But just as the sands shifted, so did opinions. Al-Mahmud and Al-Yasin might have lived well and prospered under thirty years of Al-Qadim rule, but they had disapproved of Hassan’s choice of wife from the beginning. Though they could not fault the dedication Hassan’s wife had applied to her role, nor ignore the respect she had earned from the Rahman people, she was frail of body. She had produced no sons in five years of marriage, and then had made Hassan appear weak to his peers when she’d walked away from him of her own volition. Divorce should have followed swiftly. Hassan had refused to discuss it as an option. Therefore, a second wife should have been chosen. Hassan’s refusal to pander to what he called the ways of the old guard had incensed many. Not least Sheikh Abdul Al-Yasin who had not stopped smarting from the insult he’d received when Hassan had not chosen his daughter, Nadira, who had been primed from birth to take the role.
With Hassan’s father’s health failing fast, Sheikh Abdul had seen an opportunity to redress this insult. All it required was for Hassan to agree to take on a second wife in order to maintain the delicate balance between families. It was that simple. Everyone except Hassan agreed that his marriage to Nadira Al-Yasin would form an alliance that would solve everyone’s problems. Hassan could keep his first wife. No one was asking him to discard this beautiful but barren woman. But his first son would come from the womb of Nadira Al-Yasin, which was all that really mattered.
The alternatives? Sheikh Jibril Al-Mahmud had a son who could be considered worthy of taking up the mantle Hassan’s father would leave vacant. And no one could afford to ignore Sheikh Imran Al-Mukhtar and his son, Samir. Samir might be too young to take on the mantle of power but his father was not.
This, however only dealt with the male perspective. As the sheikhs fought their war with words on each other during long discussions, ensconced in one of the staterooms, the women were waging a similar war for their own reasons. Zafina Al-Yasin wanted Leona out and her daughter, Nadira, in. Since Hassan was not allowing this, then she would settle for her daughter taking second place. For the power lay in the sons born in a marriage, not the wives. So critical remarks were dropped at every opportunity to whittle away at Leona’s composure and a self-esteem that was already fragile due to her inability to give Hassan what he needed most in this world.
In the middle of it all stood Sheikh Raschid and his wife, Evie offering positive proof that west could successfully join with east. For Behran had gone from strength to strength since their marriage and was fast becoming one of the most influential States in Arabia. But they had a son. It was the cog on which everything else rotated.
It took two days to navigate the Suez Canal, and would take another five to cross the Red Sea to the city of Jeddah on the coast of Saudi Arabia. By the time they had reached the end of the Canal, battle lines had been clearly marked for those times when the war of words would rage or a truce would be called. Mornings were truce times, when everyone more or less did their own thing and the company could even be called pleasant.
In the afternoons most people took a siesta, unless Samir grew restless and chivvied the others towards more enjoyable pursuits.
‘Just look at them,’ Evie murmured indulgently one afternoon as they stood watching Samir, Rafiq, Raschid and Hassan jet-skiing the ocean like reckless idiots, criss-crossing each other’s wash with a daring that sometimes caught the breath. ‘They’re like little boys with exciting new toys.’
They came back to the boat, refreshed, relaxed—and ready to begin the first wave of strikes when the men gathered to drink coffee in one of the staterooms while the women occupied another.
Dinner called a second truce. After dinner, when another split of the sexes occurred, hostilities would resume until someone decided to call it a day and went to bed.
Bed was a place you could neither describe as a place of war nor truce. It gave you a sanctuary in which you had the chance to vent all of the things you had spent the day suppressing. But when the person in the bed with you saw you as much the enemy as every one else did, then you were in deep trouble. As Hassan acknowledged every time he slid into bed beside Leona and received the cold shoulder if he so much as attempted to touch her or speak.
She was angry with him for many reasons, but angriest most for some obscure point he had not managed to expose. He was aware that this situation was difficult, that she would rather be anywhere else other than trapped on this yacht right now. He knew she was unhappy, that she was only just managing to hide that from everyone else. That she was eating little and looking contradictorily pale when in truth her skin was taking on a deeper golden hue with every passing day. He knew that Zafina and Medina used any opportunity presented to them to compare her situation unfavourably with Evie’s. And he wished Raschid had shown some sensitivity to that prospect when he’d made the decision to bring his children along!
The children were a point of conflict he could not seem to deal with. This evening, for instance, when Raschid had brought his son into the salon to say goodnight to everyone, Hashim had run the length of the room with his arms open wide in demand for a hug from Leona. She had lifted him up in her arms and received all of his warm kisses to her face with smiles of pleasure while inside, Hassan knew, the ache of empty wishes must be torture for her.
When she hurt, he hurt. When he had no remedy to ease that pain, he had to turn away from its source or risk revealing to her the emptiness of helplessness he suffered whenever he saw her hugging a son that was not their own.
But in trying to protect Leona from himself he had forgotten the other pairs of eyes watching him. The Al-Mahmuds and the Al-Yasins had seen, read and drawn their own conclusions.
‘A sad sight, is it not?’ Abdul had dared to say.
Leona had heard him, had known what he’d been referring to, and had been shunning Hassan ever since.
‘Talk to me, for Allah’s sake.’ He sighed into the darkness.
‘Find another bed to sleep in.’
Well, they were words, he supposed, then sighed again, took the bull by the horns and pushed himself up to lean over her, then tugged her round to face him. ‘What is it that you want from me?’ he demanded. ‘I am trying my best to make this work for us!’
Her eyes flicked open; it was like gazing into pools of broken ice. ‘Why go to all this trouble when I am still going to leave you flat the first moment I know I can do it without hurting your father?’
‘Why?’ he challenged.
‘We’ve already been through the whys a hundred times! They haven’t changed just because you have decided to play the warlord and win the battle against your rotten underlings without giving an inch to anyone!’
‘Warlord?’ His brow arched. ‘How very pagan.’ He made sure she knew he liked the sound of that title in a very physical way.
‘Oh, get off me,’ she snapped, gave a push and rolled free of him, coming to her feet by the bed. Her hair floated everywhere, and the cream silk pyjamas shimmied over her slender figure as she walked down the room and dumped herself into one of the chairs, then dared to curl up in it as if he would allow her to sleep there!
‘Come back here, Leona,’ he commanded wearily.
‘I regret ever agreeing to be here,’ she answered huskily.
Husky meant tears. Tears made him want to curse for making a joke of what they had been talking about when any fool would have known it was no time for jokes! On yet another sigh he got out of the bed, then trod in her footsteps and went to squat down in front of her.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said, ‘that this situation is so difficult for you. But my father insisted that the family heads must talk to each other. I have no will to refuse him because in truth his reasons are wise. You know I have no automatic right to succession. I must win the support of the other family leaders.’
‘Stop being so stubborn and just let me go and you would not have to win over anyone,’ she pointed out.
‘You know…’ he grimaced ‘…I think you are wrong there.
I think that underneath all the posturing they want me to fight this battle and win, to prove the strength of my resolve.’
She brushed a tear off her cheek. Hassan had wanted to do it for her, but instinct was warning him not to. ‘Tonight Zafina asked me outright if I had any idea of the life I was condemning you to if I held onto a marriage destined to have no children.’
His eyes flashed with raw anger, his lips pressing together on an urge to spit out words that would make neither of them feel any better. But he made a mental note that from tomorrow Leona went nowhere without himself or Rafiq within hearing.
‘And I saw your face, Hassan,’ she went on unsteadily. ‘I heard what Abdul said to you and I know why he said it. So why are you being so stubborn about something we both know is—’
He shut her up in the most effective way he knew. Mouth to mouth, tongue to tongue, words lost in the heat of a much more productive form of communication. She fought him for a few brief seconds, then lost the battle when her flailing fingers made contact with his naked flesh.
He had no clothes on, she had too many, but flesh-warmed silk against naked skin achieved a sensual quality he found very pleasurable as he lifted her up and settled her legs around his hips.
‘You are such an ostrich,’ she threw into his face as he carried her back to bed. ‘How long do you think you can go on ignoring what—!’
He used the same method to shut her up again. By then he was standing by the bed with her fingernails digging into his shoulders, her hair surrounding him and her long legs clinging to his waist with no indication that they were going to let go. If he tried for a horizontal position he would risk hurting her while she held him like this.
So—who needed a bed? he thought with a shrug as his fingers found the elastic waistband to her pyjama bottoms and pushed the silk far enough down her thighs to gain him access to what he wanted the most. She groaned as he eased himself into her, and the kiss deepened into something else.
Fevered was what it was. Fevered and hot and a challenge to how long he could maintain his balance as he stood there with his hands spanning her slender buttocks, squeezing to increase the frictional pleasure, and no way—no way—would he have believed three nights without doing this could leave him so hungry. Twelve months without doing this had not affected him as badly.
‘You’re shaking.’
She’d noticed. He wasn’t surprised. He wasn’t just shaking, he was out of control, and he could no longer maintain this position without losing his dignity as well as his mind. So he lowered her to the bed with as much care as he could muster, pushed her hair from her face and stared blackly into her eyes.
‘You tell me how I deny myself this above all things?’ he demanded. ‘You, only you, can do this to me. It is only you I want to do it with.’
The words were spoken between fierce kisses, between possessive thrusts from his hips. Leona touched his face, touched his mouth, touched his eyes with her eyes. ‘I’m so very sorry,’ she whispered tragically.
It was enough to drive an already driven man insane. He withdrew, got up, swung away and strode into the bathroom, slammed shut the door then turned to slam the flat of his palm against the nearest wall. Empty silences after the loving he had learned to deal with, but tragic apologies in the middle were one large step too far!
Why had she said it? She hadn’t meant to say it! It was just one of those painful little things that had slipped out because she had seen he was hurting, and the look had reminded her of the look he had tried to hide from her when she had been cuddling Hashim.
Oh, what were they doing to each other? Leona asked herself wretchedly. And scrambled to her feet as the sickness she had been struggling with for days now came back with a vengeance, leaving her with no choice but to make a run for the bathroom with the hope that he hadn’t locked the door.
With one hand over her mouth and the other trying to recover her slipping pyjama bottoms, she reached the door just as it flew open to reveal a completely different Hassan than the one who had stormed in there only seconds ago.
‘You may have your wish,’ he informed her coldly. ‘As soon as it is safe for me to do so, I will arrange a divorce. Now I want nothing more to do with you.’
With that he walked away, having no idea that her only response was to finish what she had been intending to do and make it to the toilet bowl before she was sick.
CHAPTER EIGHT
LEONA was asleep when Hassan let himself back into the room the next morning. She was still asleep when, showered and dressed, he left the room again half an hour later, and in a way he was glad.
He had spent the night stretched out on a lounger on the shade deck, alternating between feeling angry enough to stand by every word he had spoken and wanting to go back and retract what he had left hanging in the air.
And even now, hours later, he was not ready to choose which way he was going to go. He’d had enough of people tugging on his heartstrings; he’d had enough of playing these stupid power games.
He met Rafiq on his way up to the sun deck. ‘Set up a meeting,’ he said. ‘Ten o’clock in my private office. We are going for broke.’
Rafiq sent him one of his steady looks, went to say something, changed his mind, and merely nodded his head.
Samir was already at the breakfast table, packing food away at a pace that made Hassan feel slightly sick—a combination of no sleep and one too many arguments, he told himself grimly.
Leona still hadn’t put in an appearance by the time everyone else had joined them and finished their breakfast. Motioning the steward over, he instructed him to ring the suite.
‘I’ll go,’ Evie offered, and got up, leaving her children to Raschid’s capable care.
And he was capable. In fact it irritated Hassan how capable his friend was at taking care of his two children. How did he run a Gulf state the size of Behran and find time to learn how to deal with babies?
The sun was hot, the sky was blue and here he was, he acknowledged, sitting here feeling like a grey day in London.
‘Hassan…’
‘Hmm?’ Glancing up, he realised that Sheikh Imran had been talking to him and he hadn’t heard a single word that he had said.
‘Rafiq tells us you have called a meeting for ten o’clock’
‘Yes.’ He glanced at his watch, frowned and stood up. ‘If you will excuse me, this is the time I call my father.’
To reach his office required him to pass by his suite door. It was closed. He hesitated, wondering whether or not to go in and at least try to make his peace. But Evie was in there, he remembered, and walked on, grimly glad of the excuse not to have to face that particular problem just now. For he had bigger fish to fry this morning.
Faysal was already in the office. ‘Get my father on the phone for me, Faysal,’ he instructed. ‘Then set the other room up ready for a meeting.’
‘It is to be today, sir?’ Faysal questioned in surprise.
‘Yes, today. In half an hour. My father, Faysal,’ he prompted before the other man could say any more. He glanced at his watch again as Faysal picked up the telephone. Had Leona stayed in their suite because she didn’t want to come face to face with him?
But Leona had not stayed in their suite because she was sulking, as Hassan so liked to call it. She was ill, and didn’t want anyone to know.
‘Don’t you dare tell anyone,’ she warned Evie. ‘I’ll be all right in a bit. It just keeps happening, and then it goes away again.’
‘How long?’ Evie looked worried.
‘A few days.’ Leona shrugged. ‘I don’t think I’ve got anything your children might catch, Evie,’ she then anxiously assured her. ‘I’m just—stressed out, that’s all.’
‘Stressed out.’ Evie was looking at her oddly.
‘It’s playing havoc with my stomach.’ Leona nodded and took another sip of the bottled water Evie had opened for her. ‘Who would not be feeling sick if they were stuck on this boat with a load of people they
liked as little as those people liked them? You and your family excluded, of course,’ she then added belatedly.
‘Oh, of course.’ Evie nodded and sat down on the edge of the bed, a bed with one half that had not been slept in. Hassan had not come back last night, and Leona was glad that he hadn’t.
‘I hate men,’ she announced huskily.
‘You mean you hate one man in particular.’
‘I’ll be glad when this is over and he just lets me go.’
‘Do you really think that is likely?’ Evie mocked. ‘Hassan is an Arab and they give up on nothing. Arrogant, possessive, stubborn, selfish and sweet,’ she listed ruefully. ‘It is the moments of sweetness that are their saving grace, I find.’
‘You’re lucky, you’ve got a nice one.’
‘He wasn’t nice at all on the day I sent him packing,’ Evie recalled. ‘In fact it was the worst moment of my life when he turned to leave with absolutely no protest. I knew it was the end. I’d seen it carved into his face like words set in stone…’
‘I know,’ Leona whispered miserably. ‘I’ve seen the look myself…’
Evie had seen the same look on Hassan’s face at the breakfast table. ‘Oh, Leona.’ She sighed. ‘The two of you have got to stop beating each other up like this. You love each other. Can’t that be enough?’
Raschid was not in agreement with Hassan’s timing. ‘Think about this,’ he urged. ‘We have too much time before we reach dry land. Time for them to fester on their disappointment.’
‘I need this settled,’ Hassan grimly insisted. ‘Leona is a mess. The longer I let the situation ride the more hesitant I appear. Both Abdul and Zafina Al-Yasin are becoming so over-confident that they think they may say what they please. My father agrees. It shall be done with today. Inshallah,’ he concluded.
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