‘Oh…’ Leona lifted her head to mock her husband. ‘So that’s what it is I love most about you.’
‘The gentleman?’
‘The savage,’ she softly corrected.
He replied with a gentle cuff to her chin. Everyone laughed. Everyone was happy. Zafina tried very hard to hide her malicious glare.
They ate dinner beneath the stars that night. Leona was surprised to see a bed of ice holding several bottles of champagne waiting on a side table. Some of her guests drank alcohol; some of them did not. Wine was the favoured choice for those who did imbibe. But even when there had been cause to celebrate yesterday evening champagne had not been served.
‘What’s going on?’ she asked Hassan as he saw her seated.
‘Wait and see,’ he replied frustratingly, and walked away to take his own seat at the other end of the table.
Ah, the last supper, she thought then, with a pinch of acid wit. And, believing she had her answer, she turned her attention to her meal, while Rafiq continued his opinions of men in high positions who could lower themselves to cheat.
The first spoonful of what was actually a delicious Arabian soup set Leona’s stomach objecting. ‘Never mind,’ she said to soothe Samir’s dramatically ruffled feathers as she quietly laid aside her spoon. ‘Tomorrow you and I will race on the jet-skis and I promise that I, as an English gentlewoman, will not cheat.’
‘Not on this trip, I am afraid,’ Hassan himself inserted smoothly. ‘All water sports are now stopped until we can replace the buoyancy aids with something more effective.’
Leona stared down the table at him. ‘Just like that?’ she protested. ‘I have an unfortunate and one-in-a-million-chance accident and you put a stop on everyone else’s fun?’
‘You almost drowned. The life jacket did not do what it is designed to do. A million-to-one chance of it happening again makes the odds too great.’
‘That is the voice of the master,’ Samir noted.
‘You heard it too, hmm?’ Leona replied.
‘Most indubitably,’ Hassan agreed.
After that the conversation moved on to other things. Soup dishes were removed and replaced with a fish dish she didn’t even attempt to taste. A richly sauced Arab dish followed, with a side bowl each of soft and fluffy steamed white rice.
The rice she thought she could just about manage to eat, Leona decided, listening intently to the story Imran Al-Mukhtar was telling her as she transferred a couple of spoonfuls of rice onto her plate then added a spoonful of sauce just for show.
One spoonful of soup, two forkfuls of rice. No fish. No attempt to even accept a sample of the thick honey pudding to conclude. Hassan watched it all, took grim note, glanced to one side to catch Evie’s eye. She sent him a look that said that she had noticed too.
‘The Sheikha Leona seems a little…pale,’ Zafina Al-Yasin, sitting to one side of him, quietly put in. ‘Is she not feeling quite herself?’
‘You think so?’ he returned with mild surprise. ‘I think she looks exquisite. But then, I am smitten,’ he allowed. ‘It makes a difference as to how you perceive someone, don’t you think?’
A steward came to stand at his side then, thankfully relieving him from continuing such a discussion.
With a nod of understanding he sent the steward hurrying over to the side table where he and his assistants began deftly uncorking the bottles of champagne. Picking up a spoon, he gave a couple of taps against a wine glass to capture every one’s attention.
‘My apologies for interrupting your dinner,’ he said, ‘but in a few minutes our captain will sound the yacht’s siren. As you can see, the stewards are in the process of setting a glass of champagne before each of you. It is not compulsory that you actually drink it,’ he assured with a grin for those who never imbibed no matter what the occasion, ‘but as a courtesy, in the time-honoured tradition of any sailing vessel. I would be most honoured if you would stand and join me by raising your glass in a toast. For we are about to cross the Tropic of Cancer…’
With the perfect timing of a man who was adept at such things, the siren gave three short sharp hoots at the same moment that Hassan rose to his feet. On a ripple of surprise everyone rose up also. Some drank, some didn’t, but all raised their glasses. Then there was a mass exodus to the yacht’s rail, where everyone stood gazing out into the inky dark Red Sea as if they expected to see some physical phenomenon like a thick painted line to mark this special place.
Of course there was none. It did not seem to matter. Moving to place his hands on the rail either side of his wife, Hassan bent to place his lips to her petal-smooth cheek.
‘See anything?’ he questioned teasingly.
‘Oh, yes,’ she replied. ‘A signpost sticking out of the water. Did you miss it?’
His soft laugh was deep and soft and seductive. As she tilted back to look at him the back of her head met with his shoulder. She was smiling with her eyes. He wanted to drown in them. Kiss me, they were saying. An Arab did not kiss in front of guests, so a raised eyebrow ruefully refused the invitation. It was the witch in her that punished him for that refusal when one of her hands slid backwards and made a sensual sweep of one of his thighs.
Sensation spat hot pricks of awareness like needles deep into his flesh. She was right about the dishdasha, he conceded, it had to be one of the ancient reasons why his culture frowned upon close physical contact with the opposite sex whilst in the company of others.
‘I will pay you back for that later,’ he warned darkly.
‘I am most seriously worried, my lord Sheikh,’ she replied provokingly.
Then, in the way these things shifted, the private moment was broken when someone spoke to him. He straightened to answer Jibril Al-Mahmud who, since the meeting had spent every minute he could possibly snatch trying to squeeze himself back into Hassan’s good graces. Leona took a sip at her champagne. That dreadful intruder, Samir, claimed the rest of her attention. He was, Hassan recognised, just a little infatuated with Leona, which offered another good reason why he would be happy when their cruise ended tomorrow.
Jibril’s timid little wife came to join them. She smiled nervously at him and, because he felt rather sorry for her, Hassan sent her a pleasant smile back, then politely asked about her family. Raschid joined in. Evie and Imran went to join Leona and Samir. Abdul and Zafina were the last to join his own group but at least they did it, he acknowledged.
Tonight there was no splitting of the sexes. No lingering at the table for the men. They simply mingled, talked and lingered together. And, had it not been for one small but important detail, Hassan would have declared the evening—if not the whole cruise—a more than satisfactory success.
That small but important detail was Leona. Relaxed though she might appear, content though she might appear, he could see that the strain of the whole ordeal in general had begun to paint soft bruises around her eyes. He didn’t like to see them there, did not like to notice that every so often the palm of her hand would go to rest against the flat of her stomach, as if to soothe away an inner distress.
Nor had he forgotten that she had barely eaten a morsel of food all day. He frowned down at his champagne glass, still brimming with its contents. Tomorrow they reached Jeddah. Tomorrow he would take her to visit a doctor, he decided grimly. If there was one rule you were taught never to ignore when you lived in a hot country, it was the rule about heeding any signs of illness. Maybe it was nothing. Maybe it was all just down to stress. But maybe she had picked up something in the water when she fell in. Whatever—tomorrow he would make sure that they found out for definite.
It was a decision he found himself firmly repeating when they eventually retired to their stateroom and the first thing that Leona did was wilt.
‘You are ill,’ he said grimly.
‘Just tired,’ she insisted.
‘Don’t take me for a fool, Leona,’ he ground back. ‘You do not eat. You are clearly in some sort of discomfort. And you look ill.�
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‘All right.’ She caved in. ‘So I think I have developed a stomach bug. If we have time when we reach Jeddah tomorrow I will get something for it.’
‘We will make time.’
‘Fine.’ She sighed.
He sighed. ‘Here, let me help you…’ She even looked too weary to undress herself.
So he did it for her—silently, soberly, a concentrated frown darkening his face. She smiled and kissed him. It really was too irresistible to hold the gesture in check. ‘Don’t turn into a minx just because I am indulging you,’ he scolded, and parted the tunic, then let it slide to her feet.
‘But I like it when you indulge me,’ she told him, her eyes lowered to watch him reach for the front clasp holding the two smooth satin cups of her cream bra together. As the back of his knuckles brushed against the tips of her breasts she drew back with a sharp gasp.
‘What?’ he demanded.
‘Sensitive.’ She frowned. He frowned. They both glanced down to see the tight distension of her nipples standing pink and proud and wilfully erect. A small smug smile twitched at the corner of his mouth. Leona actually blushed.
‘I’ll finish the rest for myself,’ she decided dryly.
‘I think that would be wise,’ Hassan grinned, and pulled the dishdasha off over his head to show her why he had said that.
‘I don’t know.’ She was almost embarrassed by how fiercely one responded to the closeness of the other. ‘I’m supposed to be ill and tired and in need of much pampering.’
A set of warm brown fingers gently stroked the flush blooming in her cheek. ‘I know of many ways to pamper,’ he murmured sensually. ‘Slow and gentle. Soft and sweet…’
His eyes glowed darkly with all of those promises; hers grew darker on the willingness to accept. The gap between them closed, warm flesh touched warm flesh, mouths came together on a kiss. Then he showed her. Deep into the night he showed her a hundred ways to pamper a woman until she eventually fell asleep in his arms and remained there until morning came to wake them up.
At breakfast she actually ate a half-slice of toast with marmalade and drank a full cup of very weak tea—hopefully without giving away the fact that it was a struggle not to give it all back up.
Little Hashim came to beg to be allowed to sit on her lap. Leona placed him there and together they enjoyed sharing the other half of her slice of toast, while Hassan looked on with a glaze across his eyes and Evie posed a sombre question at her husband, Raschid, with expressive eyes.
He got up and stepped around the table to lay a hand on Hassan’s shoulder. The muscles beneath it were fraught with tension. ‘I need a private word with you, Hassan,’ he requested. ‘If you have finished here?’
The same muscle flexed as Hassan pulled his mind back from where it had gone off to. ‘Of course,’ he said, and stood up. A moment later both men were walking away from the breakfast table towards the stairs which would take them down to the deck below and Hassan’s private suite of offices.
Most watched them go. Many wondered why Sheikh Raschid felt it necessary to take Sheikh Hassan to one side. But none, friend nor foe—except for Evie, who kept her attention firmly fixed on the small baby girl in her arms—came even close to guessing what was about to be discussed.
By the time Raschid came to search his wife out she was back in their suite. She glanced anxiously up at him. Raschid lifted a rueful shoulder, ‘Well, it is done,’ he said. Though neither of them looked as if the statement pleased them in any way.
Well, it is done. That more or less said it. Well it is done, now held Hassan locked in a severe state of shock. He couldn’t believe it. He wanted to believe it, but did not dare let himself because it changed everything: the view of his life; the view of his marriage.
He had to sit down. The edge of his desk was conveniently placed to receive his weight, and his eyes received the cover of a trembling hand. Beyond the closed door to his office his guests and the tail end of the cruise carried on regardless, but here in this room everything he knew and felt had come to a complete standstill.
He couldn’t move. Now his legs had been relieved of his weight, they had lost the ability to take it back again. Inside he was shaking. Inside he did not know what to feel or what to think. For he had been here in this same situation before—many times—and had learned through experience that it was a place best avoided at all costs.
Hope—then dashed hopes. Pleasure—then pain. But this was different. This had been forced upon him by a source he had good reason to trust and not to doubt.
Doubt. Dear heaven, he was very intimate with the word doubt. Now, as he removed the hand from his eyes and stared out at the glistening waters he could see through the window, he found doubt being replaced by the kind of dancing visions he had never—ever—allowed himself to see before.
A knock sounded at the door, then it opened before he had a chance to hide his expression. Rafiq walked in, took one look at him and went rock solid still.
‘What is it?’ he demanded. ‘Father?’
Hassan quickly shook his head. ‘Come in and close the door,’ he urged, then made an effort to pull himself together—just in case someone else decided to take him by surprise.
Leona.
Something inside him was suddenly threatening to explode. He didn’t know what, but it scared the hell out of him. He wished Raschid had said nothing. He wished he could go back and replay the last half hour again, change it, lose it—
‘Hassan…?’ Rafiq prompted an explanation as to why he was witnessing his brother quietly falling apart.
He looked up, found himself staring into mirrors of his own dark eyes, and decided to test the ground—test those eyes to find out what Leona would see in his eyes if she walked in here right now.
‘Evie—Raschid,’ he forced out across a sand-dry throat. ‘They think Leona might be pregnant. Evie recognises the signs…’
CHAPTER TEN
SILENCE fell. It was, Hassan recognised, a very deathly silence, for Rafiq was already showing a scepticism he dared not voice.
Understanding the feeling, Hassan released a hard sigh, then grimly pulled himself together. ‘Get hold of our father,’ he instructed. ‘I need absolute assurance from him that I will not be bringing Leona back to a palace rife with rumour attached to her return.’ From being hollowed by shock he was now as tight as a bowstring. ‘If he has any doubts about this, I will place her in Raschid’s safekeeping, for she must be protected at all cost from any more anguish or stress.’
‘I don’t think Leona will—’
‘It is not and never has been anyone else’s place to think anything about my wife!’ The mere fact that he was lashing out at Rafiq showed how badly he was taking this. ‘Other people’s thinking has made our life miserable enough! Which is why I want you to speak to our father and not me,’ he explained. ‘I will have this conversation with no one else. Leona must be protected from ever hearing from anyone else that I am so much as suspecting this. If I am wrong then only I will grieve over what never was. If I am correct, then she has the right to learn of her condition for herself. I will not take this away from her!’
‘So I am not even to tell our father,’ Rafiq assumed from all of that.
‘He and Leona communicate daily by e-mail,’ Hasssan explained. ‘The old man may be too puffed up with excitement to hold back from saying something to her.’
‘In the state you are in, all of this planning may well be a waste of time,’ Rafiq remarked with a pointed glance at his watch. ‘In one hour we arrive in Jeddah. If you do not pull yourself together Leona will need only to look at your face to know that something catastrophic has taken place.’
Hassan knew it. Without warning he sank his face into his hands. ‘This is crazy,’ he muttered thickly.
‘It is certainly most unexpected,’ his brother agreed. ‘And a little too soon for anyone, including the Al-Kadahs, to be making such confident judgements?’ he posed cautiously.
; Behind his hands Hassan’s brain went still. Behind the hands it suddenly rushed ahead again, filling him with the kind of thoughts that made his blood run cold. For Rafiq was right: three weeks was not long enough—not to achieve what he was suggesting. As any man knew, it took only a moment to conceive a child. But which man—whose child?
On several hard curses he dragged his hand down. On several more he climbed to his feet then strode across the room to pull open the door that connected him with his aide.
‘Faysal!’ The man almost jumped out of his skin. ‘Track down my father-in-law, wherever he is. I need to speak with him urgently.’
Slam. The door shut again. ‘May Allah save me from the evil minds of others,’ he grated.
‘I do not follow you.’ Rafiq frowned.
‘Three weeks!’ Hassan muttered. ‘Three weeks ago Leona was sleeping in the same house as Ethan Hayes! It was one of the problems which forced me into bringing her to this yacht, if you recall…’
Leona didn’t see Hassan until a few minutes before they were due to arrive in Jeddah. By then most of their guests were assembled on the shade deck taking refreshment while watching the yacht make the delicate manoeuvres required to bring such a large vessel safely into its reserved berth in the harbour.
In respect of Saudi Arabian custom everyone was wearing traditional Arab daywear, including little Hashim, who looked rather cute in his tiny white tunic and gutrah.
Hassan arrived dressed the same way; Rafiq was less than a step behind him. ‘Hello, strangers.’ Leona smiled at both of them. ‘Where have you two been hiding yourselves all morning?’
‘Working.’ Rafiq smiled, but Hassan didn’t even seem to hear her, and his gaze barely glanced across her face before he was turning to speak to Samir’s father, Imran.
She frowned. He looked different—not pale, exactly, but under some kind of grim restraint. Then little Hashim demanded, ‘Come and see,’ and her attention was diverted. After that she had no time to think of anything but the formalities involved in bidding farewell to everyone.
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