The sheikh's chosen wife(5)

As the door closed them in, the sudden silence stifled almost as much as  the abaya had done. Neither moved, neither spoke for the space of  thirty long heart-throbbing seconds, while Hassan stared coldly down at  her and she stared at some obscure point near his right shoulder.                       
       
           



       

Years of loving this one man, she was thinking painfully. Five years of  living the dream in a marriage she had believed was so solid that  nothing could ever tear it apart. Now she couldn't even bring herself to  focus on his face properly in case the feelings she now kept deeply  suppressed inside her came surging to the surface and spilled out on a  wave of broken-hearted misery. For their marriage was over. They both  knew it was over. He should not have done this to her. It hurt so badly  that he could treat her this way that she didn't think she was ever  going to forgive him for it.

Hassan broke the silence by releasing the breath he had been holding  onto. 'In the interests of harmony, I suggest you restrain from  mentioning Ethan Hayes in my presence,' he advised, then simply stepped  right past her to walk across the room to a polished wood counter which  ran the full length of one wall.

As she followed the long. lean, subtle movement of his body through  desperately loving eyes, fresh fury leapt up to save her again. 'But who  else would I ask about when I've just watched your men beat him up and  drag him away?' she threw after him.

'They did not beat him up.' Flicking open a cupboard door, he revealed a  fridge stocked with every conceivable form of liquid refreshment.

'They fell on him like a flock of hooligans!'

'They subdued his enthusiasm for a fight.'

'He was defending me!"

'That is my prerogative.'

Her choked laugh at that announcement dropped scorn all over it.  'Sometimes your arrogance stuns even me!' she informed him scathingly.

The fridge door shut with a thud. 'And your foolish refusal to accept wise advice when it is offered to you stuns me!'

Twisting round, Hassan was suddenly revealing an anger that easily  matched her own. His eyes were black, his expression harsh, his mouth  snapped into a grim line. In his hand he held a bottle of mineral water  which he slammed down on the cabinet top, then he began striding towards  her, big and hard and threatening.

'I don't know what's the matter with you,' she burst out bewilderedly. 'Why am I under attack when I haven't done anything?'

'You dare to ask that, when this is the first time we have looked upon  each other in a year-yet all you can think about is Ethan Hayes?'

'Ethan isn't your enemy,' she persisted stubbornly.

'No.' Thinly said. Then something happened within his eyes that set her  heart shuddering. He came to a stop a bare foot away from her. 'But he  is most definitely yours,' he said.

She didn't want him this close and took a step back. 'I don't know what you mean,' she denied.

He closed the gap again. 'A married woman openly living with a man who is not her husband carries a heavy penalty in Rahman.'

'Are you daring to suggest that Ethan and I sleep together?' Her eyes went wide with utter affront.

'Do you?'

The question was like a slap to the face. 'No we do not!'

'Prove it,' he challenged.

Surprise had her falling back another step. 'But you know Ethan and I don't have that kind of relationship,' she insisted.

'And, I repeat,' he said, 'prove it.'

Nerve-ends began to fray when she realised he was being serious, 'I  can't,' she admitted, then went quite pale when she felt forced to add,  'But you know I wouldn't sleep with him, Hassan. You know it,' she  emphasised with a painfully thickening tone which placed a different  kind of darkness in his eyes.

It came from understanding and pity. And she hated him for that also!  Hated and loved and hurt with a power that was worse than any other  torture he could inflict.

'Then explain to me, please,' he persisted nonetheless, 'when you openly  live beneath the same roof as he does, how I convince my people of this  certainty you believe I have in your fidelity?'

"But Ethan and I haven't spent one night alone together in the villa,'  she protested. 'My father has always been there with us until he was  delayed in London today!'

'Quite.' Hassan nodded. 'Now you understand why you have been snatched  from the brink of committing the ultimate sin in the eyes of our people.  There,' he said with a dismissive flick of the hand. 'I am your  saviour, as is my prerogative.'

With that, and having neatly tied the whole thing off to his own  satisfaction, he turned and walked away- Leaving Leona to flounder in  his smooth, slick logic and with no ready argument to offer.

'I don't believe you are real sometimes,' she sent shakily after him.  'Did it never occur to you that I didn't want snatching from the brink'

Sarcasm abounding, Hassan merely pulled the gutrah from his head and  tossed it aside, then returned to the bottle of water. 'It was time,' he  said, swinging the fridge door open again. 'You have had long enough to  sulk.'

'I wasn't sulking!'

'Whatever,' he dismissed with a shrug, then chose a bottle of white wine  and closed the door. 'It was time to bring the impasse to an end.'                       
       
           



       

Impasse, Leona repeated. He believed their failed marriage was merely  stuck in an impasse. 'I'm not coming back to you,' she declared, then  turned away to pretend to take an interest in her surroundings, knowing  that his grim silence was denying her the right to choose.

They were enclosed in what she could only presume was a private  stateroom furnished in subtle shades of cream faced with richly polished  rosewood. It was all so beautifully designed that it was almost  impossible to see the many doors built into the walls except for the  wood-framed doors they had entered through. And it was the huge  deep-sprung divan taking pride of place against a silk-lined wall, that  told her exactly what the room's function was.

Although the bed was not what truly captured her attention, but the pair  of big easy chairs standing in front of a low table by a set of closed  cream velvet curtains. As her heart gave a painful twist in recognition,  she sent a hand drifting up to her eyes. Oh, Hassan, she thought  despairingly, don't do this to me...

She had seen the chairs, Hassan noted, studying the way she was standing  there looking like an exquisitely fragile, perfectly tooled art-deco  sculpture in her slender gown of gold. And he didn't know whether to  tell her so or simply weep at how utterly bereft she looked.

In the end he chose a third option and took a rare sip at the white wine  spritzer he had just prepared for her. The forbidden alcohol content in  the drink might be diluted but he felt it hit his stomach and almost  instantly enter his bloodstream with an injection of much appreciated  fire.

'You've lost weight,' he announced, and watched her chin come up,  watched her wonderful hair slide down her slender back and her hand drop  slowly to her side while she took a steadying breath before she could  bring herself to turn and

'I've been ill-with the flu,' she answered flatly.

'That was weeks ago,' he dismissed, uncaring that he was revealing to  her just how close an eye he had been keeping on her from a distance.  The fact that she showed no surprise told him that she had guessed as  much anyway. 'After a virus such as influenza the weight recovery is  usually swift.'

'And you would know, of course.' she drawled, mocking the fact that he had not suffered a day's illness in his entire life.

'I know you,'' he countered, 'and your propensity for slipping into a decline when you are unhappy...'

'I was ill, not unhappy."

'You missed me. I missed you. Why try to deny it?'

'May I have one of those?' Indicating towards the drink he held in his  hand was her way of telling him she was going to ignore those kind of  comments.

'It is yours,' he explained, and offered the glass out to her.

She looked at the glass, long dusky lashes flickering over her beautiful  green eyes when she realised he was going to make her come and get the  drink. Would she do it? he wondered curiously. Would she allow herself  to come this close, when they both knew she would much rather turn and  run?

But his beautiful wife had never been a coward. No matter how she might  be feeling inside, he had never known her to run from a challenge. Even  when she had left him last year she had done so with courage, not  cowardice. And she did not let him down now as her silk stockinged feet  began to tread the cream carpet until she was in reach of the glass.

'Thank you.' The wine spritzer was taken from him and lifted to her  mouth. She sipped without knowing she had been offered the glass so she  would place her lips where his lips had been.

Her pale throat moved as she swallowed; her lips came away from the  glass wearing a seductively alluring wine glossed bloom. He watched her  smother a sigh, watched her look anywhere but directly at him, was aware  that she had not looked him in the face since removing the abaya, just  as she had stopped looking at him weeks before she left Rahman. And he  had to suppress his own sigh as he felt muscles tighten all over his  body in his desire to reach out, draw her close and make her look at  him!