doted
on him and devoted most of his energy to relieving his father of the burdens of
rule, making sure he had the best medical attention available and refusing to
believe that one day his father would not be there. So, if Hassan was using
words like 'failing', then the old man's health must indeed be grave.

'What happened?' She
began to walk towards him. 'I thought the last treatment was—'

'Your interest is a
little too late in coming,' Hassan cut in, and with a flick of a hand halted
her steps. 'For I don't recall you showing any concern about what it would do
to his health when you left a year ago.'

That wasn't fair, and
Leona blinked as his words pricked a tender part of her. Sheikh Khalifa was a
good man—a kind man. They had become strong, close friends while she had lived
at the palace. 'He understood why I felt I needed to leave,' she responded
painfully.

You think so? Hassan's
cynical expression derided. 'Well, I did not,' he said out loud. 'But, since
you decided it was the right thing for you to do, I now have a serious problem
on my hands. For I am, in effect, deemed weak for allowing my wife to walk away
from me, and my critics are making rumbling noises about the stability of the
country if I do not display some leadership.'

'So you decided to show
that leadership by abducting me, then dragging me back to Rahman?' Her thick
laugh poured scorn over that suggestion, because they both knew taking her back
home had to be the worst thing Hassan could possibly do to prove that
particular point

'You would prefer that I
take this second wife who makes you flee in pain when the subject appears in
front of you?'

'She is what you need,
not me.' It almost choked her to say the words. But they were dealing with the
truth here, painful though that truth may be. And the truth was that she was no
longer the right wife for the heir to a sheikhdom.

'I have the wife I want,'
he answered grimly.

'But not the wife you need,
Hassan!' she countered wretchedly.

His eyes flicked up to
clash with her eyes, is that your way of telling me that you no longer love
me?' he challenged.

Oh, dear God. Lifting a
trembling hand up to cover her eyes, Leona gave a shake of her head in refusal
to answer. Without warning Hassan was suddenly moving at speed down the length
of the room.

'Answer me!' he insisted
when he came to a stop in front of her.

Swallowing on a lump of
tears, Leona turned her face away. 'Yes,' she whispered.

His sudden grip on her
hand dragged it from her eyes. 'To my face,' he instructed, 'You will tell me
this to my face!'

Her head whipped up, tear
darkened eyes fixing painfully on burning black. 'Don't—' she pleaded.

But he was not going to
give in. He was pale and he was hurt and he was furiously angry, I want to hear
you state that you feel no love for me,' he persisted. 'I want you to tell that
wicked lie to my face. And then I want to hear you beg forgiveness when I prove
to you otherwise! Do you understand, Leona?'

'All right! So, I love
you! Does that make it all okay?' she cried out. ‘I love you but I will not
stay married to you! I will not watch you ruin your life because of me!'

There—it was out. The
bitter truth. On voicing it, she broke free and reeled away, hurting so much it
was almost impossible to breathe. 'And your life?' he persisted relentlessly.
'What happens to it while you play the sacrificial lamb for mine?'