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‘I know a broken-hearted woman when I see one,’ Ethan persisted.
‘And has she been any less broken-hearted in the year we have been apart?’
Game, set and match, Hassan recognised, as the other man conceded that final point to him, and with just a nod of his head Ethan went out of the door and into the capable hands of the waiting Rafiq.
At about the same time that Rafiq was escorting Ethan to the waiting launch presently tied up against the side of the yacht, Leona was slipping her arms into the sleeves of a white linen jacket that matched the white linen trousers she had chosen to wear. Beneath the jacket she wore a pale green sun top, and she had contained her hair in a simple pony-tail tied up with a green silk scarf. As she turned towards the door she decided that if she managed to ignore the throbbing ache happening inside her then she was as ready as she ever could be for the battle she knew was to come with Hassan.
Stepping out of the stateroom, the first person she saw was a bearded man dressed in a long white tunic and the usual white gutrah on his head.
‘Faysal!’ Her surprise was clear, her smile warm. Faysal responded by pressing his palms together and dipping into the kind of low bow that irritated Hassan but didn’t bother Leona at all simply because she ignored it. ‘I didn’t know you were here on the boat. Are you well?’ she enquired as she walked towards him.
‘I am very well, my lady,’ he confirmed, but beneath the beard she had a suspicion he was blushing uncomfortably at the informal intimacy she was showing him.
‘And your wife?’ she asked gently.
‘Oh, she is very well,’ he confirmed with a distinct softening in his formal tone. ‘The—er—problem she suffered has gone completely. We are most grateful to you for taking the trouble to ensure she was treated by the best people.’
‘I didn’t do anything but point her in the right direction, Faysal.’ Leona smiled. ‘I am only grateful that she felt she could confide in me.’
‘You saved her life.’
‘Many people saved her life.’ Daring his affront, she crossed the invisible line Arab males drew between themselves and females and reached out to press her hands against the backs of his hands. ‘But you and I were good conspirators, hmm, Faysal?’
‘Indisputably, my lady.’ His mouth almost cracked into a smile but he was too stressed at having her hands on his, and in the end she relented and moved away.
‘If you would come this way…’ he bowed ‘…I am to escort you to my lord Hassan.’
Ah, my lord Hassan, Leona thought, and felt her lighter mood drop again as Faysal indicated that she precede him down the steps she had taken a tumble on the night before. On the other side of the foyer was a staircase which Leona presumed led up to the deck above.
With Faysal tracking two steps behind her, she made her way up and into the sunlight flooding the upper deck, where she paused to take a look around. The sky was a pure, uninterrupted blue and the sea the colour of turquoise. The sun was already hot on her face and she had to shade her eyes against the way it was reflecting so brightly off the white paintwork of the boat.
‘You managed to make Faysal blush, I see,’ a deep voice drawled lazily.
Turning about, she found that Faysal had already melted away, as was his habit, and that Hassan was sitting at a table laid for breakfast beneath the shade of a huge white canvas awning, studying her through slightly mocking eyes. Her heart tried to leap in her breast but she refused to let it. ‘There is a real human being hiding behind all of that strict protocol, if you would only look and see him.’
‘The protocol is not my invention. It took generations of family tradition to make Faysal the man he is today.’
‘He worships you like a god.’
‘And you as his angel of mercy.’
‘At least he felt I was approachable enough that he could bring his concerns to me.’
‘After I had gently suggested it was what he should do.’
‘Oh,’ she said; she hadn’t realised that.
‘Come out of the sun before you burn.’
It was hot, and he was right, but Leona felt safer keeping her distance. She had things to say, and she began with the one subject guaranteed to alter his mellow mood into something else entirely. ‘I was hoping that Ethan would be here with you,’ she said. ‘Since he isn’t, I think I will go and look for him.’
Like a sign from Allah that today was not going to be a good day, at that moment the launch powered up and slipped its ties to the yacht.
Attention distracted, Leona glanced over the side, then went perfectly still.
Hassan knew what she was seeing even before he got up to go and join her. Sure enough, there was Ethan standing on the back of the launch. As the small boat began to pick up speed he glanced up, saw them and waved a farewell.
‘Wave back, my darling,’ he urged smoothly. ‘The man will appreciate the assurance that all is well.’
‘You rat,’ she whispered.
‘Of the desert,’ he dryly replied, then compounded his sins by bringing an arm to rest across her stiff shoulders and lifting his other to wave.
Leona waved also, he admired her for that because it showed that, despite how angry she was feeling, she was—as always—keeping true to her unfailing loyalty to him.
In the eyes of other people, anyway. He extended that statement as the two of them stood watching Ethan and his passage away from them decrease in size, until the launch was nothing more than an occasional glint amongst many on the ocean. By then Leona was staring beyond the glint, checking the horizon for a glimpse of land that was not there. She was also gripping the rail in front of them with fingers like talons and wishing they were around his throat, he was sure.
‘Try to think of it this way,’ he suggested. ‘I have saved us the trouble of yet another argument.’
CHAPTER FIVE
‘WE HAVE to put into port some time,’ Leona said coldly. She twisted out from beneath his resting arm then began walking stiffly towards the stairs, so very angry with him that she was quite prepared to lock herself in the stateroom until they did exactly that.
Behind the rigid set of her spine, she heard Hassan release a heavy sigh. ‘Come back here,’ he instructed. ‘I was joking. I know we need to talk.’
But this was no joke, and they both knew it. He was just a ruthless, self-motivated monster, and as far as she was concerned, she had nothing left to—Her thoughts stopped dead. So did her feet when she found her way blocked by a giant of a man with a neat beard and the hawklike features of a desert warrior.
‘Well, just look what we have here,’ she drawled at this newly arrived target for her anger. ‘If it isn’t my lord sheikh’s fellow conspirator in crime.’
Rafiq had opened his mouth to offer her a greeting, but her tone made him change his mind and instead he dipped into the kind of bow that would have even impressed Faysal, but only managed to sharpen Leona’s tongue.
‘Don’t you dare efface yourself to me when we both know you don’t respect me at all,’ she sliced at him.
‘You are mistaken,’ he replied. ‘I respect you most deeply.’
‘Even while you throw an abaya over my head?’
‘The abaya was an unfortunate necessity,’ he explained, ‘For you sparkled so brilliantly that you placed us in risk of discovery from the car headlights. Though please accept my apologies if my actions offended you.’
He thought he could mollify her with an apology? ‘Do you know what you need, Rafiq Al-Qadim?’ she responded. ‘You need someone to find you a wife—a real harridan who will make your life such a misery that you won’t have time to meddle in mine!’
‘You are angry, and rightly so,’ he conceded, but his eyes had begun to glint at the very idea of anyone meddling with his life. ‘My remorse for the incident with the abaya is all yours. Please be assured that if you had toppled into the ocean I would have arrived there ahead of you.’
‘But not before me, I think,’ another voice intruded. It was very satisfying to hear the impatience in Hassan’s tone. He was not a man who liked to be upstaged in any way, which was what Leona had allowed Rafiq to do. ‘Leona, come out of the sun,’ he instructed. ‘Allowing yourself to burn because you are angry is the fool’s choice.’
Leona didn’t move but Rafiq did. In two strides he was standing right beside her and quite effectively blocking her off from the sun with his impressive shadow.
Which only helped to irritate Hassan all the more. ‘Your reason for being up here had better be a good one, Rafiq,’ he said grimly.
‘Most assuredly,’ the other man replied. ‘Sheikh Abdul begs an urgent word with you.’
Hassan’s smile was thin. ‘Worried, is he?’
‘Protecting his back,’ Rafiq assessed.
‘Sheikh Abdul can wait until I have eaten my breakfast.’ Levering himself away from the yacht’s rail, he walked back to the breakfast table. ‘Leona, if you are not over here by the time Rafiq leaves you will not like the consequences.’
‘Threats now?’ she threw at him.
‘Tell the sheikh I will speak to him later,’ he said, ignoring her remark to speak to Rafiq.
Rafiq hesitated, stuck between two loyalties and clearly unsure which one to heed. He preferred to stay by Leona’s side until she decided to leave the sun, but he also needed to deliver Hassan’s message; so a silence dropped and tension rose. Hassan picked up the coffee pot and poured himself a cup while he waited. He was testing the faith of a man who had only ever given him his absolute loyalty, and that surprised and dismayed Leona because, tough and cold though she knew Hassan could be on occasion, she had never known him to challenge Rafiq in this way.
In the end she took the pressure off by stepping beneath the shade of the awning. Rafiq bowed and left. Hassan sent her a brief smile. ‘Thank you,’ he said.
‘You didn’t have to challenge him like that,’ she admonished. ‘It was an unfair use of your authority.’
‘Perhaps,’ he conceded. ‘But it served its purpose.’
‘The purpose of reminding him of his station in life?’
‘No, the purpose of making you remember yours.’ He threw her a hard glance. ‘We both wield power in our way, Leona. You have just demonstrated your own by giving Rafiq the freedom to leave with his pride intact.’
He was right, though she didn’t like being forced to realise it.
‘You can be so cruel sometimes.’ She released the words on a sigh. To her surprise Hassan countered it with a laugh.
‘You call me cruel when you have just threatened him with a wife? He has a woman,’ he confided, coming to stand right behind her. ‘A black-haired, ruby-eyed, golden-skinned Spaniard.’ Reaching round with his hands, he slipped free the single button holding her jacket shut, then began to remove the garment. ‘She dances the flamenco and famously turns up men’s temperature gauges with her delectably seductive style.’ His lips brushed the slender curve of her newly exposed shoulder. ‘But Rafiq assures me that nothing compares to what she unleashes when she dances only for him.’
‘You’ve seen her dance?’ Before she could stop herself, Leona had turned her head and given him just what he had been aiming for, she realised, too late to hide the jealous green glow in her eyes.
A sleek dark brow arched, dark eyes taunting her with his answer. ‘You like to believe you can set me free but you are really so possessive of me that I can feel the chains tightening, not slackening.’
‘And you are so conceited.’ She tried to draw back the green eyed monster.
‘Because I like the chains?’ he quizzed, and further disarmed her.
It wasn’t fair, Leona decided; he could seduce her into a mess of confusion in seconds: Ethan, the launch, her sense of righteous indignation at the way she was being manipulated at just about every turn; she was in real danger of becoming lost in the power he had over her. She tried to break free from it. From her chains, she recognised.
‘I prefer tea to coffee,’ she murmured, aiming her concentration at the only neutral thing she could find, which was the table set for breakfast.
The warm sound of his laughter was in recognition of her diversion tactics. Then suddenly he wasn’t laughing, he was releasing a gasp of horror. ‘You are bruised!’ he claimed, sending her gaze flittering to the slight discolouring to her right shoulder that she had noticed herself in the shower earlier.
‘It’s nothing.’ She tried to dismiss it.
But Hassan was already turning her round and his black eyes were hard as they began flashing over every other exposed piece of flesh he could see. ‘Me, or the fall?’ he demanded harshly.
‘The fall, of course.’ She frowned, because she couldn’t remember a single time in all the years they had been together that Hassan had ever marked her, either in passion or anger, yet he had gone so pale she might have accused him of beating her.
‘Any more?’ he asked tensely.
‘Just my right hip, a little,’ she said, holding her tongue about the sore spot at the side of her head, because she could see he wasn’t up to dealing with that information. ‘—Hassan, will you stop it?’ she said gasping when he dropped down in front of her and began to unfasten her white trousers. ‘It isn’t that bad!’
He wasn’t listening. The trousers dropped, his fingers were already gently lifting the plain white cotton of her panty line out of the way so he could inspect for himself. ‘I am at your feet,’ he said in pained apology.
‘I can see that,’ she replied with a tremor in her voice that had more to do with shock than the humour she’d tried to inject into it. His response was so unnecessary and so very enthralling. ‘Just get up now and let me dress,’ she pleaded. ‘Someone might come, for goodness’ sake!’
‘Not if they value their necks,’ he replied, but at least he began to slide her trousers back over her slender hip-bones.
It had to be the worst bit of timing that Faysal should choose that moment to make one of his silent appearances. Leona was covered—just—but it did not take much imagination for her to know what Faysal must believe he was interrupting. The colour that flooded her cheeks must have aided that impression. Hassan went one further and rose up like a cobra.
‘This intrusion had better be worth losing your head for!’ he hissed.
For a few awful seconds Leona thought the poor man was going to prostrate himself in an agony of anguish. He made do with a bow to beat all bows. ‘My sincerest apologies,’ he begged. ‘Your most honourable father, Sheikh Khalifa, desires immediate words with you, sir.’
Anyone else and Hassan would have carried out his threat, Leona was sure. Instead his mouth snapped shut, his hands took hold of her and dumped her rudely into a chair.
‘Faysal, my wife requires tea.’ He shot Leona’s own diversion at the other man. Glad of the excuse to go, Faysal almost ran. To Leona he said, ‘Eat,’ but he wasn’t making eye contact, and the two streaks of colour he was wearing on his cheekbones almost made her grin because it was so rare that anyone saw Sheikh Hassan Al-Qadim disconcerted.
‘You dare,’ he growled, swooping down and kissing her twitching mouth, then he left quickly with the promise to return in moments.
But moments stretched into minutes. She ate one of the freshly baked rolls a white liveried steward had brought with a pot of tea, then drank the tea—and still Hassan did not return.
Eventually Rafiq appeared with another formal bow and Hassan’s apologies. He was engaged in matters of state.
Matters of state she understood having lived before with Hassan disappearing for hours upon end to deal with them.
‘Would you mind if I joined you?’ Rafiq then requested.
‘Orders of state?’ she quizzed him dryly.
His half-smile gave her an answer. Her half-smile accompanied her indication to an empty chair. She watched him sit, watched him hunt around for something neutral to say that was not likely to cause another argument. There was no such thing, Leona knew that, so she decided to help him out.
‘Tell me about your Spanish mistress,’ she invited.
It was the perfect strike back for sins committed against her. Rafiq released a sigh and dragged the gutrah from his head, then tossed it aside. This was a familiar gesture for a man of the Al-Qadim household to use. It could convey many things: weariness, anger, contempt or, as in this case, a relayed throwing in of the towel. ‘He lacks conscience,’ he complained.
‘Yet you continue to love him unreservedly, Rafiq, son of Khalifa Al-Qadim,’ she quietly replied.
An eyebrow arched. Sometimes, in a certain light, he looked so like Hassan that they could have been twins. But they were not. ‘Bastard son,’ Rafiq corrected in that proud way of his. ‘And you continue to love him yourself, so we had best not throw those particular stones,’ he advised.
Rafiq had been born out of wedlock to Sheikh Khalifa’s beautiful French mistress, who’d died giving birth to him. The fact that Hassan had only been six months old himself at the time of Rafiq’s birth should have made the two half-brothers bitter enemies as they grew up together, one certain of his high place in life, the other just as certain of what would never be his. Yet in truth the two men could not have been closer if they’d shared the same mother. As grown men they had formed a united force behind which their ailing father rested secure in the knowledge that no one would challenge his power while his sons were there to stop them. When Leona came along, she too had been placed within this ring of protection.
Strange, she mused, how she had always been surrounded by strong men for most of her life: her father, Ethan, Rafiq and Hassan; even Sheikh Khalifa, ill though he now was, had always been one of her faithful champions.
‘Convince him to let me go,’ she requested quietly.
Ebony eyes darkened. ‘He had missed you.’
