Without hesitation he wrenched the jet-ski from Rafiq and was speeding off towards his wife before his brother had realised what he had done. Teeth set, eyes sharp, he made an arrow-straight track towards her deadly still jet-ski as behind him the yacht began sounding its horn in a warning call to Samir. The sound brought everyone to the boatside, to see what was going on.
By the time Hassan came up on Leona's jet-ski, Rafiq was racing after him on another one and Samir was heading towards them at speed. No one else moved or spoke or even breathed as they watched Hassan take a leaping dive off his moving machine and disappear into the deep blue water. Three minutes had past, maybe four, and Hassan could not understand why her buoyancy aid had not brought her to the surface.
He found out why the moment he broke his dive down and twisted full circle in the water. A huge piece of wood, like the beam from an old fishing boat, floated just below the surface-tangled with fishing net. It was the net she was caught in, a slender ankle, a slender wrist, and she was frantically trying to free herself.
As he swam towards her, he saw the panic in her eyes, the belief that she was going to die. With his own lungs already wanting to burst, he reached down to free her foot first, then began hauling her towards the surface even as he wrenched free her wrist.
White, he was white with panic, overwhelmed by shock and gasping greedily for breath. She burst out crying, coughing spluttering, trying desperately to fill her lungs through racking sobs that tore him to bits. Neither had even noticed the two other jet-skis warily circling them or that Raschid and a crewman were heading towards them in the yacht s emergency inflatable.
'Why is it you have to do this to me?' he shouted at her furiously.
'Hassan.' someone said gruffly. He looked up. saw hi brother's face, saw Samir looking like a ghost, saw the inflatable almost upon them, then saw-really saw-the woman he held crushed in his arms. After that the world took on a blur as Rafiq and Samir joined them in the water and helped to lift Leona into the boat. Hassan followed, then asked Raschid and the crewman to bring in the other two men on the jet-skis. As soon as the jet-skis left the inflatable, he turned it round and, instead of making for the yacht, he headed out in the Red Sea.
Leona didn't notice, she was lying in a huddle still sobbing her heart out on top of a mound of towels someone had had the foresight to toss into the boat, and he was shaking from teeth to fingertips. His mind was shot, his eyes blinded by an emotion he had never experienced before in his life.
When he eventually stopped the boat in the middle of nowhere, he just sat there and tried hard to calm whatever it was that was raging inside of him while Leona tried to calm her frightened tears.
'You know,' he muttered after a while, 'for the first time since I was a boy, I think I am going to weep. You have no idea what you do to me, no idea at all. Sometimes I wonder if you even care."
'It was an accident,' she whispered hoarsely
'So was the trip on the gangway! So was the headlong fall down the stairs! What difference does it make if it was an accident? You still have no idea what you do to me!'
Sitting up, she plucked up one the towels and wrapped it around her shivering frame.
'Are you listening to me?' he grated.
'No,' she replied. 'Where are we?"
'In the middle of nowhere where I can shout if I want to, cry if I want to, and tell the rest of the world to get out of my life!' he raged. 'I am sick of other people meddling in it. I am sick of playing stupid, political games. And I am sick and tired of watching you do stupid madcap things just because you are angry with me!'
'Hassan-'
'What?' he lashed back furiously, black eyes burning, body so taut it looked ready to snap in two. He was soaking wet and he was trembling-not shivering like herself.
'I'm all right,' she told him gently.
He fell on her like a ravaging wolf, setting the tiny boat rocking and not seeming to care if they both ended up in the water again. 'Four minutes you were under the water-I timed it!' he bit out between tense kisses.
'I'm accident prone; you know I am,' she reminded him. 'The first time we met I tripped over someone's foot and landed on your lap.'
'No.' He denied it. 'I helped you there with a guiding hand.'
She frowned. He grimaced. He had never admitted that before. 'I had been watching you all evening, wondering how I could get to meet you without making myself appear over-eager. So it was an opportunity sent from Allah when you tripped just in front of me.'
Leona let loose a small, tear-choked chuckle. 'I tripped in front of you on purpose,' she confessed. 'Someone said you were an Arabian sheikh, rich as sin, so I thought to myself. That will do for me!'
'Liar,' he murmured.
'Maybe.' She smiled.
Then the teasing vanished from both of them. Eyes darkened, drew closer, then dived into each other's to dip into a place so very special it actually hurt to make contact with so much feeling at once.
'Don't leave me-ever.' He begged her promise.
Leona sighed as she ran her fingers through his wet hair. Her throat felt tight and her heart felt heavy. 'I'm frightened that one day you will change your mind about me and want more from your life. Then what will I be left with?'
'Ethan Hayes is in love with you,' he said.
'What has that got to do with this?' She frowned. 'And, no, he is not.'
'You are frightened I will leave you. Well, I am frightened that you will one day see a normal man like Ethan and decide he has more to offer you than I ever can."
'You are joking,' she drawled.
'No, I am not.' He sat up, long fingers reaching out to pluck absently at the rope work around the sides of the boat. 'What do I offer you beside a lot of personal restrictions, political games that can get nasty enough to put your well-being at risk, and a social circle of friends you would not pass the day with if you did not feel obliged to do so for my sake.'
'I liked most of our friends in Rahman,' she protested, sitting up to drape one of the towels around her head because the sun was too hot. 'Those I didn't like, you don't particularly like, and we only used to see them at formal functions.
'Or when we became stuck on a boat with them with no means of escape."
'Why are we having this conversation in this small boat in the middle of the Red Sea?' she questioned wearily.
'Where else?' He shrugged. 'In our stateroom where there is a convenient bed to divert us away from what needs to be said?"
'It's another abduction,' she murmured ruefully.
'You belong to me. A man cannot abduct what is already his.'
'And you're arrogant.' She sighed.
'Loving you is arrogant of me?' he challenged.
Leona just shook her head and used the comer of the towel to dry her wet face. Her fingers were trembling, and she was still having a struggle to calm her breathing. 'Last night you promised me a divorce.'
'Today I am taking that promise back.'
'Here...' she held her arm out towards him. '...can you do something about this?'
Part of the netting she had been tangled in was still clinging to her wrist. The delicate skin beneath it was red and chafed. 'I'm sorry I said what I did last night,' he murmured.
'I'm sorry I said what I did.' Leona returned. 'I didn't even mean it the way it came out. It's just that sometimes you look so very...'
'Children are a precious gift from Allah,' Hassan interrupted, dark head sombrely bent over his task. 'But so is love. Very few people are fortunate enough to have both, and most only get the children. If I had to choose then I would choose, to have love.'
'But you are an Arabian sheikh with a duty to produce the next successor to follow on from you, and the choice no longer belongs to you.'
'If we find we want children then we will get some,' he said complacently, lifting up her wrist to break the stubborn cord with the sharp snap of his teeth. 'IVF, adoption... But only if we want them.' He made that fine but important point. 'Otherwise let Rafiq do his bit for his country,' he concluded with an indifferent shrug.
'He would give you one of his stares if he heard you saying that.' Leona smiled.
'He is an Al-Qadim, though he chooses to believe he is not."
'He's half-French.'
'I am one quarter Spanish, and one quarter Al-Kadah,' he informed her. 'You, I believe, are one half rampaging Celt. I do not see us ringing bells about it."
'All right, I will stay,' she murmured.
Dark eyes shrouded by a troubled frown lifted to look at her. 'You mean stay as in for ever, no more argument?' He demanded clarification.
Reaching up, she stroked her fingers through his hair again. 'As in you've got me for good, my lord Sheikh,' she said soberly. 'Just make sure you don't make me regret it.'