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
