The sheikh's chosen wife(34)

So the door between their two rooms closed him away from her-just as it  had closed him away before, when he had decided it was better to sleep  elsewhere than risk another argument with her.

Maybe he was right. Maybe the common sense thing to do was stay out of  each other's way, because they certainly didn't function well together  unless they were in bed!

They had a battleground, not a marriage, she decided, and on that  profound thought she turned her back on that wretched closed door and  refused to look back at it.

The next day continued in much the same fashion. He avoided her. She  avoided him. They circulated the palace in opposing directions like a  pair of satellites designed never to cross paths. By six o'clock Leona  was in her room preparing for the evening ahead. By seven she was as  ready as she supposed she ever would be, having changed her mind about  what to wear a hundred times before finally deciding to wear the red  outfit.

When Hassan stepped into the room a few minutes later he took her breath  away. Tall, lean and not yet having covered his silky dark hair, he was  wearing a midnight blue long tunic with a standing collar braided in  gold. At his waist a wide sash of gold silk gave his body shape and  stature, and the jewel encrusted shaft belonging to the ceremonial  scabbard he had tucked into his waistband said it all.

Arrogance personified. A prince among men. First among equals did not  come into it for her because for her he was it-the one-her only one. As  if to confirm that thought her belly gave a skittering flutter as if to  say, And me, don't forget me.

Too soon for that, too silly to think it, she scolded herself as she  watched him pause to look at her. As always those dark eyes made their  possessive pass over her. As always they liked what they saw.

'Beautiful,' he murmured.

Tell me about it, she wanted to say, but she couldn't, didn't dare say anything in case the wrong thing popped anxiously out.

So the twist his mouth gave said he had misread her silence.  'Forgiveness, my darling, is merely one sweet smile away,' he drawled as  he walked towards her.

"But you have nothing to forgive me for!' she protested glad now to use her voice.

'Throwing me out of your bed does not require forgiveness?' An eyebrow  arched, the outfit, the coming occasion, turning the human being into a  pretentious monster that made her toes curl inside her strappy gold  shoes. With life, that was what they curled with life.

I love this man to absolute pieces. 'You left voluntarily,' she told him. 'In what I think you would describe as a sulk.'

'Men do not sulk.'

But you are not just any man, she wanted to say, but the comment would  puff up his ego, so she settled for, 'What do they do, then?'

'Withdraw from a fight they have no hope of winning.' He smiled. Then on  a complete change of subject, he said, 'Here, a peace offering.' And he  held out a flat package wrapped in black silk and tied up with narrow  red ribbon.

Expecting the peace offering to be jewellery, the moment she took  possession of the package she knew it was too light. So...what? she  asked herself, then felt her heart suddenly drop to her slender ankles  as a terrible suspicion slid snake-like into her head.

No, she denied it. Evie just would not break such a precious confidence. 'What is it?' she asked warily.

'Open it and see.'

Trembling fingers did as he bade her, fumbling with the ribbon and then  with the square of black silk. Inside it was a flat gold box, the kind  that could be bought at any gift shop, nothing at all like she had let  herself wonder, and nothing particularly threatening about it, but still  she felt her breath snag in her chest as she lifted the lid and looked  inside.

After that came the frown while she tried to work out why Hassan was  giving her a box full of torn scraps of white paper. Then she turned the  top one over, recognised the insignia embossed upon it and finally  realised what it was.

'You know what they are?' he asked her quietly.

'Yes.' She swallowed.

'All three copies of the contract are now in your possession,' he went  on to explain anyway. 'All evidence that they were ever composed wiped  clean from Faysal's computer hard disk. There, it is done. Now we can be  friends again.' Without giving her a chance to think he took the gift  and its packaging back from her and tossed it onto the bed.

'But it doesn't wipe clean the fact that it was written in the first  place,' she pointed out. 'And nor does it mean it can't be typed up  again in five short minutes if it was required to be done.'

'You have said it for yourself,' Hassan answered. 'I must require it. I  do not require it. I give you these copies for ceremonial purposes, only  to show you that I do not require it. Subject over, Leona,' he grimly  concluded, 'for I will waste no more of my time on something that had  only ever been meant as a diversion tactic to buy me time while I  decided what to do about Sheikh Abdul and his ambitious plans.'                       
       
           



       

'You expect me to believe all of that, don't you?'

'Yes.' It was a coldly unequivocal yes.

She lifted her chin. For the first time in days they actually made eye  contact. And it was only as it happened that she finally began to  realise after all of these years why they avoided doing it when there  was dissension between them. Eye contact wiped out everything but the  truth. The love truth. The need truth. The absolute and utter total  truth. I love him; he loves me. Who or what else could ever really come  between that?

'I think I'm pregnant,' she whispered.

It almost dropped him like a piece of crumbling stone at her feet. She  saw the shock; she saw the following pallor. She watched his eyes close  and feared for a moment that he was actually going to faint.

For days he had been waiting for this moment, Hassan was thinking. He  had yearned for it, had begged and had prayed for it. Yet, when it came,  not only had he not been ready, the frightened little remark had  virtually knocked him off his feet!

'I could kill you for this,' he ground out hoarsely. 'Why here? Why now,  when in ten short minutes we are expected downstairs to greet a hundred  guests?"

His response was clearly not the one she had been expecting. Her eyes  began to glaze, her mouth to tremble. 'You don't like it,' she quavered.

'Give me strength.' He groaned. 'You stupid, unpredictable, aggravating  female. Of course I like it! But look at me! I am now a white-faced  trembling mess!'

'You just gave me something I really needed. I wanted to give you something back that you needed,' she explained.

'Ten minutes before I face the upper echelons of Arabian society?'

'Well, thanks for being concerned about how I am feeling!' she flashed back at him.

She was right. 'You've just knocked me for six,' he breathed unsteadily.

'And I might be wrong, so don't start going off the deep end about it!' she snapped, and went to turn away.

Oh, Allah, help him, what was he doing here? With shaking hands he took  hold of her by her silk-swathed shoulders and pulled her against him.  She was trembling too. And she felt different, slender and frail and oh,  so precious.

He kissed her- What else did a man do when he was so blown away by everything about her?

'I should not have dropped it on you like this,' she murmured repentantly a few seconds later.

'Yes, you should,' he argued. 'How else?'

'It might come to nothing.' Anxiety was playing havoc with her beautiful eyes.

'We will deal with the something or the nothing together.'

'I am afraid of the nothing,' she confessed to him. 'I am afraid I might never get the chance to feel like this again."

'I love you,' he said huskily. 'Can that not be enough?'

'For you?' She threw the question back at him, clinging to his eyes like a vulnerable child.

'We know how I feel, Leona,' he said ruefully. 'In fact, the whole of  Rahman knows how I feel about you. But we hardly ever discuss how you  feel about the situation I place you in here.'

'I just don't want you to have to keep defending my place in your life,' she told him. 'I hate it.'

Hassan thought about the damage-control exercise he had already set into  motion, and wished he knew how to answer that. 'I like defending you.'  His words seemed to say it all

'You won't tell anyone tonight, will you?' she flashed up at him  suddenly. 'You will keep this our secret until we know for sure.'

'Do you really think I am that manipulative?' He was shocked, then  uncomfortable, because he realised that she knew him better than he knew  himself. 'Tomorrow we will bring in a doctor,' he decided, looking for  an escape from his own manipulative thoughts.

But Leona shook her head. 'It would be all over Rahman in five minutes  if we did that. Look what happened when I went to see him to find out  why 1 couldn't conceive?'

'But we have to know-'

'Evie is bringing me a pregnancy testing kit with her,' she told him,  too busy trying to smooth some semblance of calmness into herself to  notice how still he had gone. 'I rang her and explained. At least I can  trust her not to say anything to anyone.'

'What did she say?' Hassan enquired carefully.