The sheikh's chosen wife(26)

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.'