Hot-Blooded Husbands: the Sheikh's Chosen Wife

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 a contented 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 wife…’

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.’

‘Just like that,’ she said shakily, and looked away from him as so many things began to fall into place. ‘I felt their eyes on me,’ she murmured. ‘I knew they were there.’

‘I suspected that you would do,’ Hassan quietly commended. ‘It is the kind of training we instilled into you that you never forget.’

‘But this was different.’ She got up, wrapped her arms around her body. ‘I knew it felt different. I should have heeded that!’

‘No—don’t get upset.’ Following suit, Hassan stood up and reached for her. She was as pale as a ghost and shaking like a leaf. ‘My people were also there watching over you,’ he assured. ‘The car driver was my man, as was the man at the gate. I had people watching their people. There was not a single moment when you were not perfectly safe.’

‘But to dislike me so much that they should want to take me!’ Hurt beyond belief by that knowledge, Leona pushed him away, unwilling to accept his comfort. It had been hard enough to come to terms with it, when she’d believed he had snatched her back for his own purposes. But to discover now that he had done it because there was a plot against her was just too much to take. ‘What is it with you people that you can’t behave in a normal, rational manner?’ she threw at him, eyes bright, hurt and accusing. ‘You should have phoned me not my father!’ she cried. ‘You should have agreed to a divorce in the first place, then none of this would have happened at all!’

The you people sent Hassan’s spine erect; the mention of divorce hardened his face. ‘You are one of my people,’ he reminded her curtly.

‘No, I am not!’ she denied with an angry shake of her head. ‘I am just an ordinary person who had the misfortune to fall in love with the extraordinary!’

‘At least you are not going back to denying you love this extraordinary person,’ he noted arrogantly. ‘And stop glaring at me like that!’ he snapped. ‘I am not your enemy!’

‘Yes, you are!’ Oh, why had she ever set eyes on this man? It would have been so much easier to have lived her life without ever having known him! ‘So what happens now?’ she demanded. ‘Where do we go from here? Do I spend the rest of my days hiding from dark strangers just because you are too stubborn to let me go?’

‘Of course not.’ He was standing there frowning impatiently. ‘Stop trying to build this into more than it actually is—’

More? ‘Don’t you think it is enough to know that I wasn’t safe to be walking the streets in San Estéban? That my life and my basic human rights can be reduced to being worth nothing more than a mere pawn in some wretched person’s power game?’

‘I am sorry it has to come to this—’

Well, that just wasn’t good enough! ‘But you are no better yourself!’ she threw at him angrily. ‘Up to now you’ve used abduction, seduction and now you’ve moved onto intimidation to bring the wayward wife into line.’ She listed. ‘Should I be looking for the hidden cameras you are using so that you can show all of Rahman what a strong man you can be? Do I need to smile now?’ she asked, watching his face grow darker with the sarcasm she tossed at him—and she just didn’t care! ‘Which way?’ she goaded. ‘Do I need to let Rafiq shroud me in an abaya again and even go as far as to abase myself at your exalted feet just to save your wretched face?’

‘Say any more and you are likely to regret it,’ he warned very grimly.

‘I regret knowing you already!’ Her eyes flashed, her body shook and her anger sparkled in the very air surrounding her. ‘Next I suppose you will have me thrown into prison until I learn to behave myself!’

‘This is it—’ he responded, spreading his arms out wide in what was an outright provocation. ‘Your prison. Now stop shouting at me like some undignified fishwife,’ he snapped. ‘We need to—’

‘I want my life back without you in it!’ Leona cut loudly across him.

What she got was the prince. The face, the eyes, his mood and his manner changed with the single blink of his long dark eyelashes. When his shoulders flexed it was like a dangerous animal slowly raising its hackles, and the fine hairs on her body suddenly became magnetised as she watched the metamorphosis take place. Her breathing snagged; her throat grew tight. He was standing perhaps three yards away from her but she could suddenly feel his presence as deeply as if he was a disturbing inch away.

‘You want to live your life without me, then you may do so,’ he announced. ‘I will let you go, give you your divorce. There, it is done. Inshallah.’ With a flick of the hand he strode across the room and calmly ordered tea!

It was retaliation at its most ruthless and it left her standing there utterly frozen with dismay. Inshallah. She couldn’t even wince at what that single word represented. The will of Allah. Acceptance. A decision. The end. Hassan was agreeing to let her go and she could neither move nor breathe as the full power of that decree made its stunning impact.