Before Hassan could move a team of experts had gone down over Leona and he was left standing there staring down at the bit of white plastic she had placed in his hand.
She was pregnant. She had just told him that this red mark in the window meant that she was pregnant. In the bed a mere step away his father was no longer fading away before his eyes.
Leona had done it. She’d brought him back from the brink, had put herself through the trauma of facing the answer on this small contraption, and she’d done both without his support.
‘Courage,’ he murmured. He had always known she possessed courage. ‘And where was I when she needed my courage?’
‘Here,’ a level voice said. ‘Sit down.’ It was Rafiq, offering him a chair to sit upon. The room was beginning to look like a war zone.
He declined the chair. Leave me with some semblance of dignity, he thought. ‘Excuse me,’ he said, and stepped through the kneeling shapes round Leona, and bent and picked her up in his arms. ‘But, sir, we should check she is…’
‘Leave him be,’ the old sheikh instructed. ‘He is all she needs and he knows it.’
He did not take her far, only to his father’s divan, where he laid her down, then sat beside her. She looked pale and delicate, and just too lovely for him to think straight. So he did what she had done with his father and took hold of her hand, then told her, ‘Don’t you dare bail out on us now, you little tyrant, even if you believe we deserve it.’
‘We?’ she mumbled.
‘Okay, me,’ he conceded. ‘My father is alive and well, by the way. I thought it best to tell you this before you begin to recall exactly why you fainted.’
‘He’s all right?’ Her gold-tipped lashes flickered upwards, revealing eyes the colour of a sleepy lagoon.
I feel very poetic, Hassan thought whimsically. ‘Whether due to the drugs or your bullying, no one is entirely certain. But he opened his eyes and asked me what you were talking about just a second after you flew out of the room.’
‘He’s all right.’ Relief shivered through her, sending her eyes closed again. Feeling the shiver, Hassan reached out to draw one of his father’s rugs over her reclining frame.
‘Where am I?’ she asked after a moment.
‘You are lying on my father’s divan, ‘ he informed her. ‘With me, in all but effect, at your feet.’
She opened her eyes again, looked directly at him, and sent those major parts that kept him functioning into a steep decline.
‘What made you do it?’
She frowned at the question, but only for a short moment, then she sighed, tried to sit up but was still too dizzy and had to relax back again. ‘I didn’t want him to go,’ she explained simply. ‘Or, if he had to go, I wanted him to do it knowing that he was leaving everything as he always wanted to leave it.’
‘So you lied.’
It was a truth she merely grimaced at.
‘If he had survived this latest attack, and you had been wrong about what you told him, would that have been a fair way to tug a man back from his destiny?’
‘I’m pregnant,’ she announced. ‘Don’t upset me with lectures.’
He laughed. What else was he supposed to do? ‘I apologise for shouting at you,’ he said soberly.
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 corners 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. Inshallah.
Ethan’s Temptress Bride
By Michelle Reid
TORONTO • NEW YORK • LONDON
AMSTERDAM • PARIS • SYDNEY • HAMBURG
STOCKHOLM • ATHENS • TOKYO • MILAN • MADRID
PRAGUE • WARSAW • BUDAPEST • AUCKLAND
CHAPTER ONE
PARADISE was a sleepy island floating in the Caribbean. It had a bar on the beach, rum on tap and the unique sound of island music, which did seductive things to the hot and humid late afternoon air, while beyond the bar’s open rough-wood construction the silky blue ocean lapped lazily against a white-sand shore.
Sitting on a bar stool with a glass of local rum slotted between his fingers, Ethan Hayes decided that it didn’t get any better than this. Admittedly it had taken him more than a week to wind down to the point where he no longer itched to reach for a telephone or felt naked in bare feet and shorts instead of sharp suits and highly polished leather shoes. Now he would even go as far as to say that he liked his new laid-back self. ‘No worries,’ as the locals liked to say, had taken on a whole new meaning for him.
‘You want a refill for that, Mr Hayes?’ The soft melodic tones of an island accent brought his gaze up to meet that of the beautiful brown girl who was serving behind the bar. Her smile held a different kind of invitation.
‘Sure, why not?’ He returned a smile and released his glass to her—without acknowledging the hidden offer.
Sex in this hot climate was the serpent in Paradise. As one’s body temperature rose, so did that particular appetite, Ethan mused, aware that certain parts of him were suggesting he should consider the offer in the bar-girl’s v
elvet-brown eyes. But he hadn’t come to the island to indulge that specific pleasure, and all it took was the tentative touch of a finger to the corner of his mouth to remind him why he was wary of female entanglement. The bruising to his lip and jaw had faded days ago, but the injury to his dignity hadn’t. It still throbbed in his breast like an angry tiger in dire need of succour for its nagging wound. If a man had any sense, he wouldn’t unleash that tiger on some poor, unsuspecting female; he would keep it severely locked up and avoid temptation at all cost.
Though there was certainly a lot of that about, he acknowledged, as he turned to observe the young woman who was hogging the small bare-board dance floor.
The serpent’s mistress, he named her dryly as he watched her sensual undulations to the music. She was a tall and slender toffee-blonde with a perfect Caribbean tan, wearing a short and sassy hot-pink slip-dress that was an almost perfect match for the pink hibiscus flower she wore tucked into her hair.
Eye-catching, in other words. Too irresistible to leave to dance alone, so it wasn’t surprising that the young men in the bar were lining up to take their turn with her. She had class, she had style, she had beauty, she had grace, and she danced like a siren, shifting from partner to partner with the ease of one who was used to taking centre stage. Her eager young cohorts were enjoying themselves, loving the excuse to get up close and personal, lay their hands on her sensational body and gaze into big green beautiful eyes or watch her lovely mouth break into a smile that promised them everything.
And her name was Eve. Eve as in temptress, the ruin of man.
Or in this case the ruin of these brave young hunters who were aspiring to be her Adam. For she was the It girl on this small Caribbean island, the girl with everything, one of the fortunate few. A daddy’s girl—though in this case it was Grandpa’s girl, and the sole heir to his fabulous fortune.
Money was one hell of an aphrodisiac, Ethan decided cynically. Make her as ugly as sin and he could guarantee that those same guys would still be worshipping at her dainty dancing feet. But as so often was the way for the fabulously wealthy, stunning beauty came along with this package.
She began to laugh; the sound was soft and light and appealingly pleasant. She pouted at her present young hunter and almost brought the poor fool to his knees. Then she caught Ethan’s eyes on her and the cynical look he was wearing on his face. Her smile withered to nothing. Big green come-and-get-me-if-you-dare eyes widened to challenge his cynicism outright. She knew him, he knew her. They had met several times over the last year at her grandfather’s home in Athens, Ethan in his professional role as a design-and-build architect renowned for his creative genius for making new holiday complexes blend into their native surroundings, Eve in her only role as her grandfather’s much loved, much spoiled, gift from the gods.
They did not like each other. In fact mutual antipathy ran in a constant stream between them. Ethan did not like her conceited belief that she had been put on this earth to be worshipped by all, and Eve did not like his outright refusal to fall at her feet. So it was putting it mildly to say that it was unfortunate they should both find themselves holidaying in the same place. The island was small enough for them to be thrown into each other’s company too often for the comfort of either. Sparks tended to fly, forcing hostility to raise its ugly head. Other people picked up on it and didn’t know what to do or say to lighten the atmosphere. Ethan usually solved the problem by withdrawing from the conflict with excuses that he had to be somewhere else.
This time he withdrew by turning away from her, back to the bar and the drink that had just been placed in front of him. But Eve’s image remained standing right there, dancing on the bar top. Proud, defiant, unashamedly provocative—doing things to other parts of him he did not want her to reach.
His serpent in paradise, he grimly named this hot and nagging desire he suffered for Theron Herakleides’ tantalising witch of a granddaughter.
Eve was keeping a happy smile fixed on her face even if it killed her to do it. She despised Ethan Hayes with an absolute vengeance. He made her feel spoiled and selfish and vain. She wished he had done his usual thing of getting up and walking out, so that she wouldn’t have to watch him flirt with the barmaid.
Didn’t Ethan know he was treading on dangerous ground there, and that the barmaid’s strapping great sailor of a lover would chew him up and spit him out if he caught him chatting up his woman? Or was it the girl who was doing the chatting up? Then Eve had to settle for that as the more probable alternative, because Ethan Hayes was certainly worth the effort.
Great body, great looks, great sense of presence, she listed reluctantly. In a sharp suit and tie he was dynamic and sleek; now simple beach shorts and a white tee shirt should have turned him into something else entirely, but didn’t—dynamic and sleek still did it for her, Eve decided as she ran her eyes over him. She began at his brown bare feet with their long toes that were curling lovingly round one of the bar stool crossbars, then moved onwards, up powerfully built legs peppered with dark hair that had been bleached golden by the sun.
How did she know the sun had bleached those hairs? Eve asked herself. Because she’d seen his legs before—had seen all of Ethan Hayes before!—on that terrible night at her grandfather’s house in Athens, when she’d dared to walk uninvited into his bedroom and had caught him in a state of undress.
Prickly heat began to chase along to her nerve ends at the memory—the heat of mortification, not attraction though the attraction had always been there as well. She had gone to Ethan’s room to confront him over something he had seen her doing in the garden with Aidan Galloway. Bristling with self-righteous indignation she had marched in through his door, only to stop dead with her head wiped clean of all coherent thought when she’d found him standing there still dripping water from a recent shower, and as stark staring naked as a man could be—not counting the small hand towel he had been using to dry his hair. The towel had quickly covered other parts of him, but not before she’d had a darn good owl-eyed look!
Oh, the shame, the embarrassment! She could feel her cheeks blushing even now. ‘I presume Mr Galloway ran back to his fiancée, so you thought you would come and try your luck here.’ Eve winced as Ethan’s cutting words came back to slay her all over again.
‘Your foot, sorry,’ her present dance partner apologised.
He had misinterpreted the wince. ‘That’s okay,’ she said, smiling sweetly at Raoul Delacroix without bothering to correct his mistake—and wished she’d had the wits to smile sweetly at Ethan Hayes that night, instead of running like a fool and leaving him with his mistake!
But she had run without saying a single word to him in her own defence, and by the next morning embarrassment had turned to stiff-necked pride; hell could freeze over before she would explain anything to him! As a result he had become the conscience she knew she did not deserve, because all it took was a glance from those horribly critical grey eyes to make her feel crushingly guilty!
It wasn’t fair, she hated him for it. Hated his dark good looks too because they did things to her she would rather they didn’t. But most of all she hated his cold, grim, English reserve that kept him forever at a distance, thereby stopping her from beginning the confrontation that she knew would completely alter his perception of her.
Did she need to do that? Eve asked herself suddenly. And was horrified to realise how badly she did.
‘Have dinner with me tonight…’ Her present dance partner was suddenly crowding her with his too eager hands and the fervent darkening of his liquid brown eyes. ‘Just the two of us,’ Raoul huskily extended. ‘Somewhere quiet and romantic where no one can interrupt.’
‘You know that’s a no-no, Raoul.’ Smiling to soften the refusal, she also deftly dislodged one of his hands from her rear. ‘We’re here as a group to have fun, not romance.’
‘Romance can be fun.’ His rejected hand lifted up to brush a finger across her bottom lip with a message only a very naïve woman wou
ld misinterpret.
Eve reached up and firmly removed the finger and watched his beautifully shaped mouth turn down in a sulk. Raoul Delacroix was a very handsome French-American, with eyes dark enough to drown in and a body to die for—yet he did nothing for her. In a way she wished that he did because he was her age and her kind of person, unlike the disapproving Ethan Hayes who added a whole new meaning to the phrase, the generation gap.
And what was that gap—her twenty-three years to his thirty-seven? Big gap—yawning gap, she mocked it dryly. ‘Don’t sulk,’ she scolded Raoul. ‘Today is my birthday and we’re supposed to be having lots of fun.’
‘Tomorrow is your birthday,’ he corrected.
‘As we all know, my grandfather is arriving here tomorrow to help me celebrate, which means I will have to behave with proper decorum all day. So tonight we agreed that we would celebrate my birthday a day early. Don’t spoil that for me, Raoul.’
It was both a gentle plea and a serious warning because he had been getting just a little bit too intense recently. Raoul Delacroix was the half-brother of André Visconte who owned the only hotel on the island. So like the rest of the crowd whose families owned property here, they’d all been meeting up for holidays since childhood. They were all good close friends now who’d agreed early on that romance would spoil what they enjoyed most about each others’ company. Raoul knew the rules, so attempting to change them now was just a tiny bit irritating—and a shame because he was usually very good company—when he wasn’t thinking of other things, that was.
‘The beach is strewn with good prospects for a handsome Frenchman to play the romantic,’ she teased him. ‘Take your pick. I can guarantee they will swoon at your feet.’
‘I know, I’ve tried one or two,’ Raoul returned lazily. ‘But this was only in practice, you understand,’ he then added, ‘to prepare myself for the woman I love.’
Implying that Eve was that woman? She laughed, it was so funny. After a moment, Raoul joined in the laughter, and the mood between them relaxed back into being playful. The music changed not long after, calypso taking the place of reggae, and Eve found Raoul’s place taken by another admirer while he moved on to pastures new.
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