The sheikh's chosen wife(30)

Nor had he forgotten that she had barely eaten a morsel of food all day.  He frowned down at his champagne glass, still brimming with its  contents. Tomorrow they reached Jeddah. Tomorrow he would take her to  visit a doctor, he decided grimly. If there was one rule you were taught  never to ignore when you lived in a hot country, it was the rule about  heeding any signs of illness. Maybe it was nothing.

Maybe it was all just down to stress. But maybe she had picked up  something in the water when she fell in. Whatever-tomorrow he would make  sure that they found out for definite.                       
       
           



       

It was a decision he found himself firmly repeating when they eventually  retired to their stateroom and the first thing that Leona did was wilt.

'You are ill,' he said grimly.

'Just tired,' she insisted.

'Don't take me for a fool, Leona,' he ground back. 'You do not eat. You  are clearly in some sort of discomfort. And you look ill.'

'All right.' She caved in. 'So I think I have developed a stomach bug.  If we have time when we reach Jeddah tomorrow I will get something for  it.'

'We will make time.'

'Fine.' She sighed.

He sighed. 'Here, let me help you...' She even looked too weary to undress herself.

So he did it for her-silently, soberly, a concentrated frown darkening  his face. She smiled and kissed him. It really was too irresistible to  hold the gesture in check. 'Don't turn into a minx just because I am  indulging you,' he scolded, and parted the tunic, then let it slide to  her feet.

'But I like it when you indulge me,' she told him, her eyes lowered to  watch him reach for the front clasp holding the two smooth satin cups of  her cream bra together. As the back of his knuckles brushed against the  tips of her breasts she drew back with a sharp gasp.

'What?' he demanded.

'Sensitive.' She frowned. He frowned. They both glanced down to see the  tight distension of her nipples standing pink and proud and wilfully  erect. A small smug smile twitched at the corner of his mouth. Leona  actually blushed.

'I'll finish the rest for myself,' she decided dryly.

'I think that would be wise,' Hassan grinned, and pulled the dishdasha off over his head to show her why he had said that.

'I don't know.' She was almost embarrassed by how fiercely one responded  to the closeness of the other. 'I'm supposed to be ill and tired and in  need of much pampering.'

A set of warm brown fingers gently stroked the flush blooming in her  cheek. 'I know of many ways to pamper,' he murmured sensually. 'Slow and  gentle. Soft and sweet...'

His eyes glowed darkly with all of those promises; hers grew darker on  the willingness to accept. The gap between them closed, warm flesh  touched warm flesh, mouths came together on a kiss. Then he showed her.  Deep into the night he showed her a hundred ways to pamper a woman until  she eventually fell asleep in his arms and remained there until morning  came to wake them up.

At breakfast she actually ate a half-slice of toast with marmalade and  drank a full cup of very weak tea-hopefully without giving away the fact  that it was a struggle not to give it all back up.

Little Hashim came to beg to be allowed to sit on her lap. Leona placed  him there and together they enjoyed sharing the other half of her slice  of toast, while Hassan looked on with a glaze across his eyes and Evie  posed a sombre question at her husband. Raschid, with expressive eyes.

He got up and stepped around the table to lay a hand on Hassan's  shoulder. The muscles beneath it were fraught with tension. 'I need a  private word with you, Hassan,' he requested. 'If you have finished  here?'

The same muscle flexed as Hassan pulled his mind back from where it had  gone off to. 'Of course,' he said, and stood up. A moment later both men  were walking away from the breakfast table towards the stairs which  would take them down to the deck below and Hassan's private suite of  offices.

Most watched them go. Many wondered why Sheikh Raschid felt it necessary  to take Sheikh Hassan to one side. But none, friend nor foe-except for  Evie, who kept her attention firmly fixed on the small baby girl in her  arms-came even close to guessing what was about to be discussed.

By the time Raschid came to search his wife out she was back in their  suite. She glanced anxiously up at him. Raschid lifted a rueful  shoulder, 'Well, it is done,' he said. Though neither of them looked as  if the statement pleased them in any way.

Well, it is done. That more or less said it. Well it is done, now held  Hassan locked in a severe state of shock. He couldn't believe it. He  wanted to believe it, but did not dare let himself because it changed  everything: the view of his life; the view of his marriage.

He had to sit down. The edge of his desk was conveniently placed to  receive his weight, and his eyes received the cover of a trembling hand.  Beyond the closed door to his office his guests and the tail end of the  cruise carried on regardless, but here in this room everything he knew  and felt had come to a complete standstill.

He couldn't move. Now his legs had been relieved of his weight, they had  lost the ability to take it back again. Inside he was shaking. Inside  he did not know what to feel or what to think. For he had been here in  this same situation before- many times-and had learned through  experience that it was a place best avoided at all costs.

Hope-then dashed hopes. Pleasure-then pain. But this was different. This  had been forced upon him by a source he had good reason to trust and  not to doubt.                       
       
           



       

Doubt. Dear heaven, he was very intimate with the word doubt. Now, as he  removed the hand from his eyes and stared out at the glistening waters  he could see through the window, he found doubt being replaced by the  kind of dancing visions he had never-ever-allowed himself to see before.

A knock sounded at the door, then it opened before he had a chance to  hide his expression. Rafiq walked in, took one look at him and went rock  solid still.

'What is it?' he demanded. 'Father?'

Hassan quickly shook his head. 'Come in and close the door,' he urged,  then made an effort to pull himself together-just in case someone else  decided to take him by surprise.

Leona.

Something inside him was suddenly threatening to explode. He didn't know  what, but it scared the hell out of him. He wished Raschid had said  nothing. He wished he could go back and replay the last half hour again,  change it, lose it-

'Hassan...?' Rafiq prompted an explanation as to why he was witnessing his brother quietly falling apart.

He looked up, found himself staring into mirrors of his own dark eyes,  and decided to test the ground-test those eyes to find out what Leona  would see in his eyes if she walked in here right now.

'Evie-Raschid,' he forced out across a sand-dry throat. 'They think Leona might be pregnant. Evie recognises the signs...'



CHAPTER TEN

Silence fell. It was, Hassan recognised, a very deathly silence, for Rafiq was already showing a scepticism he dared not voice.

Understanding the feeling, Hassan released a hard sigh, then grimly  pulled himself together. 'Get hold of our father,' he instructed. 'I  need absolute assurance from him that I will not be bringing Leona back  to a palace rife with rumour attached to her return.' From being  hollowed by shock he was now as tight as a bowstring. 'If he has any  doubts about this, I will place her in Raschid's safekeeping, for she  must be protected at all cost from any more anguish or stress.'

'I don't think Leona will-"

'It is not and never has been anyone else's place to think anything  about my wife!' The mere fact that he was lashing out at Rafiq showed  how badly he was taking this. 'Other people's thinking has made our life  miserable enough! Which is why I want you to speak to our father and  not me,' he explained. 'I will have this conversation with no one else.  Leona must be protected from ever hearing from anyone else that I am so  much as suspecting this. If I am wrong then only I will grieve over what  never was. If I am correct, then she has the right to learn of her  condition for herself. I will not take this away from her!'

'So I am not even to tell our father,' Rafiq assumed from all of that.

'He and Leona communicate daily by e-mail,' Hasssan explained. 'The old  man may be too puffed up with excitement to hold back from saying  something to her.'

'In the state you are in, all of this planning may well be a waste of  time,' Rafiq remarked with a pointed glance at his watch. 'In one hour  we arrive in Jeddah. If you do not pull yourself together Leona will  need only to look at your face to know that something catastrophic has  taken place.'

Hassan knew it. Without warning he sank his face into his hands. 'This is crazy,' he muttered thickly.

'It is certainly most unexpected,' his brother agreed. 'And a little too  soon for anyone, including the Al-Kadahs, to be making such confident  judgements?' he posed cautiously.