The sheikh's chosen wife(16)

Or part of the truth, he then amended, all too grimly aware that there  was yet more to come. But the rest was going to have to wait for a  calmer time, for this moment might be silent but it certainly was not  calm, because-

Damn it, despite the sensible lecture he was angry! There was not  another person on this planet who dared to speak to him as she had just  done, and the hell if he was going to apologise for responding to that!

He flicked a glance at her. She hadn't moved. If she was even breathing  he could see no evidence of it. Her hair was untidy. Long silken  tendrils had escaped from the band she'd had it tied up in all day and  were now caressing her nape, framing her stark white profile to add a  vulnerability to her beauty that wrenched hard on his heart-strings. Her  feet were bare, as were her slender arms and long slender legs. And she  was emulating a statue again, only this time instead of art-deco she  portrayed the discarded waif.

He liked the waif. His body quickened; another prohibited sigh tightened  his chest. Curiosity replaced anger, though pride held his arrogant  refusal to be the first one to retract his words firmly in place. She  moved him like no other woman. She always had done. Angry or sad, hot  with searing passion or frozen like ice as she was now.

Inshaliah. It was Allah's will that he loved this woman above all  others. Let her go? Not while he had enough breath in his body to fight  to hold onto what was his! Though he wished he could see evidence that  there was breath inside hers.

He picked up an ornament measured the weight of the beautifully sculpted  smooth sandstone camel then put it back down again to pick up another  one of a falcon preparing to take off on the wing. And all the time the  silence throbbed like a living pulse in the air all around them.

Say something-talk to me, he willed silently. Show me that my woman is  still alive in there, he wanted to say. But that pride again was  insisting he would not be the one to break the stunning deadlock they  were now gripped in.

The light tap at the door meant the ordered tea he didn't even want had  arrived. It was a relief to have something to do. She didn't move as he  went to open the door, still hadn't moved when he closed it again on the  steward he'd left firmly outside. Carrying the tray to the low table,  he put it down, then turned to look at her. She still hadn't moved.                       
       
           



       

Inshallah, he thought again, and gave up the battle. Walking over to  her, he placed a hand against her pale cheek, stroked his thumb along  the length of her smooth throat then settled it beneath her chin so he  could lift her face up that small inch it required to make her look at  him.

Eyes of a lush dark vulnerable green gazed into sombre night-dark brown.  Her soft mouth parted; at last she took a breath he could hear and see.  'Be careful what you wish for,' she whispered helplessly.

His legs went hollow. He understood. It was the way it had always been  with them. 'If true love could be made to order, we would still be  standing here,' he told her gravely.

At which point the ice melted, the gates opened and in a single  painfully hopeless move she coiled her arms around his neck, buried her  face into his chest and began to weep.

So what do you do with a woman who breaks her heart for you? You take  her to bed. You wrap her in yourself. You make love to her until it is  the only thing that matters any more. Afterwards, you face reality  again. Afterwards you pick up from where you should never have let  things go astray.

The tea stewed in the pot. Evening settled slowly over the room with a  display of sunset colours that changed with each deepening stage of  their sensual journey. Afterwards, he carried her into the shower and  kept reality at bay by loving her there. Then they washed each other,  dried each other, touched and kissed and spoke no words that could risk  intrusion for as long as they possibly could.

It was Leona who eventually approached reality. 'What now?' she asked him.

'We sail the ocean on our self-made island, and keep the rest of the world out,' he answered huskily.

'For how long?'

'As long as we possibly can.' He didn't have the heart to tell her he  knew exactly how long. The rest would wait, he told himself.

It was a huge tactical error, though he did not know that yet. For he  had not retracted what he had decreed in a moment of anger. And,  although Leona might appear to have set the words aside, she had not  forgotten them. Nor had she forgotten the reason she was here at all:  there were people out there who wanted to harm her.

But for now they pretended that everything was wonderful. Like a second  honeymoon in fact-if an unusual one with Rafiq and Faysal along for  company. They laughed a lot and played like any other set of  holidaymakers would. Matters of state took a back seat to other more  pleasurable pursuits. They windsurfed off the Greek islands, snorkelled  over shipwrecks, jet-skied in parts of the Mediterranean that were so  empty of other human life that they could have had the sea to  themselves.

One week slid stealthily into a second week Leona regained the weight  she had lost during the empty months without Hassan, and her skin took  on a healthy golden hue. When matters of state refused to be completely  ignored, Rafiq was always on hand to help keep up the pretence that  everything was suddenly and miraculously okay.

Then it came. One heat-misted afternoon when Hassan was locked away in  his office, and Faysal, Leona and Rafiq were lazing on the shade deck  sipping tall cool drinks and reading a book each. She happened to glance  up and received the shock of her life when she saw that they were  sailing so close to land it felt as if she could almost reach out and  touch it.

'Oh, good grief,' Getting up she went to stand by the rail. 'Where are we, Rafiq?'

'At the end of our time here alone together,' a very different voice replied.

CHAPTER SIX

Leona turned to find Hassan was standing not far away and Rafiq was in  the process of rising to his feet. One man was looking at her; the other  one was making sure that he didn't. Hassan's words shimmered in the air  separating them and Rafiq's murmured, 'Excuse me, I will leave you to  it,' was as revealing as the speed with which he left.

The silence that followed his departure pulsed with the flurried pace of  her heartbeat while Leona waited for Hassan to clarify what he had just  said.

He was still in the same casual shorts and shirt he had been wearing  when she had last seen him, she noticed. But there, the similarity  between this man and the man who had kissed the top of her head and  strolled away to answer Faysal's call to work a short hour ago ended.  For there was a tension about him that was almost palpable, and in his  hand he held a gold fountain pen which offered up an image of him  getting up from his desk to come back here at such speed that he hadn't  even had time to drop the pen.

'We arrived here sooner than I had anticipated,' he said, confirming her last thought.

'It would be helpful for me to know where here is,' she replied in a  voice laden with the weight of whatever it was that was about to come at  her.

And come it did. 'Port Said,' he provided, saw her startled response of  recognition and lowered his eyes on an acknowledging grimace that more  or less said the rest.                       
       
           



       

Port Said lay at the mouth of the Suez Canal, which linked the  Mediterranean with the Red Sea. If they were coming into the port, then  there could only be one reason for it.

Hassan was ready to go home and their self-made, sea-borne paradise was about to disintegrate.

He had noticed the pen in his hand and went to drop it on the lounger  next to the book she had left there. Then he walked over to the long  white table at which they had eaten most of their evening meals over the  last two weeks. Pulling out a chair, he sat down, released a sigh, then  put up a hand to rub the back of his neck as if he was trying to iron  out a crick.

When he removed it again he stretched the hand out towards her. 'Join me,' he invited.

Leona shook her head and instead found her arms crossing tightly beneath  the thrust of her breasts. 'Tell me first,' she insisted.

'Don't be difficult,' he censured. 'I want you here, within touching distance when I explain.'

But she didn't want to be within touching distance when he said what she  knew he had to say. 'You are about to go home, aren't you?'

'Yes,' he confirmed.

It was all right challenging someone to tell you the truth when you did  not mind the answer, but when you did mind it- 'So this is it,' she  stated, finding a short laugh from somewhere that was not really a laugh  at all. 'Holiday over...'

Out there the sun glistened on the blue water, casting a shimmering haze  over the nearing land. It was hot but she was cold. It was bright but  she was standing in darkness. The end, she thought. The finish.