of what we have left besides the excellent sex?’
He didn’t answer. Instead he made one of her eyebrows arch as he snatched up her spritzer and grimly downed the lot. There was a man at war with himself as well as with her, Leona realised, knowing Hassan hardly ever touched alcohol, and only then when he was under real stress.
Sitting up, she was aware of a few aches and bruises as she gingerly slid her feet to the floor. ‘I want to go home,’ she announced.
‘This is home,’ he replied. ‘For the next few weeks, anyway.’
Few weeks? Coming just as gingerly to her feet, Leona stared at his rigid back—which was just another sign that Hassan was not functioning to his usual standards, because no Arab worthy of the race would deliberately set his back to anyone. It was an insult of the worst kind.
Though she had seen his back a lot during those few months before she’d eventually left him, Leona recalled with a familiar sinking feeling inside. Not because he had wished to insult her, she acknowledged, but because he had refused to face what they had both known was happening to their marriage. In the end, she had taken the initiative away from him.
‘Where are my shoes?’
The surprisingly neutral question managed to bring him swinging round to glance at her feet. ‘Rafiq has them.’
Dear Rafiq, Leona thought wryly, Hassan’s ever-loyal partner in crime. Rafiq was an Al-Qadim. A man who had attended the same schools, the same universities, the same everything as Hassan had done. Equals in many ways, prince and lowly servant in others. It was a complicated relationship that wound around the status of birth and the ranks of power.
‘Perhaps you would be kind enough to ask him to give them back to me.’ Even she knew you didn’t command Rafiq to do anything. He was a law unto himself—and Hassan. Rafiq was a maverick. A man of the desert, yet not born of the desert; fiercely proud, fiercely protective of his right to be master of his own decisions.
‘For what purpose?’
Leona’s chin came up, recognising the challenge in his tone. She offered him a cool, clear look. ‘I am not staying here, Hassan,’ she told him flatly. ‘Even if I have to book into a hotel in San Estéban to protect your dignity, I am leaving this boat now, tonight.’
His expression grew curious, a slight smile touched his mouth. ‘Strong swimmer, are you?’ he questioned lazily.
It took a few moments for his taunt to truly sink in, then she was moving, darting across the room and winding her way between the two strategically placed chairs and the accompanying table to reach for the curtains. Beyond the glass, all she could see was inky darkness. Maybe she was on the seaward side of the boat, she told herself in an effort to calm the sudden sting of alarm that slid down her spine.
Hassan quickly disabused her of that frail hope. ‘We left San Estéban minutes after we boarded.’
It was only then that she felt it: just the softest hint of a vibration beneath the soles of her feet that told of smooth and silently running engines. This truly was an abduction, she finally accepted, and turned slowly back round to face him.
‘Why?’ she breathed.
It was like a replay of what had already gone before, only this time it was serious—more serious than Leona had even begun to imagine. For she knew this man—knew he was not given to flights of impulse just for the hell of it. Everything he did had to have a reason, and was always preceded by meticulous planning which took time he would not waste, and effort he would not move unless he felt he absolutely had to do.
Hassan’s small sigh conveyed that he too knew that this was where the prevarication ended. ‘There are problems at home,’ he informed her soberly. ‘My father’s health is failing.’
His father…Anger swiftly converted itself into anxious concern for her father-in-law. Sheikh Khalifa had been frail in health for as long as she had known him. Hassan doted on him and devoted most of his energy to relieving his father of the burdens of rule, making sure he had the best medical attention available and refusing to believe that one day his father would not be there. So, if Hassan was using words like ‘failing’, then the old man’s health must indeed be grave.
‘What happened?’ She began to walk towards him. ‘I thought the last treatment was—’
‘Your interest is a little too late in coming,’ Hassan cut in, and with a flick of a hand halted her steps. ‘For I don’t recall you showing any concern about what it would do to his health when you left a year ago.’
That wasn’t fair, and Leona blinked as his words pricked a tender part of her. Sheikh Khalifa was a good man—a kind man. They had become strong, close friends while she had lived at the palace. ‘He understood why I felt I needed to leave,’ she responded painfully.
You think so? Hassan’s cynical expression derided. ‘Well, I did not,’ he said out loud. ‘But, since you decided it was the right thing for you to do, I now have a serious problem on my hands. For I am, in effect, deemed weak for allowing my wife to walk away from me, and my critics are making rumbling noises about the stability of the country if I do not display some leadership.’
‘So you decided to show that leadership by abducting me, then dragging me back to Rahman?’ Her thick laugh poured scorn over that suggestion, because they both knew taking her back home had to be the worst thing Hassan could possibly do to prove that particular point.
‘You would prefer that I take this second wife who makes you flee in pain when the subject appears in front of you?’
‘She is what you need, not me.’ It almost choked her to say the words. But they were dealing with the truth here, painful though that truth may be. And the truth was that she was no longer the right wife for the heir to a sheikhdom.
‘I have the wife I want,’ he answered grimly.
‘But not the wife you need, Hassan!’ she countered wretchedly.
His eyes flicked up to clash with her eyes. ‘Is that your way of telling me that you no longer love me?’ he challenged.
Oh, dear God. Lifting a trembling hand up to cover her eyes, Leona gave a shake of her head in refusal to answer. Without warning Hassan was suddenly moving at speed down the length of the room.
‘Answer me!’ he insisted when he came to a stop in front of her.
Swallowing on a lump of tears, Leona turned her face away. ‘Yes,’ she whispered.
His sudden grip on her hand dragged it from her eyes. ‘To my face,’ he instructed, ‘You will tell me this to my face!’
Her head whipped up, tear darkened eyes fixing painfully on burning black. ‘Don’t—’ she pleaded.
But he was not going to give in. He was pale and he was hurt and he was furiously angry. ‘I want to hear you state that you feel no love for me,’ he persisted. ‘I want you to tell that wicked lie to my face. And then I want to hear you beg forgiveness when I prove to you otherwise! Do you understand, Leona?’
‘All right! So, I love you! Does that make it all okay?’ she cried out. ‘I love you but I will not stay married to you! I will not watch you ruin your life because of me!’
